13 Ways Improve Your YouTube Marketing Campaign

YouTube marketing is an essential part of your marketing mix. Each month, four billion hours of video are watched on YouTube and, in 2011, YouTube had more than one trillion views.

YouTube, like many platforms, has witnessed a massive increase in mobile traffic. In 2001, the number of mobile views of YouTube videos more than tripled.

YouTube’s audience is significant, but the damage to your company and brand can also be enormous and costly if you rush onto the platform. To avoid rushing in and making a costly mistake, here are a series of tips to ensure you get the biggest bang for your YouTube marketing buck.

1. Create compelling videos

First things first, you don’t need to create a viral video to be successful. The same rules apply to creating compelling videos as apply to creating a captivating blog post. You need to create a video that addresses the needs and concerns of your audience.

2. Connect

Your YouTube account, like your other social media accounts, is a satellite and its purpose is to link back to your website. Always link back to your website, you should do so in the video or in the text description at the very least. You can also use your video to connect by ending the video with a call to action telling people to contact you through your website or to email you.

3. Make your video searchable

You need to make it easy for people to find your videos through YouTube’s search engine and through other major search engines, like Google and Yahoo!. There are three things you can do to make it easier to find your video:

Include keywords in the title of your video
Always include a full URL in your description and have a thorough, keyword rich video description.
Use related keywords in your video’s tags

While these aren’t silver bullets, they can potentially help you leapfrog your competition in search results.

4. Get involved in the community

YouTube marketing is like all other forms of social media marketing – you need to be active and involved in the community to be successful. Marketing success will depend on how willing you are to comment and share the work of others.

5. Brand your channel

It is a common assumption that you need to launch a brand channel or become a YouTube partner to brand your presence on YouTube.

There are three ways you can brand your YouTube channel without paying:

You can create a branded YouTube channel and have the colors match those of your brand.
Have your channel set to Player View instead of Grid View to highlight your latest video in a large screen
Create playlists to highlight your best and related content

6. Brand your videos

Branding your channel is important, but you also need to brand your videos. Have your logo appear in each video, have constant color schemes and maintain a consistent voice. YouTube marketing will help you sell products, but it will also help you build brand recognition.

7. Add annotations

Annotations can be added to your videos to enable clickable calls to action. These will appear along the top of your video for a certain amount of time. You can use these to create links to other videos, send people to your blog or send viewers to a newsletter signup form.

8. Use only the necessary resources

YouTube videos don’t have to be expensive to be effective. In fact, the New York Times recently ran a story titled On YouTube Amateur is the New Pro. Be polished, but not too polished. Communicate an effective message, but don’t make your message too long.

9. Post bulletins

Posting a bulletin involves sending an update to your channel’s subscribers. Pushing your note to your followers’ homepage will help bring more traffic to your video.

10. Don’t waste an opportunity to create

You don’t need a special occasion to create a YouTube video. You can create videos for special occasions, but you can also create how-to and training videos to share with your network.

11. Don’t shy away from YouTube ads

YouTube marketing can also be helped with paid ads. People search for YouTube videos like they search for general web content – they do so using keywords. Like Google’s AdWords, you can bid on keywords and have your video appear as a sponsored search result.

12. Be sociable

If you are taking a crack at YouTube marketing, you likely have a presence on other social networks. If you do, leverage your other networks to maximize the views you can get for your YouTube video.

You can increase the number of shares your video gets using several tactics:

Create a blog post to support a new video
Post your video to Facebook
Send a tweet out to your followers providing the link to your video

13. Take advantage of YouTube Insights

YouTube Insights, like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights, provides valuable feedback on your YouTube marketing performance.

Identify the videos you’ve posted with the most views and the most comments and see if patterns arise. If you notice a pattern, like a particularly popular topic, focus on that a bit more and your network will reward you.

Conclusion

Create compelling videos that are easy to find. Connect with other YouTube members and share your videos with your network through your blog and other social media accounts. The 13 steps outlined above will help your YouTube marketing demolish your competition.