When you think of social media advertising for your manufacturing, construction, or B2B company, you probably think of Facebook or LinkedIn. What about YouTube? Many neglect it because they think their ideal buyers aren’t there. Isn’t it all just a bunch of makeup tutorials?
Wrong! YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet. Your ideal buyers are absolutely on YouTube doing research for the services you provide.
Why Advertise on YouTube?
To build brand awareness, increase lead generation, and drive website traffic. YouTube even helps you increase the chance of your YouTube channel being found through organic search, and you can specifically target your desired audience.
Growing Your YouTube Organic Search Rank
It’s every company’s dream to be at the top in search rank. Since YouTube is a search engine you can use your video ads to grow your subscriber list. As more people subscribe to your channel, more people will be notified of any new video you post. This increases the views your video will get in the first 24 hours, which raises the video up on the search ranks and into more ‘related video’ searches.
If your content connects with enough people, it can show up in google search as well.
Reaching a New Audience
Trying to reach millennials? You should know that 70% of millennial YouTube users watch videos to learn how to do something new or do research. If you’re trying to reach a new audience, like many industrial businesses, YouTube is a good place to build a presence. Plus, you can target ads on YouTube based on a user’s perviously watched videos and their search history from YouTube and Google.
Pro-tip: Make sure you do some keyword research before you start targeting ads based on search history. It could save you time and keep you from chasing bad leads.
Video Is Highly Engaging Content
Everyone likes a good video. YouTube or even Netflix wouldn’t be a thing if it weren’t true. Almost one third of Internet users (1 billion people!) visit YouTube daily. Yeah, think about that – that’s about 1/7th (14%) of people on the entire planet, oh and this guy…
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Video is powerful and people watch it because it is engaging, accessible, and low barrier – all you have to do is press play.That’s why marketers say that the play button is the most clicked Call-To-Action. As many as 78% of marketers say that video gives them a good ROI. Even marketing automation tools, like HubSpot, have integrated video into their platforms.
With over 3 billion searches per month on YouTube, specific ad targeting, and valuable content, you can increase search rank, build brand awareness, and even generate leads. The only question left should be: How do I get started?
How to Get Started With YouTube Advertising
You don’t have to do all the work yourself. If you are excited about video and want to dive in but have no idea what to do, you can hire a digital marketing agency, a social ad agency, or even a freelancer who specializes in the targeting social ads.
If you do hire someone, make sure you still understand what running a YouTube ad campaign means. You will want to support any advertising you do with content on your YouTube channel and on your website.
Steps to Starting A YouTube Ad Campaign
A great resource to learn a lot about Youtube ad set up and management is from our good pal HubSpot.
HubSpot gives us a bit of a step-by-step overview:
- Creating and Branding a YouTube Channel
- Optimizing Your Videos for SEO
- Creating Videos for YouTube
- Building a YouTube Marketing Strategy
- Understanding YouTube Analytics
- Running a YouTube Advertising Campaign
Notice that actually running a YouTube ad campaign is the last step. You’ll want to create and brand your YouTube channel so that when people click through to your channel they know it’s you. You’ll want to build a solid base of video content on your channel and optimize them with descriptions, tags, and categories so that your viewers have more content to engage with once they hit your channel.
Before you start advertising, you’ll need to Create a marketing strategy, set SMART goals, and track your performance.
Overwhelmed? Even if you just make a few videos and post them to your YouTube channel for the next few quarters, you’ll still be impacting search rank with optimized content.
Your Next Steps
If you don’t have a YouTube channel, start by making one and optimizing it with branded cover & profile images and links to your website and other social media channels.
If you do have a nicely branded YouTube channel, start by optimizing the video content that you currently have and establish benchmark data for its performance. Then start building that YouTube Marketing Strategy.