Marketing on Youtube

Why YouTube Has Huge Potential for Your Marketing

Today’s use of the Web involves a number of different platforms, many of which are used regularly as a kind of replacement for, or in addition to search engines. These include the social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter which have a tendency to be used by their subscribers on a daily basis whether via desktop or via mobile devices. The amount of different ways of presenting content has also increased, and because of and in response to this search engines have modified their own technology and algorithms in order to give their users access to these different content types via the search engine results pages (SERPS).

Search engines such as Google have realised the potential of these other platforms and channels in terms of their huge popularity and reach. For example, Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion, and Microsoft bought a 1.6% share of Facebook in 2007 for $240 million. Where a medium offers huge reach as well as the ability to target, and where there are ‘active’ users and the opportunity for interactivity, there is a serious marketing opportunity. So what are just some of the main reasons why YouTube offers such potential for marketing to big and small organisations as well as individuals?

Huge Number of Users
It is estimated that YouTube has approximately 60 million unique viewers every month. Not only do people arrive at the site to view the content. Many of the users are contributors and most recent estimates suggest that there is now 35 hours worth of video uploaded to You Tube every single minute! Alexa currently puts YouTube in 3rd position (4th in the U.S) in the list of the most trafficked websites behind Google and Facebook.

Huge Reach
YouTube is used globally, and a sizeable portion of users are in the ‘developing’ Asian markets.

Huge Scope
Scope with the Message
Using YouTube to communicate with target audiences offers huge scope in the type of messages which can be conveyed because YouTube offers a large amount of freedom to contributors. Messages can be anything e.g. factual / educational, practical, related to individual products and services / offers etc.

Scope with the Medium
There is huge scope in how the messages can be presented in video form e.g. slides, cartoons, realistic, documentaries, interviews, how-to guides, advertorials etc.

Scope Geographically
YouTube can be used to communicate in at least 18 languages which means you can at least be understood by your target market wherever they are.

Huge Flexibility and Leverage
There are a number of ways in which videos you’ve submitted to YouTube can benefit from even greater leverage online. For example, comments can be collected, videos can be easily inserted into web pages, and videos can be shared e.g. by email addresses, with friends associated with your account, and via social networks (Digg, Facebook, MySpace etc.).

Targeting and Measuring
Although YouTube has a large number of users who are broadly in the ‘Generation Y’ marketing category (those born approximately from the end of the 1970s through to the beginning of the 2000s) targeting is possible in a number of ways. Targeting can take place for example by setting up different channels and by creating different videos relating to different products, services, and target audiences. Ratings and numbers of views of videos can be measured and recorded, and videos can be linked incorporated in many different marketing strategies and tactics.

Potentially High ROI
Submitting videos to YouTube is free. Since the cost of making the video can be really very low in real terms and relative making other types of corporate videos or producing other promotional media, clever use YouTube and good optimisation can mean that the ROI is good.