Many social media managers and brand owners often overlook the limitless potential of YouTube marketing.
YouTube has more than 2 billion monthly active users. So, your target audience is already on YouTube daily.
Now that we have established the importance of marketing your product and services on YouTube, you must be thinking about the next step.
If you already have a YouTube channel for your business, great! But if not, starting a YouTube channel should be your first step.
Just starting a YouTube channel and uploading random videos on it isn’t going to take you a long way. There needs to be a proper goal and plan in your mind before you start marketing on YouTube.
This article will give you some tips and tactics to build a top-notch YouTube marketing strategy.
Let’s roll.
Top 10 Tips to Create a YouTube Marketing Strategy
1. Know Your Target Audience
This step is one of the most crucial steps for creating a marketing campaign or strategy. We all have heard lots of business gurus saying ‘know your audience’ more than a thousand times now. If you get this wrong, then the whole plan will go down like dominoes.
Therefore, we must know what it means in terms of content marketing strategy.
It means knowing the demographics of your audience. You should gather data on the average age group engaging with your business, where the majority of them live, what their gender ratio is, etc.
If your competition is already marketing on YouTube, don’t panic. You can get a good idea of your target audience by watching them. By learning what your competitors are doing wrong, you can gain an advantage over them and can get ahead of them in the long run.
Get your hands on whatever data you find in the market about YouTube. Figure out what types of videos your target is mainly engaging in. Is it a long-form video, or is it a short-form video? Make a note of what trends they are following, and you are good to go for the next step.
2. Create Creative & Engaging Content
Instead of spending thousands of dollars on YouTube advertising, you can create creative content on YouTube for free to achieve much better results with less investment.
Once you have figured out what your target audience is looking for, you can make your videos accordingly and subtly promote your products. There are practically infinite options for video topics. After you have found what you are going to talk about in your videos, make sure that it is engaging.
To make your videos engaging, you can use background music, stock footage, infographics, and animations in your videos.
Before using any external resources, make sure that you use copyright-free and royalty-free music, stock footage, etc.
Once you have started creating creative and engaging content, the next step is to market it on YouTube.
3. Use YouTube SEO to Increase Your Reach
YouTube has a separate algorithm for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). With the process of YouTube Search Engine Optimization, you can rank your videos higher in the YouTube suggestion, attracting organic traffic to your channel.
Here are some pointers to optimize your YouTube profile:
- First, fill in all the details on your YouTube profile. Make sure that you add popular keywords in the ‘about’ section of your channel. Here you can also add links to your social media accounts and website.
- Add high-quality feature images as your channel icon and banner. Since this will be the welcome page of your channel, make sure everything is up to the mark. Create a channel trailer to entice viewers and give a general idea about your channel.
- In each video, always write a description. While writing, use high-volume keywords. It will rank your videos higher in the YouTube suggestion. Here again, you can link back to your website or product.
- If you want to have an international reach, be sure to add captions and translations to your videos. YouTube can also generate transcripts automatically, but most of the time, they are not very accurate.
- Make professional and eye-catching thumbnails and titles to attract the attention of viewers
4. Use YouTube Marketing Tools
Another way to grow your YouTube channel is to use YouTube marketing software. A YouTube marketing tool or software provides you with an analysis of what works for you and what doesn’t, upon which you can act to improve your content.
This software can also suggest keywords that you can use in your description box in a platform-friendly manner. Some of these tools also give you ideas for creating content depending on your audience preference.
With the help of YouTube marketing tools, you gain better insights into your target audience, which can ultimately help you increase your business’s popularity.
Some of the best YouTube marketing software are:
- YouTube Studio
- SocialPilot
- BuzzSumo
- VidIQ
- Tubics
- Biteable
5. Create a Proper Call-To-Action
How often have you heard YouTubers saying: “…please like, share and subscribe to my channel”?
That’s nothing but a call to action. At the end of every video, you should guide your viewers to take a particular action or series of actions.
A call-to-action can be anything, from asking people to subscribe to your channel to recommending them to buy some product to even telling them to check out your company website.
It is essential to have an excellent call-to-action as it will take your audience through the sales funnel.
6. Collaborate with Influencers & Other YouTubers
Apart from using YouTube video marketing software and SEO techniques, you can also take the help of the already established influencers and YouTubers to promote your channel.
Research conducted by Google shows that 6 out of 10 people follow the advice given by their favorite influencer rather than a movie or a TV star.
That is why collaborating with influencers and YouTubers can produce great results. One of the things you should remember while doing these collaborations is that you must let the influencer do their thing.
If influencers are not feeling their natural selves, their audience will notice it, and it will have a negative impact on your target audience.
7. Start YouTube Affiliate Marketing
YouTube affiliate marketing also involves working with influencers or YouTubers. YouTube affiliate marketing is a method of advertising or promoting your products on other YouTube channels.
Here you have to create a unique affiliate link for each affiliate marketer. The affiliate marketer will promote the products, put the link in the description box or comment section, and guide their audience towards your link.
With the help of affiliate marketing, you can generate sales and gain more traffic to your website.
As each affiliate link is different, you will be getting data on which affiliate marketer has made the sale, and accordingly, you can pay them a commission. Most companies pay 5 to 30 % of commission per sale.
The return on investment is very high on YouTube affiliate marketing. Apart from YouTube, you can also use other channels like blogging websites, social media, Emails, and SMSs for affiliate marketing.
8. Give a Shot to YouTube Advertising
Once you have followed all the above steps, you can think of doing YouTube ads. With the help of YouTube ads, you can promote your products, services, brand, and even events.
But before you should rush for YouTube ads, you should know that there are four different types of YouTube ads.
1. Skippable In-stream Ads
Skippable in-stream ads are types of ads that we all encounter the most on YouTube. These ads can be played before, during, or after a video. You can skip them after 5 seconds.
You will have to pay according to the views that you gain from the ads. An advertisement will only be considered viewed when the viewer has watched it for a minimum of 30 seconds or clicked on the CTA banner.
These types of ads will save you a lot of money as you only have to pay as per the actions of your target audience.
2. Non-skippable In-stream Ads
As the name suggests, non-skippable ads are ones that the viewers cannot skip. The maximum duration for these is 15 seconds. As viewers can’t skip these ads, that is why they usually dislike them.
Thus, you should use non-skippable ads very carefully, or there is a chance that your target audience might be getting wrong impressions of your business or brand.
To ensure that this doesn’t happen, ensure that you provide informative and entertaining content in those 15 seconds that will positively impact your audience. You will have to pay for these ads as per CPM ( Cost per thousand impressions).
3. Video Discovery Ads
Video Discovery ads are displayed when a viewer searches for some content in the YouTube search box. Sometimes these ads are found on the homepage as a YouTube suggestion.
Video discovery ads have a thumbnail and a short description written below the title.
You would have to pay for these ads only when the viewer clicks on the video’s thumbnail. That means creating an eye-catching thumbnail is a must for getting views.
4. Overlay Ads
Overlay ads are the banners that you sometimes see at the bottom of the screen while watching the video. The dimension of this in-video banner is around 480px × 70px. There is only one problem with this type of ad; they are not available on mobile apps.
While making your YouTube marketing strategy, you should know that about 70% of YouTube users watch videos from the YouTube mobile application.
From these four types of advertisement, you can choose which you think will get you maximum reach at a reasonable price.
9. Create a Schedule for Publishing Videos
The subscribers of YouTube channels are loyal fans, and they will expect content from you regularly. Using the YouTube marketing software, you will know what times your viewers are most likely to engage with your videos.
You can use it to your advantage by publishing videos at those times and impressing your subscribers.
10. Consistency is the Key
Creating quality content is a time-consuming process. From finding video topics, writing a script, and shooting and editing – it’s a lot.
But YouTube marketing is essential for your business to grow its reach and customers. If you are not consistently making content, then it is difficult to achieve these goals.
Consistency on YouTube doesn’t have to do anything with the frequency with which you upload videos. It is always better to upload videos once every month than upload them for one week and then ghosting your channel for two months.
Not only would you have to maintain consistency in uploading videos, but also in the quality of those videos. After 10 videos, if the editing is terrible or the script is not on point, the view count will drop.
That is why you will have to make sure that you are consistent all across the board.
Ensuring consistency on your channel is stressful enough. But what about when you need to manage multiple YouTube channels at once?
That’s when YouTube scheduling tools like SocialPilot come in handy. SocialPilot allows you to connect all your channels to a single dashboard and schedule your feed videos and Shorts ahead of time. What’s more? While scheduling your videos, you can add custom thumbnails, tags, restrictions, and more. Don’t miss another post ever again with SocialPilot.
Final Words
These are some YouTube marketing tips that you can use to make a successful strategy. If you are a new business and planning to market through a YouTube channel, it will take you some time to gain views and subscribers.
So, it is essential to be persistent and have patience during those times. If you follow the above steps closely, there is a strong possibility that you will have the upper hand over your competitors.
If you want help with your YouTube marketing then you should definitely give SocialPilot a try. The tool will not only help you with scheduling and posting on all your YouTube channels but let you manage your other social media accounts under one roof.
