Why is YouTube Effective for Marketing - Supercharge Your Strategy

By now we all know that images and video attract our attention more than words and with over 1 billion unique visitors to YouTube each month and over 6000 million hours of video being watched, this platform has become a tool every small business owner should consider using in their marketing strategy. Most potential customers would much rather watch a well-thought-out promotional video about your business, service or products than read a long-winded sales letter. 

Many successful companies such as GoPro, Playstation and Walmart have been using YouTube in their digital marketing strategy for quite some time. GoPro, one of the most popular camera choices in the market today use their channel to upload content that includes informational videos on their products to get advocates of their products to add footage from their camera being used. But, the use of this platform is not reserved only for big companies, more and more small to medium-sized businesses have started making their videos to promote their products and services. Why not you?

BEFORE YOU GET STARTED

If you are regularly going to produce videos, you should launch your own Youtube channel! Once it has been created, make sure that your Youtube channel's name matches your company's name. Branding across all social media platforms is important and YouTube is no exception to the rule.

1. The explanation video: In this type of video, you explain how to use your product, or why the service you are offering is what your potential customer needs. You must be really clear with your explanation and to the point. You are there to promote the quality of your product or service. So it's time to show your expertise!
2. The testimony video: Here in this video you are collecting testimonies from your clients that are satisfied with your product and service. You want them to preach the benefits of your product or service. This will help your future customers to have confidence in the quality of your work because these words are coming from another mouth, other than yours. These types of people are your advocates and have no personal benefit in supporting your brand, other than that they love using it. Do not use paid actors - find real advocates for your business.
3. The presentation of the company: This type of video gives your audience a sneak peek into the unknown of your company. It should be a really simple video where you show the inside of your company and introduce your employees to the viewer. You can go a step further and make the video fun. This type of video is not used to boost sales, but it will allow you and your customers to build a relationship. People can be more sensitive to these types of videos and if you are doing them right, they will build trust in your brand more easily.
4. New product video: when a new product is on its way, make sure that your subscribers are informed. Tell them the launch date and other important information. If your product or service is already on the market, make a video about it and show them what your product or service can do for them.
5. Q&A: known as Question and Answer, this type of video is getting more and more popular. The principle is simple: your audience asks you a question via the comments section about whatever they want to know in regard to your company, product or service and in turn, you respond via video. Look at ways you can make your responses entertaining to your audience.

Below are some things you can do to get this much-needed traffic:

1. Use your other social media platforms to get your videos out there. Everyone who is already following you is a good start in letting them know there is a video out, but you also want to get them to share the video so your reach can go further.
2. Choose the right title. Take some time thinking about a great title as you want to grab your audience's attention. Relevant keywords in your title will also help within the search results of their YouTube search. The more popular the keyword is, the more chances you have of your video being found.
3. Write the right description. The same logic applies here as it does with your title, but with your description you can include more keywords to help create more opportunities for your video to be found.
4. Transcribe your videos and post the transcript in your video description. You can use services like speechpad.com to instantly get an SEO boost to help with the video's rank.
5. Direct lots of links to your video. Many people just think of using external SEO techniques for boosting website page rankings but it can also play a huge role in page rankings for your YouTube videos. Links both ways from website to YouTube and YouTube to website.
6. At the end of your video, don't hesitate to ask viewers to subscribe to your YouTube channel, this is a common practice that actually does work.