YouTube Marketing Tips

Intro

Even if you are not a YouTube content creator, a knowledge of how best to promote any YouTube content you may have is imperative to guarantee high viewership. YouTube is a great place to post tutorials, video interviews, product demos, customer testimonials, and more. Here are a few helpful tips for YouTube Marketing!

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1. Have a good title

The best titles are compelling and informative. Have you ever been a victim of clickbait? Videos with "clickbaity" titles get views! However, they can also be perceived as highly annoying. As a business, make sure your video titles are informative. People should know what they are getting when they click on one of your videos. Tubular Insights notes that YouTube video titles should stick between 41 and 70 characters.

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2. Create an intriguing thumbnail

Video thumbnails act as a preview of sorts to a video. In most cases though, what appears as the thumbnail is a carefully created image, designed to build intrigue. If you choose not to make a custom thumbnail for your video, YouTube will create one for you. Your thumbnail would be a random screenshot from your video. Sometimes, the screenshot could be blurry. Not something you want! Try using image creation tools such as Canva to create custom thumbnails for your videos.

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3. Embed your YouTube videos

The more places someone can come across one of your videos the better! Embed your videos on a product page or a blog post. People tend to spend some time going through such pages. If they come across your video there, they are more likely to view it. Video content is proven to improve conversion rates and lower bounce rates on-site. Use this opportunity to direct people from your websites to your YouTube channel. Another place to embed your YouTube content is on your social media profiles. You can plug your YouTube by posting about it on Facebook or Twitter.

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4. CTA's increase engagement

You're going to keep hearing about CTA's on this blog because they are so important! The best way to increase your subscription count and like numbers is to ask for it. Pretty much every YouTube video asks outright for viewers to "Like, Subscribe, and hit the bell icon to turn on Notifications". While it can be annoying to see this in every video, people need to be reminded. You can also create a sense of urgency by running a contest. Say you want comments on a certain video. Maybe you can give a gift card to a random commenter. You can also use your videos as a way to direct your users to your website or another location you want them to visit by including a link to it. That link in the video serves as your CTA. If you made a product launch video, you can ask viewers to "click on the link in the comments" to pre-order it.

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5. Pay for YouTube Advertising

If you have the budget, YouTube is a great place to advertise. You can get more visibility by running paid YouTube ads. Here are a few types YouTube offers to choose from:

• Display Ads: Only on desktop, ads displayed on right-side of video.
• Overlay Ads: Only on desktop, semi-transparent ads displayed right on the bottom.
• Skippable and Non-skippable ads: Can show up before, during, or after a video. Skippable can be skipped after 5 seconds and are usually longer videos, non-skippable can't be skipped and are usually 15-30 seconds long.
• Bumper ads: Non-skippable ads with a maximum length of 6 seconds that have to be watched before viewers can watch their video.
• Sponsored Ad Cards: Displayed within relevant videos. Use them to promote your products/content.

Learn more about YouTube’s video ad formats...

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Conclusion

Whether YouTube is your main content platform or you are using it to supplement other content, these tips should help you promote your videos. Make sure to have a good title, an intriguing thumbnail, embed your videos, use CTA's, and, if you can afford to, pay for YouTube advertising. Hope these tips help!

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About the Author

Nikith Deo is the Digital Marketing intern for Sparrow Marketing. He is an incoming MS IMC student at Northwestern University.