IN THIS CHAPTER

Balancing doing too much versus too little

Solving for the people and the platform

Improving over time and not giving up

YouTube has so much to offer, and its potential to deliver to your marketing needs is limitless. Unfortunately, marketers tackling the channel often develop hasty approaches that aren’t thought through in an effort to just get started, or, worse, they overwhelm themselves with analysis-paralysis by trying to figure everything out before starting.

I’ve seen the same mistakes made time and again with clients of all sizes, and you can be forgiven for falling into the same traps. In this chapter, I list ten of the most common mistakes so that you can avoid making them.

Trying to Do Too Much

YouTube is a search engine, a community, an advertising platform, a content destination, a subscription service, and much more. It’s unlike any other digital platform, and it’s always evolving and changing. The result is that marketers can’t easily recognize YouTube as one thing or another, leading to confusion as to how to use it as a marketing channel.

Even the most expert of marketers can make the common mistake of trying to do everything possible on YouTube. The goal for every marketer is not to have a YouTube strategy simply because it’s a box their boss wants them to tick, but rather to have a YouTube strategy that delivers to the needs of the business. You can use YouTube selectively as required. Nothing states that you must do everything listed in this book.

Further, when you evaluate your business needs, the resources you have available, and all the various marketing techniques you can employ, you may decide that you don’t need to leverage YouTube at this present time.

Successful marketing is about delivering against business needs, not having marketing activity occurring in every possible channel or medium for a false sense of completeness.

If you’re confident that YouTube is a tool you’d like to leverage in your marketing, the best way to avoid the mistake of trying to do too much is to pick your lane. You can be

• An advertiser running ads on YouTube
• A sponsor running your ads in specific placements or working with influential YouTubers
• A content creator where you make your own videos
• A publisher where a major focus of your business is the content you create

Check out Chapter 1 for more details on how to pick your lane.

In the unlikely event that you decide not to use YouTube for your marketing, at the very least, set up your channel so that you have it registered. As you won’t actively be using YouTube, you can use a single simple video or the channel artwork to point people to other spaces where they can find you instead. People may be searching YouTube expecting to find you, so at least have a minimal presence in place.

Failing to Set Success Criteria

Regardless of the marketing channel in question, failing to set success criteria before you start is a common mistake. Marketers may have an idea of the campaign they’d like to deliver, along with a loose idea of what success looks like, but the more specific you are, the more likely your campaign will be a success.

Marketers must determine the specific key performance indicators they will use to measure a platform like YouTube and ensure that those KPIs are the right ones to deliver against the business goals. (For more on KPIs, see Chapter 2.) Time and again, I’ve seen CEOs asking their marketing team to deliver lots of video views or channel subscribers, but the question to ask is “Why is that important?” If views or subscribers translate into sales, then they’re probably good metrics for success, but if they don’t deliver to a business goal, you’ll be wasting your time.

Think through what you’d like YouTube to deliver for your business and set the appropriate KPIs. For example, if you want YouTube to help grow your brand awareness, you’ll be interested in maximizing the number of people you can reach as cost efficiently as possible. If you’re looking to drive sales, you’ll want to ensure that the ads you run on YouTube compel people to click through and purchase.

Knowing what you need YouTube to do and setting those measures of success will ensure that you don’t waste time creating videos that don’t do anything for your business. At the end of any campaign, the question you’ll be asked by the big boss is “So what did it do for the business?” Marketers who spend a lot of time and money developing videos that don’t meet the right success criteria are destined to lose their jobs.

Forgetting about the Audience

Even though I emphasize YouTube’s potential as a marketing channel, don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s a traditional marketing space where you can use a megaphone to simply shout out messages. Your potential audience can skip your ad if it’s not interesting or navigate away to watch or do something else. Marketers must work harder than they’ve done in the past to deliver really great ad creative and video content that the audience wants to see.

Marketers easily make the mistake of getting caught up thinking about marketing strategies, business jargon, reports, data, processes, agencies and more, forgetting that, ultimately, you’re trying to talk to a real person and show them that you have something on offer they may like. It’s all about the audience, and neglecting to keep their needs and wants in mind can lead to ad creative and video content that just doesn’t resonate with them. Chapter 3 walks you through developing audience insights that can ground your efforts.

Identify a unique and compelling insight about your target audience and then focus on building your creative upon it. You’ll find you’ve created something that resonates with them.

Neglecting to Make Creative for YouTube

A challenge marketers face is the increasing need to make more creative for more marketing channels than ever before.

The marketing channels used to be just TV, print, and radio. Now new digital platforms appear every few years, while existing digital channels evolve. For example, the video requirements for YouTube are different from Facebook and Instagram, and they change when YouTube creates new ad formats. It’s hard to be a marketer! You have a lot to consider and keep up to date with. Having said that, the benefit is that your marketing efforts can be more effective and efficient than in the past.

Marketers I’ve worked with fall into the trap of thinking they can upload their TV ad to YouTube and that it’ll work just fine, or that the video they make for their website is good enough to run on YouTube and in social channels. Better results with the performance of creative come when the channel or platform is kept in mind. Sure, making creative specifically designed for each platform or channel requires more work, but it’s worth it. Make sure you that when you’re making video creative for YouTube, you keep in mind what makes creative work on the platform.

Chapter 6 details how to make ad creative that works on YouTube, and Chapter 10 covers creative fundamentals for video content.

Thinking Paid Media Is Optional

Perhaps the most common mistake I have encountered with previous clients is that you can post videos on YouTube, and they’ll magically find an audience for free. Sure, it’s possible that anyone can find your video, but with millions of videos available on YouTube, it’s more likely that it’ll be lost in the sea, never to be seen.

Using paid media may seem daunting, especially for smaller marketing teams and individuals with smaller budgets, but you can spend just a few hundred dollars and see results. YouTube offers a ton of control so you can ensure that your paid media budget is working for you. If it’s not, you just turn it off.

Chapter 7 covers the Google Ads solution and how you can set up a paid media campaign.

Copycatting

Copycatting is a real pet peeve of mine. I’ve had numerous clients who have seen another advertiser’s successful campaign and said “I want that.” Sure, simply copying the idea of another advertiser can work, but often it doesn’t. Great creative and content are original works, not just copy-and-paste jobs.

I see this same mistake when I meet people who say they want to be YouTubers. I ask them what they’d like to make videos about, and the answer is invariably “Oh, probably just makeup tutorials.” Newsflash! No one wants to see your makeup tutorial. Lots of people are already doing a great job of making zombie-taco makeup tutorials, so don’t just copy someone else. Instead think of something you uniquely can create. Great marketing stands out when it’s original and compelling, so avoid copycatting another person’s work.

Chapter 4 walks you through the blank canvas that YouTube’s ad formats offer, and Chapter 8 lists tons of different types of content videos you can make. Just make sure you bring your own unique approach to everything you do.

Ignoring the Basics of Quality Video Production

In the past, quality of things like picture and audio weren’t quite as important as they are today. When online video was nascent, quality wasn’t the best, but now people watching videos on YouTube expect a certain level of quality.

A friend who is a YouTuber recently made a video where his audio had a couple of glitches. It didn’t seem like a big deal, so he uploaded the video but then got flamed in the comments by his fans. It turned out people really do want a baseline level of quality, so ensure that any video you create

• Is in focus, clear, and high definition
• Has audio that is clear and free from glitches
• Has smooth and professional editing

Gone are the days of turning on your webcam and making videos, as professional level equipment is now available to everyone. It’s an easy mistake to think that YouTube doesn’t require professional level quality, but when the 14-year-old kid at home is making movie-level videos, they’re setting the bar higher for everyone.

Chapter 11 walks you through how to create video, including the gear (equipment) you’ll need along with options for editing.

Making Once, Distributing Once

If you make a video but only post it to one place, you’re missing an opportunity. Sure, even though I believe you should tailor your video creative to YouTube (and tailor it differently to other channels), you can find ways to make simple tweaks and adaptations to your video so that you can post it in as many other places as possible.

I’ve worked with marketers who do a great job of creating videos for YouTube, even running high-performing paid media to support their campaign, but forget that they can tap into lots of other potential distribution channels to reach a bigger audience.

For example, after you upload your video to YouTube, you can

• Post it to your blog and embed it on your website
• Link to it from your social channels
• Email it to customers in your next newsletter
• Play it at events or in retail locations

Ask yourself the question “Does the video, in its current iteration, work in another channel?” If your video works just as well somewhere else, post it! If a tweak will help, then take that extra step. For example, if you want to play a video you’ve made in a retail location, you may not want the sound to be always playing, in which case you can tweak the video by adding subtitles.

Giving Up Too Early

I admit this one is a big ask because I’m asking you to not give up even when things might feel hard. The fact is, YouTube is one of the more complex marketing channels to tackle — after all, that’s why I wrote this book. I’ve had many clients and friends who have wanted to give up, and my advice is to keep at it.

Smart marketers know when to make changes to their plans and pivot away from channels that don’t perform. That said, YouTube needs at least a full year of conscientious effort before making the decision to reduce, revise, or abandon efforts. Marketers should start small, be consistent, and be persistent.

“Oh, he tried the YouTube thing, and it didn’t work” a friend once said to me, referring to a mutual friend who wanted to be a YouTuber. It’s not that YouTube couldn’t have worked for him; it’s that he gave up too soon and that he didn’t really know what he was doing. It’s a real shame when I hear this kind of thing, because I know YouTube can work incredibly well. People who think it’s not working usually just need extra support and guidance so that they can start to see results.

Slacking Off Optimization

Real talk: Don’t even bother using YouTube for your marketing if you’re not going to commit to optimization. This advice is true of most other digital channels, too. Their major benefit is that anything you create and publish will yield data that you can use to iterate and improve. You must

• Test, test, test! Try different ideas and see what works better. For example, test thumbnails and titles to see which people click on more. Chapter 6 talks about testing methodologies.
• Use all the YouTube features available. They’ll ensure that you’ve optimized your chances of being found. Part 5 covers all the features YouTube offers for your channel, video publishing, and community management.
• Look regularly at your analytics and develop ideas for what to do next. Your data will be your gold mine, revealing insights about what works and what doesn’t. Chapters 16 and 17 expand on the analytics tools you should be spending some serious time exploring.