Video marketing has been one of the most effective types of digital marketing in the past few years thanks to the popularity of such platforms as YouTube. Consequently, more and more businesses are turning to this type of marketing to promote their products and services. Here’s how small businesses can use YouTube marketing in their digital marketing strategy.
#1- Do the Research
First and foremost, you need to do the research and prepare before you actually start using YouTube marketing as a part of your strategy. What is the market like in your niche? What are your competitors up to? Is anyone else using YouTube marketing in your niche, and if they are, how effective is it in their hands?
In addition to answering those questions, you should also find out which topics your target audience is most interested in (e.g. if your niche is makeup, your customers could be interested in how to apply your makeup products and what they are made of). Keywords are also important, but you can research them either at the beginning or later when you will be dealing with SEO directly.
#2- Develop A Strategy
After your research is complete, you can start developing your strategy for your YouTube marketing campaigns. To get more opportunities along the way, you will need to know what you are doing – or at least the foundation of it as being flexible is still an important part of video marketing.
Keep in mind that you might not be able to develop your strategy fully right away as you will be collecting new pieces of information along the way. Still, it is essential that you have some kind of framework to follow (like content guidelines, for example) that will help you at the beginning.
#3- Plan A Schedule
In a way, planning a schedule is a major part of your strategy development, but it’s worth looking at this task separately. Planning a schedule is important for the success of your campaigns as it will help you focus on priorities, achieve your milestones, and organize your workflow.
In addition to that, a good schedule will help you upload videos on time and will prevent you from getting less traffic because of inconsistent uploads (which you simply won’t have to go through). That being said, you need to be realistic with your posting schedule if you want to have high-quality videos instead of rushed ones. A lot of content is good only when it meets your quality standards.
#4- Find Tools to Use
There are many social marketing tools to choose from, but not every business owner knows that there are also many tools you can use specifically for YouTube marketing. Moreover, many of them are available for free which can help you significantly reduce your video marketing budget.
YouTube itself provides you with all kinds of features and even has a built-in video editor. Still, it’s worth looking for additional tools you can use including a video editor, a grammar checker or proofreader, promotional tools (e.g. to promote your video on your social media profiles), and so on.
#5- Choose Your Video Formats
Of course, it’s more tempting to just start creating videos at this point, but the planning stage isn’t actually over. In fact, one of the most important decisions you will make is choosing the video formats you will stick to.
One way to choose them is by looking at what your competitors are doing, but if there are no competitors of yours who use YouTube for marketing, you will have to experiment. Start with several video formats and see how they perform. Ask your audience for feedback and then adjust your formats to that. And remember that you shouldn’t be afraid of experimenting – learning from mistakes is one of the easiest ways to find what works for you.
#6- Tie in Your Marketing
The last thing you should do before you start creating your YouTube content is to tie in your video marketing strategy into the rest of your digital marketing. This will help you better establish where YouTube marketing is for you in the great scheme of things.
For example, you would probably want to start with writing a product marketing plan that you can then adjust for the various marketing channels you use (e.g. email marketing, social media marketing, direct mail marketing, etc.) Then, you can simply add YouTube marketing as one of the channels you use to market a specific product. Alternatively, you can base this on your entire business to develop and promote your brand.
#7- Start Creating Content
Once you are all set and ready, you can finally start creating content for your YouTube channel. As mentioned earlier, quality must always comment over quantity if you want your campaigns to be successful.
If you produce content of bad quality, the reputation of your brand will suffer – not just your marketing campaign. But once you become known for high-quality content, you can expect to get more subscribers while other brands and content creators will respect you more and will offer collaborations.
#8- Consider Using Outsourcing
That being said, if you still want to have a lot of content produced in a short amount of time while ensuring that this content is of the highest quality, you can consider using outsourcing as a way to reduce your workload.
For example, using a research paper writing service site that can help you find qualified writers who will help you write scripts for the videos. Make sure to delegate easy tasks to be outsourced while you can focus on the more complicated ones that need more attention and care.
#9- Use Video SEO
Once your videos are ready and you start uploading them to YouTube, you will need to use SEO just like you do with all your content on other channels to improve their visibility. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Channel Tags: Pretty much what your channel is about (e.g. makeup).
- Video Titles and Descriptions: Don’t be too wordy in the titles and make them as informative as possible. In the description, elaborate on the video’s topic and add all the necessary links (e.g. social media profiles).
- Video Tags: YouTube itself stresses their importance as they help your potential viewers find your videos (just like hashtags on social media or keywords in articles and blog posts).
- Thumbnail Image: Definitely take some time to make this as it is one of the elements making your audience click on and watch your video (along with the title).
#10- Track, Analyze, Adjust
Last but not least, remember to track and analyze the performance of your videos so you can then adjust your future videos. As mentioned earlier, you can change your video formats, but you should also focus on the topics you cover and how interested in them your audience seems to be.
Final Thoughts
All in all, video marketing with the help of YouTube is one of the best ways to boost the results of your digital marketing campaigns, so use the tips in this article to create your own YouTube marketing strategy and start promoting your business better.
Guest post courtesy of Dominic Beaulieu
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