In today’s digital landscape, business-consumer dynamics have shifted. The existence of digital channels has influenced buyer behavior and consumers are now in control of how they receive information. Instead of giving you a call or waiting for your next commercial, consumers now rely on the internet to find information about your business. In recent times, studies show video to be the preferred medium by consumers for receiving information about brands or products that have sparked their curiosity.
According to Wyzowl, 96 percent of people say they rely on explainer videos to know more about a product or service they are interested in. A Hubspot research study found that 72 percent of people prefer video over text to receive marketing information. And with over 2 billion users, YouTube is their preferred platform. Eighty-eight percent of marketers say they’ve found success in YouTube marketing.
As a business owner invested in digital marketing, your job is to adapt to the changing dynamics. Provide your audience the answers they need in a form they want to consume. Your consumers will thank you for it – and your business will benefit greatly from it. Seventy-four percent of people say they were convinced to purchase by watching a video. This means your digital marketing activities need to include a YouTube strategy and you may need to reach out to the experts for YouTube video marketing services.
Your clients are in control,” said Sonja Jefferson from Marketing Donut. “Make sure that the information you put up about your company answers their questions and positions you as the trusted resource they seek.
Create the type of information your buyers actually want to consume,” Jefferson added. “Marketing with valuable content is a win-win for your company and its customers.”
In this post, we’ll talk about:
• The benefits of leveraging videos as part of your digital marketing campaigns
• Why your business should use YouTube as your primary video marketing platform
• What makes a YouTube marketing video so successful
• How you can set up your own YouTube advertising channel to leverage the power of YouTube
Key Benefits of Using Video for Marketing
Using videos for marketing isn’t anything new. On the contrary, ask any YouTube marketing agency and they will confirm, it’s been on the rise for years. Eighty-seven percent of marketers used video as a marketing tool in 2019, up from just 61 percent in 2016.
Video is a versatile media format that you can use to offer information to your audience. It’s available in many forms and can cater to a diverse set of audiences. It can easily attract the attention of your audience and invite them to engage with your brand.
You can leverage the power of video to elevate your digital marketing efforts in the following ways:
1. Captures Audience Attention
An Oxford study found that humans now have shorter attention spans, thanks to the internet. Apparently, it went down from 12 seconds to about eight and a half seconds, according to a Microsoft Canada study. Although newer studies have sought to refute that claim, the fact remains that it’s harder to capture – and keep – user attention today.
Marketers use video to attract the attention of their ideal audience. That is because the human brain is hardwired to respond more to visual cues:
• Seven out of 10 receptors are found in the human eye.
• Fifty-percent of the brain is devoted to vision and the processing of visual information.
• The brain can identify information seen for as little as 13 milliseconds.
• The brain automatically shifts attention to whatever is new or moving in an environment.
By adding a video to your blog or web page, you can trick the human brain into watching the video and effectively capture user attention.
2. Strengthens Your Sales Pitch
You need a strong sales pitch to persuade your customers to buy your product or subscribe to your service. A sale can only happen when you have a strong value proposition.
Jakob Nielsen revealed that visitors only read up to 28 percent of text on a web page, with 20 percent being a more realistic expectation. No matter how strong your pitch is, it ultimately won’t matter if your audience doesn’t read it.
But conveying your message using a video can actually strengthen your pitch. Not only do customers prefer to watch videos, they also retain 95 percent more information. Videos convey way more information while packaged in a format that’s not only informative but also entertaining.
Whether it’s a best seller or something new, video is a great way to showcase what a business can provide to a client or another business without needing a salesperson for each interaction,” says Thrive’s Media Specialist Corbin Hubbard. “Video can be seen by thousands of people and can help narrow the sales funnel when redirected to a landing page or product page.”
Eighty percent of visitors to your website will watch a video while only 20 percent will choose to read the text. Give your value proposition more power to convert with the help and expertise of a YouTube video marketing agency.
3. Boosts Credibility
People don’t immediately trust businesses they find on the internet. It’s one of the main reasons why they perform plenty of research before making a purchasing decision and why managing your online reviews and online reputation is more important than ever.
Trust is perhaps the most crucial element in driving sales and your most essential asset. But when you consider the fact that most businesses online don’t have a face, you can see why consumers have trust issues. This is why 84 percent of marketers say their primary focus in the future will be to build consumer trust.
Leveraging videos can be one of the best ways for you to build trust with your customers. Video content with personal appearances from you or your employees attaches a face to the brand, making your business feel more human.
Meanwhile, video testimonials add an element of social proof, making consumers feel validated. Fifty-seven percent of consumers say they felt more confident about their purchase from watching company videos.
If a video can conjure up emotion for the viewer, that’s what will stick with them long after they are finished watching,” says Thrive’s Corbin Hubbard. “That’s what people remember: a genuine response. Something simple, something thoughtful.”
Why Use YouTube for Video Marketing?
YouTube is the number one platform for video content, not just in the U.S. but in the entire world. It has become everyone’s primary source of entertainment, information and educational content.
In recent years, a growing number of marketers consider YouTube video production to be the most effective for video marketing. Why YouTube marketing services? Let’s look at the numbers:
• YouTube enjoys 2 billion unique visitors every month.
• Seventy-three percent of U.S. adults use YouTube, while 90 percent of 18 to 24-year olds prefer YouTube.
• Among all traffic on YouTube, 15.2 percent comes from the US.
• YouTube content reaches more 18 to 49-year olds than any broadcast or TV network.
• People watch over 1 billion hours of video on YouTube per day, more than Netflix and Facebook combined.
• Users who view TrueView YouTube ads to completion are 23 times more likely to visit or subscribe to the brand’s channel. Those who don’t are still 10 times more likely to perform the action.
• TrueView YouTube advertising increases views of previous content by as high as 500 percent.
You’ve seen the numbers. Now let’s go deeper into why you need to use YouTube video marketing.
YouTube’s User Base is Massive
YouTube is one of the largest video content sharing platforms and social networks on the internet today. According to Statista, YouTube has over 2 billion monthly users worldwide. These are people who log in to the site at least once a month. Take note that these numbers exclude those who watch videos with guest accounts or those without Google accounts.
At first glance, the numbers shown above reveal the massive user base present on YouTube. And yet, ask an expert from any YouTube advertising agency, there are some business owners who think those numbers are empty statistics because their target audience “isn’t on YouTube.” Is that really the case? Fortune Lord reveals some incredible data about YouTube’s demographics.
Out of the 2 billion monthly users:
• Eleven percent are aged 18 to 24.
• Twenty-three percent are between 25 and 34.
• Twenty-six percent are 35 to 44.
• Sixteen percent are between 45 and 54.
• Eight percent are 55 to 64.
• Three percent are 65 and above.
• The remaining 14 percent are undetermined.
By seeing the identities behind the numbers, you can tell that your audience is definitely on YouTube. Your YouTube agency can find ways to present unique content that effectively targets your ideal audience. Our YouTube video marketing agency can show you how.
Second-Largest Search Engine
YouTube’s user base is massive but so is it’s media library. That’s because over 300 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute. It contains vast information about anything under the sun – and beyond.
To navigate a site that big, YouTube’s users rely on its powerful search engine to find the content they are looking for. It processes over 3 billion searches a month, way more than Bing, Yahoo, Ask and AOL combined, making it the second-largest search engine on the internet behind Google.
So if you’re wondering if your content will get any screen time at all, judging by the numbers, it will. All you have to do is optimize your YouTube video production to match user intent.
Boosts SEO
Aside from YouTube’s own search engine, YouTube video marketing can also boost your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and perform well on Google search engine results pages (SERPs).
Thanks to Google Universal Search, mixed media can show up on SERPs. Images, videos, news, books and even local searches are shown on results pages for a comprehensive set of answers to what people search for. But videos are now showing up more often at the top of SERPs. Google prefers YouTube not just because it’s one of its subsidiaries but also because of the native transition between the two websites.
Google searches account for nearly 86.9 percent of all internet traffic. Those who show up at the top of SERPs get 33 percent more traffic. Take advantage of these metrics by writing high-quality content and complementing your web pages with YouTube videos. Pages with video are 53 times more likely to show up on the first page of SERPs.
If customers are watching a video on your website, they tend to stay on your website longer. Google calls this ‘dwell time,’” shares Corbin Hubbard. “The longer someone sticks around, Google knows you have high-quality content, which improves your search rankings.”
Evergreen Content
We’ve seen the massive growth potential of viral marketing. But it requires either a stroke of genius or incredible luck and sometimes both, for your content to go viral. For stable growth, many YouTube video marketing companies have had considerable success by leveraging evergreen content on YouTube.
Evergreen content is content that stands the test of time. It remains relevant for long periods, giving you more growth opportunities. When using YouTube for business, you can repurpose old content to reach out to old and new audiences without significant investments in time, money and equipment.
For instance, you can repurpose an old but popular blog post into a podcast, video series, infographic and explainer video. As a result, your YouTube video marketing company gains four additional pieces of content that you can leverage to gain more views and generate more engagement.
Offers Greater Insight into Campaigns
The best thing about YouTube advertising and marketing is that it offers free analytics on each video’s performance. YouTube’s Insights feature provides all the data you need on the number of views you are getting, your viewers’ demographics and your subscribers’ status, similar to Google Analytics.
But the best thing about YouTube Insights lies in its most powerful feature: Discovery. You gain more insight into how users are finding you on the website. It shows what channels are being used to find your videos.
Data on the specific dates, external and internal searches and the keywords used to find you are all available on the Discovery feature. All of these will help you improve your YouTube marketing services to help you optimize future videos.
Anatomy of a Successful YouTube Marketing Video
Verified Account: You need to have a verified YouTube account to make your channel more official. It’s also important so you can upload custom thumbnails for your videos. Do this by visiting youtube.com/verify and using the verification code they send you.
After that, you need to complete your YouTube profile and finish setting up your channel. Here’s how:
• Add a description for your channel in the “about” section containing what your channel is all about and the keywords you want to target. Add links to your website and social accounts.
• Upload a high-resolution image of your logo as your channel icon. It should be a square or round image that renders at 98 x 98 px.
• Create a banner that welcomes viewers to your channel or use the space to promote a channel schedule or any service you provide. YouTube recommends choosing an image that’s 2560 px wide and 1440 px tall.
• Optimize your YouTube marketing agency’s channel banner by adding links to your website, social accounts or an auto-subscribe prompt.
Strong Title: Your video needs a strong title as YouTube’s primary source of information about your video. It should contain relevant keywords that match what people typically search for. Use Google Trends, Google Ads Keyword Planner or other relevant tools to find popular search terms. It also helps to analyze what your competitors are doing.
Optimized Description: The space below your video is dedicated to a video description where you can describe what the video is all about. An optimized description contains three things: keywords, links and a strong call-to-action (CTA).
Your video description has a 5,000-character limit, but YouTube only shows about 300 characters within the first three lines of text before the “Show More” button. Maximize this space by providing a brief yet powerful description of the video in the first three lines of text. Add a few keywords without sounding spammy.
Follow up your intro with supporting text to complete your description. Provide more context about the video while also adding a few more keywords and hashtags in the text. Add links to other videos, products, social accounts, or even timestamps linking to different sections if your video is too long.
Eye-Catching Thumbnail: People are visual creatures, so thumbnails are usually the first things people see. A custom thumbnail is important because it helps your video stand out. It helps capture user attention and make them more curious about the contents of your video. For instance, you can show the end of your YouTube video production as the thumbnail to build anticipation.
Clickable Elements: Did you know that you can add clickable elements to optimize your video for conversions? They function as clickable CTAs to inspire action from your users. These come in the form of transparent cards, end screens, bumper ads and watermarks.
• You can use up to five transparent cards on any part of the video to link to other videos, channels, websites or any other place on the internet.
• The last five to twenty seconds of every video can be used to show up to four clickable frames that can be linked to any website, promotion, channel, playlist or subscription.
• Bumper YouTube ads are unskippable. Use them to promote any product or service you like by linking to your website or landing page.
• You can also add a custom subscribe button as a custom watermark on each video. Do note that these are only visible to users who haven’t yet subscribed to your channel.
Reminder to Like, Share, and Subscribe: Dedicate a portion of your video – whether at the beginning, middle or end – to ask viewers to like, share and subscribe to your channel. It gives you more opportunities to engage with your audience and can be your audible CTA. It’s free, and it works.
Complete Tags: Video tags are essentially your keywords. They help YouTube associate your content with other videos so it can show up on searches. YouTube allows you to use up to eight tags per video. Make the most of your tags by using your most important keywords while also including a good mix of long tail keywords.
Discoverable: The best thing about YouTube is that it aids the discoverability of videos by adding them to auto-generated playlists. A YouTube marketing company can make its videos more discoverable by adding them into custom playlists and other similar content.
The Power of YouTube Ads
YouTube advertising is one of the best ways to make your product or service more visible on the website. It’s also a more effective advertising method because people are three times more likely to pay attention to your ad on YouTube than on TV.
A YouTube video marketing company can benefit greatly from it because it helps you target specific audiences while also expanding your reach. Finding the right settings can be tricky and may take some time to perfect, but a YouTube advertising agency like Thrive can help.
But the best thing about it is its cost: you only pay for the ad when a user clicks on it or watches it in its entirety.
Here are six types of ads your YouTube marketing agency can use:
• Display ads
• Overlay ads
• Skippable video ads
• Non-skippable video ads
• Bumper ads
• Sponsored cards
How to Set Up Ads for Your Business
Do you want to make YouTube’s ad platform work for your business? Here’s how you can set up ads on YouTube:
1. Create a Google Ads account if you don’t already have one.
2. Login to your Google Ads account and open Linked Accounts under the Setup column of the Tools section.
3. Follow the steps provided to link your Google Ads account to your YouTube channel. Linking will happen automatically. But if you are a YouTube marketing company managing someone else’s account, you will need to ask for access.
4. Follow the same steps to link your Google Analytics Account to your YouTube channel.
Once you’re done setting up your ad account, you can now begin uploading your video ads to YouTube.
Alternatively, work with a reputable YouTube marketing company like Thrive. Our YouTube marketing services elevate your video marketing strategies for higher ROI and faster growth.
YouTube Video Marketing Services to Boost Your Brand’s Content Strategy
YouTube is one of the best tools you can use to take your video marketing strategy to the next level. It helps you tap into a worldwide audience while it also boosts your local presence.
Are you looking to implement a new video marketing strategy on YouTube? Do you need the help of a YouTube video marketing company to make it happen? Thrive Internet Marketing Agency offers high-performing YouTube video marketing services that build your presence on the world’s biggest video-sharing platform.
Our YouTube video marketing agency helps you create quality, optimized content so you can find your ideal audience and help them convert. Our YouTube advertising agency will also help you run strategic advertising campaigns for better targeting and higher conversions while working with a reasonable budget.
Thrive Internet Marketing is a YouTube agency that has everything you need to run a successful video marketing campaign. Work with a reputable YouTube agency today and elevate your business to greater heights. Give us a call at 843-353-6383 or fill out this form to schedule a free consultation.
