How To Use YouTube for Business Marketing

These are some interesting facts about the YouTube and why people need to be taking it seriously frankly.

Two billion logged in users per month, two billion people and that is people with accounts on YouTube. Compare that to Facebook, that’s okay. So Facebook’s got 2.7 billion but two billion people but there are so many more people that don’t have accounts that just use YouTube as a platform.

It’s the second most visited website and obviously then owned by the first most visited website. Both of these websites are search engines as well. So it’s an incredibly sort of a powerful platform, craziness, right?

One billion hours of video watched every single day, no wonder no one gets anything done. But in terms of a B2B scenario as well, 50.9% of B2B decision-makers use YouTube to research purchases. You see the thing is with YouTube, a few years ago you’d be a bit sniffy about it really and thinking, well, it’s only just full of roller-skating cats or whatever, but honestly the platform hasn’t moved on so far in the last kind of couple of years. And the content and the sort of creativity generally but more specifically you’re getting a lot more businesses making use of it because it’s such a powerful way of connecting with your potential audience.

So and the other thing, as well as 70% of viewers bought something having watched material on YouTube about what it was they were looking for. This is the thing because it’s part of the customer journey in a sense, you think you’ve got a need. Your first thing is right, I’ve got a question in my mind, I go to Google search engine, then a lot of the time you’ll get served up with a video suggestion. And obviously because Google and YouTube are one of the same company.

If you’re creating really valuable, really relevant video content that’s answering specific questions, then chances are that could potentially in some niches that could be your content served up on the first page of a Google search. And then obviously people are going straight to YouTube as well sometimes as a first port of call but effectively by creating video content on YouTube, you obviously it’ll be on YouTube itself but also you’ve got that sort of double whammy effect almost of then. As I say if you’re creating really relevant material, it will also make it onto the YouTube search as well which is tremendously powerful, so what?

How to use YouTube for marketing?

As I said before, YouTube is a search engine. It’s not like Facebook or LinkedIn, all the other social platforms people are there because they’re looking for resolutions to their problems.

What does that mean from a business perspective? Well, businesses generally we exist to serve our customers I’d argue, right? So we’re here, we’re problem-solvers, that’s what we’re about, right? So if we know what issues people are having, we can tailor our content to specifically help those people. And when people get help, they’re generally pretty happy about it. And therefore they’re a lot more receptive in terms of moving them down the buyer’s journey to obviously first stop. They’ve got no idea who we are as a business, they wouldn’t have heard of us but you see if they interact and they find your content and you’re answering questions and then the idea is obviously with YouTube content, you encourage people, not just to watch one video. And then suddenly you start to foster and build these relationships online and that’s what it is all about at the moment.

There has been such an enormous like migration online over the last year. In fact, I said this before but you know the rate of change where we are now is where we would have been in three or four years time had COVID not happened. So, the rate of change, it’s just enormous the take up in terms of the migration of customers online and the change in habits in terms of looking for products and services much, much more online now than it ever was before.

As I said before, people on YouTube, they’re in a different mode that if you’re on Facebook or Instagram or whatever you are, it’s a social platform, they’re there to be social to interact with their friends, they’re not there to be sold to. That isn’t to say though that you can’t sell on social platforms, you can but it’s a very different sorts of prices. Lots more, it’s lots of softly, softly and over a longer period of time. However, if someone comes into your virtual shop and is asking you a question and you give them an answer and they’re like, oh, fine, brilliant, okay. Then that is a lot easier in terms of an interaction to then point people in the right direction down their customer journey for you.

So, in some senses the people that come to you from Google and from YouTube, they’re, I would suggest that they are lower hanging fruit because they’re coming to you with an issue that you can help them resolve.

Like I said before, there’s lots of SEO benefits. I’ll kind of gloss over that but there are loads of those SEO benefits because YouTube is owned by Google. You can also optimize your videos, again, this is more of an SEO type thing and they are searchable on the platform.

And also this might not be that sort of important to you but it’s the only platform that actually pays creators for content. If you’re doing stuff for Facebook, you won’t get, they don’t care, they won’t pay you any money. The other thing as well is that content you pop out on YouTube and this is a great little graphic. I mean it’s actually says here 20 plus days, but stuff on there nine years old. The point is you’re investing this time and often money in creating the content but it’s there it’s evergreen for forever whereas you do a tweet, you do something on Facebook or Insta, in a few hours, it’s gone and it disappears into the ether.

YouTube marketing goal

So I would always say with video content generally marketing actually start with the end in mind, what is it that you actually want to achieve? And then obviously we’re talking about video and we’re talking about YouTube but it could well be you wanting to run a print ad but you’ve got to start with the end in mind? What do you want whatever it is your doing to achieve in terms of your business. What you need it to lead to and it needs to be part of some kind of overall marketing strategy or video marketing strategy?

Now obviously we’re talking about video so that would have a direct impact in terms of the kind of videos that you’ll need to make depending on the goals that you want to achieve within your business.

So you need to ask yourself something along the lines of, are you gonna use YouTube to improve your brand awareness and engagement? Is that something that you need in your business? Are you wanting to have more of a flow of customers and leads within into your businesses at a case that there’s just crickets at the moment and you’re not seeing, you’re not getting that visibility in the market and you just need to have more people coming through the door. Do you want to drive more traffic to your website or do you wanna improve sales? All of these things are absolutely possible. So, but it’s important to have that clarity from the word go.

How can you use YouTube to boost your business?

• Use YouTube Ads to ‘switch on’ traffic to your business – via Google Ads.
• Provide as SEO boost – get you in top search rankings by creating videos based on answering specific questions.
• Embed your videos in a blog/ on your website – create a richer experience & benefit from SEO goodness.
• By consistently creating consistent and valuable video, this will build visibility & credibility in your niche – building ‘know, like and trust’.
• You can create videos that will become a ‘library’ / little marketing foot soldiers working 24/7.

How to start earning from YouTube channel?

This is the burning question I’m sensing that you’re probably all asking, will I become an internet sensation? No, probably not, you might do. If you do brilliant but that shouldn’t be the goal.

However, you could make money from YouTube eventually it takes time and like I said, there’s been a massive migration online so it’s no surprise to learn that the growth in users on YouTube and creators on YouTube has been immense, right? There’s a lot of noise but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get involved, I’d argue it’s a really good time to get involved that is why you need to be absolutely dialed in to your audience and the kind of value that you can add to the conversation in your niche.

The different sort of YouTube income possibilities are obviously YouTube ads which is kind of what everyone thinks about straight away.

• 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time per year.
• Amount that your ads earn depend in the niche you’re in
• Typically 12 – 18 months – does vary wildly/ trends/ experience of people behind the channel

Anyway, I know this is the juicy bit, right? And this is you’ll find so many people on YouTube banging on about, I made a million pounds in a minute or whatever it is, these are actual figures that I know to be true. So 125,000 subscribers, this particular creator is pulling in 5,000 pounds per month.

So that’s decent, isn’t it? But this is after someone, this is about particular example, lovely lady, she has been at it for four years. So it’s one of those things when you pop onto the chat the platform and you see all these people in they’re banding around all these amazing figures, what you need to bear in mind is you’re looking at someone who’s in Chapter 10 of their journey and you are just on the contents page.

Other income streams from YouTube

• LinkedIn
• Digital products
• Affiliate
• Brand deals
• Channel Merch

Attention points in terms of using YouTube

But like I said, do not start with YouTube channel for the money because that’s not what it’s about. It’s about helping people, it’s about authenticity.

It’s a long game. You’ll see lots and lots of people on YouTube and they are all like I said before overnight successes that have been at it for a decade.

It takes commitment and time and there will be moments lordy I know only too well there’s, you will be doing content and releasing content and no one watches it. And you’ve got to keep on tracking and not let that put you off because you need to be guided by your mission. So you need to know your why, you need to understand why are you creating your YouTube channel? What’s it for?

And actually why do that than even, I would suggest why you even in business, I mean, it’s kind of not turning into some kind of existential discussion point but the point is if you know why you’re doing, is it to provide for your family? Is it because you wanna leave a legacy. Whatever it is. You know what I’m saying? If you have those goals, crystal clear in your head all the time then when it gets rough which it will in terms of you create, put a pouring lots of time, effort, love into this of all these sort of creating these really, really valuable pieces of information and helping people and then it just doesn’t do anything on YouTube or no one replies or no one likes it or whatever.

It does kind of batter the old ego. Let me tell you, I’m sure you’ve been there. But you’ve just got to keep pressing on through because like I say those points you’ve got to keep your eyes focused on the main goal, the reason you’re doing it, your why and everyone goes through it.

Everyone who starts a YouTube channel starts at zero. So everyone’s been there, everyone knows what it’s like. And like I say, do not compare yourselves to people who’ve been at it for 10 years because there’s no point, it’ll just make you feel down in the dumps. And also typically it takes you 100 videos before the YouTube algorithm will even notice you exist. The other thing to do and this would go for YouTube but also it will go for any kind of social media, anything that you’re generating bars on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube whatever, always remember, it’s not your data.

So it’s all very well having a bazillion likes on Facebook or 300,000 subscribers on YouTube but actually if YouTube tomorrow decided to stop for whatever reason or close your account down, not that it would and unless you are really naughty. Everything that you’ve worked for could evaporate in a puff of smoke. So just be aware that actually the social and the search engine, doing these sort of digital platforms is all great but you need to have a process afterwards that takes people off those platforms and into some kind of email sequence or landing page or whatever it is so that you can take those details and put them into a CRM or some kind of email system that you own.

And therefore that data then is yours. And you can then start to build an email list, you can create maybe an email newsletter and you can start building know like and trust offline too. So, always bear that in mind. It’s all very exciting digital marketing and everything but you must always bear in mind that you don’t own the platform. It’s not your data until you take people off and then you start putting them into your own systems.

What YouTube can be?

• Searchable video library – Added customer service
• Grow additional revenue streams
• 24/7 ‘Shop Window’
• Digital marketing ‘Backbone’

Final thoughts

I really hope you’ve got value from this post. To dive into more detail about how to create video marketing, do check out the other videos on our YouTube channel .