Nowadays, everyone watches videos on YouTube. The platform has more than two billion users every month, making it the most popular platform ever after Google. This presents an opportunity to connect your company with a very large audience. However, you need a well-thought-out marketing strategy for this, because without a plan you will get lost in the maze called YouTube.
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What is YouTube marketing?
First of all, it is important to be clear what YouTube marketing is all about. With YouTube marketing, you ensure that your company and product or service is promoted on the platform. You can do this by posting valuable videos or advertisements. But why is it actually important for your business? YouTube has now become the second search engine in the world and the second most visited site after Google. So you can appeal to a very large audience with YouTube, if you do it right.
Create a YouTube marketing strategy in 4 steps
To create a good YouTube marketing strategy, there are a number of important steps:
Step 1. Creating a YouTube channel
- Come up with a unique name for your channel
Step 2. What is your target audience and what are their preferences?
Step 3. Who are your competitors? Make a competitive analysis
Step 4. Optimise your YouTube videos
- How do you make YouTube videos?
- Maintain engagement and attention
1. Creating a YouTube channel
Make sure you have a Google account in your company's name. With this account, you log into YouTube. This way, all employees will soon be able to access your company's YouTube channel.
Come up with a unique name for your channel
One of the most important things when setting up a YouTube channel is coming up with an appropriate name. For example, you can use your company name. Another option is to use your full name. This can be useful if you have a sole proprietorship and want to create a personal connection with your target audience. You can also choose a name that describes what your product or service is, such as "Marketing tips".
2. Who is your target audience and what are their preferences?
Now that you have created a YouTube channel and come up with an appropriate name, it is important to know who your target audience is. Who do you want to reach with your videos or ads? What are these people already watching? What are their interests and preferences?
To find out what type of person you want to reach, it is possible to use other platforms to do audience analysis. On platforms like Instagram and Facebook, you will find the heading 'statistics' These statistics will show you which age group follows you and where they come from. You can also promote your new YouTube channel on your socials. Observing what people think of it will in turn give you ideas for content.
After collecting the data, you are going to create a buyer persona and incorporate YouTube into your customer journey. A customer journey is simply the journey a customer takes from first contact to purchase or conversion. You can use YouTube to create more awareness, but also use it as a community for people who have already made a purchase.
3. Who are your competitors? Make a competitive analysis
Besides having your target audience clear, it is also useful to know who your competitors are. Look at other channels posting similar content. Look at the number of followers, the number of views per video, how often they post, the topics they mention in videos, what promotions they use and what the reactions are. When you start posting videos on your channel, it is important to be found. For this, you can look at the keywords and tags used by competitors.
Some questions you can ask yourself to perform a clear competitive analysis are:
- Which videos are doing well on their channel?
- What is their brand voice?
- What can I do differently or better?
- How can I get ideas from the competitor's channel?
4. Optimise your YouTube videos
Now that it is clear who your competitors are, you can get to work creating videos. Of course, you want your videos to be found by your target audience. That is why it is important to implement video SEO. We have already written an extensive blog about this. You can find it here!
How do you make YouTube videos?
It may sound simple, but there are some important things you need to know to create successful YouTube videos:
- Schedule your videos
Whether you write a full script or just broadly think of what you want to say, it is important to have a clear idea of what you are going to say in the first 15 seconds. Come up with something that makes people want to keep watching. This could be a brief explanation of what's to come, a visual intro, a catchy shocking or exciting intro, or a teaser of what's to come later in the video.
- Filming your videos
Think about the setting of your video. Make sure your background matches the style of your videos and what you want to say. This could be a white background or an office or garden. It all depends on your type of video and content. What clothes are you putting on? Formal or informal? Get the right clothes that enhance your videos and use appropriate music that reinforces your story.
In addition, you can use different types of shots. You have a wide shot, a medium shot and a close shot. A wide shot is best when there are several people in the frame and you want to show the surroundings. a medium shot works well for almost all types of videos. A close shot is ideal for very personal videos like a vlog.
- Editing your videos
Choose good software such as Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro. Use on-screen graphics to make your videos interesting. B-roll can also help well with this. B-roll are cinematic shots of a product, for example, while someone talks over it. In the editing process, it is good to change the camera shot from time to time.
- A good thumbnail
A thumbnail is the image people see before they click on your video. It should be a visual representation of what is happening in the video. Making a good thumbnail is done by using lots of contrast, using a consistent layout and colours, adding graphics, choosing a colour scheme that stands out and using simple clickable text.
Engagement and attention retention
Engagement can be measured by the number of likes, comments, shares and subscribers. YouTube uses these Audience Engagement Signals as part of their algorithm. The better the audience engagement of your videos are, the higher they are ranked.
Some of the things you can do to get more engagement are:
- Ask your viewers for their opinion
- Respond to viewer comments within the first 48 hours of uploading
- Ask viewers to leave a comment
- moderate comments, take out spam etc.
- Ask viewers to like your video
- Ask viewers at the end of the video if they want to subscribe
- Add a subscribe link at the end of your video description
- Use a branded watermark
- Use your videos on your website or other platforms by making them
- Ask viewers if they want to share your video
- Create content that is easily shareable, such as something controversial or something very practical
One of the trickiest things about making YouTube videos is retention. YouTube calls this Audience retention or Viewer retention. It is the average percentage of a video that people watch. Videos with high audience retention score better because YouTube ranks them higher.
Some ways you can keep the attention of your viewers are:
- Clearly communicate the value of the video
- Provide a preview of what is going to happen in the video
- A sneak peak of an interesting moment in the video
- Keep your videos interesting by using different shots, angles, B-roll, graphics etc
- If you have already created more videos, you can use this data by analysing YouTube's audience retention report
