A Beginner’s Guide To YouTube Marketing

YouTube is much more than an entertainment platform where you put on one video and end up watching another seven for one hour straight. Being the second largest search engine, the go-to platform for all entertainment needs, and one place where we end up spending much more time than we initially planned to, it is a favourite platform for marketers! YouTube Press has revealed that 1 billion hours of videos are watched on YouTube on a daily basis.  All those ads that you watch for 5 seconds before you skip them; they’re all a part of the marketing efforts of innumerable companies trying to use it to their advantage! This Guide to youtube marketing will help for any marketer planning to include YouTube into their marketing plans and schedules.

What Is YouTube Marketing?

To put it in simple terms, YouTube marketing is the practice of promoting one’s products, services and businesses through the platform. This is done by using YouTube ads or by uploading relevant videos on the YouTube channel of a firm.

While YouTube is one of the giants when it comes to digital entertainment, the majority of marketers tend to overlook it. According to Brandwatch, only 9% of all small businesses currently have a YouTube business channel. YouTube Marketing is in no way something unachievable! It is very much a part of digital marketing and is simply video marketing through YouTube’s platform. If you plan and strategize well, there is enough proof that it can help your business grow immensely.

How To Set Up Your YouTube Channel?

Hootsuite has revealed that when it comes to millennials, YouTube is the second most sought after platform for consuming online video content, after Netflix. Here are some steps that you can follow to set up your own YouTube channel:-

Step 1 – You first need to create a Gmail account for your YouTube channel. It is recommended that you do not use your personal account due to security concerns. So create a Gmail account and use it to sign in to YouTube.

Step 2 – Next you need to go to YouTube’s homepage and go to “My Channel” from the drop-down window and set up the name for your business channel. You have to click on “use a business or other name” and enter the name you have chosen for your brand.

Step 3 – You next need to feed the details of your YouTube business account on your channel. You can head over to the “Customize Channel” link to complete this step.

Step 4 – Complete the set up by setting up the channel icons and the artwork. You need to set the dimensions for the YouTube images so that you don’t have to compromise on the quality of the images. For channel icons, adjust it at 800×800 pixels and for channel banners, use 2560×1440 pixels for mobile devices and 1546×423 pixels for the web.

Step 5 – Fill in the channel description for your business’ YouTube channel. Head over to the “About” section on your profile. We recommend you to add your business’s email in the contact information. YouTube allows you to add as many as five links and hyperlinks in the description section so go ahead and add the links to your homepage and website.

Step 6 – Set up other activities of your channel such as other featured channels to show that you are actively involved in the YouTube community. Add featured channels of influencers and popular personalities from your industry.

Step 7 – Before you start posting, make sure you optimize your channel by creating and adding channel trailers and adding essential tags, thumbnails, keywords, etc.

What Are Some Benefits Of YouTube Marketing?

YouTube Marketing comes with several advantages! According to YouTube Trends’ reports of 2020, 94% of Indian YouTube users learned to do things by themselves by watching YouTube videos. It is these advantages you are looking for as answers when trying to understand the importance of the platform for your business. Some assured benefits of YouTube Marketing are:-

1.    Global Audience Reach

This is one of the most obvious benefits of YouTube Marketing! With millions of active users logging into the platform each day, you can expose your business not just to the local audience, but get audiences from across the world. This does not just create brand awareness and recognition for your firm. By using YouTube marketing, you are also opening your business up to possible customers, clients, and even employees, all of whom have their individual contributions in your business’s growth. Backlinko has revealed that the number of comments, likes and shares on your videos is directly linked with a higher ranking of your channel.

2.    Building Your Email List

A notable benefit of YouTube Marketing is that it helps you build your email list. This email list can be used for other purposes, especially in email marketing. If you continue to provide useful and engaging content to your audience, you can have them glued to your YouTube channel and even compel them to subscribe to your channel. For this purpose, you must make sure that you use software which allows you to embed the sign-up form into your video directly. According to Buffer, YouTube is the second most popular platform after Facebook when it comes to brands posting their online videos.

3.    Your Content Stays Forever

Using YouTube for your digital marketing allows you to repurpose your content in future because your content stays on the platform. Repurposing the already content is an effective content marketing strategy and allows you to reach the audience that loves that type of content repeatedly. Furthermore, you save on your time and financial resources when repurposing your content and use it to provide useful information to increase audience engagement. According to Sprout Social, 71% of B2B marketers have included YouTube in their marketing plans.

4.    Reaching Out To Your Audience And Customers

YouTube has a comment section for every video uploaded on the platform. You can utilise this section to get in direct touch with your audience. If you continue to provide your audience and customers engaging videos that they like, they will like and comment on it. You can respond to these comments and interact with them. Furthermore, you can ask questions in your videos and ask your viewers to comment on their answers. You can then acknowledge these responses by directly replying to the comments of your customers and viewers. Hootsuite has revealed that 6% of all the Google ad revenue comes from YouTube.

5.    Budget-Friendly

Contrary to popular belief that YouTube is an expensive platform owing to its popularity, YouTube Marketing is actually a budget-friendly marketing practice. You can create videos for your channel by investing a much lesser amount and time than you would spend on other forms of advertising, including both digital and offline such as commercials, billboards, pamphlets, etc. Furthermore, you reach a much larger audience by investing a comparatively much less amount, while by advertising through physical means, you reach a geographically restricted audience with more resources’ investment. MediaKix has revealed that YouTube is the second most important social media channel when it comes to influencer marketing.

What Are Some Useful Tips For YouTube Marketing?

Alphabet has revealed that YouTube earned more than $6 billion in revenue generated through ads in the first quarter of 2021. Here are some useful YouTube Marketing tips that you must think through and include in your strategies for better performance of your business’s channel:-

1.    Know your audience and their interests and hobbies. Make attempts at understanding what type of content and videos they like to watch and the general demographics such as age, gender, social background, etc.

2.    Optimize your YouTube videos for better visibility and pay special attention to YouTube SEO practise to get more viewers. One such important YouTube SEO practice is including the target keyword in your video’s title. Add tags to your videos and use YouTube categories.

3.    Create engaging and catchy titles for your videos to immediately grasp the attention of the audience. According to a study by Tubular Insights, the YouTube titles should be somewhere between 41-70 characters.

4.    Use custom thumbnails for promoting your YouTube videos. If you create a really captivating thumbnail on your own, your videos will make your brand look more professional. While YouTube anyway takes a screenshot of your video and adds it as the thumbnail, the picture often tends to be blurry and may not even be entirely relevant. So create customised thumbnails.

5.    Host a contest or a giveaway on your YouTube channel. Get your viewers to subscribe to your channel to be able to participate in the giveaways. Hosting fun and easy contests can help you increase your traffic remarkably.

6.    Create video series to increase the viewers on your channel. These video series can be related to your niche and cover a certain topic or theme.

7.    Create YouTube playlists to organise your content. This will help your audience to easily navigate through your channel.

8.    Add call to actions to increase audience activity on your platform. Ask your audience to like and comment on your videos directly and add similar requests to subscribe directly in the description of the video.

Here’s some interesting information: According to statistical reports by Think with Google, paid ads created for YouTube mobile get more attention than ads on television by up to 84%.

We hope this article was helpful in getting a basic idea of how YouTube marketing works! YouTube if used well can prove to be extremely advantageous for your business! YouTube is without a doubt one of the best platforms for all your video marketing plans and you should get started with it right away!

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Our team of expert writers is committed to bringing insights on topics ranging in the fields of technology, marketing, and business. With a wide-reaching range of services on our platform, we help businesses achieve digital transformation end-to-end.