How to expand your brand’s reach with YouTube marketing

What once began life as a simple video sharing platform has long since evolved into one of the dominant communications channels on the Internet. According to one recent study, YouTube has more than 2.6 billion active users as of 2022. Not only has the site become the largest video sharing service in the world, but it’s also the second-largest social networking site in existence.

All of this is to say that when it comes to marketing in the digital era, YouTube is officially one opportunity that is far too important to overlook. This is true for businesses in not only all industries, but of all sizes as well.

Therefore, if you don’t already have an established YouTube presence, now would be an excellent time to build one. Even expanding on that which you already have is highly recommended for a wide range of reason, all of which are worth exploring.

Types of YouTube Marketing Strategies

Generally speaking, there are three main techniques that businesses can use to create promotional content for a YouTube audience depending on their needs. In all likelihood, they will use a combination of the following methods to make sure that they’re reaching their desired audience in the most efficient way possible.

For the best results, however, marketers need to begin with a comprehensive understanding of their customers so that they’re making informed decisions regarding what type of content to create and post. Likewise, competitor research will be key to identify gaps in the marketplace that can be filled with the right type of content at the right time.

Creating Videos for Content Marketing

The most popular way to expand a brand’s reach through YouTube marketing involves creating video content that will be published directly on your own channel. Think of this as your own little corner of the site where people can go to find out more information about your products and services, get answers to important questions they may have, and more – all through compelling, highly engaging video content.

There are many benefits to this approach.

• First, it helps to expand organic reach through video search and sharing. People can not only subscribe to your channel, but they can share your content with others as well.
• Likewise, you maintain full ownership of content to share across other channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others.
• Finally, your YouTube channel can act as a hub for other customer relationships on the platform. You can respond directly to other videos, engage in the comment section, etc.

Having said that, managing a YouTube channel is nothing if not a major time commitment – though the same can be said for most forms of marketing. Some factors you’ll need to consider include:

• The fact that additional market research may be necessary to identify content opportunities.
• Video production is expensive because you need to not only invest in equipment but also crew members to operate cameras, microphones and lights, along with other production elements.
• It takes ongoing, proactive work to maintain the channel in a way that keeps people engaged for the long-term.

Partnerships for Influencer Marketing

Another opportunity that brands have to expand their reach via YouTube marketing has to do with what is called influencer marketing. In essence, you’re finding a YouTube “personality” who has an existing audience that is very similar to the one you’re trying to reach. One who is already paying attention to this person and trusts what they have to say. Then, by partnering with them to create content, you attract the attention of people who otherwise may not have found your channel on their own.

This also offers its fair share of benefits, including:

• You’re partnering with someone who has already built their own audience.
• Their audience trusts this person, therefore a recommendation for your brand holds more weight than traditional advertising.
• Influencers can dramatically amplify your own voice, helping to get your message to the widest possible audience.

Of course, there are some potential drawbacks:

• It may be difficult to find an influencer that closely aligns with your brand.
• Once a relationship begins, that influencer is tied to your business. If they do something to damage their own reputation, your business might wind up as collateral damage.

Advertising on YouTube

Finally, brands always have the opportunity to advertise directly on the YouTube platform – a method that is not too dissimilar to using something like Google Ads. Here, you can pay to have your video content appear in highly visible locations – be it before or during another piece of content that someone is watching, on the YouTube homepage, or elsewhere.

The benefits of this approach include:

• You can connect your existing customer data with Google Ads for precise targeting capabilities. You can create more relevant ads that are than targeted towards the people who are most likely to respond to them.
• Certain aspects of the process can also be automated, including ad bidding and placement. This can free up your valuable time to focus on other areas of your campaign that need your attention.

Of course, the potential drawback to this is that you’re still talking about paid advertising – something that a certain subset of users go out of their way to ignore. Some pay for YouTube Premium and don’t see many ads at all, while others employ ad blocking software too much the same effect. Either way, both things potentially eat into your overall return on investment.

How to Reach and Engage Your Audience on YouTube

One of the most important things to understand about all of this is that a marketing approach when it comes to a platform like YouTube will depend on a different set of tactics than an advertising approach. This is true whether you’ll be creating original content from the ground up, if you’ll be partnering with an influencer, or are employing both methods at the same time.

Having said that, there are a number of approaches that you will want to experiment with to help make sure your efforts are generating the results that you’re after.

Tips for Video Marketing

When it comes to marketing on YouTube with an eye towards getting as many views for your content as possible, you’ll want to explore some or even all the following best practices:

• Focus on creating engaging titles. The video you post will speak for itself, but that doesn’t matter if nobody clicks on it. An engaging title will entice someone to click through to see more.
• Mention keywords in your video titles, descriptions, and even in the content itself. This will help YouTube’s algorithm better “understand” what your video is about, which will go a long way towards improving visibility.
• Create content for your specific audience. Again, you need to understand as much about who you’re talking to as possible so that you can give them exactly what they want to see and hear.
• Engage with the community. Respond to comments on the videos that you post and “like” and comment on videos that other people and brands post, too. Part of the appeal of YouTube is that it is a community, not unlike any other social network. Use that to your advantage when it comes to YouTube marketing.
• Choose engaging thumbnails. People will make a decision about whether to watch your video in literally fractions of a second. An engaging title, coupled with a compelling title, could be exactly what they need to entice them to click on a link and find out more.

Tips for YouTube Advertising

In terms of YouTube advertising, you’ll want to complete steps like the following:

• Lean into Google Ads’ extensive audience targeting options. Based on what you know about your ideal consumers, you can target content to them based on relevant demographics, live events, interests, purchase intentions, and more.
• Use the “YouTube Channels” option in your profile to make sure that your ads are showing on only the most relevant channels that align with your target audience. You can enter the URLs of specific channels for maximum effect. You can exclude certain channels from ad placements in the same way.
• Target your ads to audiences based on the topics being discussed. This is a great way to make sure that your ads are getting in front of people who are most likely to become one of your paying customers in the first place.

Continue to Improve Through Analytics

Finally, it is crucial to understand that putting up your first series of videos on YouTube isn’t the end of this particular story. As is true with a lot of areas of marketing, it should be the beginning of something bigger. This means that you need to analyze and monitor the performance of those videos on an ongoing basis.

By paying attention to which types of content people are receptive to and which ones they aren’t, you can make sure your efforts (and your marketing dollars) are focused in the right places. Maybe one particular influencer is underperforming – if you know this as soon as possible, you can end the relationship and partner with someone else. Maybe your target audience really doesn’t seem to like one particular type of video ad.

No matter what, you need to acknowledge that continuous improvement is one of the keys to success, and it must be a priority moving forward. YouTube has a lot of native tools that can help you track performance using metrics like total views and engagement. Likewise, there are other customer analytics tools that can help shed light on who is watching your videos, which demographics they belong to, and more – all so that you can have the most actionable information to work from as your campaign continues to expand.

In the end, the popularity of YouTube – both as a content channel and as a marketing platform – is not something that can be argued with. Few could have predicted that the site would have grown into what it currently is when it originally launched over a decade ago, but here we are.

Regardless of the type of business you’re running or even the industry that you’re operating in, it is absolutely possible for a brand to expand its reach using YouTube marketing as a primary tactic. You just need to remember the best practices outlined above along the way.

If you’d like to find out more information about how a brand can expand its reach with YouTube marketing, or if you have any additional questions that you’d like to go over with someone in a bit more detail, please don’t delay – contact us today.