Marketing Your Business On YouTube

Spoiler Alert: YouTube isn’t just for cat videos and lyric singalongs to all your favourite power ballads. It’s actually a really great place to market your business - and in this article, we are going to tell you how.

The Impact Of YouTube

With around 30 million visits every day and over 2 billion active users around the world, YouTube is a great source of traffic but is so often underutilised by businesses.

Built on the creation and sharing of video content, YouTube is especially great for small businesses who are ready to inject some more personality into their brand through video marketing - taking the concept of short Instagram stories one step further with longer and more-content heavy videos. And it’s not just the high user figures that make YouTube such a great marketing tool for businesses.

With space for a full profile, YouTube is as much of an interactive social platform as Facebook and Instagram, while embracing the increasing popularity of video content and engaging storytelling.

Why Your Business Needs To Use YouTube

Having a business YouTube channel means:

• Access to literally millions of users every day
• A chance for viewers to subscribe to your content
• Super simple analytics that tell you how many people have viewed your content
• Unlimited video length
• The ability to completely customise your channel for your business, and use it as another crucial customer touchpoint
• Integration of clickable links and CTAs in videos
• Discovery ads

Let’s take a closer look at what all this means and how you can harness the power of Youtube for your business.

How To Get Started With YouTube For Your Business

Before you start posting content, we recommend building out a profile which you would be proud to showcase and share with customers and connections in your industry. Remember that every online touchpoint for your business is an opportunity to make a great first impression and you should always assume that a new visitor to one your platforms knows nothing about your business.

Sign up for a Business YouTube account through your company Gmail (if possible). This ensures that the username and password for your YouTube will be connected with your Gmail account, ensuring continuity and saving you from being locked out of the account.

Head to your profile and start to turn it into a customer-facing profile. This includes adding your brand logo as the profile image, setting your display name as your company name, and including other information in the description - such as your business ‘elevator pitch’ or a brief introduction, and a website link. You can also integrate other social media channels as clickable links.

Once you’ve got the basics down, you can start to customise your profile according to your industry and audience. Create or select channel art that supports your brand with a banner photo to compliment your profile picture and follow and subscribe to like-minded and inspiring channels within your industry to start the long process of networking and outreach.

Create a channel trailer. This is a brief video that essentially does the job of an introduction but in a visual and highly engaging way. It increases viewer engagement and puts your face at the centre of your brand - immediately making your brand more relatable and more likeable.

Interact with viewers, respond to comments, and like and share other channels’ videos as well as your own. The more active you are on your account the more others will engage with you.

Top Tips To Make Your Business YouTube Stand Out

Got your channel set up and ready to go? Here are a few more tips from us on how to ensure that your YouTube channel and videos stand out from the crowd.

Create playlists of similar videos, grouping them together to make your content more organised and accessible to viewers.

Encourage viewers to subscribe at the end (and sometimes beginning) of every video. When they subscribe, they receive a notification anytime you upload something new, so this is an important way of ensuring consistent engagement across every new video.

Use YouTube’s Livestream feature. This inspires action from viewers who like your content.

Verifying your channel is a great step in business growth, but you need 100,000 followers first - so actioning our other tips and recommendations will help you to get to that coveted stage!

Consider YouTube influencers and the power of YouTube ads. These are the short ads you see at the beginning and in the middle of other videos, with you paying every time the ad is watched for at least 30 seconds or if the viewer clicks on your ad. These ads help you to monetise your YouTube presence and work in much the same way as Google paid ads - just exclusive on YouTube.

Use clickable links to your other profiles, your website, and specific products or services you offer.

The Takeaway

With a focus on visual content and such a high user rate every single day, YouTube is a resource that can not only help your business reach new viewers, but can give them something to engage with, share, and which draws them into your customer journey.

Once you’ve created your profile, the biggest step is encouraging users and followers to subscribe, as this means that every video you post will garner engagement and viewers. You can support this by sharing your YouTube uploads on your website and across other social media platforms, and by generating fresh and new content on a regular basis to show both customers and search engines that you are active and relevant.

For more advice on using YouTube for the benefit of your business, get in touch with us.