There are a lot of benefits to using YouTube to help your business engage with target audiences, drive website traffic, generate leads and grow sales.
Marketers working in B2C and B2B companies large and small across industries and sectors share the same challenge: how to get their products and services in front of their target audience. Over the past few years YouTube has emerged as the place to be for businesses. Yet, too often, the social network is overlooked.
Postmedia has identified five benefits of using YouTube for your business.
Today’s marketing landscape
It’s no secret the internet has forced the modernization of sales as today’s buyers don’t need companies to sell to them. They have access to all the information they need online to learn about products and brands. What they want is for companies to help them in some way. For marketers, this means creating content their target buyers will find valuable and placing it where those customers are online.
The rise of YouTube
What type of content do customers want? Videos. They want videos that educate them about products and services and will convince them to make a purchase. And they are looking for those videos on YouTube.
YouTube has come a long way from its early days. Thanks to its purchase by Google and integration with the giant search engine’s advertising arm, Google AdSense, YouTube has grown from the place to watch cat videos to one of the biggest online video platforms in the world and a force in global advertising for brands.
YouTube is bigger than ever for marketers
Look at the stats: YouTube’s worldwide advertising revenues hit nearly US$7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020 alone. Why? More than 65 per cent of users say YouTube content is authentic and feels like real life. This means they are connecting with it and trust it. Not surprisingly, its popularity is growing. YouTube was the fourth most downloaded app on iPhones in 2020, as reported by Mashable. It beat out Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. In the U.S., 62 per cent of users download the app daily.
All of this makes marketing on YouTube a good investment. YouTube has the best ROI for video content followed by Facebook and Instagram. This fact is leading more brands to the platform, 89 per cent of video marketers planning to use YouTube in 2021.
Why YouTube should be part of your marketing strategy
The numbers tell the story:
- YouTube has more than 2 billion active users. This is equivalent to almost a third of everyone online.
- YouTube has the largest reach among U.S. adults. Fully 81 per cent of Americans say they use the video-sharing site, up from 73 per cent in 2019.
- Each day, people watch more than 1 billion hours of video and generate billions of views.
- YouTube generates more traffic than any other website anywhere except its parent company Google.
- More than 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
5 benefits of using YouTube for your business
This is where your target audience is
YouTube’s user base and reach are massive, growing and very diverse. According to the latest research from Pew Research Centre, YouTube is the most popular social media platform in the U.S., followed by Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. If your brand isn’t on YouTube, you miss out on engaging with your target audience.
Fast fact: YouTube has launched local versions in more than 100 countries and in 80 languages.
Your customers are looking for you on YouTube
People go to YouTube with a purpose. The same is not always true of other social networks, where users may accidentally find a brand or solution based on content they’re skimming. With YouTube, users have a clear objective, such as learning how to install a faucet, taking a yoga class or gaining insights on the latest trends in their industry. As a marketer, you can use the challenges you know your target market is facing to create the content they need.
Tip: Integrate your customers’ pain points in your video titles and descriptions to ensure they find you.
SEO best practices for Google hold true for YouTube
YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine next to Google. It is a powerful search tool and will help you boost your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and ranking on Google search engine results pages (SERPs).
Fast fact: Web pages with video are 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of SERPs.
YouTube analytics offers deep insights
You can learn:
- how your videos rank by views.
- your videos’ real-time performance.
- how people find your channel.
- key metrics such as impressions, click-through-rate, views and unique viewers.
- how long users are engaging with your videos.
- who your viewers are and when they’re on YouTube.
YouTube can help you gain new customers:
YouTube has shared how its search and recommendation algorithms work to help marketers drive people to their sites and keep them engaged. For example, if a video is underperforming, YouTube suggests changing the title and thumbnail to help get more views.
YouTube is a growing social platform and offers unlimited possibilities to engage clients. Use YouTube to increase awareness of your business, drive more traffic to your site, build trust with your target audience, generate more leads and help grow revenues. It’s where your business needs to be.
