[Why Having a YouTube channel Alone Isn’t a Complete Video Marketing Strategy] So you’ve managed to get 60,000 YouTube views on that video you posted last week… So many views! I know, pretty exciting hey? Now, if you’re like most marketers, you think, “YES! My video marketing is kick ass!” and then you start practicing Markie award thank-you speeches in your bathroom mirror. But I want to ask you a question that has probably already crossed your mind. That tiny voice in the back of your head has surely whispered it, or your CMO has hinted, but I’m flat out just going to ask: So what? Where did these mysterious views come from? Who is watching your videos? And, as every marketer should question, are these viewers part of your target audience contributing to ROI, or are they just randoms who landed on your content after watching 20 videos of a chihuahua doing yoga? YouTube Matters This post isn’t a bash on YouTube – far from it. YouTube is a critical part of your video marketing strategy as it’s the second largest search engine next to Google. Based on a study by Pardot, 72% of product research for a future business purchase begins on Google, so you definitely want to use YouTube to improve your visual search rank, but too many marketers rely on YouTube as their only tool. Do you want to compete with suggested content? YouTube is great for search, but it also has lots of potential distractions and you don’t want to lose new prospects to YouTube’s suggested content (especially if they’ve made it all the way to the end of your catchy video and you haven’t paid for pricey publisher privileges). So let’s take a look at how to make better use of YouTube and your marketing budget by driving engaged viewers back to your website. You want to point people back to your site where they can consume more of your content and encounter clear options to convert. When you supplement YouTube with a video marketing platform, you’ll also be able to find out exactly who your viewers are. Practical Ways to Drive Viewers to your Website A lot of brands are starting to use YouTube annotations to point viewers to their own website. Basically, when someone’s watching your video, you can use an annotation like “learn more here” and link your audience back to your home base. Just look what Lowes did at the end of their Christmas lights video: youtu.be/fMX2kKXX6sw As you can see, Lowes uses the annotations as a CTA to direct viewers back to the exact products featured in the video. Annotations are free, easy to use, and they perform better than banner ads. As an example, a traditional banner ad gets a CTR of 0.1%., but with annotations on their YouTube videos, Salesforce achieved an average CTR of over 1%. The Pros & Cons Directing people to your site using annotations is both good and bad. Some folks have annotations turned off completely and, technically, if someone watches only 20 seconds of your content and then heads to your site, this can hurt your (non-paid) YouTube search rank based on broken session time. This is why you’ll want to use your channel branding to point to your website, or do as Lowes does and save the site suggestion until the very end of your video. The links to your site don’t necessarily have to be clickable, they just need to point to where viewers can find more content they can subscribe to if interested. I hope this post is useful to you! :-) Clinton A. Lewis Jr.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 21:12:57 +0000
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