YouTube Marketing Best Practices
With so many different platforms and methods constantly emerging on the digital marketing scene, it can be difficult if not overwhelming to choose where to focus your efforts. One thing a lot of experts agree on is the rising importance and effectiveness of YouTube marketing. By now all of us are familiar with this ubiquitous website that allows users to upload an endless stream of videos on almost any subject.
While YouTube itself may not be a new phenomenon, the idea of utilizing its powerful reach to help achieve your marketing goals may be a new concept. Digital marketing professional Trevor Erikson gives a great summary of YouTube marketing basics in an informative webinar. Before we go into Erik’s ideas on how you can use YouTube videos to generate more sales and clients for your business, let’s take a look at some stats.
YouTube User Stats
Perhaps the most striking fact about YouTube is that it is now officially the second largest search engine behind the Google search engine. It’s so big in fact that it’s larger than the next 3 search engines combined (Bing, Yahoo, and AOL) in terms of volume of searches. Some recent figures include 3 billion search queries per month. That translates to 5700 searches being performed every minute. About 100 hours of video are uploaded every minute to the site.
According to a recent study by Animoto, 96% of people surveyed said they found videos to be helpful in making purchasing decisions. 71% said videos help increase their trust in certain brands, and another 73% said they were ready to make purchases after watching informative product videos. These numbers help us quantify just how much of an impact marketing videos can make on marketing efforts. Erikson stresses the importance of videos for the 18 to 34 year old demographic in particular. Studies show people in this age bracket are now spending more time on YouTube than they are on watching TV.
5 Types of YouTube Marketing Videos
For Erikson, there are 5 types of effective marketing YouTube videos:
- Unboxing Videos: film a product being taken out of its packaging box
- How To/Tutorials: Explanations on how to use a product, troubleshoot, how to take care of it, etc.
- Product Comparison: Compare one product vs. another similar competitive product, or show the difference between “real” and “fake” versions of a product.
- Product Reviews: A fast paced description of a product that is careful to provide relevant information that may not be obvious upon the first glance.
- Torture Testing: Test out or demonstrate a product claim, such as “water-proof” or “extremely durable”
For more information on how to put together one of these videos, or tips for making them more successful, be sure to watch all of Trevor’s webinar. If you’re in the midst of putting together a digital marketing strategy for your clients or your business, you would be remiss to exclude YouTube from that marketing strategy!
