How to effectively use YouTube for marketing

YOUTUBE: THE NEXT BIG THING THAT ALREADY IS

Rachel PetersNoah Echols

Monday, February 24, 14

ABOUT US

A LITTLE ABOUT USNoah EcholsImmersed in digital for over a decade, Noah charts paths for clients that lead to compelling digital experiences for consumers. Working across departments, he curates insights to create multi-channel strategies that meet client objectives and deliver value to the consumer.

Rachel PetersRachel enjoys all aspects of user experience, from interviewing customers to designing interactions to testing those designs. Before becoming an experience architect, she was a technical writer, creating help documentation, interface copy, training demos, and functional specifications.

Associate Director of User Experience at IQ Agency

Associate Director of Strategy at IQ Agency

@nvechols

@rachelhpeters


HERE’S WHAT WE’LL COVER

Why YouTube Matters

Before You Get Started

What You Really Need to Know

Q&A

1

2

3

5

Features to Guide Your Strategy4


WHY YOUTUBE MATTERS


Most brands have ignored YouTube while a few have embraced it as a powerful tool in their channel mix. Not only do you have an opportunity to get ahead of your competition, but there are several other reasons to take YouTube seriously:


WHY YOUTUBE MATTERS

Remember when this happened?


WHY YOUTUBE MATTERS

What about this?


5 REASONS TO PAY ATTENTION

YouTube has 1 billion active users every month

YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Web

Visual content, especially video, has become the content type of

choice among consumers

The communities on YouTube are large, active, and passionate

Most of your competitors are probably not using YouTube effectively

123

45


STILL NOT CONVINCED?

• 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

• According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network

• 20% of global YouTube views came from mobile devices

• Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube


These brands get it.


These brands get it.


A FEW THINGS BEFORE YOU GET STARTED


GETTING STARTED | GENERAL TIPS

To approach YouTube strategically, you have to change the way you think about it. It is not a video hosting site. It is not just a place to watch funny cat videos. It is an flourishing social networking site where users connect around shared passions.

CHANGE THE WAY YOU DEFINE WHAT

YOUTUBE IS



Trolls are real and vicious, and they will show up in your video’s comment section. Don’t turn off the comments. Just ignore them and let other users take care of it.

DON’T FEED THE TROLLS

DON’T FEED THE TROLLS



Google+ and YouTube overlap in a lot of ways, so treat YouTube like you would a blog post in terms of SEO. You will increase your brand’s authority and ultimately its page rank.

BE ON GOOGLE+ TOOBE ON GOOGLE+ TOO



Content posted to YouTube needs to be YouTube-centric, not just content that was created for other channels but uploaded to YouTube to check a box.

POST YOUTUBE-CENTRIC CONTENTPOST YOUTUBE-CENTRIC CONTENT


OK, HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW


UNDERSTAND CONSUMER MINDSET

Create content that meets consumers where they are in their journey.

Brands that really get it, know what content consumers need to move them along their journey to purchase and then beyond purchase into advocacy.

TRIGGER

LOYALTY LOOPMOMENT OF PURCHASE

PASSIVE LOYAL

ACTIVE LOYAL

PASSIVE EVALUATION ACTIVE EVALUATION



YouTube offers the opportunity for paid, owned, and earned media.

While you should be posting unique content to your channel mostly, your strategy should included paid and earned as well.

Paid

Earned

Owned


YouTube offers the opportunity for paid, owned, and earned media.

While you should be posting unique content to your channel mostly, your strategy should included paid and earned as well.

Paid

Earned

Owned


PREROLL

Preroll interrupts the viewer and delays them getting to the content they want.

With that said, it should be a part of your strategy – but you have an obligation to carefully consider how you use it.

You will do more harm for your brand by annoying users with bad content if your pre-roll isn’t useful or entertaining.


PRE-ROLL CAN BE ENTERTAINING


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW2pzRfiHWs



PRE-ROLL CAN BE USEFUL


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiLrvrfaYFI



POST INSPIRING CONTENT


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk



POST HELPFUL VIDEOS


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vHn2JEIdF8



LEVERAGE YOUTUBE INFLUENCERS

Tap into communities that already exist by renting the legitimacy of influencers.

YouTube recently launched the Video Creation Marketplace to connect video creators with brands. There are several other services though that do the same thing though, so find the right solution that allows you to connect with the right person.


LEVERAGE YOUTUBE INFLUENCERS


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4qwjeJBk0s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4qwjeJBk0s

FEATURES TO GUIDE YOUR STRATEGY


PARTNER PROGRAM

• Allows you to share in ad revenue

• Partners can link to external websites in their video

• Google is incentivizing brands to create great content


YOUTUBE ONE CHANNEL

Brand and organize your channel and it will be optimized across devices.You now have a lot of flexibility to organize your content creatively on your channel as well as link to your website, social accounts, and other/partner channels. See the resources at the end for help with branding.


PLAYLISTS

Think of YouTube playlists like Pinterest boards or mix tapes.Group content together by theme or topic to make it easy for users to find what they are looking for and to share a package of videos with others. You can also embed an entire playlist on your website.


JUMP LINKS

Create chapters with links, allowing users to skip to relevant parts

By adding a time code to the video url you can create a link to a certain point in the video. For brands this is most useful for chapterizing videos in the description or in the copy of a website where the video is embedded.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzKx-VdwlBk



ANNOTATIONS

Entice viewers to engage further with the brand.Provide links to relevant videos or external content. Do not just add a link to the next video though. It should be relevant.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGN5xaQkFk0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGN5xaQkFk0

DESCRIPTIONS AND CLOSED CAPTIONING

• Only 160 characters of your video description will show in search results, so make sure the first few sentences of your video description are the most compelling.

• Titles should entice users to click – think Upworthy, but a little more useful.

• Uploading a closed captioning script allows more of your content to be indexed by Google.


PAID CHANNELS


METRICS THAT MATTER

ViewsDemographicsPlayback locationDevicesAudience RetentionSubscribersLikes/DislikesFavoritesCommentsSharingAnnotations

[Things you can measure


SOME HELPFUL RESOURCES

YouTube Channel Art Guidelineshttps://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2972003?topic=16630&hl=en

YouTube Creator Playbookhttp://www.youtube.com/yt/playbook/index.html

YouTube Video Creation Marketplacehttps://videocreationmarketplace.appspot.com/

YouTube Trends Bloghttp://youtube-trends.blogspot.com/

YouTube Insights Studyhttps://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://think.storage.googleapis.com/docs/youtube-insights-jan-2014_research-studies.pdf&chrome=true

Effectiveness of YouTube Adshttps://support.google.com/partners/answer/2770862?hl=en


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How to effectively use YouTube for marketing