If your brand doesn’t have a YouTube marketing strategy, it’s time to fix that. Video content is engaging and can help establish a relationship with your target audience in ways an Instagram post can’t. Before you hop into making YouTube a marketing driver for your brand, you’ll need a strategy that will set you up for success.
Why You Should Develop a Marketing Strategy on YouTube
With more than 1 billion unique user visits each month across 91 countries, you can see the possibility for brand exposure. The user base for YouTube ranges across all demographics, and it blows traditional cable networks out of the water.
According to a study by Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network. When a digital platform can deliver video content to your target audience cheaper than traditional networks and outshine their market share, you know it’s time to get in on the action.
- YouTube Ads
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- True View Ads / Skippable Ads: These ads are 12 seconds to 6 minutes in length and can be skipped after 5-15 seconds of video play. The beauty of this ad type is that advertisers are only charged after 30 seconds of watch time or user interaction. That means you don’t pay for an unengaged audience!
- Preroll / Non-skippable Ads: These ads follow the same rules as True View ads, but remain unskippable. This means they often include a call-to-action (CTA) and use a pay-per-click (PPC) system. They run 15-20 seconds and can be added to videos before, after or in the middle of the content.
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- Bumper Ads: These snippets of attention-grabbing videos can help boost a campaign and drive interest to your product since they are unskippable ads that run in-between videos while the user picks the next video to watch, averaging about 6 seconds.
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- Display Ads: These ads are traditional graphic images that appear above the video suggestion list, on the right of the featured video or in-between playlists. These ads are only used on desktop, not mobile, which means you miss out on YouTube’s massive mobile user base.
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- Overlay Ads: Otherwise known as in-video advertisements, these ads display as semi-transparent banners that generally take up 20% or less of the screen. While these ads have the most reach, they are also primarily used for desktop viewing instead of mobile.
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- Sponsored Cards: These still image pop-up ads are designed to display on the video screen in-between videos or on the right of suggested videos. These work on a PPC or pay per view (PPV) system making them a great use of money.
- Masthead Format: These ads display prominently at the top of the homepage and are similar to sponsor cards, but are larger with a much heftier price tag.
- Invest in Your Own Channel
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- How-To Videos for Product Support: If your brand’s products aren’t fully self-explanatory or you want to give answers about products and services, a how-to format will work great! Home Depot utilizes this format to showcase building and setting up household appliances.
- Testimonials: Let your happy customers shine on your channel! You can share your customers’ video testimonials and recommendations about your product or service on your channel.
- Other content ideas: Product demos, interviews with the CEO, customer and brand ambassador content, and behind-the-scenes content are all great ways to elevate your channel.
- Promote: If you’re interested in boosting your views, you can pay to promote your content to expand its reach.
- Influencer Collaborations
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- YouTubers pride themselves on being content creators, so use these partnerships as opportunities to get high-quality video UGC.
- If you’re a beauty brand, you definitely need to make partnering with beauty YouTubers a priority. From product reviews to giveaways, there are plenty of ways to team up and create some fun and engaging content. If you’re interested in learning more about how to partner with beauty YouTubers, we’ve got everything you need to know in this blog.
- YouTube is a great platform for building relationships with brand ambassadors who can help grow your online presence in a long-term partnership.
- Just make sure you’re following FTC guidelines by having them announce the extent of your partnership and that the YouTuber understands the rules they must follow.
Developing Your YouTube Strategy
Before you start ironing out your strategy, you need to know who your audience is. Info like age, gender, demographics, location, whether they’re an existing customer, new leads, interests and more will be crucial for pinpointing your messaging.
After you know the who, you need to know the why. Knowing the goals of these videos, whether they are to boost sales, brand awareness or build a relationship with customers, are just as important as who you are speaking to.
After you make it through the creative process, you should look into tracking your strategy’s success through monitoring click rates, video shares, views and conversions triggered by the videos.
Ways to Make Your Channel Stand Out
- Optimize Your YouTube Channel
Don’t underestimate how much having an optimized and attention-grabbing title can increase your views! Do a keyword analysis on the topic, find and incorporate high-volume keywords in the title to improve visibility for a larger audience.
- Create Playlists to Help Organize Your Content
This makes navigating your video list much easier. When viewers are looking for specific video topics on your channel, having specific playlists is convenient. For example, organize with topics like: Tutorials, Unboxing x Your Brand, Product Swatches, Recipes, etc.
- Closed Captions
Subtitles help viewers better understand content for those hard of hearing or international audiences. Making accommodations for your audience will help make you a more inclusive brand.
- Annotations
These help increase engagement and allow you to add in call-to-action triggers within the video.
As a highly developed platform, the competition on YouTube is fierce, but with the right strategy your brand can sparkle. Always remember to be creative, engaging and pay attention to the types of videos your audience enjoys the most. This will help you build out future campaigns. If you have any questions about optimizing your brand’s YouTube presence or launching a YouTube influencer collab, click here to learn more about our process. Our team of influencer marketing specialists is here to help!
