Oftenly disregarded by digital marketers when creating their brand’s social media strategies, YouTube is a platform with a huge marketing potential.
Just to briefly highlight how important this network is for the online users worldwide, let’s remember it is the second largest search engine, has almost two billion active users, and around 500 hours of content is uploaded on the platform every minute.
So yes, YouTube video marketing is a really serious job. But believe it or not, using YouTube for marketing may be just that one missing piece that will skyrocket your business.
And so, my question is: why not take advantage of the exposure and marketing benefits YouTube has to offer?
If the idea of having a YouTube presence starts to grow on you, let’s go over some boxes that you need to check when you’re creating your YouTube marketing strategy in order to maximize your results.
Let’s dive into some of the most helpful YouTube marketing tips!
8 tips on how to market your YouTube channel in 2022
1. Take inspiration from the best YouTube channels
2. Analyze your YouTube competitors
3. Optimize your YouTube videos
- Don’t settle for boring YouTube thumbnails
- Remember the importance of YouTube descriptions
- Organize YouTube videos into YouTube playlists
4. Cross-promote your YouTube content
5. Create partnerships
6. Try live streaming on YouTube
7. Don’t miss out on YouTube ads
8. Check out your YouTube Analytics
1. Take inspiration from the best YouTube channels
Nobody said YouTube marketing is easy.
Actually, if you're looking for the best way to advertise on YouTube, you should know there's any. Or at least, not one that works for everyone.
And as a brand, when you’re launching yourself into new waters, and try advertising on YouTube, you need to take it slow, give yourself some time to think how you can make the most out of that YouTube promotion, get creative and of course, research the market a bit.
Now, if you’re new to this whole YouTube marketing concept, you can start by researching the YouTube strategies applied by the best YouTube channels.
Sure, with so much content out there, it is very hard to be authentic, but taking a little bit of that and a little bit from there will offer you a mix that, once matched with your brand personality, will make you unique.
A great starting point is to analyse the YouTube trending videos and discover their ressemblances on both strategical, as well as technical level.
Some helpful questions will pop up when doing this like: do the best YouTube videos have captions, what lengths do they have or do they have any special effects?
2. Analyze your YouTube competitors
Once you discover those YouTube tactics that YouTube users seem to fancy, you need to narrow down your searches and see what other actors from the same industry as you are doing, aka your YouTube competitors.
The benefits of conducting a YouTube competitor analysis is that you can find gaps in your YouTube competitor’s content and come across needs that you can fulfill for the YouTube audiences.
As researching your Youtube competitors may be a long and bumpy process, the results will pay off. And luckily there are plenty of competitive analysis tools you can count on to make this task easier.
Also, if you need an extra hand, here’s a quick guide about how to conduct a social media competitive analysis for when you’ll want to spy a little on your YouTube competitors.
Even if it seems like a long road, don't worry, there are plenty YouTube marketing tools to help you along the way.
3. Optimize your YouTube videos
Don’t settle for boring YouTube thumbnails
Now let't see, the next lesson on how to market a YouTube channel.
Like it or not, first impressions matter a lot. And when users are in the YouTube dashboard, looking for whatever, and they have a pretty much endless content feed at their disposal, the only thing that will make them stop scrolling is a killer YouTube thumbnail.
Your YouTube thumbnail should be able to push the user to click and view the video. It is a very important thing you have to keep in mind if you want to gain more subscribers on YouTube.
Since YouTube thumbnails are a visual representation of your YouTube videos, try putting in closeup images for better conversions and adding a caption that pulls the attention of your viewers.
Here's a tip for when you're creating your YouTube marketing strategy: the thing with YouTube thumbnails is that they must be catchy, straight-on-point with what the YouTube video is all about. And, if possible created in a personalized style, for the users to be able to quickly recognize the brand.
Remember the importance of YouTube descriptions
Remember when we said YouTube is the second largest search engine? Well, this means that those text sections need to be filled carefully because they matter a lot.
Let’s start with YouTube video titles. Not only do you need a great title for your YouTube video in order to stand out from the crowd and impress the user enough to stop scrolling, but also they need to be bulletproof, SEO speaking.
This is a most important YouTube strategy.
A great idea would be to optimize those titles for YouTube voice search. Think about frequent keywords people use to find what you’re talking about in your YouTube video.
Visualize yourself doing YouTube voice search. Would you go for a more extended YouTube video title or a shorter one?
Moving forward to how to write a good YouTube description.
As for the YouTube video descriptions, the same old SEO principles apply.
You should start your YouTube video description with your focus keywords, but at the same time be careful not to look spammy or robotic. Your tone should be conversational and natural.
Also, try to be descriptive and on point, in order to deliver just enough information about what your Youtube video covers to make it in the 300 characters limit (or the three lines of text) YouTube allows before the “Show More” section.
Organize YouTube videos into YouTube playlists
Are you wondering why you should organize your Youtube videos into Youtube playlists?
Well, to make your Youtube viewers stay longer on your channel and watch a bigger part of your YouTube content, of course.
The more you facilitate their viewing flow, the more they’ll appreciate it and reward you with more views. It is an important box you should thick if to promote your YouTube channel.
Believe it or not, having an organized channel may be seen as an indicator of your brand’s professionalism. Therefore, keep this in mind when you're creating your YouTube advertising strategy!
4. Cross-promote your YouTube content
Get a higher reach for your YouTube videos with cross-promoting on your other social media accounts!
Certainly your YouTube marketing efforts are only a part of your overall social media marketing strategy.
Depending on the social media channels you have chosen to promote your business on, you will have different approaches, we know that.
But you must also keep in mind that, although the social media platforms are handled differently, you must create a unity in your overall social media presence.
Which makes it a great opportunity to cross-promote content that has performed well, to gain even more exposure.
Or, in the reverse situation, if you’ve just uploaded content on your YouTube channel and you want to promote your YouTube video and to gain more views, cross-promoting your YouTube video on other social channels may be the great way to start.
5. Create partnerships
Either it’s with another brand with whom you have a similar audience, or it’s an influencer, partnerships are a great deal when it comes to successfully doing YouTube marketing, as any kind of marketing actually.
Actually, for a successful YouTube marketing campaign, you should never forget about placing influencer marketing in your YouTube marketing strategy.
By having a partner in your YouTube marketing campaign, not only you’ll get some help in your YouTube channel promotion, and getting more video views, but also you’ll have access to a whole new audience segment.
The most important rule for doing influencer marketing, or finding a partner to help you in your YouTube marketing efforts is that there has to be a similarity in your values and personalities.
Otherwise, the whole collaboration will feel fake and forced, and this is something YouTube viewers get in a glimpse.
The YouTube marketing services offered by the platform and many and powerful, but it's very important to have a strategy when using them.
6. Try live streaming on YouTube
Look at any social media platform you want, and you’ll notice a brand’s increasing tendency towards live streaming. Simply because this is what the viewers want nowadays.
Given the lockdowns caused by the COVID19 pandemic, which meant stopping massive production processes for videos and turning to the diy video in your own living room, people have shown more interest in more authentic, not so polished videos.
And that’s simply because such a setting is closer to their day-to-day lives. Besides, through a live streaming session people can put a face to a brand name, which makes them feel more connected with that brand in this way.
On Facebook for example, live video’s usage has increased by 55% in the last year, according to our Facebook videos study. Which is WOW!
Therefore, if live streaming is so loved on social media these days, why not do it on YouTube as well? Especially if you think making your YouTube channel an important part of your marketing mix.
And voila, here's another tip on how to get more subscribers on YouTube and optimize your YouTube marketing strategy!
7. Don’t miss out on YouTube ads
Paid ads are an essential element of any strong marketing strategy. And if you feel like YouTube marketing is the next big step for your business, then you need to seriously consider investing in some paid ads on YouTube at some point.
Because it’s better to start your journey sooner rather than later, here’s a quick preview of the YouTube ads available in case you decide to try and maybe test some paid advertising on YouTube:
- Display ads (also known as video discovery ads): are those YouTube ads that appear to the right of your video and above the video suggestions list, that are only available on desktop
- Overlay ads: refer to the semi-transparent ads that appear on the lower part of your video and that are also available for desktop
- Bumper ads: a non-skippable video ad inserted before your video – up to six seconds in length, that is also available for mobile devices
- Skippable video ads: the placement of this YouTube ads type can vary, having the possibility of inserting them before, during or after the video; these are ads of up to three minutes in length, but skippable after five seconds.
- Non-skippable video ads: have the same placement, but unlike the skippable ads, the non-skippable type will play itself until the end, and can be up to 20 seconds in length.
But before starting investing in YouTube ads, you must do your homework one more time. Do your research to discover what type of YouTube videos get viewed most and craft your content in that direction.
8. Check out your YouTube Analytics
Ok, so you wanted to dive into the waters of YouTube marketing, have tried some of the YouTube tips we shared and now what?
Well, the work of a digital marketer never stops after the implementation of the strategy. The next step is turning to your YouTube analytics to see the impacts of your efforts. And then optimize accordingly.
Depending on what you’ll want to monitor you can turn to YouTube’s own analytics dashboard, or to a third party YouTube analytics tool.
In order to discover which one is more suited to your needs you can test them without a problem.
Socialinsider for example offers a 14 days free trial for you to understand how the platform works and what data can you get to boost your YouTube presence.
Are your ready to start marketing with YouTube?
Final thoughts
Therefore, are you in for a try when it comes to YouTube marketing?
A great Youtube social media marketing strategy can be to repurpose content you have previously made into various formats like podcasts, infographics, presentations, etc. This marketing strategy will help you spare a spend a lot of time or finance costly tools and equipment.
Having a well-researched YouTube marketing plan will help you to engage and build your audience.
So now that you've discovered some tips for a successful YouTube channels, you can go out there and try to discover which YouTube marketing strategies work best for your business.
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