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Developing Your YouTube Marketing Strategy
Before you shoot your first minute of video footage, you need to determine how YouTube fits into your marketing plans. What is your YouTube marketing strategy—what do you want to achieve, and how?
Developing a YouTube marketing strategy is similar to developing any marketing strategy. You need to focus on your customer (audience), your message, your products/services/brand, and the other elements of your marketing mix. Everything has to work together to bring your chosen message to your chosen customer and generate the desired results.
You can’t just shoot a video and throw it on the YouTube site; you need to develop a plan. This chapter walks you through the elements of a successful YouTube marketing strategy—what you need to do, why, and how.
What Is the Purpose of Your YouTube Videos?
Let’s start with the most basic strategic issues for any marketing professional: What is the purpose of your YouTube videos? What is your goal? Why do you want to market via YouTube?
The wrong answer to the last question is “because everyone’s doing it.” Equally wrong are “because it’s the latest thing,” “because my competitors are doing it,” and “because it’s neat.” As a marketing professional, you can’t base your marketing strategy on the latest trends and technologies or on the behaviors of other marketers. You have to pick and choose the media you use based on their strategic importance to your company and brand; you have to pick media that serves your purpose and achieves your stated results.
It’s possible that there is no strategic reason for you to market on YouTube. Perhaps you run a local contracting business and you have a loyal customer base, enough to fill your schedule for the next several months. In this instance, you might have nothing to gain by putting up a video on YouTube.
On the other hand, maybe you do have something to gain from producing a series of YouTube videos. Even if you don’t want or need to attract new customers, you might be able to serve your existing customers better by incorporating YouTube into your media mix. Perhaps you can create a video demonstrating some of the options you have available for your customers, using YouTube as a kind of extended video catalog. Or maybe you can reinforce your new customers’ choices by uploading testimonials from older customers. Possibly you can use YouTube as after-sale support by showing customers how to maintain the work you create for them.
The point is that you need to determine up front what you want to achieve, and how YouTube can help you achieve that. Don’t automatically assume that YouTube is just for attracting new customers or selling individual products—there are a number of ways that you can use YouTube for both presale promotion and after-sale support. Figure out your goals ahead of time and then build your plan around those goals. And, as I said, if YouTube doesn’t help you achieve those goals, that’s okay; you should never shoehorn a particular medium into your plans, just because everybody else thinks you ought to.
Who Is Your Customer?
Another factor in determining how YouTube fits into your plans is the customers you’re trying to reach. Just who do you sell to—and why?
This is Marketing 101 stuff, so forgive me if I’m stating the obvious. But many marketers, especially those working online, either don’t know the basics or somehow forget them over time. Sometimes stating the obvious is the most important thing you can do.
All your marketing should revolve around the customer, so it’s imperative that you know who that customer is and what he wants. Work through the following checklist to determine just who it is you should be focusing on:
• How old is your target customer?
• Is your customer male or female?
• Is your customer single or married?
• What is your customer’s average yearly income?
• Where does your customer live?
• Where does your customer shop?
• What does your customer like to do in his or her spare time?
• How does your customer describe himself or herself?
• How does your customer prefer to receive information: via newspaper, television, radio, or the Internet?
• What websites does your customer frequent?
• What products does your customer currently use?
• Is your target customer a current client or someone who is not yet using your product?
• Does your customer know about your company or product?
• If so, what does your customer think about your company and product—what image does he have of you?
These are just a few of the things you need to know about your target customer. The more you know, of course, the better you can serve the customer’s wants and needs. The less you know, the more you’re guessing in the dark—and guessing in the dark is an ineffective and inefficient way to create a marketing plan.
Of course, another set of important questions to ask, in terms of incorporating YouTube into your marketing mix, concerns YouTube itself. Does your customer visit the YouTube site? If so, how often? Why does he visit the site? What does he think of YouTube? What types of videos does he like to watch? How does he feel about “commercial” videos on YouTube?
If your customer is a heavy YouTube viewer, and if he’s open to commercial messages among his entertainment, YouTube holds promise as a marketing vehicle for your company. On the other hand, if your customer never visits YouTube, or is diametrically opposed to commercial messages intruding on his entertainment, you shouldn’t include YouTube in your marketing mix. After all, you don’t want to advertise in places where your customer isn’t.
What Does Your Customer Want or Need?
Knowing who your customer is makes up just part of the process. Equally important is knowing what your customer wants or needs—that is, why the customer is in the market for a particular product or service.
Perhaps the customer has a problem; most do. Your customer is looking for a solution to that problem—and that solution is what you want to provide.
Or perhaps the customer has a basic unfulfilled need, such as food, shelter, or security. Your goal is to fulfill that basic need; the product or service you offer is how to fill the need.
What’s key is to identity with your customer so that you share his wants and needs. Only then can you determine how to best meet those requirements and communicate that fact in a compelling fashion.
What Are You Promoting?
What exactly is it that you want to promote on YouTube? Is it your overall company, a brand, or an individual product or service? You need to identify this upfront because you’ll use different methods to promote different aspects of your business.
And, remember, you’re not always promoting a product. That is, your product might be only the means to an end. For example, you might be selling bookcases, but what you’re actually promoting is a superior system for displaying your customers’ libraries of books. Or maybe you’re selling door locks; what you’re promoting are the security and peace of mind that come from a superior lock solution.
In other words, you’re promoting a solution, not a product or service. Your product or service is merely a means to accomplish that solution.
Or maybe you’re not promoting anything at all. That is, you might be using YouTube in a support role to provide customer support or technical support; that’s much different from using YouTube to sell products or services. It’s also possible that you use YouTube for strictly internal purposes, to support your employee base or for employee training. Again, how you intend to use YouTube will determine the types of videos you create.
What Is Your Message?
Assuming that you use YouTube to promote your company, brand, or product/service, what message is it that you want to impart? Marketing is about more than just offering a product for sale; it’s also about creating and conveying a company/brand/product image—and that image is conveyed as part of a cohesive marketing message.
Take, for example, the classic example of low-end versus high-end image. If you sell a commodity product on price, the image you convey must resonate with a price-sensitive audience. On the other hand, if you offer a high-end product to a brand-savvy audience, you need to convey a classier image; it’s not about price, it’s about appearance.
Beyond simple image, your YouTube videos need to carry the same or similar message that you use in your other advertising media. This message is critical to everything you do in your marketing efforts; it should grab your customers’ attention, tell them how you can solve their problems/meet their needs, and convince them that you offer the best of all available solutions.
That last point bears reinforcement. Not only should you tell potential customers what it is you’re offering, but you also must tell them what it is about your company/brand/product that differentiates you from your competitors. Answer the unspoken question, “why us?”—or you risk losing the sale to a better-defined competitor. Emphasize what makes you different and what makes you better. You are selling yourself, after all.
In doing this, however, you should never forget that your message is about the customer, not about you. The biggest mistake that companies make is to communicate “what we do” instead of “what we do for you.” Customers want to hear what’s in it for them, not what’s in it for you.
In addition, you must present your message in terms of benefits rather than features. Never describe the 22 function buttons on your new electronic gizmo; instead, describe how each button solves a particular customer want/need. Instead of saying that your gizmo has memory recall, say that “memory recall lets you remember key contacts at the touch of a single button.” Again, phrase your message in terms of what you do for the customer—not in terms of what you or your product does.
How Does YouTube Fit Within Your Overall Marketing Mix?
As I said at the outset of this chapter, this is all Marketing 101 stuff—customer, message, and so on. What’s different, in the YouTube age, is that you have this new medium in which to reach the customer and impart your message. How, then, should YouTube fit within the rest of your marketing mix?
A company’s marketing mix today looks a whole lot different from the marketing mix of a generation ago. Go back a decade or two and you had a limited number of media to use: newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and direct mail. All those media are still around, and still important, but now you have a new family of media built around that channel that we call the Internet.
What new media am I talking about? Here’s a short list:
• Websites
• Search engines
• Blogs
• Social networks (such as Facebook and MySpace)
• Photo-sharing sites (Flickr and so on)
• Video-sharing sites (YouTube and its competitors)
This book isn’t about all those other Internet-related media, just YouTube. Still, you need to consider all aspects of online marketing when fitting YouTube into your marketing plans. Does your YouTube marketing stand alone, or is it part of a larger campaign that includes seeded blog postings, banner website ads, pay-per-click search engine ads, targeted emails, and viral campaigns on the key social networks? This should all be determined up front.
In addition, YouTube’s place alongside the traditional marketing media should also be determined. Do you use YouTube merely as another channel for your television commercials, or does it expand on your television advertising with additional spots, alternative takes, expanded scenarios, and the like? Does YouTube merely provide more exposure for your existing campaign, or does it change things up to fine-tune your message to the slightly younger, more interactive YouTube audience?
For example, let’s say you have an established campaign that uses the traditional media of print and television. The easiest approach is simply to repurpose your television ads to YouTube, posting your 30-second TV commercials to the YouTube site.
This is a simple approach, and it might be a good one—if your commercials are compelling enough to attract YouTube viewers. But, let’s face it, when given the choice of watching a million other entertaining and informative videos, why would YouTube viewers choose to spend 30 seconds of their valuable time to watch the same commercial they’ve seen a dozen times on TV? Again, if the commercial is compelling enough, this might work. But for most advertisers that approach, although inexpensive and easy to execute, won’t be successful.
A better approach might be to take your existing television commercial and expand it for the YouTube audience. Maybe offer an “uncut” or “uncensored” version or shoot a new commercial that starts up where the first one left off. Or maybe use YouTube as a channel for similar executions that you didn’t use on television. Something to extend or expand your existing campaign, not just replicate it online.
You can also use your existing campaign as the jumping off point for something new and creative. For example, some companies have created an initial video and then encouraged viewers to produce their own variations. You can even do it in the form of a contest: Make your own YouTube video promoting our product, and the winner gets a valuable prize. Use your imagination and take advantage of the user interaction that YouTube encourages.
Finally, you can move beyond your existing campaign and create something totally new for YouTube. Play to the differences inherent in the YouTube medium; create a video campaign that exploits what’s new and unique about YouTube. Just make sure your YouTube-specific activity hews to the same overall message you use in the rest of your marketing.
Whichever approach you adopt, make the choice based on your particular circumstances. You can repurpose your existing marketing materials for YouTube; you can extend them with the YouTube medium and audience in mind; or you can create something completely new for the YouTube channel. There’s no one right way to proceed. In fact, you might choose different approaches for different campaigns over time.
How Will You Measure the Results of Your YouTube Videos?
Creating a video and posting it on YouTube is just part of the process. How do you measure the success of that video?
The first key to measuring success is to determine what kind of response you wanted. Did you design the video to generate direct sales, either via your website or 800-number? Did you design the video to drive traffic to your website? Did you design the video to enhance or reinforce your company or brand image? Or did you design the video to reduce customer or technical support costs?
This is key: To measure the success of your YouTube video, you have to first determine what it is you hope to achieve. Then, and only then, can you measure the results:
• If your goal is to generate sales, measure sales. Include your website’s URL and 800-number in the video, along with a promotion or order code, and then track sales that include that code.
• If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, measure your traffic pre- and post-YouTube video. Use site analytics to determine where site traffic originates from; specifically track the traffic that came directly from the YouTube site.
• If your goal is to build your brand image, measurement is more difficult. You need to conduct some sort of market research after your YouTube campaign has had a chance to do its thing and ask customers what they think of your brand—and where they heard about it.
• If your goal is to reduce customer or technical support costs, measure the number of support requests before and after uploading the YouTube video. The more effective the video, the fewer the subsequent calls for support.
Of course, another way to measure your video’s success is to count the number of views it achieves on YouTube. This, however, is a false measurement. Just because many people view your video doesn’t mean that it has accomplished the goals you set out to achieve. A video with 100,000 views is nice, but it means nothing if you wanted to boost your sales and it didn’t do that. Entertaining YouTube viewers is one thing but generating sales (or establishing brand image or whatever) is quite another.
What Type of Video Content Is Best for Your Goals?
What type of video should you produce for YouTube? More immediately, what type of video can you produce?
You have a number of choices to make when determining what type of videos to produce for you YouTube. It’s not a one-size-fits-all situation; what works for one company might bomb completely for another. In fact, what works today might not be what you need to do tomorrow. And, of course, you’re not limited to a single approach; many companies employ two or more different types of videos, each designed to achieve its own specific goal.
With that in mind, let’s look at the most common types of videos that companies incorporate into their online marketing mixes.
Repurposed Commercials
Many companies think that the best way to use YouTube is as an alternative distribution channel for their existing television commercials. Their YouTube content consists of repurposed commercials—the same 30-second spots they run on television.
This might be an appropriate strategy—if your TV spots are uniquely entertaining. To be honest, however, this is a losing strategy for most firms; YouTube viewers tend to expect something new and different than the same commercials they see on TV.
In fact, some companies have experienced the ire of the YouTube community for unimaginatively commercializing the site in this manner. You win the support of the community by doing something new and innovative; you lose their support when you seemingly don’t put in the effort or treat YouTube as just another type of television station—which it most decidedly is not.
Tip |
In my opinion, YouTube is not the place to recycle your company’s commercials. Users will not go out of the way to view something online that they try to avoid otherwise in the real world. Unless you have a clever, Super Bowl–worthy commercial that people want to view again and again, keep your ads to yourself and don’t upload them to YouTube. |
That said, if you have no budget for new production and you do have a unique commercial message, you might want to try uploading your existing commercials to the YouTube site. Know, however, that what works on the big TV screen often works less well in the small YouTube video window.
For example, it’s important to note that most YouTubers view videos in a 320×240 pixel window. That’s pretty small when compared to the 640×480 resolution of a 25” standard definition television screen, or the 1920×1080 resolution of a 42” or larger high definition TV. All the niggling details you can see on a bigger TV turn miniscule when viewed in a web browser. This fact alone might cause you to reshoot a busy television commercial for the smaller YouTube screen; at the very least, you want to decrease the resolution before uploading the video.
Note |
Learn more about optimizing your videos for the YouTube audience in Chapter 4,“Understanding Audio/Video Technology.” |
Infomercials
Let’s move beyond repurposed material into new content created expressly for the YouTube site. (Although you can, of course, also display your YouTube videos on your own website or blog.) When you create videos just for YouTube, you can choose from among several different approaches you can employ.
One popular approach is to create the YouTube equivalent of an infomercial. That is, you create a video that purports to convey some type of information but, in reality, exists to subtly plug your product or brand.
Let’s say that you offer gift baskets for sale. You create a short video for YouTube about how to make gift baskets—something that would be of interest to anyone in the market for them. You prominently display your web page address and phone number within the video and in the descriptive text that accompanies the video on the YouTube site. Because the video has some informational content (the how-to information), it attracts viewers, and a certain percentage of them will follow through to purchase the gift baskets you have for sale.
Or maybe you’re a business consultant and you want to promote your consulting services. To demonstrate what you have to offer potential clients, you create and upload some sort of short video—a motivational lecture, perhaps, or a slideshow about specific business practices, or something similar. You use the video to establish your expert status and then display your email address or web page address to solicit business for your consulting services.
Or maybe you have a full-length DVD for sale. You excerpt a portion of the DVD and upload it to YouTube, with graphics before and after (and maybe even during) the video detailing how the full-length DVD can be ordered.
Likewise if you’re a musician with CDs to sell, an author with books to sell, an artist with paintings or other artwork to sell, or a craftsman with various crafts and such to sell. The musician might create a music video to promote his CDs; the author might read an excerpt from her book; the artist might produce a photo slideshow of her work; and the craftsman might upload a short video walk-through of pieces he has for sale. Make sure you include details for how the additional product can be ordered and let your placement on YouTube do the promotion for you.
Here’s an example of an effective infomercial approach. Viator Travel (www.youtube.com/user/ViatorTravel) offers tours of more than 400 destinations worldwide. The company created a series of informative and entertaining videos about its top destinations and uploaded those videos to YouTube. Interested people can view the videos and then contact the firm to schedule a vacation. It’s quite synergistic.
Then there’s John Pullum (www.youtube.com/user/Hypnotions), a hypnotist and mind reader who provides corporate entertainment and motivational speeches. He’s uploaded videos of several of his appearances to YouTube; they’re both entertaining and informational in regard to the services that he has to offer. Any viewers who like what they see can then go to his website to learn more or arrange an engagement.
The key is to create a video that people actually want to watch. That means something informative, useful, or entertaining. It can’t be a straight commercial because people don’t like to watch commercials. It has to provide value to the viewer.
After you hook the viewers, you lead them back to your website where your goods or services are for sale. It’s a two-step process: Watch the video and then go to the website to learn more or buy something. If your video is interesting enough, viewers will make the trip to your website to close the deal.
Instructional Videos
Similar to the infomercial is the instructional or how-to video. In this type of video, you create something truly useful for your target customer and then drive business by direct link from the instructional video.
Let’s say, for example, that you sell appliance parts. You create a series of videos showing, in step-by-step fashion, how to perform various types of repairs: changing the drive belt in a dryer, cleaning the burner assemblies in a gas range, and so on. Each video exists unto itself, with the sole goal of providing practical information to the viewer. Of course, you include your website address and 800-number at the start and end of each video and suggest that viewers can find additional information (and the parts they need) on your website. You help the viewers and they (eventually) buy something from you.
Product Presentations and Demonstrations
You can also use YouTube for more obvious selling efforts, the most common of which is the product presentation or demonstration. Here is where you use the video medium to show customers a particular product, in the kind of detail you just can’t do in print or on a web page.
Many products are good candidates for video demonstrations—especially mobile phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, and other difficult-to-use electronic gadgets. Automobiles also benefit from video presentation because there’s a lot to see there. In fact, any item that’s not quickly or easily understood, or that has a bevy of sophisticated features, is a good candidate for a YouTube video demonstration.
Real Estate Walk-Throughs
A specific subset of the product demonstration is the real estate walk-through video. Today, most realtors take digital photographs of the houses they list, and potential buyers view those photos on the realtor’s website. But there’s nothing stopping you from using a camcorder to produce a video tour of the house, editing the tour into a short video, and posting the video on YouTube. You can then direct potential buyers to the walk-through video on the YouTube website or embed the YouTube video on your website so that visitors can view the video there. It’s a great enhancement to a realtor’s selling services, and it doesn’t cost you a dime (beyond the cost of shooting the video, of course).
Customer Testimonials
You can also use YouTube to promote your company or reinforce a buyer’s decision. To that end, the time-honored approach of using testimonials from existing customers is a viable one. Send a video crew out to the customer’s location, or invite him or her to your office, and let the camera roll. Film the customer talking about her experience with your company in her own words, and you have an effective plug for who you are and what you do.
Company Introductions
For that matter, you can use YouTube to introduce your company to your customers. This could be in the form of a short brand-building video or a video welcome from the company president—even a video tour of your offices or factory. This is especially beneficial for companies that employ innovative production techniques or create especially interesting products.
Expert Presentations
If your business is a leader in its category, or if you are an industry expert, you can establish and exploit that expertise via a series of YouTube videos. All it takes is a video camera or webcam pointed at you behind a desk; you then spend three or four minutes talking about a particular topic or issue of interest. If you truly know what you’re talking about, your video can help to establish your professional credentials and burnish your company’s image.
Business Video Blogs
This leads us to the topic of video blogs, or vlogs. A vlog is like a normal text-based blog, except that it’s spoken and put on video. You or someone from your company sits in front of a webcam or video camera and expounds on the issues of the day. Perhaps multiple vloggers participate so that you present a variety of faces to the viewing public. In any case, you use the video blog as you would a normal blog: to comment on contemporary issues and put a human face on your company.
Executive Speeches
If your company likes to communicate regularly to its employees, YouTube presents a better way to do so. Instead of sending a soulless memo to the worker bees or trying to gather all your employees at a single location, simply record your company executives on video and post those videos on YouTube. Create a private channel just for your company’s employees, and they can receive the executive’s message at any time, on their own computers. It’s more efficient than a company meeting and more personal than a memo.
Company Seminars and Presentations
Along the same line, you can use YouTube to bring all your company’s employees into seminars and presentations that might otherwise be limited to a select few. You might accomplish this by recording a meeting or seminar with one or more video cameras, or by uploading PowerPoint presentations in a video format with audio annotations. Again, this works best via a private company channel that authorized employees can view at their discretion.
Tip |
To convert PowerPoint presentations to video with audio accompaniment, use a software program called Camtasia (www.techsmith.com). |
User or Employee Submissions
Of course, you don’t have to personally create all the videos you post to YouTube. There’s a wealth of talent outside your company’s marketing department, in the form of other employees, customers, and just interested individuals.
You might, for example, solicit videos from your company’s employee base. Run a contest, pay for participation, or just present the endeavor as a fun exercise, but let your coworkers express their creativity in ways that are hopefully suitable for YouTube broadcast.
The same goes with your customers, who have their own ways of showing brand or company loyalty. Ask for testimonials, as discussed previously, or open it up to more fully produced submissions. As with employee videos, you can roll the whole thing up into a contest, which serves as another form of promotion for your company.
Humorous Spots
Finally, don’t fall into the trap of taking yourself too seriously. Some of the most popular videos on YouTube are humorous ones; the funnier the video, the likely it is to gain a large audience and go viral. It’s okay to make fun of your company, your product, or yourself, or just to treat the topic in an entertaining fashion. YouTubers like to be entertained, and they’ll tolerate a promotional message if it’s a funny one.