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The Definitive Guide To Marketing Your Business On YouTube

This article is more than 8 years old.

Visual content has never been more popular or effective, and YouTube continues to dominate among visual-centric social networks. With 85% of online adults considering themselves regular YouTube users, the opportunities for businesses to get videos in front of a large, captivated audience are huge.

If you’ve considered marketing your business on YouTube but haven’t been sure where to start, this guide is for you. I’ll cover all aspects of using YouTube for business, including:

  • How to optimize your videos for search and clicks
  • What types of videos to create and share
  • How to promote your videos and channel
  • How to use paid YouTube ads to extend your reach

How to optimize your videos for search and clicks

Optimizing your videos for on-site and Google search is key to success on YouTube. Utilizing relevant keywords in your title, tags and description can help users find your videos for related searches.

Title: Google recommends using your keywords first, and branding second (e.g., Cooking Show – Cake Tutorial – Kelly Brown). Use season and episode numbers if relevant. Most importantly, use a title that paints a clear picture of the content of your video. Keep your titles to 50 characters or less, if possible. Any longer and your title will get truncated, decreasing the chances it will get clicked by users when it appears in search results.

Tags: These will be your main keywords. There is some speculation that YouTube may put more weight on the first few tags, so put your most important keywords near the beginning, and then list keywords in order of decreasing importance. Try to use all 120 characters for optimal results. Wondering which tags to use on your videos? This can be a challenge. One of my favorite strategies is to see which ones other content providers are using. Unfortunately, YouTube no longer shows tags on a video’s watch page, but there is a workaround for this. By installing the vidIQ Vision extension for Chrome, you can see exactly which tags are used for every video you watch.

Description: Include a call to action to entice your viewers to take a next step (watch another video, click a link to your site, etc.). The first 3 sentences of your description will be displayed in search, so make sure your value proposition is near the beginning. Be sure to use the same keywords you included in your title. Perhaps the #1 most important element you should include in your description is a website URL. If possible, use it near the beginning of your description to encourage even casual viewers to click through to your site. Offer something of value to entice viewers to click through: a free infoproduct, transcript, or other related content.

Closed captioning: Adding captions to your videos is not only beneficial for hearing-impaired viewers, it can provide an additional opportunity to include keywords. There are a number of ways you can add captions: manually enter them, line up your video with a transcription, or upload a subtitle or closed caption file. YouTube provides a detailed guide for how to do this in their help guide. Note: While YouTube does provide automatic captioning for most videos, the quality can be very poor. If you have the time, consider adding captions yourself.

Transcription: Having a text-based rendering of your video gives Google and YouTube more text to search and index, and is useful for viewers who prefer to scan through the main points of your video before watching (or instead of watching!). There are two main ways you can create a transcription: either by downloading and editing your automatically generated close captions, or by typing or uploading your own transcription (or hiring someone else to do it for you).

Annotations (To be replaced by Cards): These are blurbs of text you can add to different parts of your video. These are often used for highlighting important parts of a video, or for incorporating a call to action (e.g., “Click below to subscribe to our channel”). You can choose from 5 types of annotations: speech bubbles, spotlights, notes (popup boxes), a title overlay or a label. You can select exactly where you want to place your annotations within your video, and can also customize the look and feel of your fonts and colors. While annotations can be useful tools for highlighting key parts of your video, use them sparingly. Using more than 1 or 2 per video can annoy your viewers, causing them to click away from your video.

Note: YouTube has now introduced Cards which will eventually replace annotations. Cards allow you to customize your destination URL, title, image and call to action.

Thumbnails: When viewers are scrolling through search results, thumbnails can have the biggest impact on clicks. Make sure you use captivating, colorful, high-contrast images that work well both in small and large formats. The optimal size for your thumbnail image is 1280 x 720 pixels. While YouTube will automatically generate a thumbnail for you, it’s almost always preferable to upload your own custom thumbnail.

What Types of Videos to Create and Share

One of the most common questions business owners ask me about YouTube for marketing is, “What types of videos am I supposed to post?” The prospect of coming up with ideas for entertaining and engaging videos that also help to accomplish a business goal can be overwhelming. Following are some ideas to get your started.

  • Tutorials: Show your viewers how to perform a task
  • Product demos: Demonstrate common uses for your product(s)
  • Customer testimonials: Interview a satisfied customer, or share a user-generated testimonial on your YouTube channel
  • Business intro video: YouTube allows user to create a Channel Trailer to welcome new viewers. Use this to give a brief introduction to yourself and your business, and let them know what types of videos they should expect to see if they subscribe to your channel.
  • Behind-the-scenes videos: Take your viewers on a tour of your office or workspace, or introduce them to your staff or co-workers
  • Tips and tricks: Share useful insights that will help your prospects
  • Live presentations: Speaking at a conference or tradeshow? Record and share it with your YouTube viewers
  • Webinars: Most webinar software providers will allow you to record your webinars. Upload them to YouTube and share them with your audience. I have often used these webinar recordings as an opt-in incentive on my site.
  • Commercials: Take a look at ads from Old Spice or Always to see what YouTube commercials should be like.
  • Product launches: Share the release of new products with your YouTube viewers
  • Statistics: To establish yourself as an expert in your field, share industry-related statistics, data and research via a simple slideshow-like video
  • FAQs: Compile a list of frequently asked questions and respond to them via video

As you create and promote a number of different types of videos, you’ll start to learn which types work best with your audience. Keep in mind that different types of videos may perform differently depending on where you share them. For instance, we know that videos uploaded directly to Facebook now perform better than YouTube videos shared on Facebook. In fact, Facebook videos now get more than 80% of all video interactions on the platform.

In other words, don’t be surprised if your YouTube videos don’t perform as well as you’d like when shared on Facebook. Consider using Facebook’s native uploader, and saving YouTube for sharing on all your other social channels.

How to promote your videos and channel

There are three main ways to generate views for your videos:

  • Ranking highly on Google and/or YouTube for popular keyword searches
  • Having a large YouTube subscriber base
  • Promoting your videos or channel via your other web properties

We’ve already covered ways to optimize your videos for search. Growing your YouTube channel and promoting your videos and channel on your other web properties will be your next (and perhaps most challenging) job. Following are 10 tips for increasing both subscribers and views.

  1. Promote your YouTube channel on your other social media profiles. Be sure to use relevant hashtags in these posts to increase your reach.
  2. Engage your loyal fans. By looking at your Creator Dashboard, you can see which users are most engaged with your content. Consider involving them in some way to nurture potential brand ambassador relationships.
  3. Add a YouTube widget to your blog. A tool like Tint can help you display a number of videos (your own and other people’s) in a widget on your website or blog.
  4. Collaborate with business owners in a complimentary niche. Approach other YouTubers about promoting each other’s videos. Create co-branded videos you can each use to build your audience.
  5. Use a video pop-up box on your site to promote your videos to your website visitors. A tool like Video Lightbox can help with this.
  6. Engage with users, on your videos and theirs. Social media works best when you interact and engage with other users, and not just on your own channel. Leave thoughtful comments on other people’s videos, and respond to comments left on yours. The more interactions you get on your videos, the better your search rankings will be.
  7. Include a link to a relevant YouTube video in your guest post bios. Guest posting on a popular niche site is great for growing your influence and expanding your reach, but it’s also great for getting traffic to your videos and channel.
  8. Share your videos with your email list. Direct them to embedded videos on your site to increase both video and page views.
  9. Embed your videos onto your website or blog. Add videos to existing blog posts, or create new blog posts specifically to promote your videos. This will not only increase video views, it will increase pageviews on your site.
  10. Always use playlists: This will ensure that viewers are sent to another relevant video, rather than clicking over to another video or channel. Use relevant keywords in your playlists to increase their chances of ranking in search.

For many more strategies for growing your subscribers and views, see my article, 50 Free Ways To Grow Your YouTube Channel Subscribers and Views.

Use paid options to extend your reach

Like other social networks, YouTube provides a way for business owners to extend the reach of their content. YouTube ads let you turn any video into an ad, ensuring that your video gets seen before other videos in search as well as alongside other videos users are watching. YouTube offers a number of targeting options (age, gender, location, etc.), and ad sizes range from large mastheads (850x250), to smaller, standard display ads (300x250 or 300x60).

4 common ad types. Image courtesy of YouTube

Using YouTube ads can be a great way to give your videos a boost, getting them off the ground and increasing social proof (views, thumbs up and comments). Following are 6 best practices to keep in mind if you decide to use YouTube ads.

  1. Make sure your first few seconds act as a hook to reel viewers in. If the first 5 seconds of your video doesn’t capture their interest, you’ve lost them. Focus on putting your most captivating content first, and then back up this content with facts and details later in the video.
  2. Keep ads short and sweet. Most YouTube experts recommend keeping your video ads to 1 minute or less. Unbounce found that 80% of viewers clicked out of ads after 60 seconds.
  3. Focus more on your goals than on views. While on-site engagement is a great indication that your video is hitting its mark with viewers, take a look at whether or not your YouTube ads are helping you meet your specific goals. Are they resulting in conversions (opt-ins, downloads, sales, etc.)? Are they sending qualified traffic to your site?
  4. Use a call to action in your ads. While some big brands have success creating entertaining videos with no specific call to action (CTA), I’d recommend smaller businesses use them to increase engagement. If you’re using TrueView video ads, you can choose to overlay a CTA over your ad, so viewers see it as soon as they begin watching your video.
  5. Always have a goal in mind before you record your ad. What exactly do you want people to do after watching your ad? Call your business? Visit your website? Having a specific goal will allow you to monitor the effectiveness of your ads.
  6. Use video remarketing to increase your chances of engagement. Remarketing (also known as retargeting) lets you target your video ads to users who have already interacted with your videos or YouTube channel. This will give you the best chance at achieving a positive ROI for your YouTube ads. Here is a guide to help get you started with remarketing.

Conclusion

As you invest in a YouTube marketing strategy, remember to focus on the content of your video before you even think about marketing it. With 300+ hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, the playing field is large and crowded, and your videos need to really speak to your audience to succeed. Once you’ve created a video you’re proud of, promote and distribute it via all your channels, and consider investing in paid promotion for your best videos.

If you’ve found this guide helpful, and you’re looking for more help with your social media marketing initiative, grab my eBook, The Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing.