YouTube Video Marketing: What You Need To Know
YouTube has become one of the best ways to build an audience and market your business online.
The accessibility and popularity of the YouTube platform have made it the ideal place for successful marketing.
Because of this, YouTube has become a popular search engine, second only to Google.
Users who want a detailed and accurate answer to any questions are heading straight to YouTube to view a video over googling for their solutions.
This makes YouTube a priority for any marketer trying to market its services and products to existing and new audiences.
Let’s have a look at everything you need to know about YouTube video marketing below.
What is YouTube video marketing?
Video marketing is when videos are used in order:
- To promote and market products or services
- To increase engagement on digital and social channels
- To educate your customers and reach your audience with a modern and new medium
YouTube is the most popular video platform and is the most commonly used for video marketing.
Usually, you will find that most marketing videos are under two minutes long.
However, the most optimal length will depend on where you are going to embed or share it. In general, you will find that the majority are kept to under two minutes long.
According to some YouTubers, video marketing can bring more leads than email marketing. This isn’t hard to believe with 2.3 billion users.
Best channels for distribution of video content
Knowing and understanding the proper video distribution channels can go a long way to ensuring your content reaches your target audience and driving traffic.
Some of the best channels include:
Social media
Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube video marketing are great for reaching your target audience.
You need to consider which category of social media is best suited to your content.
YouTube is a brilliant place to start. However, you should also make use of any industry-specific online forums or social groups too.
Your network
You should never underestimate the power of your own existing and growing network.
Think about sending your videos via email to your primary contacts, everyone in your current database, and any new sign-ups to your marketing information or newsletters.
Use automated email marketing to take care of all your emails and make the process easier and more efficient.
Blogs
If you have your own blog, don’t waste this opportunity. You can promote your YouTube video marketing on your blog to boost your video SEO and reach your followers.
If you can, it’s also good practice to distribute your video marketing to other industry-specific blogs, so you can overlap your target audience and achieve maximum reach.
Paid ads
Although organic distribution often works the best, it can sometimes be worth using paid ads to help give you a boost, using tools such as Adsense and Google Adwords.
How much does YouTube make from your videos?
YouTube is free to sign up and use, but in reality, it’s not really.
When using YouTube video marketing, there are many factors to consider, such as are you going to pay to have your ads appear on other people’s videos and channels?
Or are you going to create videos such as guides, tours, or tutorials and enable ads to appear and monetize your videos?
When you monetize your videos on YouTube, YouTube shares its revenue with you. You can view how much you are earning through a revenue report, and ad rates report.
If you choose to use YouTube to have ads placed on other videos, you can set yourself a daily budget and use handy tools such as only paying for the service if someone chooses to watch your ad.
Don’t forget to check out these 7 key trends in digital video advertising.
How does the YouTube algorithm work?
According to YouTube, the algorithm they use is simply a real-time feedback loop that tailors videos to an individual viewer’s interests.
It chooses which videos are best to suggest to each user. The algorithm closely watches each user’s behavior as much as it monitors video performance.
Tech blogger, Antoine Bechara says, “The two most important places the algorithm impacts are the recommendation streams and search results.”
Video marketing industry trends
In today’s digital age, consumers are starting to watch more and more videos, both on a computer and portable digital devices.
To ensure you are reaching your target audience, video marketing should be included in your marketing strategy.
However, just producing video content isn’t enough.
You also need to understand the how what, why video marketing works, and the current video marketing trends of 2022.
Video usage
One of the most critical factors to YouTube video marketing being successful is its usage.
2021 isn’t expected to change compared to the previous year. Recent research suggests that as many as 85% of businesses used video marketing in 2020. 95% said they would continue in 2021.
If you are planning to get involved and reap the benefits of YouTube video marketing, you need to be aware of some of the latest video marketing trends.
The top video trends include
- Presentation videos
- Explainer videos
- Testimonial videos
- Sales videos
- Video ads
Livestream boom on mobiles
Live streaming is set to one of the popular trends for video marketing.
In 2021, the average US user will have around 9.5 video streaming apps on their mobile devices.
With users having around 80 applications on their phones on average, this would mean that 10% are for video streaming.
Curious to learn more? Check out our post on live streaming statistics.
A rise in short-form videos
Short-form videos will also continue to be a common trend during 2021. This is a marketing trend that has been heavily influenced by the launch of Instagram Reels and the growth of TikTok.
Some rumors are surrounding Instagram’s Reels and the possibility of developing Reels further.
Reels include enhanced video editing tools, the ability to sell services and products on Reels, and possible monetization opportunities for content creators.
These are certain things to look out for in the future.
Tik Tok is also extremely popular. It took over the social media world and became the fastest-growing social media platform, set to hit 1.2 billion average monthly active users during 2021.
User-generated video content
User-generated content plays a vital role in marketing strategies. Video content is undoubtedly no exception to this. This kind of content ranks among the top marketing trends in 2021.
It’s effective with attracting new users and retaining them. User-generated content on YouTube receives 10x more views in comparison to branded content.
Studies suggest that users who land on a site via UGC spend twice as long on the site. Not only this, but it also does a much better job of converting users into sales.
Online training and educational videos
You can expect to see more online training and educational videos.
The coronavirus has forced employees to work from home where possible in 2020, and students have also had to take lessons in digital format.
Meaning there are now more people than ever before in education from home.
Therefore, it’s no surprise that a significant video marketing trend of 2021 is e-learning focused.
Online educational and e-learning videos were already on route to shape the video marketing trends during 2021.
Even before COVID-19, the e-learning market was already on track to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 10.3 percent between 2020 and 2027.
No matter which type of videos you plan to produce. Make sure you keep track of everything because each individual video has various elements like sounds, graphics, intro & outro clips attached to it. You can use graphic design & video editor software such as Vectornator, Visme Canva or Biteable to get started.
Consider using project management software to ease your work. So you can spend more time creating videos rather than managing people.
Video advertising growth
The growth of video advertising is not showing any signs of slowing down. This figure is also expected to increase over the next few years and reach $12.66 billion by 2024.
This does mean that the competition for video ad space will be fierce. If you want to get ahead of the game and keep in front of your competition, you are best to jump on this trend now.
Rise of shoppable videos
As eCommerce grows, more and more brands are starting to create seamless shopping experiences for their consumers.
One of the more recent video marketing trends is the rise of shoppable videos.
Shoppable videos provide a seamless and interactive experience for shoppers because it allows them to purchase the product advertised in the video ad directly and quickly.
This means they don’t have to leave to search for the product in the ad. This is set to be one of the most popular video marketing trends in 2021 and further.
More users through accessible video content
When working with video marketing, you need to make your videos as accessible as possible. And on the whole, accessible and inclusive design is on the rise across all forms of content, video included.
But how can you make sure everyone can access the content you’ve created?
Creating accessible videos can help to broaden the reach and usability of your videos.
However, an often overlooked aspect of video production is accessibility, even though it can be included at minimal cost and time, especially if considered when planning.
An accessible video can help many people at different times but can be critical for many people with disabilities.
Considering this, you should make sure you think about:
- Removing auto-play functions
- No flashing or strobing content
- Providing video captions and a transcript option on all your videos
- Taking advantage of audio descriptions
- Making sure your video player is accessible to everyone from the beginning.
What are some video marketing tools to get started?
Of course, when it comes to creating YouTube video marketing, you will need some tools to help get you started.
Let’s have a look at a few.
Write-on Video
Write-on Video is a video planning, and editing tool specifically built for social media or people editing videos on their iPhones and Android devices.
It includes outlining and storyboarding tools, with collaborative and comment features available as well.
Write-on Video is available on iOS and macOS and Android, so you can easily create, edit, and share to YouTube right from the phone or transition to the desktop for a more immersive experience.
VideoScribe
Whiteboard videos are creative and fun videos that tell a story through drawing. You can create whiteboard videos using accessible drag-and-drop features from VideoScribe.
You can engage with your audience with 190 royalty-free music tracks and professional graphics in a minimalistic way. You get a seven-day free trial, and then it costs $35 per month or $168 annually.
Fastreel
This gives you the ability to edit your existing videos with an online editor. It allows you to create videos from your browser without having to download anything.
If you usually edit using your mobile, this can help to free up needed space.
It enables you to add royalty-free music, filters, text, and a branded watermark to all your videos. You are also able to adjust the speed of your video and make videos using still images.
You will pay between $0 – $19.95 per month, which is extremely reasonable, especially if you are trying to keep costs down.
Animoto
You don’t need any video editing experience for you to use Animoto. They have an easy-to-use drag and drop functionality that enables you to add your photos and video clips into existing templates.
Some may see templates as a downside, but you get access to over 1 million stock photos and videos from Getty with business and professional plans.
You can share your videos online in minutes, and it will cost you between $0 – $49 per month.
TubeBuddy
The mobile app and browser extension TubeBuddy is entirely free and integrates with your YouTube account directly to make it even easier for you to manage and control your channel.
It includes optimization features such as video title and description translation, keyword explorer, ‘Insta-suggest’ for tags, search rank tracking, etc.
It may not be as professional as some tools, but it is worth playing around with, considering it’s free.
Note: Want to find more tools to help you with YouTube? Check out our roundup of YouTube marketing tools.
It’s a wrap
As you can see, there is a lot to consider when it comes to video marketing and YouTube video marketing, but it is undoubtedly an area that is worth investing time.
