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YouTube has undeniably staked its claim as an essential tool in a marketer's repertoire. An estimated 48% of all marketers plan to add YouTube to their marketing strategy, which goes to show how valuable it is in creating brand awareness, increasing recognition and expanding a brand's audience reach.
But that's not to say that using YouTube to create brand awareness is as easy or straightforward as it sounds. Here's everything you need to know about putting together the right strategy for your business.
But First, Let's Look at the Numbers
YouTube is the Internet's second largest search engine. At 3 billion monthly searches, YouTube's search volume exceeds that of Bing, Yahoo and AOL. Here's a quick snapshot of YouTube's popularity in the US:
- 74% of Americans use YouTube. By comparison, only 68% use Facebook and nearly half (40%) use Instagram.
- More than 15% of YouTube's traffic comes from the US.
- More than a billion hours of videos are watched on YouTube every day.
- Half of all B2B decisions are influenced by YouTube.
- 70% of YouTube users purchased from a brand mentioned on YouTube.
How to Determine a YouTube Strategy for Brand Awareness
1. Learn About Your Audience
There's no one-size-fits-all approach to successful YouTube marketing. What works for a business in the fashion sector won't be effective for a business in the manufacturing industry. That's why setting time aside to learn about your audience is a critical first step.
Start by collecting quantitative data, such as the predominant age range of your audience and their viewing preferences. For example, younger viewers prefer short-form content (e.g. tutorials). Qualitative data, on the other hand, helps you gain a deeper understanding of your audience's content preferences, such as what they search for and the brands they follow.
Conducting competitor analysis might also prove handy later on. Do your competitors shoot casual-looking videos or professional ones? Do they stick to a specific video length? Do they use video effects, text overlays or background music?
The more you can learn about your target audience (and competitors), the better chances you'll have of attracting their interest, boosting your viewership and building awareness of your brand.
2. Research Popular and In-Demand Video Topics
Before you jump straight into creating content, make sure you have a solid list of video ideas and topics that your target audience will find interesting and engage with. If you're an accounting firm, publishing content about political issues might not be particularly attractive to your potential clients. Take the time to do some digging.
Platforms such as BuzzSumo, AnswerThePublic and SEMRush allow you to find relevant content ideas and topics based on industry/niche and keywords. Another option is looking at the comments that viewers/subscribers ask in your competitors' videos. Identifying common questions or video requests will help you create content that your audience will be interested in.
3. Optimize Your Videos for Search
After you've created your content, make sure you spend time optimizing it for search to increase its visibility, viewership and boost brand awareness. Specifically, you should spend time creating optimized metadata for every single one of your videos; this includes the title, description, keywords/tags, thumbnail, closed captions and subtitles.
This will allow your content to be properly indexed by YouTube and will also increase the chances that your videos will actually pop up in search results. It's generally a good idea to keep your metadata succinct, straightforward and relevant. Make sure your metadata includes your main keyword or variations to make it more SEO friendly.
4. Share Your YouTube Videos on Social Media
Distributing your videos on social media platforms will give you the opportunity to reach a wider audience, increase awareness across multiple channels, and engage your viewers.
However, simply sharing the videos might not be sufficient by itself. For example, if you've created a tutorial or how-to video about your product or service, then perhaps you can direct users to it when they ask questions on your social media pages instead of sharing it on your page directly.
You might also want to consider using relevant hashtags when sharing your YouTube videos with your followers. This tactic can be especially effective if you've created your video as part of a larger campaign or global trend — including hashtags will give you an excellent opportunity to be part of the conversation and spread the word about your brand. For example, Twitter’s own research into hashtags confirms that individuals can see a 100% increase in engagement by using hashtags.
Get Started with YouTube
Sticking to a clearly defined YouTube marketing strategy can be highly effective and rewarding. Publishing relevant content that your audience is interested in isn't enough to increase brand awareness — you need to promote the content further to maximize its potential and get results.
Remember to create a publishing calendar to help you plan your videos ahead of time and stay on top of your strategy.
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BBB of Southern Piedmont and Western N.C. contributed this article.