Consumers today are bombarded with promotional messages, on a variety of media, about various products; how to use them, where to find them, their benefits, and much more. So how can YOUR message make an impact?
For a small business, traditional media advertising models are expensive and not easy to track. Over the years, marketers have shifted their focus to interactive media to achieve different communication goals and effective engagement with customers and the ability to measure the results. Social media marketing has gained wide attention when it comes to interactive marketing, and YouTube has become the primary conduit for marketers in reaching a wider audience via the most appealing content format–videos!
According to Statista.com, over the course of 2015, YouTube had approximately 170.7 million unique users per month in the United States, and as of July 2015, more than 400 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute.
According to YouTube statistics (https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html), more than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices, and once mobile users are on YouTube, the average viewing session is now more than 40 minutes, up more than 50% year over year. This is an incredible opportunity to get your products and services in front of a vast audience.
A YouTube Channel for your Business!
Create your own YouTube channel, which is similar to a Facebook page. Giving your channel a name similar to your business name will give your channel more visibility in search results and is also great search engine optimization.
Apple’s YouTube channel is a good example!
Brand it
Your YouTube homepage is the face of your business. Ensure that you have a unique appearance and create a custom background, with colors that match your branding, and upload your logo. Fill out the channel description thoroughly and optimize it by including keywords, relevant information about your company, and links to your website and other social media profiles.
Get the videos done right!
Begin with the message you want to convey and utilize your videos to address a specific need of your audience. Your content should be valuable and compel the viewer to watch. Consider injecting some humor into it to make it interesting and enjoyable. Some examples of videos you can create are:
- FAQ videos (videos with Frequently Asked Questions such as how they can get the Applova consumer app and if it free of charge.)
- ‘How to’ videos (such as how to order a favorite dish using the Applova mobile app)
- Tips videos (for example tips for a healthy diet, tips for choosing the right coffee)
- Success stories (videos featuring the story of your business, from incorporation to current day)
- Customer review videos (Videos featuring your happy customers/customer testimonials)
- Behind-the-scenes videos/Walkthrough videos (People would love to know what’s happening inside your shop.)
Here is a great example!
Title, Description and Tags matter!
In order to create more search engine visibility for your videos you should fill the title, description and tag boxes of the videos with targeted key words. The description should be informative and may include URLs to intended landing pages such as your website, Facebook page, product pages and other significant pages.
Timing for videos
Your videos need to be the right length. The first 3 to 5 seconds of the video will capture the interest of the viewer to continue watching or not. The optimum time for a video differs based on the type of video. For example:
1 – 2 minutes for a product video
Under 30 seconds for a promo video
Use Annotations
In order to enhance the customer engagement with your videos you can include clickable calls to action which may be link to other videos, a subscription option or link to a download.
Analytics will make your life easy!
YouTube provides powerful insights on your videos with their dashboards. You can get analytical data on who has watched your videos, how they found your videos, viewer engagement with the videos (likes, comments and shares) and even the demographics of your audience. This data will be a rich source of insight into creating future videos.
Higher the Sharing, Higher the Reach!
You can share your YouTube video on Facebook, Twitter, or even do a blog around it to extend its reach. For instance, you could create a video on how to order through your Applova mobile app, publish it on your own YouTube channel and share it across all the social media platforms you are on and make it go viral!
In this hyper-connected world, knowing how to be creative and how to get to the point will increase your online presence. Everything you need to do to stay relevant in this online era is at your fingertips!
Challenge the traditional practices, follow these simple tips, and you’ll be a pro on YouTube in no time!
