You own a business blog, but you’re not seeing any traffic or leads, you’ll love this YouTube marketing guide.
Video marketing is a huge opportunity, so much so that 86% of video marketers say it has increased traffic to their website. And as far as video is concerned, YouTube is the biggest site on the web. It counts 2 billion active users, and 500 hours of video uploaded every minute.
YouTube also happens to be the second most visited website after Google and is used as a search engine in its own right. This all means that no matter what industry your business is in, your audience is likely on YouTube. And it’s probably why 55% of marketers include YouTube as part of their marketing strategy.
Besides the obvious benefit of gaining access to a huge audience through YouTube, there are other reasons why YouTube marketing is a great idea. Your content will remain evergreen, which is especially remarkable compared to other social networking sites, like Twitter. Furthermore, you can get found on Google, and you can target your audience with AdWords for video.
If any of the aforementioned benefits sound good to you, then you’re probably wondering how you can make it happen.
That is what this guide is going to explain.
We’ll look at how you can set up your own YouTube channel, and how to make sure your content is optimized for search. We’ll also discuss video creation, analytics, YouTube Ads, and promotion.
Let’s get started.
Table of Content
- How to create a YouTube channel
- Customizing your channel.
- Creating Engaging Content
- Optimizing Videos for Ranking
- YouTube Analytics
- YouTube Advertising
- Promoting your content
- Conclusion
How to create a YouTube Channel
The first thing you have to do is to create a Google account (if you don’t have one already). This applies to those who don’t have a Google account and those who would rather create a separate one for their company or brand (for account sharing purposes). To create a Google account, go to the Google sign-in page.
Click “Create Account” on the bottom left of the page, then select “To manage my business”
Fill in all the required details, and follow all the prompts, and you’ll soon have your business account.
Now that you have your Google account, the next step is to Create your YouTube Brand Account. To do this, follow the steps listed below:
1: Go to youtube.com and sign in (note: you may already be signed in).
2: Click on your account module, at the upper-right hand corner.
3: Select Settings
4: On the Account tab. Select Add or manage your channel(s)
5: Click Create a Channel
6: Type in your Channel’s name, then click create.
Now you have a brand account.
Once you’ve set up your channel, the next step is to customize it.
Customizing your Channel
Your channel should be consistent with your brand identity across all other platforms. This is communicated through the following:
- Colors – Ensure that you’re using the colors of your brand.
- Name – Your name should be your brand name, this is important because it is the easiest way for potential audiences to find you.
- Logos – this should be the name of the leader of the brand, or the brand logos.
- Channel Art – The background image is important. However, as long as it is consistent with the rest of the profile, it can be updated periodically.
- Channel Description – You should describe your brand and your content. Use keywords as this will help in your Search Engine Optimization.
- Channel Trailer – This is a sneak peek of what your channel is about, so it must be concise. It should include a call for people to subscribe to your channel.
- Custom URL – this makes it easier for your audience to go straight to your website.
Creating Engaging Content
Once you’re done setting up and customization of your channel, that’s when you can settle down to face the main task of creating videos.
Recording videos is as easy as pointing your phone or camera at your subject. But you have to decide what that subject will be i.e. the type of videos you will publish.
Your target audience will be a useful factor to consider in making your decisions. After all, the purpose of having a YouTube channel is to get your audience watching your videos, subscribing to your channel, and then hopefully buying your products and spreading brand awareness. To start with, you could repurpose old blog posts (if you have any). If you don’t have any of those, then you could post:
- Interviews
- Product tutorials and reviews
- How-to videos
- Webinars
- Live Broadcasts
- Vlogs
- Event videos
Optimizing Videos for Engagement
We established earlier that Youtube functions as a search engine. People go directly to youtube for information about a diverse range of topics. You want your videos to rank at the top of the search results whenever a person goes to YouTube Search to make an enquiry. To make that happen, you must optimize your videos. The following are things that you should look out for:
1. Title
Your title should be both compelling and precise. Compelling, to encourage people to click on it, and Precise to ensure that when they do click, they won’t feel misled. Use keywords in the titles to give them a better chance.
2. Video Description
Only the first two or three lines will be plainly visible, so you have to make sure that they are written well enough to drive curiosity about the rest of the information hidden under the “show more” option. Include links to your social media channels and all the relevant keywords.
You have a 5000 character and a 15 hashtag limit, so be sure to take full advantage. You can add a transcript of the video as well, and if not, then time stamps may suffice.
3. Thumbnails
Use custom thumbnails, they will help you frame your content however you want. You can use tools like Canva to create them. The kind of thumbnails you create determines whether the user will scroll past the screen, or if they will stop to watch your video.
The effectiveness of thumbnails depends on how attention-grabbing it is. Designs that have compelling imagery such as a human face exhibiting strong emotions ranging from shocked, happy, sad or irritated expressions. Thumbnails that feature titles of the video also had a higher chance of performing better than those without clear written descriptions.
4. Cards and End Screens
Cards are small Calls to Action that pop us as you watch a video. You can use up to five per video to direct viewers wherever you want them to go. End screens are frames that pop up in the last 5 – 20 seconds of a video. They can be used to advertise related content.
YouTube Analytics
YouTube Analytics is a tool made to help channels measure their success, and strategize when certain things don’t work out. You can find it the YouTube Studio.
To engage in any real analysis of your performance, you must first establish your goals. After that, then you can begin to provide metrics with which to measure your performance. Key metrics that can be used are:
- Watch time: The total number of minutes spent on your content by watch and video.
- Retention rate: The average percentage of a video that your audience watches per view.
- Subscriber count: Whether they are increasing or decreasing.
- Audience demographics: Who is watching you, and how can you best meet their needs?
- Device Reports: Whether your videos are watched on desktops or mobile devices.
At the end of the period, you should create engagement reports to provide context for the data written for analysts. These reports help show what viewers are clicking, sharing, commenting and promoting.
YouTube Adverting
YouTube ads come in two major formats, video ads, and non-video ads. More specifically, they come in four types. They are:
- Skippable in-stream video ads: These are the ads that play before a video and can be skipped after 5 seconds. If a person chooses to watch beyond those first five seconds then you pay your advertising fee.
- Non-skippable in-stream video ads: These, as the name implies cannot be skipped and are 15 seconds long. These are paid for per impression and should be used only the advertiser is very confident in their ad.
- Discovery ads: These show up on the YouTube search result page. They include three lines of text along with a thumbnail.
- Non-video ads: There are two options here, display ads and in-video overlay ads. For those without a budget for videos, this provides an option to advertise with images.
To advertise using any of the options listed above, the video (if any) must be uploaded onto your YouTube Channel. Once that is sorted, follow the steps.
1: Go to Google Ads, sign in and select New Campaign.
2: Choose your goals that relate to your set objectives
3: Select your sub-type. This will be one of the campaign types discussed above.
4: Define the parameters of your advertising campaign. This includes your bid strategy, budget, audience’s language and location of your audience. Target your audience based on their buyer personas and then click select.
Promoting your Content
Beyond paying for ads, you have to be creative in promoting your videos in order to ensure that your content is in front of new audiences. You can do this by:
- Sharing on other social media platforms.
- Collaborating with influencers
- Embedding them on your website.
- Engaging with your audience
- Engaging with other YouTube channels as well.
Conclusion
YouTube offers you lots of wonderful opportunities, but only if you plan smartly, work hard, and stay consistent.
Give your channel time to grow, and use that time to experiment with different kinds of content. By using analytics to measure the performance, you can tell the content that resonates more with your brand.
YouTube content can also be promoted on other social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and TikTok. Our guides can help you get started.
