How to Advertise on YouTube Successfully?

We must have been bitten by the video bug at Seek Social, because following on from last week’s post about our new livestream, this week we’re going to turn our attention to the art of using YouTube for business, and advertising on YouTube. If you want to use video as a medium for business, then you need to be present on this platform. But what should you be doing to ensure your business YouTube channels get the most exposure possible? Read on, and the Seek Social team will be happy to enlighten you!

Prepping your Business Youtube Channel:

YouTube Channel Creation

The beginnings of a successful business YouTube channel are created way before you upload (or even record) your first content. Appearance and imagery are VERY important when using YouTube for business. They put your business YouTube channel on brand, and leave people in no doubt that they are on your channel.

Creating Banner Images & Icon

So, step one is to make sure that all of YouTube’s default imagery is replaced with something bespoke to your business. At the very least you’ll need a banner image for your channel page and a channel icon.

Creating Video Trailer

If you want to take things to the next step, add a video trailer to your channel. A watermark for inclusion in your advertising on YouTube and the videos themselves could be a good idea too. Why? It would mark your YouTube business channel and its content out as something you have created.

Optimizing Your Channel

The graphical elements are just the beginning though. You should also optimize your channel’s text introduction to include keywords or phrases often seen in your video titles. In a way, this is very similar to traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Analytics Tools to Measure Ads Campaign

You should also link your YouTube account to your Google Analytics and Google Adwords accounts so that you can do three key things. One, use insights gleaned from your Google data to inform your initial YouTube business plan. Two, help target your YouTube ads And three, have a way of recording how your Youtube advertising actually performs.

The Next Step – Define a YouTube Business Plan:

You can do this before you even set up your YouTube business channel if you like. The key takeaway here is that when using YouTube for business, your YouTube business plan should be in place before your content is. Know what you want to accomplish with your online advertising, and how you will measure success.

Crucially, also know which of the many kinds of YouTube ads you want to employ, and develop a bidding strategy designed to get you the right amount of plays, at the right times and in the right places And of course, your YouTube business plan should also establish what your budget and the maximum bid are going to be.

Defining Demographics – Identify an audience for your advertising on Youtube:

The other part of a successful YouTube business plan – and something that will really help you get the most out of your YouTube advertising and using YouTube for business in general – is identifying the right target audience to get potential customers.

The great thing is that you can use your Google Analytics and Adwords data to figure out who those people are! Of course, metrics such as age group, location, gender can be used here as they would elsewhere. However, your Youtube business channel and the ads associated with it have a few more options due to the nature of the platform.

For instance, when using YouTube for a business you can also target (or rule out) people who have an affinity with a certain topic, even people who watch a certain channel’s content.

One Last Thing – Pro Tips for Advertising on Youtube:

Once you have all of these things set up, you’ll be starting your business YouTube channel and any online video advertising campaign you may run off on the right foot. However, there is more that you can do to increase your chances of success.

Firstly, don’t operate your YouTube business plan in isolation. Use the Google data available to you to inform your decisions when using YouTube for business, and vice versa. Cross-market between Google and YouTube. Don’t forget that you can have too much of a good thing though – and avoid your audience getting burnt out on your video ads and your business YouTube channel content by setting frequency caps.

Finally, for today, avoid marketing to children logged in on their parents’ accounts. Kids don’t control the purse-strings in the family, so them seeing your advertising on YouTube does you no good. How can you do this? By excluding the numerous child-focused channels on YouTube when defining your target audience.