Easy YouTube Marketing Hacks For Your Brand
YouTube has been around since 2005 when it was established by three former PayPal employees; Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. That’s 14 years of great video viewing for most of us. But many marketers have bypassed YouTube marketing. Perhaps assuming video marketing in general is too expensive, elaborate or unnecessary. In this article, Moondust is looking at some easy YouTube marketing hacks for your brand.
Credit: Photo by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash
Why YouTube?
Traditional TV is declining, weekly watch time dropped 12% among 18- 34 year olds in 2018.
Cisco predicts that video will be 82 percent of all internet traffic by 2022.
· YouTube is the second place platform worldwide in terms of active users and over 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube each day.
YouTube supports 80 different languages and has local versions in 91 different countries. That means it reaches 95% percent of the internet worldwide. WOW!
· YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world! Of course, you know the first. YouTube receives around 30M visits per day making it a great choice for driving traffic to your site.
· Today, content consumption is changing and 92% of internet users now watch videos online each month. In fact, an increasing number of internet users prefer to receive information in video format.
Current consumer trends include simplifying, decluttering, relaxing and ASMR videos.
YouTube Trivia
Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You is currently the most popular YouTube video (2019) with over 4 billion views!
YouTube Marketing Hack #1 – Rank Higher
Just like Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, YouTube has a powerful algorithm that ranks content. And it works in a similar way to the other platforms. The more people interacting with a video, the higher it begins to rank. But if your channel is new, how do you get the attention in the first place?
Use keywords- YouTube is a video-based platform, but you still need great content! Use keywords that are popular for your industry but also trending ones when you can. Add these into the video description and include hashtags.
Watch your analytics- YouTube has an excellent administrator analytics panel and if you’re focusing on YouTube marketing you should be watching it. You can learn more about your audience demographic, most popular videos, watch times and much more.
Keep it short- 33% of viewers will stop watching a video after 30 seconds, 45% by one minute, and 60% by two minutes. YouTube’s algorithm will not rank your video highly if it isn’t being watched till the end.
Don’t buy subscribers- It can be tempting to purchase subscribers if your channel is new but doing so won’t help you rank higher. In fact, it could penalise you more! YouTube analyses channel followers and video views ratio. So, if you have 5k subscribers and 0 video views it simply looks like your content isn’t good.
Incentivise Comments – YouTube’s algorithm favours videos with plenty of comments. The highest-ranking channels often provoke discussion by asking a question, starting a debate or even encouraging fans to comment to enter a contest. If you have a large employee base, then ask them to comment. You can also email video links to your opted in database for a quick algorithm boost.
YouTube Marketing Hack #2 – Drive Traffic
Creating beautiful videos and getting good YouTube engagement is great. But most B2B brands we work with, also want to drive traffic to their site. So, what marketing hacks can we use to drive traffic?
Create useful content- It may sound obvious but surprisingly, a lot of big brands still don’t create content that’s useful to their viewers. Forget the overly promotional videos. Think about showcasing user generated product reviews, product explainers and demos using your products. If you solve a user problem or question and create a need for your product then you will drive more traffic and generate more comments and shares.
Create strong CTAs- Brands generating good YouTube traffic pay close attention to their Call to Action messaging. This includes the text below the video as well as the titles and tags. Your CTR (click through rate) has a strong influence on the YouTube algorithm and the best way to boost it is to create compelling thumbnails, call to actions and titles.
Example- Check out how Clinique is driving traffic from their video to their site.
Note how the brand includes individual links to each product. This eliminates the risk of users getting lost on your site.
And while we’re shining some love on Clinique, take a second to admire their playlist organisation. The brand has thought of all the different beauty categories and neatly organised their videos accordingly. This means users can jump straight into the ones they want without getting frustrated or bored.
Add annotations and end screens- You can add on screen annotations and end screen cards to highlight key messaging and drive more traffic. Annotations work like call-to-action buttons and can be used to get people to subscribe, grab a special offer or visit your site to learn more. Call-to-action cards sit at the end of your video in the last 30 seconds of your content and remind people of your brand, website or other videos to watch.
Adding a card to the end of your video is easy as shown below:
A word of warning though, don’t overdo your annotations. A busy screen with pop ups happening everywhere will only annoy viewers.
YouTube Marketing Hack #3 – Maximise Your Influencer Marketing Strategy
If your brand is planning to onboard influencers for your YouTube marketing campaigns then you definitely need to pay attention to these tips. Paid YouTube influencers can be very expensive, so regardless of how big your budget is, you need to make sure you are maximising your ROI.
Agree on your goals- Brands and influencers must first agree on how the campaign will be evaluated. This means creating KPIs, analysing the historical performance of the brand channel and assessing the influencers channel (branded content performance VS unsponsored content). You should also analyse the influencer’s audience before signing an agreement. This involves looking at metrics and data like average video length, comment & shares rate, average views per video.
Create an influencer kit- Your brand should create an influencer kit with the agreement, KPIs and other information like timings, deadlines, hashtags, tags, UTM tracked links and product specifications. You should also agree on basics like who will create the content? Which channel will it be hosted on? Will you provide the reviews and the influencer will read them? Or do they prefer to create their own?
Tag influencers- Just like Nike below, you should always tag influencers mentioned or featuring in your videos. If you’re on a small budget, consider mentioning influencers (favourably) in your video and tagging them. It is possible to gain free influencer interaction this way, especially with micro and mid-level influencers.
For more influencer marketing tips check out our article How to find your perfect influencer
YouTube Marketing Hack #4 – Repurpose Video Content
When you’ve spent so long creating awesome videos, it’s a shame not to repurpose them. Repurposing content maximises it’s reach and your ROI. With YouTube, it’s easy to do this by embedding videos into your blog, turning them into gifs or adding transcripts for other regions. Here are some tips:
Create GIFS from your videos- GIFS are great for channels like Twitter because they drive high levels of engagement. To create a GIF from a YouTube video simply select the URL at the top of your browser. Add the word "gif" right before the domain name so it reads, www.gifyoutube.com/[your-video-tag]. This will bring you to gifs.com, with your video already uploaded and ready for editing. Then you will see a menu of options set the GIF duration, crop, add captions and more. Now download it and add your gif to tweets with a link to the full video, just like a sneak preview.
Embed the video into your blog – It’s easy to embed your YouTube video into your WordPress blog. Under the video, click SHARE, then Embed. From the box that appears, copy the HTML code and paste it into your blogs HTML.
This is ideal to emphasise a point in your blog or expand on an idea. For example, if your blog is about nail colours for Summer, your video might showcase your top 10 designs. Alternatively, your blog might be about your new house paint range and your video could include useful DIY tips. There are so many great matches for this.
Create transcripts- By creating alternative language transcripts of your videos, you are widening their ability to target different geographical regions on your other social media channels. YouTube automatically generates a written transcript for every single video uploaded to its website. But that’s a transcript of the existing video- presumably English. To add other languages; Open the video, click the icon on the far right for "Subtitles/CC." (CC stands for "Closed Captions.)
Set your language then upload or paste your alternative language transcript. Remember, this works well to dub voiceovers but not so well with videos containing onscreen text.
YouTube Trivia - LEGO has almost twice as many views as any other brand on YouTube- With nearly 8 million subscribers, LEGO’s YouTube channel is owning it. LEGO operates channels in multiple languages and has tons of awesome playlists to broaden their reach.
YouTube Marketing Hack #5 Amateur Video Tips
The great thing about YouTube marketing is that you don’t need to have a huge budget to create a great video. Using just a smartphone, brands have created interviews, product demos, behind the scenes and Q&A videos. In fact, users often prefer a more spontaneous video that looks less staged as it appears more authentic. That said, amateur doesn’t mean terrible. So, here are some YouTube tips for amateur video makers.
Make use of YouTube’s editing tools- That’s right. YouTube has a whole host of editing tools natively available on its platform. And one editing tool that’s useful is Enhancements. Enhancements offers 9 effect fixes including:
· Apply time lapse
· Apply filters
· Auto-fix lighting and colour
· Rotate the view
· Stabilize shaky camera motions
· Apply slow motion
· Trim out parts of your video
· Custom blurring
· Blur faces
Images via filmora
Live stream videos to YouTube- Live streaming has seen massive growth, especially in the past few years with the advent of Facebook Live, and Instagram live videos. And you don’t need to be a pro to go live, all you need is a webcam or mobile device. Streaming live events like a product launch or press conference adds excitement to your channel and doesn’t require a large budget.
Live streaming is more intuitive from mobile devices where you can simply open the YouTube app on mobile, tap the camera icon at the top of the screen, and choose "Go Live."
Be careful of copyright- Be very careful about uploading videos that infringe copyright. Infringing copyright can land your brand with a huge fine or the removal of your video. This could be using photos or footage without the correct licencing, unlicensed music or brand names. Check out this super cute video from YouTube explaining copyright with a host of cheeky puppets. A must watch for beginners.
Get the basics right – Just because you’re an amateur doesn’t mean your videos need to look it. Prepare your script or prompts beforehand. Ensure your office environment is clean, tidy and everyone knows you will be filming. Minimise background noise such as air conditioning, fans or kitchen noise. Choose well lit spaces that showcase you and your product in the best light. Literally.