With over 2 billion logged-in monthly users, there’s no doubt that YouTube has enormous potential for business marketing. It’s even more advantageous when you realise that the average user spends 40 minutes on the site!
Not only does YouTube have an incredibly expansive outreach, it’s also free to use and widely accessible for all businesses. Rather than being merely used for entertainment purposes, YouTube has morphed into a valuable marketing platform for businesses worldwide – and it’s not hard to see why. It allows your business to stand out among competitors, while providing meaningful engagement through creative videos, powerful features and eye-catching ads.
Here are some of the ways that YouTube can help your business thrive!
Know Your Audience & Gain Valuable Insights
Once you’ve created a Brand Account on YouTube and started uploading videos, you should spend time researching and gaining insights into your audience. Consider existing YouTube Trends to get an idea of what is growing in popularity for users across the site, and further segment your audience to see who is the main demographic that is watching your videos.
With a YouTube channel for business, you’ll have access to an Analytics Tab, where you can gain a thorough understanding of your audience – monitor key metrics like subscriber count, average view duration, watch time and audience retention, and research demographic stats to identify your viewer base. You can even examine device reports to see which devices are most widely used among your viewers (e.g. mobile, desktop, Smart TV). Using your analytics, you can determine what kind of video content resonates with your audience the most and use this to brainstorm more ideas.
Another great thing about YouTube for businesses is that you’re able to reply to user’s comments underneath the videos. You can browse through these comments to further identify your audience’s preferences and interests, and even leave a Pinned comment at the top to ask for more video feedback and content ideas. If you have 1000 subscribers or more, you can visit the Community Tab to post questions and create a poll for your audience. You can even feature video testimonials by customers on your YouTube channel!
Optimise Your Videos to Attract Views
Like Google, YouTube basically functions as a search engine, but for videos. There are certain ranking factors within the YouTube algorithm that can determine if your video gets more views and search results. To attract views, you should optimise your videos so that they can reach a larger target audience and build brand awareness. Here are some suggestions:
Create a powerful video title
Make sure that you include the relevant keywords to attract the right audience. You can find keywords in Traffic Sources of YouTube Analytics, along with Google Trends and Google Ads Keyword Planner. Make sure you load the important keywords at the beginning of the title, avoid excessive punctuation and ideally use 60 characters or less to avoid being cut-off on mobile.
Note: try to avoid clickbait because false or gimmicky advertising (and sensationalist language) leads to lower retention and search ranking, while eroding the relationship with your viewers.
Write a keyword-rich description
The YouTube video description box should briefly summarise the topic or subject matter. Similar to the video title, you should try to plug in the relevant keywords early on, but try to balance this with more natural language. You can use up to 300 characters before the Show More button pops-up. This should be where you add more business information by featuring some product links, or website and social media links.
Develop an attention-grabbing thumbnail
To captivate viewers immediately and entice them to click on your video, you need a strong thumbnail. In fact, 90% of the best performing YouTube videos have custom thumbnails, meaning that their videos are more likely to stand out. The thumbnail specs should ideally be as high-res as possible (max 2GB), with dimensions 1280 x 720 pixels (16:9 ratio).
Clickable CTA buttons
To drive more lead conversions and video subscriptions, you can use clickable call-to-action buttons on your YouTube videos. There are several options for your business to use: End Screens that appear in the last 5-20 seconds, YouTube Cards which can expand when clicked and directs viewers to another site or playlist, unskippable bumper ads which appear at the video beginning for 6 seconds, and watermarks which enable custom subscribe buttons that are visible to non-subscribers.
Build Your Brand Identity: Optimise Your YouTube Channel
Like optimising each individual YouTube video to get views and clicks, you should also make it easier for people to find your YouTube channel and build a cohesive brand identity. Here are some ways to optimise your YouTube account for search ranking, views and subscriptions.
- Upload your business logo as the channel icon.
- Write a keyword-rich channel description that includes your website URL and social media links. This channel overview should provide subscribers of what content they can expect to gain value from.
- Create a Youtube Channel art banner. This should welcome viewers to your channel and promote your channel schedule, events, product launches or service offerings. In your banner, you should also embed your website and social media links for more brand exposure, along with an auto-subscribe button.
- In your YouTube channel, you should also feature other Youtube channels for your subscribers to find other relevant content or helpful resources. This builds brand value since you’re aligning your YouTube channel with other associated companies.
- Create a channel trailer to preview your video content to new audiences. Channel trailers auto-play when an unsubscribed visitor lands on your page. This means you should effectively provide an intriguing glimpse into your channel and introduce your business’s overarching brand. This is a fantastic opportunity to convert new audiences into subscribers.
- Develop video playlists so that viewers can continue watching your videos. Your playlists should be seamless, cohesive and have some logical progression from one video topic to the next. For example, you may consider organising the playlist from beginner to advanced tutorials, or product upgrades. You can even work with other YouTube channels and feature your videos in their video playlists.
- YouTube captions and translations are probably one of the most underrated ways to maximise your brand exposure. In fact, 60% of a YouTube channel’s views actually come from outside the creator’s country! You can enhance your audience outreach by using YouTube’s translation tools or add captions, making it easier for certain users to access your video. I.e. non-native speakers and hearing impaired audiences.
YouTube Advertising & Retargeting
Your business can gain so many benefits from advertising on YouTube – you can expand your reach to valuable customers, grow your audience and maintain loyalty, promote engagement, generate leads, while tracking analytics to measure your business’s performance. If you haven’t captured a prospect, you can use retargeting mechanisms offered by YouTube ads to pique their interest and encourage them to make a purchase.
Highly powerful and cost-effective, YouTube Advertising can help you grow and promote your business faster than ever before. In fact, people are three times more likely to pay attention to online video ads compared to traditional TV ads. You can also gain real-time insights to improve your ads and make meaningful adjustments which are tailored to the interests of your audience.
There are several types of YouTube advertising formats:
- Display Ads
- Overlay Ads
- Skippable video ads
- Non-skippable video ads
- Video discovery ads
- Sponsored cards
Coupled with video monetisation under the YouTube Partner Program, you can actually earn AdSense revenue from multiple sources including ads, channel memberships, business merch, and YouTube Premium users. To earn these monetisation rights, there are certain minimum eligibility requirements you need to check off, yet the rewards are insanely great for your business growth and revenue!
Get Started With YouTube Advertising for Business!
Advertising your business on YouTube requires lots of dedication. With OMDIGI Group’s Social Media Marketing and PPC Services, you can optimise your business’s YouTube channel and grow your audience quickly. We work closely with your business to develop tailored advertising campaigns across popular social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. So why waste time?
Contact us now for more details!
