3 Tactics You Should Be Using in Your YouTube Strategy
by Tristan Ramirez •
Don’t be so quick to write off YouTube as merely a brand awareness tool. With the robust targeting capabilities and combination of rich media and user intent, conversion-driven marketing is just a few clicks away. Marketing on the video behemoth is not as simple as it sounds though; requiring businesses and marketers to tap into both their creative and analytical skills. All in all, there are a few big ideas to keep in mind when heading into the YouTube marketplace:
- Have a strategy. Keep the user intent as well as their place in the funnel in mind when building out your campaign.
- Use content that has purpose. Your video content should serve a purpose and be appropriate for your strategy.
- Be entertaining. Perhaps the most important rule as YouTube optimizes towards view-through-rate. That is, if people like your content, you stand a better chance in the marketplace.
If you need a refresher on the types of users you should be thinking about in your overall YouTube strategy, you can read all about that good stuff in our related article: 3 Types of Users You Should Be Marketing To On YouTube.
Now, let’s get into the targeting strategies you should be using on YouTube since that is what you’re here for, right?
Related: Intro to Youtube Advertising
Placements
With placement targeting, advertisers can place content on any monetized video and/or channel. This method of targeting can be leveraged in a number of ways and adapted to your objective and position in the funnel. Using this tactic allows businesses and advertisers to target viral videos, popular channels, competitor channels and/or videos, and just about anything else on YouTube that happens to be monetized. This option can be useful for all stages of the funnel. By placing an ad on a popular video or channel relevant to your business, you can tap into their audience to get thousands of eyes from a relevant group on your advertisement. By placing ads on a review or unboxing video, you can get in front of people who are near the end of the buying cycle.
YouTube Targeting
With the powerful capabilities of YouTube video targeting, brands can effectively prospect and retarget on the platform. Brands can target specific users based on channels they have subscribed to, videos they have engaged with, and any kind of content they have viewed (both videos and ads). The best part… you can apply this tactic to your competitors’ content. This is an important tactic when initiating a strategy that takes user intent into account. Targeting users who are watching “how-to” content with some kind of information or solution that your brand has to offer can be a big opportunity for brands to directly insert themselves at the right place and time. Keep in mind that some more popular videos and channels will have more competition in the auction and may drive your costs up a bit. This is why having good content is key; YouTube places preference on advertisers who have stronger VTR (view-through-rate), which, therefore, has a positive influence on your costs. Check out our article that discusses Keys to SEO Optimization of Your YouTube Videos & Channel.
Similar Audiences
Similar Audiences function like Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences in that they build a target audience for you based off of the information that you provide. This information may come in the form of an email list, CRM data, and/or website traffic. This allows brands to leverage the database of the tech giant to find users out there who are most like their customers and list members. This is a valuable method of prospecting for brands who would already have a target market and a compiled source of information. The more data you included in your list, the better, as it allows the algorithm to get a more granular understanding of the desired users which then builds a higher quality audience.
To sum things up, YouTube provides advertisers with a powerful suite of solutions and granular targeting. Using these tactics along with a robust strategy will allow brands to not only get in front of the right people at the right time, but also help them to build up their brand with relevant content that intrigues these users. Keep in mind, using quality content is a must when it comes to advertising on YouTube. It’s a busy market out there and at the end of the day, YouTube is an entertainment platform whose ultimate goal is to keep users happy so that they don’t leave. And in return, advertisers have access to over 1.9 billion monthly users. That’s 3.8 billion eyes that your brand can potentially get in front of. Turn those eyes to your videos and/or channel and increase your traffic. Check out our related article for an additional 6 Ways to Increase YouTube Traffic. Get out there and nail your YouTube strategy!