Smart marketing tactics have always been very important for small businesses as they cannot directly lock horns with the bigger names in the industry. Over the past decade, with the increased involvement of the internet in our lives, business strategies have also changed. The prime focus has shifted from television to computer screens. To any business looking to grow using the web, YouTube has to be one of the most important platforms.
With over 2 billion views a day, YouTube is the second most visited site in the world. YouTube originally was a platform to share short videos with people. But over the years it has grown into an extremely powerful tool. It is an essential tool for any business or individual looking to reach a large number of people. The fact that it is extremely easy to use, and provides a brilliant platform for communication adds to its appeal.
Why Opt for YouTube?
Starting a business and making sure that it prospers into something profitable – these are two completely different tasks. You need to put in a lot of effort to make sure that people see your product or brand. YouTube is one of the best possible tools for this job. Here are some of the important benefits that your business will get by building a strong presence on YouTube.
Popularize your product: If your business is trying to get into a new market with a particular product, you can simply make a video of the product working and show the benefits that the product has. If done in a creative manner, you will soon find that there will be many people liking your video and going for your product.
Get feedback: You can use YouTube even if you are not completely ready with your product. It can be a great tool to figure out the response that the product might get. You simply have to put up the video of your prototype. With over 500 million active users, there is no better place to get reviews about your product.
Sharing made easy: As a young business setup, you may have people located at remote locations. It might not be possible for you to share all the material with them. YouTube can be a great way to share presentations or something similar with these remote employees.
Simplify tasks: For businesses that often get client calls regarding problems with the product, YouTube can be a lifesaver. You might not have a work force to cater to all these problems. In that case, you can simply make a video with systematic details and share it on YouTube so the users can access it.
Increase your brand visibility: If you are unable to make a video regarding your business due to time constraints or lack of good content, then there are other methods. You can simply go, rate and comment on relevant videos. You can also share some good videos on your channel. Simply by doing this, you are making your brand more visible and communicating with other users.
YouTube Insight: Once you have your video on YouTube, comments are not the only way to analyze them. In addition to comments and ratings, there is an Insight feature also available on YouTube. This is a reporting function, which provides you with statistical data regarding the people visiting your video. This is helpful as you can figure out whether your campaign is actually working or not and make changes accordingly.
Increase your site’s traffic: YouTube also allows you to insert links into your videos. By doing this you can channel traffic from your YouTube video to your own site. Search engines also index these videos, and video results are comparatively lesser than text results. This increases the chances of a person finding your business video through a search.
Save Money: One of the most important factors in any marketing campaign is money. Conventional methods like advertising on television or newspaper require a lot of money, but YouTube allows you to upload your videos completely free. From setting up your channel to analyzing the traffic on your video, it costs you nothing.
YouTube Ads: With such a huge number of views everyday YouTube is one site where you would definitely want to run an ad campaign. You have multiple options available when it comes to the kind of advertising campaign you want to run. You can use one of the several marketing programs or you can use the video target tool to place your ads.
Get the Maximum Out of YouTube
You can build your company’s presence on YouTube, but the job is only half done. To make sure that your campaign succeeds, you have to put in a lot of effort. The most important thing would be make proper use of your channel. YouTube gives you the option of customizing how your channel looks. You should take full advantage of this as it allows you to stand out amongst other regular channels, and makes a positive impact on the viewer.
Many companies simply ignore their channel. After the initial bursts of enthusiasm, you may find that there is nothing happening in the channel and this may discourage you. Even if you have nothing new to post, make sure that you keep up to date with the comments.
You should also make sure that you keep your content organized. You have the option of creating playlists. So you can group all the relevant videos together into a single playlist, or you can sort them on the basis of time.
YouTube is one of the fastest growing sites and is a great platform for you to showcase your company. When it comes to social media marketing there are very few sites more important than YouTube. All you need to do is make full use of the features provided by the site and be patient. YouTube can do wonders for your business if used correctly.
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THE MARK CONSULTING & MARKETING