3 Tips for Better YouTube Marketing

Let me guess.

You wonder how you can use YouTube as part of your content marketing mix. After all, the video giant is a powerful platform to raise awareness, build an audience, and get more sales. But how do you do it?

In this article, we share three tips from Ben Speas, the Content Solutions Lead at YouTube, Northern Europe. He spoke at last year's conference and shared a few key insights.

Let's get started.

How do you break through the noise?

Speas says that brands need to consider two crucial elements before they can get the most out of YouTube (or any other platform for that matter):

1. Your brand must match your consumers' passions.
2. Your brand needs a content strategy in place.

If you haven't figured out those two steps, then get started on that. To help you plan your content, Ben Speas suggests you break it into the following framework:

• Hero content. Major brand moments, including product launches and announcements.
• Hub content. Regular content that engages your subscribers and continues the conversation with them.
• Hygiene/Help content. Useful content that solves a problem your prospects are searching for. This could be in-depth tutorials and other "how-to" videos.

In his presentation, Speas gave us three tips to apply the content framework on YouTube. Let's look at a few examples and see what we can learn from them.

1. Marry audiences

For a great example of how you can mix and match different audiences, you'll want to take a look at the collaboration between violinist Lindsey Stirling and the EA video game Dragon Age. Watch the video below:

Now, here is a look from "behind the scenes":

Challenge: Differentiate the game in a crowded field of competitors and reach their core audience.

Insight: Dragon Age fans on YouTube love classical music.

Result: A unique hero video featuring an influential YouTube classical musician, which immense the Dragon Age audience into an inspiring audio visual experience.

Questions for the content marketer:

• What else does your audience like?
• How can you marry these audiences in your content marketing efforts?

Bonus tip: Look at data to discover intersections between audiences, and then think about how you can marry them with each other.

2. Be discoverable and relevant to your audience

As content marketing is catching on, more companies finally understand the importance of relevance. The consumer is in charge and can easily ignore you, which is why you must create content that is discoverable and relevant to them.

Fortunately, video allows you to show your audience what your product or service can do for them. In YouTube terms, this is where your hygiene/help content truly shines: share useful content that solves the problem your customer is searching for.

This content is a perfect match for your hub. You're teaching your audience that you can solve her problem, and that your brand and product is the natural next step. Let's look at an example from the Swedish furniture brand IKEA.

Here is a breakdown from "behind the scenes":

Challenge: Customers complain that the self-assembly furniture is cumbersome and time-consuming (customer objection).

Insight: New innovations make self-assembling easier and faster.

Result: A series of hygiene/help content that shows how easy it is to assemble IKEA furniture, while demonstrating the flexibility and smart solutions of its products.

During last year's conference, James Mathewson at IBM said that 97% of their search traffic came from their hygiene/help content. More specifically, these search queries could be boiled down to what their readers wanted to learn, and what they wanted to solve. As he points out, it's not sexy, and it's not rocket science, but it works, and too many companies don't do it. IKEA is an obvious exception. Is yours?

Questions for the content marketer:

• What does your customer need to know before she can do business with you?
• What hygiene/help content do you have in place today, and how are you optimizing it for search engines?

Bonus tip: Use metadata to ensure your hygiene/help content is found in the search engines. By being on YouTube, you get a 2 for 1 deal: you get YouTube and Google.

3. Use YouTube influencers

Using YouTube influencers has become a popular way for brands to spread their message and reach a wider audience. YouTube influencers can be a powerful ally because:

• They have built a large audience.
• They are trusted advisors.
• They understand what their audience wants.

Let's look at how Turkish Airlines used YouTube influencers as part of their #FortuneTraveller campaign.

Here is a look from "behind the scenes":

Challenge: Raise awareness of the numerous exotic destinations as well as the comforts of Turkish Airlines business class travel.

Insight: YouTube is a platform with truly global reach, allowing Turkish Airlines to tap into new and diverse cross-cultural audiences.

Result: A video series featuring 10 YouTube creators from seven different countries resulted in high social engagement and awareness.
The experiences felt more authentic than the traditional broadcast ad. They told their story of how they got to Turkey: not a pre-written script, telling them what to say and do. Ben Speas gives us a few things to consider before we team up with an influencer.

Here are his best practices:

• Define the role of the influencer.
  Is he or she a spokesperson for the brand? Will you leverage their other social media, or build a long-term partnership?
• Decide where the content will live.
  Will it live on your channel or theirs? Or both? Consider both advantages and disadvantages with each option.
• Leave adequate time for briefing, production, and post-production. Make sure you create a production schedule that sets clear deadlines and expectations.       
• Be prepared to give them creative freedom.
  They are the experts. They know their audience, the platform and which content works best for their fans. Your best option is to listen to them.

In closing

YouTube offers many benefits to the content marketer. You can marry audiences, be found in search engines by creating useful and relevant content, as well as partnering with YouTube influencers to reach a critical part of your audience.

For more on video content, view this year's agenda with Jyske Bank on their successful video content strategy.