The first thing to consider before shooting any video is to evaluate how YouTube will fit into your marketing plans. Which strategy will you be using to market your products or services on YouTube? Without a doubt, you will not be posting videos blindly. You must make use of a strategy that will work for you. Ask yourself, “What do you want to achieve as you promote your products on YouTube?”
Coming up with a YouTube marketing strategy should not sound strange. This is like any marketing strategy. There are certain essential factors that you need to put into consideration. For instance, the customer comes first. Secondly, the strategy will have to consider the message. Also, it should mull over the product being sold. All these elements need to work in harmony to guarantee that you utilize an effective YouTube marketing strategy. In some cases, these elements are often referred to as the marketing mix.
This post will guide you through how you can develop a successful marketing strategy that will see your business thrive.
The Purpose of YouTube Videos
The first step in developing your promotional strategy is to understand the importance of the YouTube videos that you will be uploading. Why are you uploading the YouTube videos? What is the main reason behind using YouTube as your ideal marketing platform? What goals do you have in mind?
Perhaps you are planning to turn to YouTube because it is what other businesses are doing. Well, if this is what you have in mind, then it is better not to post. As a marketing expert, you need not to do something because other people are doing it — you will never know what is right for your business. First, sit down and evaluate the purpose of marketing your products or services on YouTube. Your goals should determine how you will be posting content on YouTube.
What’s in it for you as you upload videos to YouTube? The chances are that you will be helping your customers learn how to use your product. Alternatively, you might end up raising awareness about the fact that your product could help in solving a problem. Therefore, this could be a good reason why you want to make use of YouTube to promote what you have to offer. The main point here is that it is vital you first determine the key thing that you need to achieve when incorporating YouTube as part of your marketing mix. As earlier pointed out, there are various ways of using YouTube. So, don’t make assumptions that your platform will be there to entertain your audience. Have a plan and understand the purpose as to why you wish to use YouTube.
Know Your Customer
Understanding your customer is another area that must be prioritized in developing a working marketing strategy. Who are you selling your products/services to? Also, why do you want to sell them your product or service?
As you plan to develop an effective YouTube marketing strategy, it is worth pointing out that your marketing efforts will revolve around the customer. The customer is the most important part of your business; they are the ones that will purchase whatever you are offering. If you fail to entice them, there is a certainty that your business might fail.
In a bid to know the customers you are dealing with, there are certain considerations that you need to ponder on. For example, you need to know the age of your customers. What is their gender? Where do they reside in? What do your customers do during their free time? What are some of the websites that they frequently visit? Most importantly, do they know about your product/service?
Some of these questions will help you in knowing the type of people that you will be dealing with. This guarantees that you develop a marketing plan that meets their demands. The more you know your customer, they better you are at serving them effortlessly.
Besides being informed about your customers’ habits, you will also want to know whether they visit YouTube or not. It would be useless to market your products or services on YouTube, yet your target market does not visit the platform. Therefore, this is another important consideration to keep in mind as you seek to know your customer better.
Customer Tastes and Preferences
Knowing the customer’s tastes and preferences will also help you in formulating a marketing strategy that will make your business prosper long term. Here, you need to take the time to understand what your target market is after. If they are regular YouTube viewers, what are they looking for? Perhaps they are looking for a specific solution to a problem that they are facing. This is where your business comes in.
Conversely, they might be browsing through YouTube to find a product that surpasses what they have been using. Your rivals might be offering similar products that are not effective, and your audience is out in search of a better brand to turn to. Knowing what your customer is after is imperative, as it will aid in formulating a marketing goal. For example, your goal here could be formulated to meet the existing need of your potential customers.
What is Being Promoted?
What are you trying to promote on YouTube? If you have been keen, then it should come to your attention that there are several things that you could be doing on YouTube. Are you trying to sell your brand? Are you trying to sell a specific product/service? What is it that you plan to market on YouTube? Certainly, from the look of things, you can’t just wake up and upload videos on YouTube. You have to have a plan. This plan should include knowing exactly what you are promoting.
The main reason why you need to clear your path is to guarantee that you utilize the right strategies depending on your plan. Unquestionably, you will use different methods to sell a specific product compared to selling your overall brand. It could also be that you are out to use YouTube as a support tool. Therefore, you will not be promoting anything. This means that a different strategy will also be required when using YouTube for this purpose. How you plan to use YouTube will have a huge impact on the strategy that you will develop. Hence, it is imperative to mull over the specific things that you will be promoting.
The Message
Different messages will be utilized on YouTube depending on what is being promoted. Effective marketing demands that the message delivered to the audience should be well formulated. It is worth noting that the message will portray a picture of your brand in the minds of your audiences. Thus, creating an appropriate message is vital.
An important attribute about the message concerns what you will be telling your prospective clients about your brand. Your message should iron out the main reasons why the customers should opt for your product/service as opposed to your competitors. Why you? This is what your message should be answering.
There are thousands of businesses that have channels on YouTube. Accordingly, if you need to stand out, you need to make yourself different from the rest. This is what YouTube viewers are after. They will like your channel immediately if they notice that there is something different about your message or brand. The difference could lie in how best you create your video ads. If you advert are more engaging than your competitors, you will gain a large following.
The best way of presenting your message is to sell the product/service benefits. This is what your customers are after. They need to know what makes your product/service different. If there are certain additional benefits that your competitors talk of, you need to outperform them. Marketing is all about making yourself stand out from the rest. Don’t focus too much on the features that your product has. Instead, focus more on the advantages that your customers could get if they chose to rely on your product.
Measuring the Success of Uploaded YouTube Videos
After you have uploaded your YouTube video, you need to find out how it is performing. How do you do this? First, the response you get from your audience will help you in measuring whether the video was successful. What kind of response were you expecting from your audience? Did you anticipate that you will get millions or thousands of likes? If the response you get does not meet your expectations, then the video did not perform well.
Accurately measuring the success of the uploaded YouTube videos will depend on the purpose of the videos you upload. For example, if you upload a video to generate more sales, you will have to track the sales derived from the link attached to the video. If the video uploaded was meant to drive traffic to your business website, you will have to measure the resultant traffic. This can be done by measuring the number of unique visitors or the page views to your business home page. As you can see, measuring the performance of your video will depend on the purpose. So, first, understand why you are posting the videos before you can evaluate how they are performing.
Some of the basic ways of measuring the success of your videos are briefly looked at in the following lines.
Views
How often are your videos being watched on YouTube? This is an obvious way of measuring how well your videos are performing. Few views will mean that your reach is low. Perhaps you did not market your videos to different social media platforms that you have. Also, there is the possibility that your videos are not worth sharing. Find out what you are doing wrong and adjust accordingly.
Shares
To what extent is your target market sharing the videos that you are uploading? If there are minimal numbers of shares, this shows that your content might not be engaging. It is also significant to find out where your audience is sharing your content. For example, are they sharing your videos on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter? This could be an indication that you need to market your content on these platforms. Analyzing this information helps as it gives you a map of the best social networks that you can invest in. The best part is that you will have a reason to avoid social pages that are irrelevant, depending on your customer browsing preferences.
Comments
How many comments are you getting for each video that you post? A high number of comments indicates that you are reaching many people. This is a good sign. Few comments are a red flag. Analyzing the number of views should go together with the number of comments that are being posted to your channel. Doing this will give you the insight that you need to adjust your marketing strategy.
Subscription Rate
If your content is engaging enough, rest assured that more people will subscribe to your channel. This will be an indication that your target market is interested in whatever you are selling them.
Likes and Dislikes
YouTube also has a way of letting you know immediately whether your videos are performing well or not. The number of likes you get will reveal to you how your videos are received by your audience. Many likes will give you the impression that you are doing a wonderful job. On the contrary, several dislikes will also point out that there must be something wrong that you are doing.
Impressions
YouTube analytics will also count the impressions that you make from your posts. It should be noted that YouTube impressions do not take into consideration the number of times your viewers click on the video that you post. If your audience is impressed with the video that you post, they should leave a thumbnail on your video. Hitting like, for example, will show YouTube analytics that your content is interesting and worth displaying on pages of people that might be interested in your brand.