How To Do YouTube Marketing The Right Way

Everyone loves a shocking statistic, so here are a few for you. Every minute, 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. Every day, the world spends 46,000 years watching YouTube.

Years.

Those are pretty impressive numbers.

Indeed, YouTube is the third most visited site on the Internet and it has over a billion users. As you can see, that’s a lot of visibility that businesses could be taking advantage of. And it’s an entirely free platform.

By now, you know that video is the way of the future, with a large percentage of video projected to be in video form now and in upcoming years.

There are many, many reasons why businesses should be thinking seriously about video marketing and YouTube marketing in particular.

On top of the visibility and ability to connect with your target audience on a massive platform, the video medium gives you the opportunity to build credibility. It allows you to establish yourself as an authority. At the end of the day, YouTube offers a solid path to conversions and revenue.

(By the way, Yocale can help you with increasing your visibility on Google).

Even small businesses can get a lot out of YouTube marketing. But, you have to do it in the right way in order to be seen and heard.

1. Creating The Right Kind Of Videos

For a video platform, the only way to grow your brand on YouTube is undoubtedly going to be creating the right kinds of videos. Ultimately, this means that your videos should be helpful. However, there’s a lot more to it than that.

Whether you create how-to tutorials, answer frequently asked questions, or interview experts, you should provide valuable content that your target audience is going to find particularly helpful. As far as the actual content of the video itself goes, that’s the foundation right there.

‘How to’ videos are growing 70 percent each year.

In fact, that’s the case whether you’re writing content for your blog or producing content for YouTube, but it bears repeating.

Here’s another way to think about it. if you can write a blog post on a given topic, you can certainly make a video about it. You can even collaborate with others and build your audience through theirs.

The power of video marketing is no more prevalent than in the real estate industry. Realtor Amir Hamzehali has used video as much as possible in show casing listing to not only local but foreign buyers as well.

Another aspect of video creation has to do with the length of your videos. In terms of video length, you need to get your audience to reach the end of your video so that they will see your call to action (more on that below).

Of course, as we mentioned, the content needs to be more than simply helpful. That’s a strong foundation, but it isn’t enough to get people to continue watching your video.

It needs to be presented in an exciting way that is going to push people forward, whether that’s with your voice or some other technique. Here are a few guidelines:

• A video that gets people watching from beginning to end has a story to it; that is, it is propelling the user through some kind of narrative, whatever that may be, from beginning to end.

You could be reviewing a spoon and still create a story out of it. Another way to think of it is to provide your audience with an experience. Without good storytelling, your videos will just not be as effective.

• If you or someone else is going to be on screen, consider writing a script so that you know what you’re going to say. Engage people with your voice. Use editing to spice things up, whether that’s jump cuts or another film technique.

In order for that happen, it is important that your videos are snappy and never excessively long. A video could be as short as three minutes, but ideally no longer than ten.

Here’s a more in-depth look about how to insert life into your YouTube videos through the art of storytelling and other film techniques from a popular YouTuber.

Pro Tip: YouTube provides a lot of in-depth information regarding who is watching your video and how they found it, both on an individual video basis, but also across all of your videos.

Either way, look at your insights to check on your most popular content, giving you an idea of what video content you should post more of in the future.

But, here’s an important caveat. From time to time, it is a good idea to produce other content that’s not necessarily directly related to your specific products or company. These types of videos are meant to be entertaining or compelling and pique interest that way.

Keep in mind that off-brand content still reflects positively on your brand. Just don’t produce this content all the time; you don’t want to confuse your audience.

Pixability’s industry study on how the top 100 brands are using YouTube found that the most successful companies produced a wide range of content.

They produced shorter content directed at those near the beginning of the buying cycle and longer form content being used to appeal to those who were already invested in their products.

So, to recap: helpful, valuable content is the foundation of a successful YouTube marketing strategy.

But, you need to present it an interesting way, perhaps by doing something like projecting your voice as if you were on a stage (this takes some practice), and, ideally, your video should have a storytelling component to it.

From time to time, mix it up with an extra compelling video.

But: there is another very important aspect to your video creation.

Pixability’s study also found that the most successful companies have 50% more videos than channels without as much success. Moreover, these successful companies were the ones posting regular content.

Indeed, there is a correlation between producing regular content and achieving success.

Often times, the posting frequency aspect doesn’t get as much attention as it should. The reason why frequency is so important is because it allows you to build a loyal base of viewers, who will come back to check on your channel if they know you’re posting regularly.

You may want to even go so far as to commit to a certain number of videos a week and tell your audience this in your channel trailer or on your channel banner. But don’t set yourself up for failure.

People are much more inclined to subscribe to your channel if they know you’re posting somewhat regularly. This may only be once a week, but the point is for it to be regular and consistent.

If you have doubts that you won’t be able to commit to a regular posting schedule, don’t commit.

Of course, while you want to produce regular video content, you don’t want to spread yourself too thin; you also don’t want to release subpar content at the risk of putting out yet another video.

That’s not to say that every video needs to have a high production value (in fact, that isn’t the case at all). You do, however, want to avoid churning out videos for the sheer sake of it.

In wrapping up this section, allow us to direct your attention to one final important aspect of making your videos. Remember the purpose of video creation in the first place.

Since the purpose of your YouTube videos is to drive people down the sales funnel, your videos need to point them in that direction. Create an educational video but giving them just enough information so that they are left looking for more. You will also want to implement the steps below.

With that, we suggest you proceed to step two.

2. Include Calls To Action In Your Videos

When it comes to creating video content, businesses have a handful of purposes for creating that content in the first place.

Ultimately, a YouTube video that is specifically designed for marketing purposes wouldn’t be doing its job if you didn’t include a call to action. The key is to keep them engaged until the end and then, once they’re there, you include a call to action.

You can include clickable calls to action, such as links to previous videos or a subscribe option throughout.

If your video is longer, aim to include a call to action every three minutes.

Keep in mind that these annotations also come in handy if you happen to have content that’s out of date. Instead of deleting the video, you can create a new video and include an annotation to direct people to the new video.

Whether you want to use YouTube as a platform to direct viewers back to your website so that they can interact further with your company’s services or products, or to capture a lead, you need to always have this in mind. You may even use YouTube to make a direct sale.

If your goal is lead generation, here is how you would optimize your YouTube videos to meet that goal: mention the link at some point in your video and explain the benefit of subscribing to your list.

Be sure to track all of your leads as these people are now familiar with your products/services and therefore further down the funnel.

If you want to make a direct sale, include a call to action in your video and then provide a link in the description box that goes directly to where they can make the purchase.

Also don’t overlook including subtitles in your videos. This will allow your content to be seen by a greater number of people, from those watching videos in public without sound (there are many) to the hearing impaired.

3. Make Your Videos Findable [Optimize For SEO]

Once you created your content and included calls to action in them, the next step is to optimize your videos for SEO purposes – that is, make them findable.

Your video creation efforts will be entirely wasted if people aren’t finding your content. In other words, SEO is an integral part of YouTube, just as it is when producing content for your website. YouTube is the second biggest search engine, after all.

At a very basic level, your keywords should obviously be relevant to your particular industry. Don’t make the mistake of trying to cold sell to someone who isn’t ready to be sold to yet.

In short, keyword research is necessary. What keywords are people using to find your video? Don’t make the mistake of using the Google Keyword tool. You want to use the YouTube Keyword Tool.

That’s because although people search on both platforms, they search for different things on them. On Google, they might be searching for weather updates while on YouTube most people are searching for entertaining videos or very specific tutorials.

Indeed, YouTube SEO and Google SEO are very different. After you’ve conducted the necessary keyword research, you want to incorporate the following SEO practices into your video.

In fact, the best brands in Pixability’s study optimized their YouTube videos by keeping twice as many playlists for one, and two, video tags. Here is how to optimize your video tags.

As far as playlists go, you can create playlists for your most popular videos or a playlist dedicated to all of your videos that highlight your products or services the most. The choice is yours, but there are a couple of options to consider.

You also want to pay attention to the title of your videos as well as your video’s description. Ensure that you incorporate targeted keywords in the first few words of your video’s title without making yourself look like spam. That would be silly. No one wants to look like a ham.

Bold your keywords in the description, but don’t include too many keywords. Include a link to your call to action at the beginning of the description, whether that means getting them to share the video or any other action you want them to take. Remember: always have your goals in mind.

That same study found that not only were the most successful brands on top of SEO practices, but they also applied consistent branding in their metadata, including titles, tags and descriptions.

In summary:

• Titles (include keywords in the first few words)
• Tags
• Descriptions (fairly keyword rich, call to action at the beginning, bold keywords)

Consider, too, that page views, subscribers, comments and likes can also increase your visibility.

Another important aspect of ranking? Video responses. Video responses are followed by comments, which are followed by likes, which are followed by the number of views on your videos. In short, encourage others to make video responses.

4. Optimize Your Channel Page

A channel page, for all intents and purposes, is similar to a home page. You can add banner/channel art to reflect what your videos are all about.

If viewers stumble upon one of your videos and then descend into a dark hole looking at all of your video content, this is where they will go to learn more about the person or company behind the video creation.

That’s why you should use your channel page as another means to drive people to your website. Include links to your website and social media pages.

Make use of your banner, as this provides a visual cue about what your brand or business is all about, in addition to giving you the ability to include clickable links. Your banner is prime real estate for calls to action.

You also want your channel to be on brand. Choose colours that match your own branding. Here is a more in-depth look at how you can brand your channel for marketing success.

5. Use YouTube Ads

There’s Google AdWords. There’s Facebook advertising. But there’s also YouTube advertising.

Remember those mind blowing statistics we mentioned at the beginning of this article? That’s exactly why you should consider YouTube advertising (if you’re serious about YouTube, of course, which you really should be).

Just as you would bid on keywords in traditional pay-per-click advertising via Google Adwords, the premise is similar for YouTube. The benefit is that it is much cheaper.

Pixability’s industry study mentioned above found that the best brands made use of targeted YouTube advertising on a very regular basis.

Another part of the keyword process is testing how they did. In order to be able to do this, ensure that keywords have a minimum of 1,000 monthly impressions. While you’re testing your keywords, also make an effort to test video lengths and even a handful of target audiences.

Also ensure that when you’re bidding on keywords, you set your budget low enough to ensure that you don’t spend all of your budget on a single keyword.

Here’s how a step-by-step guide to doing YouTube advertising.

6. Share Your Videos On Other Platforms

You’ve heard it time and time again. And, you are about to hear it once more. Social sharing is, yet again, very important when it comes to successful YouTube marketing. But don’t take it from us.

Take a look at the Pixability study, with Facebook and Twitter being their most important sources of traffic. Every time you post a new video, you can also consider writing a blog around it. Or you could include it as a link in an email newsletter.

If you haven’t started a YouTube channel, you should probably give it some serious thought. If you have, this is how do to YouTube marketing the right way.

In the meantime, you can read more about the topic of video marketing here.