Youtube Marketing Tips
What is YouTube?
YouTube (youtube.com) is essentially a video sharing website, and works like a search engine, allowing free searches for videos, TV clips, music videos, and similar media using keywords. Uploading videos to YouTube is predominantly undertaken by individuals in their own capacity, for business or other purposes, and by some corporations and companies via partnership agreements e.g. CBS and UMG. The video sharing technology uses Adobe Flash which allows the videos to be displayed without requiring many of the different plug-ins that you would normally need to view media created in other formats. Videos / clips / music can be successfully uploaded in a number of different formats (depending on what they’ve been created / recorded in) e.g. The content of YouTube could most certainly be describe as User Generated Content (UGC) or User Created Content (UCC) for obvious reasons, and this broadly conforms to a general trend toward a change in communication patterns, the wider use of social media, and social networking.
Background
YouTube, originally developed as venture-funded start-up by ex PayPal employees, has grown to the point that it was purchased by Google acquired it for $1.65 billion of its stock in 2006. Although the vast majority of YouTube’s content comes from the U.S., it is a worldwide phenomenon. To gauge the potential marketing power of YouTube in terms of popularity, it accounts for nearly half (market share) of the online video provision in the U.S., and it is estimated that not only were 6 billion videos viewed on the website in January this year, but statistically speaking, 20 hours of new videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute!
The Reach and Popularity
The fact that you don’t need to be registered or pay to view the videos, and all you need is a connection to the Internet and a means of viewing the website e.g. typically a computer or mobile device, makes the reach of the website enormous in a global sense. The reach has been and is being extended still further with YouTube being made available on Apple products / services (Apple TV, iPhone), and YouTube for TV distributed through set top boxes, PlayStation and Wii.
Essentially you can upload material in minutes, and view / listen to material in seconds, so it’s fast whether you’re a user, contributor, or both. In marketing terms, you can reach your audience in large numbers, in short space of time. Access to, knowledge, understanding and use of an ever-increasing amount of sophisticated technology as part of our daily lives in the developed world have most certainly contributed to the exponential growth of YouTube. For example, in the UK not only are we watched daily by cameras in the street for traffic control, policing, etc, but the average mobile phone contains a ‘good’ quality digital camera. This means that not only has the amount of things that are ‘filmed’ and recorded increased dramatically through sheer weight of numbers of cameras and people with cameras out there, but it has made it more likely that ‘interesting’ or newsworthy and engaging things are more likely to be captured on film. The fact that mobile devices can access the web, and can distribute their recorded / filmed material via the phone network / via the Web accessed through the phone, gives us each the potential to create current, topical, reasonable quality messages that have implications for and uses in marketing as well as for fun leisure and other reasons. In a marketing sense, we are not so much limited by budget, but more by our imagination, and being in the right place, at the right time with the right idea.
The Target Audience
Taking a broad look at YouTube over time, it is something that was first adopted by young adults, then senior citizens, and then teenagers. This seems an unusual pattern considering the large number of ‘younger’ web users, music and TV consumers, and the adopting patterns for these types of media. Adults have basically fuelled the huge growth of YouTube. One factor preventing some young people from using YouTube (in the UK) as much as they could is the fact that it’s use is banned in many schools due to it’s highly publicised misuse for e.g. bullying videos, racist content in some videos.
Geographically and culturally, YouTube (as previously mentioned) is rooted in the U.S. where most of its users and contributors are based. The democratic nature of the website and how it is contributed to and used have brought it praise in the western world where the idea of ‘democracy’ is highly valued. For example, YouTube received the George Foster Peabody Award in 2008 for its services to democracy. Conversely, in countries where our cultural views of western democracy, our politics and views of other political situations in the world, and our religious views and treatment of religious matters are not always shared, access to YouTube has been banned and blocked at various times e.g. China, Thailand, Turkey, Morocco, Iran and Pakistan. From a marketing standpoint, there will be obvious negative implication for using YouTube as a major part of marketing strategies and tactics if your target market or a large part of it is based in a geographic area where a ban is in place, is likely to be in place, or where users are highly restricted religiously, culturally, politically and technologically to YouTube (and the Web in general).
The search engine nature of YouTube – the typing in and selection of videos / clips / music / video blogs, using keywords - and sheer size of its user numbers means however that targeting segments, and niches is possible to a high degree.
YouTube and Marketing
The global market is a reality with YouTube. A well crafted, interesting, entertaining clip can travel the world virally, and can gain notoriety and further mileage in the mass channels in a very short space of time.
One of the great features of YouTube is that fact that YouTube videos don’t have to viewed on the YouTube website itself, thus multiplying the opportunities for people to see marketing messages posted on YouTube. When YouTube videos are displayed on response to a query, and a YouTube clip is selected by clicking on it, visitors are directed to a dedicated page for that clip. Next to the clip will be a string of ‘embed’ code. If this is pasted into e.g. the code of a web page, the YouTube video can then be displayed and played in that page.
Corporate, Business, and Marketing strategies rely on the cohesion and compatibility of the elements and relationships that are part of those strategies, and this inbuilt flexibility with YouTube conforms nicely to this model. With the move of many parts, and in some cases the whole of many businesses onto the web, and with a corresponding move away form traditional, paid-for advertising in other media e.g. print, YouTube can be a vitally important weapon in the fight for customers, sales, and customer retention.
Buyer Behaviour and YouTube
Broadly speaking, looking at Marketing communication models (e.g. AIDA), the use of YouTube clips in just YouTube, and / or leveraged by inclusion in web pages, are most likely to be effective in the middle to last part of the model, and beyond i.e. establishing greater ‘Interest’ and ‘Desire’ for products and services. Theoretically, as well as providing potential customers with the information and re-assurance they need to purchase, videos could also be used to reduce post purchase dissonance, and to provide post purchase information, support and care that could help to retain customers, and possibly contribute to the generation of testimonials, positive comments (next to YouTube clips) and valuable word-of-mouth supporting communication around the web.
The general roles therefore of YouTube videos in marketing of goods and services could be to inform, educate, demonstrate, allow ‘virtual sampling’, re-assure, convince, and provide a call to action.
YouTube clips can engage more of the senses than simple written / drawn communications, and thus can impart a lot more information in a short space of time, and have the potential to hold much more attention and interest in the viewer. Demonstration videos can overcome language barriers by not using talking, or by using aural translations and / or translated subtitling.
The use of humour and contrasting / shocking / involving / surprising images in YouTube clips can be much more exaggerated and have fewer boundaries than the use of the same things in heavily regulated mass media channels. YouTube is much more deliberately, actively viewed than passive mediums like TV.
Curiously, for example, by sending particularly funny YouTube clips to friends, colleagues on a regular basis, a person can enhance their own reputation and perceptions of their personality traits among their friends, and ‘bask in the reflected glory of the clips themselves’. This pairing and association of feelings and attitudes generated by visual images and sound in traditional mass media commercials with brands, products and services, is now something we all have the potential to use for ourselves and our businesses for little or no cost. Building of ‘smaller’ brands with ‘big’ brand techniques is now a reality.
YouTube Applications and Considerations
Registering with YouTube allows you to upload videos. Setting up your own channel on YouTube is a simple process that allows you to display other relevant videos you have posted in a group, thus setting up a clear identity, and a dedicated ‘corner’ of the web that your potential and existing customers can easily access all parts of.
The nature of the clip you post on YouTube will depend very much on its place in the sales and communication process. Whatever its place, giving plenty of good quality, informative content in the video is going to add value, increase the perception of value of you and your company in the mind of your target customers, and help to establish your ‘expert status’ in their minds. Everybody likes ‘free stuff’, especially when it’s actually useful. Establishing, value, and perceived expertise, can help to build trust, and increase the likelihood of a person contacting you with a serious enquiry or buying from you. For example, producing a series ‘top tips’, ‘how to’ videos, common problem identification and solution videos can help augment positive values attached to you, your company, your products and services in the mind of the video viewer.
Leverage your YouTube clips by including the embed code to them in your web pages i.e. allow visitors to your web pages to access them when they visit your site.
It is a basic assumption that marketing messages have a point i.e. a clear call to action needs to be shown. For this reason make sure that the content of your YouTube clips direct visitors to appropriate web pages / landing pages / conversion routes.
Leverage other products / services / YouTube clips / websites / businesses that you have by including information about them in YouTube clips.
Be inventive and engage the emotions of viewers. The competition for attention on YouTube is essentially as great as it is in the ‘real world’ and on the Web. To stand out, and get extra mileage from your clips, try to think creatively about presentation within clips. Give your clips greater perceived contrast and value.
Other Implications
If you are provider of goods and / or services, because of YouTube’s immediate and democratic nature, if your promises exceed or fall short of consumer expectations, you could find clips being submitted from product / service users – it can work both ways. Anybody with a mobile phone or digital camera in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time for you could spell a PR triumph or disaster for you – it can work both ways.
Summary
YouTube is a resource with huge potential reach, immediacy, and power. You
can harness that power to support all aspects of your marketing, drive relevant
visitors to your web pages, and improve the chances of conversion and customer
retention. Harnessing the power of YouTube for most businesses wouldn’t
necessarily require increased technical knowledge of any kind, or more importantly,
a huge budget. As with so many aspects of business and marketing, a little vision,
imagination, creativity, thought, time and effort can go a long way.
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