Video marketing has steadily become one of the most influential types of digital marketing for businesses. And YouTube is the platform with access to the most extensive audience base, making it the best option to choose. Since the rise of YouTube’s popularity, the application’s algorithms and settings have constantly changed.
YouTube updates these every so often, which means that variables such as how you get views, how visible your videos are, how to display ads, and how to earn money through YouTube change along with them.
We’ve compiled this comprehensive guide to keep you up-to-date with all such changes and help take you through the entire YouTube Marketing process from start to finish. So, let’s dive right into it.
Table of Contents
Creating A YouTube Channel for Marketing
The first step is to create a YouTube channel as a business (or sole proprietor if you’re the only person or a blogger). For business, you can sign up using your company email.
But if you’d also like your team member to have access to the admin rights, you can create a generic company email and sign up with that so that everyone could use it. All you must do is share the username and password, and it would allow many people from the same company to upload videos, manage your channel, reply to comments, etc.
It can be beneficial to have more than one person running a YouTube profile. Ever since the platform introduced the ‘Community’ feature, which almost works like a Facebook newsfeed, it’s become a smart idea to remain active on the forum even when you’re not posting videos. You can also engage with your followers by posting content as you usually would on other social media platforms.
Then, there’s also another feature that Google supports called ‘Brand Accounts’, which enables companies to share access to a YouTube channel with multiple team members.
Signing Up For A YouTube Account
As far as basics go, here’s how to sign up for a YouTube account:
- Go to YouTube.com
- Sign in to your profile
- Click ‘Create Account’
After that, you should sign in to your account and click on your profile icon. Then, click on ‘My Channel’, where you can enter details of your YouTube channel.
How to Share YouTube Videos Online
Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t offer a feature that would automatically link your videos to other social platforms.
However, you can share videos online in blog posts or other places on the web through embedded links. As for Instagram, you’ll have to upload the video to share it manually, and you must also match the video requirements that Instagram has separate from YouTube. But you can use tools such as Tube2Gram to help simplify the process!
That aside, you can share videos from YouTube just like you can share any other kind of post. For example, by clicking the ‘Share’ option, you could refer to a video in a Tweet, send it to a colleague, or perhaps add the link in an email. However, the viewing platform would remain YouTube which means anyone you share it with would have to open YouTube to access the video.
Let’s take a look at some of the benefits that having a YouTube channel will bring for you or your production team.
YouTube Partner Program: Adding Links to Your Channel
Adding clickable links to videos was pretty easy when YouTube had its ‘Annotations’ feature. But that has long since been discontinued. What’s more, you now have to become part of the YouTube Partner Program to link to external websites from your channel, whether for affiliate marketing or other forms of advertising.
The YouTube Partner Programme has some eligibility requirements which state that to qualify, you should:
- Follow all the YouTube monetization policies.
The YouTube monetization policies are a set of guidelines that enable you to monetize on YouTube. Your agreement will include compliance with these monetization policies to earn money on YouTube as a YouTube partner potentially.
- Live in a country/region where the YouTube Partner Program is available.
- Have more than 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months.
- More than 1,000 subscribers.
- A linked AdSense account.
But that aside, you can still add clickable links to your own videos or playlists on YouTube so that users can view and click on your content when you refer to it. That strategy can effectively lure viewers in and appeal to them to continue watching content on your channel. For instance, you might’ve noticed that there often appear recommendations for similar videos on the side while watching a video.
To add such a link to your YouTube video, you’ll have to use YouTube’s Card feature, which you can access in your video editing settings.
Creating YouTube Playlists
Meanwhile, creating YouTube playlists can be a great way to organize your video content for your team and audience so that it’s easy to navigate for everyone. You can also share these playlists in the same way you share individual videos, allowing you to share a series of videos instead of just one.
For example, if your company offered a course in the form of a series of video lectures on YouTube, it would be conducive to have all the videos organized into one playlist. Then, users can easily access the playlist whenever they want, and you can keep adding to it as you please.
How to Monetize YouTube Videos
Perhaps one of the most asked questions is related to earning money from YouTube and the monetization process. It’s no surprise that most of us are eager to have YouTube act as a secondary source of income or revenue, considering the kind of numbers it can generate for people. We’ve seen influencers and marketers take immense advantage of such opportunities.
Yet, when you start your channel, you’ll quickly realize that the process is much more taxing and challenging than it may appear at first glance. It requires outstanding commitment, and you must also meet a set of requirements to qualify for monetization.
Four Golden Rules
There are four golden rules to earning your monetization rights on YouTube:
- First, you need to have 1,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel.
- Your videos have generated 4,000 hours of Watch Time within the course of the last year.
- You must comply with all of YouTube’s policies and guidelines.
- You should have an AdSense account set up.
These requirements or more or less the same as those of qualifying for the YouTube Partner Program, which means that aiming for these digital goals will help you catch two birds with one stone.
But once you reach the required number of subscribers and views, what should you do next?
YouTube Monetization
Well, here are the steps you take to enable monetization once you can:
- At the top right corner of the screen, click on ‘YouTube Studio’ in the dropdown.
- Next, find the Channel menu on the left-hand side of your screen, and click on Monetization.
- Finally, click ‘Start’ in the Monetization window.
Improve Your Chances of Monetization
That aside, another significant thing to discuss is what you can do before you hit that ‘Enable’ button to ensure that your channel has the best possible chance of getting approved. It can take nearly 30 days for YouTube to review your profile and an additional 30 days to apply again if your application is rejected. So, we have no time to waste!
One of the most common reasons that YouTube ends up rejecting monetization applications is duplication or copyright strikes. If you’ve met all the requirements but accidentally ended up going against one of YouTube’s policies or guidelines, your request can get rejected. To avoid this issue, you must ensure that all stock footage or audio you use is either accounted for or has the proper licenses. In other words, don’t use something you don’t have the credits or authority to use!
Therefore, before using such clips for videos, you can do your research or contact the authors to ask for permission to use them. Otherwise, a safer bet is just choosing content that’s already free to use.
A Winning YouTube Marketing Strategy
Now that we’ve covered the basics let’s talk a bit about what our YouTube marketing strategy should look like and what things to prioritize the most.
What Kind of Videos to Create on YouTube?
No matter what kind of business you are – B2B or B2C business – here are a few video formats that are guaranteed the highest success rate.
1. Product Videos
They are often an effective way to advertise your brand. If you sell a B2C product or service, the ideal thing to do is to get someone to come over to your office or place and help you shoot a product or service session. But if you sell a B2B product or service, you can also easily use screen recording tools to record stellar product videos such as demos, webinars, product intros, feature clips, etc.
That aside, you can even hire the services of a video scriptwriter, a voiceover artist, or a video creator from a platform like Upwork.
2. Repurposed Content
An intelligent technique that many marketers look over is repurposing already-created blog content into videos or other formats. If you already have a long-form blog post that’s a guide related to your niche, why not convert that same information into a video? You’ll save both time and energy.
3. Case Studies and Testimonials
You can request your loyal customers to give you video testimonials or have them participate in case studies. For example, Zendesk has some stunning and inspiring video case studies.
4. YouTube Live
A great way to create buzz on your YouTube channel is to use the ‘Live’ feature from time to time and interact directly with your audience. It can keep your followers engaged with the brand and more connected to the team.
5. Help Center Videos
Many businesses publish help or FAQs video content on YouTube. In addition, many of their users organically go to YouTube to find tutorials for general product setup instructions or debug various issues. So, you can look for the most common support or setup requests of your customers and consider creating video content around it.
How to Do SEO on YouTube?
Similar to Google, YouTube is a type of search engine but for videos. And that means that SEO is just as crucial on YouTube as it is on Google. You can go a long way if you know how to integrate these strategies well into your content.
Here are three YouTube SEO tips to help you get started.
1. Start With Keyword Research
Before creating videos, you can use tools or general research methods to determine what topics (related to your niche) people search. One way to do this is to use YouTube’s autocomplete feature. Once you start typing in a keyword, YouTube will suggest the most searched videos around it. As YouTube only offers the most popular searches, you can rest assured that the suggestions will most likely have decent search demand.
You can also try using YouTube keyword research tools such as Keyword Keg. Even in the free version, you can use this tool to generate a few keyword suggestions for your seed keyword along with data about search trends, search volume, SEO competition, and more.
Another tool you can use is called Keyword Tool Dominator. It lets you look for three keywords a day (on the free plan) and gives multiple keyword suggestions for each. The only con is that it doesn’t show you the search volume.
Another technique to integrate into your SEO plan could be to keep a close eye on competitors and see what video content they’re producing. The popularity of their videos can help you determine what kind of content may work well for your target audiences.
2. Conduct Thorough Video SEO
SEO on video content is quite similar to that with text or blog content. So, the same tactics that apply there can also be used here. For instance, you can use keywords in the video titles, write good meta-descriptions, add descriptive tags, and use all keywords multiple times throughout the video description.
What’s more, you can use a tool like LSI Graph to look for relevant keyword variations to add to your content.
3. Optimize Your Channel Page
Your channel page is the one place where you should use your most important keywords. Therefore, you should write a highly optimized description for your channel page. And as mentioned before, you can always use YouTube playlists to organize your channel’s content. By creating keyword-friendly playlists, you can group your content according to different topics, which will cause it to appear every time a user searches for your keywords.
Once you’re done with the basics, you can even consider investing in a YouTube marketing solution like TubeBuddy. It can do wonders for your YouTube marketing efforts. Finally, always remember to regularly analyze your performance and create SEO marketing reports to study and upgrade your strategy for next time.
4. Best Tools for YouTube
If you’re a B2B business, there are many screen recorders like Loom, Camtasia Studio, Screencast-O-Matic, and more that can equip you with the tools to record your screen and download the recordings. Several of these tools even come with stellar editing features that enable you to tidy up your videos or add notes to different screens. They can be amazing for creating content like product demos, explainers, walkthroughs.
In addition to screen recorders, many video-making tools also often come with beautiful templates for creating all kinds of YouTube videos. The templates range from those for product videos and explainers to case studies and presentations. Here are a few such YouTube video making tools:
That aside, if you run an online store, another tool you may want to check out is Clipman, which is exclusively designed for making online store product videos.
Review YouTube Videos With The #1 Video Proofing Software
And before we come to end this guide, we’ll leave you with the secret ingredient to making the best YouTube videos.
The secret doesn’t lie in some cheatsheet to create content. Rather, you’ll find it in error-free and quality videos. And one of the best ways to ensure great video quality as well as content is to review it before you upload.
There’s always something that you may miss out on while production. And this could be especially true if you’re a team. So to ensure that your videos are actually good to go, you need to review them using the #1 video review software – GoVisually!
GoVisually is fast, reliable, and easy to use. All you have to do is upload videos, invite reviewers to get feedback online in real-time (Yesss, this is true!), and simply revise the video. Tada, you’ll be done.
Plus it has so many other powerful annotation and review tools like version compares to make your life easier.
Trust me, with GoVisually, you’ll have one less thing to worry about as a YouTuber!
Key Takeaway
YouTube marketing is a brilliant strategy to add to your marketing campaign, both for B2C and B2B businesses. Videos serve as a long-form type of content, meaning you have greater space to depart information and value. You can express yourself through visuals, audio, and graphics.
Moreover, monetizing a YouTube channel does take some time which means you won’t be earning direct money right away, but you can generate conversions by targetting the right people.
