While the majority of small businesses take the time to set up the traditional social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, many overlook the importance of video in communicating with their brand’s followers. According to a recent article summarizing a video statistics report released by Invodo, 74 percent of all Internet traffic by 2017 will be video and 52 percent of marketing professionals agree that it offers the best ROI. This is where YouTube comes into its own. Small businesses can produce compelling video messages that resonate with their audience, even without much of a budget.
Here are five ways to make use of YouTube when conducting your next marketing campaign.
1. Treat YouTube Like a Search Engine
YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and receives upwards of 30 million visitors each day, making ranking incredibly important. You might be surprised at how much traction you can generate simply by using effective SEO practices. To do this, you’ll need to ensure that you’re including strong keywords in your titles and descriptions to optimize your video content.
2. Customize Your Channel’s Homepage
If people aren’t searching for your videos specifically, they’ll likely come across your content by seeing it in the Up Next sidebar to the right of website – provided your ranking is high enough. Assuming they navigate to your YouTube channel, they’ll be presented with a homepage you can alter to better suit your needs. An effective way to differentiate your channel and reinforce your online identity is to brand it. Use the same colors as your website, upload your logo and include any other relevant information so that viewers can associate your videos with your business.
3. Leverage Events, Products and Promotions
Whenever you attend an event function or convention, make sure there’s a video to go along with it. In doing this, you can re-engage those people that attended as well as attract interest from some of those who weren’t there. Similarly, demonstrate the effectiveness of your products. Your approach can vary, but an excellent example comes from Tom Dickson, CEO of Blendtec and his Will it Blend? viral videos. They go to great lengths to make a mundane process more exciting and interesting.
4. Utilize Paid Views
In addition to making your campaigns work for you by targeting specific consumer groups, consider promoting your content through Google AdWords for Video and increasing your channel’s visibility. You may need a modest budget to take full advantage of the platform, but if you make use of the TrueView management tool within AdWords, you’ll only be charged if viewers continue to watch after the first 5 seconds.
5. Drive Viewers to Your Website
Lastly, your channel should tie in with your business and direct potential customers to your website. You can do this by sharing videos to your site and creating an archive in the same way that the Hermance Machine Co. has been able to do effectively. They have a page just for their videos, which creates a great resource and “how-to” guides that are helpful for the visitor and potential customer or client. Link to any relevant products or pages in the description or somewhere in the video so that no matter where they end up online, people will know where they came from. If you find you’re struggling to convert customers online, YouTube offers many great options for small business and hopefully you’ll have found these five tips useful.
