Introduction to YouTube marketing

Each month, businesses try to come up with innovative marketing strategies as they look for alternate ways to promote their business online. Online marketing is not complete without digital video advertising, and there is no better platform for it than YouTube. It is the largest ecosystem for watching videos, and it is the second-largest search engine after Google with over a billion users every month. More than half of digital marketers use YouTube as a major platform to market their business.

You might think, "That's awesome but YouTube is not a space for my audience." Well, in this article we are going to introduce you to the basics of YouTube marketing and how it can benefit your business in ways you might not have realized. Let's dive in and talk about YouTube marketing.

What is YouTube marketing?

The most-searched word keyword on Google is YouTube. Though people initially didn't think of YouTube as a search engine, that's exactly what most of its visitors do on the site. Its previously mentioned monthly user base combined with video being an eye-catching medium makes YouTube a perfect field for brands to market their products or business.

Along those lines, YouTube marketing is basically the practice of promoting businesses and products on YouTube’s platform by uploading valuable videos on a company’s YouTube channel or using YouTube ads. Now businesses have an opportunity to establish and grow their brand through interactive videos that can build followers because of the dominance of YouTube. It offers users their own channels on which they can develop and execute their marketing strategy. Businesses can also monetize through YouTube by advertising their video content that streams on other channels besides their own.

"YouTube is the most-searched keyword on Google worldwide."

The truth about YouTube marketing

While YouTube is a great platform to generate more traffic and customers for your brand, it's also a really competitive space where anyone can just create a channel and upload videos, so you can't expect instant results. Even the giants who got into this space very early have only managed to gain a handful of views and subscribers. YouTube is often overlooked by marketers because some only see it as an online video platform while others see the reality and think of it as a part of social media. 

To get ahead as a market leader, you'll have to plan and execute a winning strategy, possess the ability to create great videos with viral potential, and optimize those videos with SEO keywords and topics that attract users on YouTube.

"If they were a non-Google company, they would be spending a fortune on the brand search campaign."

How YouTube can benefit your business

Video has already become huge and has evolved to the point where a few seconds of video are the current trend (think TikTok). As customers consume more videos on social media platforms, video is ranking higher than ever, which leads to even more consumption of them. When you're using YouTube, you can upload videos natively to each platform from the whole library of videos in YouTube. You can embed these YouTube videos with your blog posts, making your blog more creative, dynamic, and engaging. Using YouTube as a part of your marketing strategy can result in exponential growth for online businesses.

Benefits of YouTube marketing

YouTube can help you improve your SEO ranking and overall brand presence. It allows marketers to present content that's unique and easy for viewers to consume and share. Let's have a quick look at how YouTube can benefit your business.

• Improve your Google search ranking 
  You might have noticed that videos often appear on search results, which means Google considers videos to be as important as websites with text articles.

• Associate your domain name with your YouTube channel 
  This means when people search for your business or for products and services you offer, your YouTube videos will also appear. 

• Get your videos shared on social media platforms 
  If you're creating high-quality videos that entice others to share on social platforms, you're signaling to Google that you're producing valuable content that is of great relevance to your target audience. When it comes to Google page rankings, social media metrics play a vital role, so this will improve your ranking.

• Collaborate with other website owners to embed your videos on their sites 
  Every time your video gets embedded on other websites, it gets a higher ranking. The more websites that embed your video, the higher it will rank in the search results, which Google updates regularly.

"When someone sees your brand on YouTube, it’s significantly more memorable than reading a blog post or seeing a text-based ad."

How YouTube is different from other social platforms

YouTube videos are more like blog posts in that people tend to seek them out rather than passively stumbling upon them, so to master YouTube marketing, you need to approach it differently than other social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Those are engagement-driven and revolve around both creating and sharing great content with a goal of brand awareness. Meanwhile, YouTube marketing fits effectively into the niche of content marketing. People come to view the video and comment, similar to how they comment on blog posts. You won't see people tagging others on comments like they do on other social media platforms. Instead, it's about the viewer's experience—if they resonate with the content in the video or if you can create a quality video of great relevance, they will share it on their own social platforms.

People are likely to find your video on YouTube by searching for it or when viewing similar content. People often come to YouTube with the intention of sitting down and spending some time watching videos—unlike other social media sites where they might see your content from ads or from a friend's engagement with it. This is why you should approach YouTube as content marketing instead of social media marketing. 

YouTube video SEO

YouTube's massive popularity means if you take the time to optimize your videos' SEO and produce quality content on a regular basis, you will easily gain the edge in reaching a wider and more relevant audience.

Some of the important video ranking factors you should know about when it comes to optimizing SEO include:

• Keywords for your channel: Use the right tags and let YouTube know what your channel is about.

• Video tags: You need to add tags to your videos for better reach. Find out which tags perform best so they will be shown in relevant search engines.

• Video headline and description: Research keywords to find out what your audience is looking for and use the highest-ranking keywords in your video title and additional keywords in the video description.

• Video transcript: Add a transcript to your video so viewers can check the spelling of a word or still access the content if the audio isn't available due to some technical glitch.

• Thumbnail image: The thumbnail image will be visible whenever your video is indexed, and it can help entice the audience to view your content.

• Engagement: YouTube also looks at the engagement numbers for your content, including the watch time of the video, likes and dislikes, and the number of comments.

• Subscriber count: Initially there won't be many subscribers for your channel, but how many subscribe to your channel after watching one of your videos really matters. This shows how much the content in your channel is relevant to the audience.

YouTube is not merely a home to funny and viral videos anymore. It has become a serious marketing platform that allows your brand to engage with your audience in a truly visual way. YouTube may seem overwhelming at the beginning, but it is the place where your audience wants to learn, engage with your brand, and be entertained.

We'll talk about the complete guide for effective YouTube marketing strategy in our next article.

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