Marketing on Youtube is the opportunity to take advantage of the audience of the largest video platform in the world. You can increase brand visibility, strengthen your relationship with your audience, and drive conversions there. Better understand the importance and ways to have good results on Youtube!
Marketing on Youtube is not yet part of your strategies? So it’s time to start thinking about how your brand can harness the power of the largest video platform on the web.
You may think your audience isn’t there or maybe you think doing video marketing is too complex, accessible only to large companies. If you think so, it’s also time to better understand how Marketing works on Youtube.
Why Do Marketing on Youtube?
Marketing on Youtube is one of the most efficient ways to increase brand engagement and visibility by harnessing the power of the world’s largest video platform. Let’s understand better why this is so important.
It’s not new to any marketer that videos are dominating the internet. It’s been a long time since we’ve had fun with funny videos on the web, spent hours watching online classes, or seeing how to make a recipe step by step.
This fascination with internet videos has a precursor, and surely you already know what it is: Youtube. Launched in 2005, the platform was so successful that it was acquired by Google the following year and became the biggest driver of this type of content on the web.
Today, Youtube has more than two billion users, which accounts for nearly a third of the internet —and that number increases each year.
According to Alexa data, this audience makes Youtube the second most accessed site on the web, behind only Google. In India, the consumption of videos on the web grew 135% between 2014 and 2018.
With these numbers, do you still think your audience is not on Youtube? It’s very likely that your customers are already on the platform (and you should be there too).
Another interesting number: every day, people spend on average 11min47s browsing the platform and watching the videos.
In comparison, Facebook is used for 17min46s a day, and Instagram, for 7min7s. You can tell youtube is among the biggest powers on the Internet, isn’t it?
This growth has made Youtube go from being just a video sharing platform to becoming a business platform.
It is no accident that the site was responsible for leveraging digital influencers, who won a loyal audience with their videos and left traditional TV shows behind.
With them, Youtube also ceased to be a passing platform, which is accessed by a link just to watch a video and then leave, and happened to be a destination platform, in which people go to browse, see what news and spend more time.
With an eye on the power of the platform, brands began to explore what it had to offer as a marketing tool.
Today, Youtube offers several possibilities of marketing and communication actions, which can increase brand awareness, the power of engagement and the authority of brands.
And don’t think they’re limited to posting videos on the channel. This is essential, of course, but you can also invest in ads, partner with brands and influencers, interact with channel subscribers, and take advantage of a number of features.
So if you don’t already do Marketing on Youtube, start changing your look: instead of a video platform, understand Youtube as a business opportunity. And you’ll be amazed at everything he can deliver.
What are the best marketing strategies for Youtube?
Want to better understand the opportunities that exist on Youtube? Let’s show you now the Marketing strategies on Youtube that you can develop. Later, we’ll detail the main ones.
Produce relevant content
First, understand that Youtube is a content platform. Therefore, it is one of the main tools of Content Marketing. And so producing content relevant to your audience is the primary strategy—without that, you can’t engage anyone.
For this, it is essential to know your audience first. It is from building a persona for your videos that you will be able to create content that interests the public, that they share and thrill or that simply answer your questions.
Engaging the audience
Don’t think that Youtube serves only as a repository of videos. It’s no use uploading the files over there and forgetting them, okay?
To succeed with Marketing on Youtube, you need to treat your audience well. This means responding to users’ comments, creating videos based on their questions, interacting on social networks, and asking what they’d like to see on your channel, for example.
These engagement strategies value those who follow your brand and improve your online reputation.
A good tool for this are posts from the Community tab, which serve to interact with subscribers in addition to the comments of the videos.
Here’s an example:
example of interaction between youtuber and public
Promote your videos
Another marketing strategy that cannot be forgotten is the dissemination of videos off Youtube to reach a larger audience. Remember that you have other digital channels to integrate with your presence on the platform.
That’s why the videos you post there can also be posted on Facebook, Instagram, the website, blog, email marketing and paid media, for example.
Later, we will present the main strategies to promote your videos and thus improve your reach numbers and involvement on Youtube.
Optimize videos for searches (SEO)
A good way to boost the performance of videos on Youtube is to optimize content for user searches —both from Youtube itself and from Google.
After all, who doesn’t want to appear in the first search results on the world’s largest video platform or leading search engine?
Searching for keywords, creating good titles, optimizing file name, and improving click-through rate (CTR) are strategies you already know from SEO to web pages.
But this same logic can be used in SEO for Youtube. Still in this article, you will know what are the main optimization strategies.
Advertise on other Youtube channels
Marketing on Youtube is not just about your channel. You can also create ads to appear on other placements that have the audience profile you want to reach.
Later, we will talk about Youtube Ads, which are the paid media formats of the platform. You can set up ads in Google Ads, which you may already use to create sponsored link or media display campaigns.
With the possibility to advertise on Youtube, therefore, you have another option of dissemination channel, with high targeting power, reach and engagement.
Partnering with influencers
Another way to do Marketing on Youtube is partnerships with influencers. By the way, you don’t even need to have a Youtube channel for this (although we indicate that you have, okay?).
By teaming up with influencers, your brand leverages the closeness, credibility, and power of influence they have with the audience. For you to have an idea: after family and friends, youtubers are the main opinion makers.
An example that highlights this was the phenomenon of sales of the book “The Missing Part”, after youtuber Jout Jout published a video about the work.
youtubers communicate authentically with the audience, and that’s how they win a legion of fans.
So when your brand thinks about partnerships with them, you need to know that you’re not dealing with traditional celebrities or advertising on TV. Youtubers will show you how to really connect with people.
For this partnership, there are different strategies. You can propose the production of sponsored content or a series of videos on the youtuber channel, with the intention of taking advantage of its organic reach.
But it is also possible to propose the production of videos for the brand channel, whose goal is to take advantage of the image of the influencer and attract its audience.
Monetize your channel
Did you know that your own channel can become a source of income? And if you have a meaningful audience and publish good content, that income can be quite valuable.
This is possible by adhering to the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), which allows you to make money from your videos by serving ads and viewing YouTube Premium subscribers, among other forms of monetization.
To start generating revenue on Youtube, however, the channel needs to have more than 1000 subscribers and more than four thousand hours of public display in the last 12 months, in addition to complying with the platform’s content guidelines.
If you meet these requirements, you can request youtube review to participate in YPP and then monetize your channel.
How to create good videos for youtube channel?
If Youtube is a content platform, the first step is to create good videos for your audience. So let’s now look at the main guidelines for your videos to rock:
Understand your audience
First, think: do you know what your audience would like to see on your channel? This answer is essential to the success of the content.
So start understanding the motivations, questions, pains of the audience to know what topics you should address. It’s also important to know the habits of video consumption to know how long and how often they are most appropriate.
For this, it is necessary beyond the basic data (gender, age, location, etc.) and build a persona for whom your videos will be produced.
A Google search can help with this task. The study showed what are the main motivations that lead Indian to Youtube: Connection, Knowledge, Entertainment and Identity. Based on them, you can also understand your audience.
Set goals
Before you start producing the videos, it’s also important to think about why you’re going to do this. The intention may be, for example, to generate traffic to the site, encourage the sale of a product, or increase interactivity.
Setting the goals of a content or series of videos is essential to have results and to verify that it was the expected return.
Create a script
From the definition of the persona and the objectives, you can already start thinking about the production of the videos. But it’s not time to record yet: think first of the story they’re going to tell.
At this point, the ideal is to build a script, with a short summary of the video, prediction of duration and the sequence of speeches and images that will build this story. A storyboard —graphic sketch of the screens that the video will show—is also a widely used feature.
In addition, it is important to think about the multimedia elements (graphics, images, sounds, music, etc.) and links to other videos and blog articles that can be included. Planning everything first, in the roadmap, makes production much more efficient.
Set the location for the footage
The definition of the location is decisive for the quality of the video. Evaluate issues such as the presence of noise or lack of lighting that can impair recording, as well as the possibility of charging for site use.
To avoid problems, please inquire first and visit the site in advance to evaluate these issues.
But also remember that a simple rental — like the company’s office or the nearest plaza — can be even more efficient and much more into account.
Plan the resources for recording
On the day of the recording, there can be nothing missing! Plan everything you need to record and still think about plan B if you have an equipment problem.
Camera, lighting, tripod, microphone and clothing are essential items of a video you need to think about.
Take time for editing
Did everything work out with the recording? So it’s time to do the editing. Many people do not realize that this part can be the most complex of the production process and that it takes time. Therefore, include this step in video planning.
In editing, it’s time to organize everything that has been recorded. Don’t think you need to win an Oscar with this, but making a good edit can be a differentiator of your channel, since it’s not something simple.
Think about the transition of the images, the rhythm of the video, the songs and sound effects, the links to other content, and the thumbnail that is displayed on Youtube.
Set a publish frequency
After recording the videos, do not publish randomly. In content planning, it is important to define publication dates, preferably with a constant frequency.
It is important to make this definition of an eye on the consumption habits of the audience, but also in its production capacity.
That way, your audience knows when you have news on your channel and can follow more faithfully. On the Rock Content channel, for example, we publish new videos every Thursday at 9:00.
Set a publish frequency
After recording the videos, do not publish randomly. In content planning, it is important to define publication dates, preferably with a constant frequency.
It is important to make this definition of an eye on the consumption habits of the audience, but also in its production capacity.
That way, your audience knows when you have news on your channel and can follow more faithfully. On the Rock Content channel, for example, we publish new videos every Thursday at 9:00.
What types of content to create for the Youtube channel?
Need inspiration to know what to post on your channel? You can produce various types of content to diversify your posts and engage your audience. Here are some video ideas to record.
Tips related to your area of expertise
The production of content should be relevant to the public. So try to answer the questions they have, with tips and tutorials that help solve common questions.
To understand the importance of this: a Google search showed that many people are on Youtube to learn.
Then, you can take advantage of this trend by educating your audience about your area of expertise. This helps build your market authority and make it easier for consumers to make decisions on the shopping journey.
On the Rock channel, for example, we publish several videos with tips on Digital Marketing:
Customer testimonials
Customer testimonials help corroborate what you say about your brand. You can ask the client to record their speech or, to ensure standardization between different testimonials, invite you for a short interview.
Testimonials from employees
It’s not just your customers who can talk about the brand. Employees live the day-to-day life of the company and can talk with ownership about how behind the scenes work.
Therefore, also make room for their testimonials, which help strengthen the brand’s reputation and still attract talent.
Product demonstration
Youtube does not exactly serve to make ads of your products as if you were in the commercial range of TV. But you can use the platform to talk about your products in an educational way.
Show how your last release works, how it can be used, how to extract more benefits from it, among other demos.
In addition to staying on the Youtube channel, these videos can also be used on the product page on the company’s website or e-commerce, as another argument for sale.
Video response
To drive interaction with subscribers on the channel, you can also create videos with questions and answers to resolve the questions that appear.
Nilce and Leon, from the channel Where the Key?, for example, made a video answering questions of comments that arose during a trip.
Interviews
Interviews with guests bring quality content to your channel, as well as attracting a new audience. You can invite experts, influencers, collaborators, and partners from other brands to do so.
Success stories
Create videos with successful cases to show what your brand has already done good for customers. This type of content is decisive in consumer decision-making in the final stage of the purchase journey.
Live streams
Live broadcasts have great appeal to the public. You can do lives on Youtube to give tips, do interviews, answer questions in real time and cover events, for example.
That is, you can do all kinds of content that we show above, only live!
In this case, the video planning needs to be redoubled so that there are no problems at the time of transmission.
How to increase the audience of your channel?
So let’s say you did the job right, planned your channel’s content well, and created videos relevant to your audience.
But is that enough?
Not yet: Marketing on Youtube also includes publicizing your channel off the platform to attract more and more audience. Here are some tips for this!
Integrate Youtube with your other digital channels
A Digital Marketing strategy is not done on just one channel. As much as you prioritize one or the other tool, it’s important to be present on different channels to reach your audience wherever it is.
Among the different channels that your brand uses — website, blog, social networks, email marketing, landing pages, ads, etc. — you need to create integrated communication.
Speaking of Youtube videos, you can use them to complement a blog post, to commake the sales page of a product or educate the customer with email marketing.
On rock’s blog, for example, we use videos to enrich the reading experience. An example is this video drunk in the full post on Digital Marketing:
Partner with other brands
Another way to promote your channel is to partner with other brands and influencers. You can adopt the strategy we call guest posts when we refer to blog strategies.
What does that mean? In Marketing for Youtube, you can propose the production and publication of videos on partner channels, which have an audience profile similar to yours, with content relevant to that audience.
Another idea is to invite to interviews or webinars together. This helps increase your visibility and attract new stakeholders to the channel.
Interact in other channels, forums, and communities
Interacting with comments from other Youtube channels, web forums or social media groups is also a way to promote your videos.
But don’t think about making a blatant advertisement, okay? Interact relevantly when your videos help group members in some way. So your brand is part of conversations by offering something of value to people.
Include CTAs in videos
For people to do what you want, nothing simpler than asking them directly, is it? That’s what call-to-action or CTAs, which can appear in your videos, are for.
Include in the video script some lines that encourage users to watch other videos on the channel related to that content.
Ask them to leave comments, to know their opinion, or to share the video, so that more people have access to it.
The difference of this type of video in relation to customer testimonials is that you will show, in addition to customer satisfaction, what strategies the company has adopted to conquer it.
The same goes for the opposite way: On other digital channels, such as social networks and blog posts, include CTAs encouraging more people to access your channel.
Make playlists
Playlists are very useful for the user. Instead of searching for the videos that interest them among hundreds of submissions, users can access the playlists you create to watch a sequence of content on a particular subject.
For the channel, it is another way to expand the views and make the user know more content.
Take, for example, the playlists we create on the Rock channel:
How to optimize videos for SEO?
Marketing on Youtube can not leave out the SEO. Optimizing videos for search means increasing channel visibility, number of subscribers, brand authority and, ultimately, marketing results.
You will now see the main optimization techniques so that your videos appear well positioned on Youtube and Google, but be sure to check out our full post on SEO for Youtube with all the tips. Follow.
Keyword search
The search engine algorithm —both Google and Youtube itself—use keywords to identify the topic of a content and associate it with users’ searches.
So if your video has a number of tips on Content Marketing, for example, the keyword “Content Marketing” needs to appear in your video: in the title, description, captions, and other fields that the search engine can understand.
A keyword search then serves to identify which terms should be worked on your content, and cover similar and related words that can be used.
That way, Google can understand the main keyword, but also the semantic field you’re working with.
For this search, you can use tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner, Keyword Tool, and Google Analytics itself in the report on keywords that lead to your site.
Title and description
After identifying the important keywords, another step in the SEO optimization process for Youtube is to fill in the basic fields of the video.
Title and description are the most important fields, for which Google gives great importance.
The title should be attractive and informative to the user, showing what he will find when watching it.
The description should bring more details, in addition to including CTAs and links to other content.
In these two fields, the keyword must be present naturally, without forcing the bar to repeat it insistently.
File name
This is a detail that can go unnoticed, but it is also essential for optimization. Edit the name of the video file before going up to the platform.
Google can easily read that information and aggregate it to the data it has about its content.
Tags
Unlike meta keywords, which no longer have an effect on traditional SEO, tags (or bookmarks) work great in marketing for Youtube.
We’re talking about those blue hashtags that appear in the image below.
Tags are terms and expressions related to the content of a video, so Google can associate them with users’ searches and recommend them in related video suggestions.
Subtitles and transcripts
Subtitles and transcripts are accessibility tools, which allow you to follow the video even without audio.
But by turning speech and sounds into texts, they also help Youtube understand the content of your channel’s videos, which is essential for ranking the results of a search.
Length of videos
There is probably no ranking criterion in the Youtube algorithm that favors longer videos.
However, they often meet users’ expectations by bringing more complete and in-depth content. Therefore, they tend to appear better positioned.
So consider producing longer videos for your channel. But never lose sight of the quality of the content, regardless of its duration.
CTR
The click-through rate (CTR) in a video in the search results is probably one of the algorithm’s ranking criteria. When a video is clicked heavily, it matches the searches for that keyword.
You don’t have to control CTR, but it can work for that rate to grow, by creating good titles, descriptions, and thumbnails that encourage user click.
Commitment
In addition to the click-through rate, Youtube probably also evaluates the level of engagement that video generates.
If users comment a lot, mark “Liked”, share the link and watch until the end, probably this video meets the expectations of those looking for that keyword.
You also can’t control how users will interact with your videos, but you can encourage them to comment and share with CTAs in speechand description, for example.
What is it and how to use Youtube Ads?
Posting videos and optimize them for SEO are organic strategies to bomba-bomb your Youtube channel. However, the platform offers paid advertising options for brands that are willing to invest money in media to boost their results.
We are talking about Youtube Ads, which encompasses the different advertising formats on Youtube. To do this, just have an account in Google Ads and set up campaigns there, which include image and video ads.
To get started, go to your Google Ads account. When you create a campaign, you’ll already have to choose your ad’s objective and display locations.
If you choose Traffic as your goal, for example, the following placement options appear:
If you want to create a video ad, choose the “Video” option, which allows you to serve on Youtube and partner sites. To create a video campaign, the content must first be hosted on Youtube. This type of campaign can have different formats:
In-stream skipable (appear before or during the main video and are skipable);
Non-skipable in-stream (appear before or during the main video, are not skipable and have 20 seconds maximum);
Video discovery (appear as a recommendation in Youtube search results);
Bumper (appear at the end of the main video, are not skipable and have 6 seconds maximum);
Out-stream (appear only to mobile users on partner sites and apps outside of Youtube).
Keep in mind that non-skipable videos can annoy the user, so they need to deliver really interesting content to them.
The same goes for jumpable ads, as you need to get people’s attention so they want to see what you have to show.
But if your company is not yet ready to produce video ads or has a non-audiovisual strategy, you can advertise on Youtube in other formats:
Overlay ads (appear on the video, in graphic or text format);
Display ads (appear on the internal pages of Youtube, in graphic format).
Overlay ads aren’t set up in Google Ads (see Google’s instructions on them). Display ads can be set up in Google Ads within the display campaigns, where Youtube is included.
Once you’ve decided what type of campaign you want to create, you still need to set your audience targeting, delivery schedule, and budget.
Now, if you want inspiration to create video ads, take a look at Youtube Ads Leaderboard, which shows the videos of the platform’s top advertisers.
Take, for example, this ad in Dove’s bumper format:
What is it and how to use Youtube Analytics?
The presence of your brand on Youtube can not stay in the dark. This means that you should keep an eye on channel and video performance to see if you’re on the right track and at what points you can improve. And Youtube Analytics will be your biggest partner in this task.
To view your channel numbers, go to the link youtube.com/analytics. First, you’ll get an overview of your key metrics in the last month.
Youtube Analytics metrics are divided into three.
Reach Reports
Show how users are getting to your content. E.g. Impressions (how many times the thumbnail of videos has been shown to users on Youtube), Impression click-through rate, Views, Unique Viewers, Traffic Source.
Engagement Reports
Show how users are interacting with your content. Ex:Watch time (how many hours of a video was watched in total), Average view duration (how long users watch the video before leaving the screen), ‘Liked’ and ‘Disliked’ Tags, Shares.
Audience Reports
Show the profile of the audience that accompanies the channel. E.g. Gender, Age, Location, Device Type.
To check your channel’s performance, remember the importance of setting goals and goals when planning a campaign or video production. So you know exactly what you need to track to know if you’re getting results.
Note, for example, that monitoring the number of video views is important. But it may not be decisive for your marketing goals.
If you want to generate traffic to a blog post, for example, what matters most are clicks (even if the video hasn’t reached so many views, you know?). Therefore, evaluate the performance of the videos always by keeping an eye on the objectives outlined.
Anyway, now you know why you can’t leave Marketing on Youtube out of your strategies, don’t you?
See how Youtube is not just another video sharing site, as it was in its early years of existence.
It has become a powerful business platform that encompasses major content producers, large advertisers and a plethora of content for the most diverse audience profiles.
So your brand also needs to be there. Whether for a large company or for a small business, Marketing on Youtube offers several opportunities for you to enjoy.
Now, take the opportunity to learn more. Download our full video marketing e-book for free and learn how to get results with this content format!
Event coverage
Event coverage is also interesting content for Marketing on Youtube. You can broadcast lectures from a congress, interviews with participants, or drops of content on the topics of the event, for example.
