7 strategies to grow your business using YouTube
In 2019, the platform made over $4.9bn in net advertising revenues in the US alone and is expected to hit $5.4bn in 2020.
Youtube has over 2 billion monthly users, and with so many people turning to YouTube for business, education, entertainment, and everything in between, it's clear that this platform can no longer be ignored by any small business that hopes to make it online.
It doesn’t matter if you have a bootstrapped startup, or if you’ve gotten some seed money and are trying to grow, YouTube can be an amazing resource to fuel this growth.
In this article, we take a look at seven effective strategies to grow your business using YouTube.
1. Analyse competitors and tailor strategies for your own business
YouTube is the number one source of on-demand videos in the world. It has a large and receptive audience waiting to be tapped by businesses.
Many brands have already built a strong presence on YouTube and your first step in using the platform to grow your business is to analyse your competitors so you can inform your own strategies for growth.
Watch your competitors’ videos, as well as other videos in different industries outside of your own. Make notes of the most interesting and compelling parts and then find creative ways of doing it better.
For instance, are they live streaming often? If so, teach yourself how to live stream and make that part of your strategy as well.
The key to this part of the process is to understand not just how the YouTube channel performs, but how the business as a whole performs. Is your competitor using their YouTube to compliment and make more money on their blog? Are they selling courses to their YouTube subscribers? These questions are the things you need to ask yourself.
By doing your research first, you ensure that you're not jumping in blindly, but rather that you have a clear strategy in place to increase your chances of success.
2. Focus on keyword research (specifically local)
As a small business looking to grow, you need to focus on keyword research. While conducting your competitor analysis, make a list of all the keywords from their videos.
To do this, simply search for their most popular videos and then copy all the tags that are listed to increase the likelihood that videos from your brand will be included under "suggestions" whenever someone views your competitors' videos.
In addition to collecting keywords from popular videos in your niche, you can also use Google's free keyword tool to find even more keywords in your industry that you can include in your video title, description, tags, and other relevant places in order to attract a wider viewership.
3. Use good thumbnails (they matter)
As humans, we tend to judge books by their covers. Your thumbnail is basically the cover of your YouTube video, and, as such, YouTube viewers will judge your videos by their thumbnails.
It's important to choose good thumbnails since these will be one of the main determining factors as to whether or not visitors will play your video.
One of the best ways to create perfect thumbnails is to use emotion. For instance, you can use an image of a smiling individual making direct eye contact. This works effectively because as humans, we tend to relate to other humans.
4. Use video tags on YouTube
YouTube tags are words or phrases that you can include in the description to let your viewers know what the video is about.
Leveraging tags is one of the best ways for keyword optimizing your YouTube videos.
You can use YouTube tag generators like Keywordkeg.com to help you discover the best keywords to shoot your videos to the top of the search results.
5. Create playlists
Once you've created a set of high-quality videos that go together on your channel, you can turn them into a playlist.
For instance, if you do recurring educational videos every week, or if you have webinars that are focused on the same topic, then you can create binge-worthy playlists with each grouping. This allows your YouTube viewers to carry on watching your videos without having to search for the next video manually.
This tactic is great for growth because it keeps viewers on your channel for longer and shows them that you have tons of high-quality content. Also, it helps keep your videos organized to make things easier for both you and the users.
6. Use calls to action
Yet another effective way to grow your business on YouTube is to use compelling calls to action to help you generate more engagement.
Depending on the types of goals you have for your video marketing, you need to add clear and concise CTAs about the action you want your viewers to take, such as:
Subscribe to my videos
Find me on Facebook
Visit my blog
Post a comment
...and so on.
7. Fill out the descriptions
You need to include a detailed description in the space provided underneath your video. This is extremely valuable real estate and you must make full use of it by adding a link to your website, coupon codes, contact details, and any other important information.
A detailed description will also help boost your YouTube SEO so that your videos are shown in relevant search results.
Conclusion
Creating video content is a lengthy and often time-consuming process, it's important that you get the most from each and every video on your YouTube channel.
These seven simple strategies will help you grow your business using YouTube. They’ve done it for me personally and though I’m not making my goal of $1000/month in the first year, I’m absolutely thrilled with the progress so far.
Just remember, consistency is key when it comes to experiencing phenomenal growth with this or any other marketing strategy.
About Ron Stefanski
Ron Stefanski is an internet entrepreneur and marketing professor at National Louis University who has a passion for helping people create and market their own online business. You can learn more from him by visiting OneHourProfessor.com. You can also connect with him on YouTube or Linkedin.
