Making a good YouTube video is a solid investment in your business. If it’s done right it will drive qualified traffic and leads into your business. The YouTube video becomes like having an employee on autopilot, out there selling for you 24 hours a day. And if the content is good, it’s an investment that will pay dividends for years to come. So, keep watching while I give you the formula for how to promote your business on YouTube.
Why promote your business on YouTube?
A lot of people don’t fully get the idea that YouTube is basically just a very big search engine. It’s not just a channel. Or an alternative to television. Or a repository of fine cat videos.
YouTube is where people go, second only to Google, to get educated, solve problems, and find information.
What attracts a lot of people to YouTube as a search engine is that it’s search results are perceived as being more 3-dimensional than Google. It delivers results with video, audio and images. It’s more engaging and immersive.
Broadly speaking, there are basically three types of videos on YouTube: Funny, Weird and Useful. If you’re in business, you’re probably going to aim to make videos that fit into the ‘useful’ category. If you teach people how to do something useful, you will earn their attention.
So what should you be making videos about? Well, you need to identify what problems or challenges your ideal customer has, and how you can help solve them.
Use keywords to find your ideal customer
What are the keywords or phrases that your ideal customer is searching for?
An easy way to do this is to use the YouTube search tool. When you start typing in the name of a video, YouTube will provide you with suggestive search terms. Use this as a guide to choosing the right name for your video. So, for instance, when I start typing in “how to pro mote your business…” YouTube gives me the ideal title for this video. Which is exactly what I’ll call it.
Your next step is to create valuable content around your keywords. And there are lots of creative and engaging ways of doing this on YouTube.
For my YouTube videos, I use the face-to-camera video technique. It’s a popular format on YouTube because it’s a very direct way of delivering important information. And it feels like a conversation, so it’s quite easy to watch.
The most important thing about your video is to make valuable content rather than a sales pitch. YouTube is not the place to sell your products. People will not respond well to this. Just focus on providing useful information, and then use an annotation or call to action to drive your audience back to your website.
What is a “Call to Action”?
You use a call to action to drive your viewers to act and take a particular, defined step once they’ve finished watching the video. This brings an audience from someone else’s web property, in this case YouTube, to your own web property. And this then allows you to deepen the relationship with the viewer, enable them to learn more about your business, and become aware of your products and services.
Common calls to action:
The most common calls to action are:
- Ask them to like the video
- Ask them to subscribe to your channel
- Ask them to share the video with their friends.
- Ask them to add comments to the video
- And, of course, drive them back to your website or blog
How to drive more viewers back to your website
Driving viewers back to your own website is, in most cases, the main action that you want them to take. People do a search on particular keywords to learn something or solve a problem. For example, they might do a search on ‘how to interview someone on video’. The video comes up and within the video, your call to action drives them to your website.
The important thing about the traffic coming from YouTube is that it is highly qualified. People have already shown a strong interest in your content, because they’ve watched your video.
Your video has helped develop the relationship prior to people coming to your website. Once they come to your website, you then have the opportunity to make them an offer.
But normally you would try to capture their email address so you can send them relevant information to keep building the relationship before making a sales offer. That way, you establish credibility and trust first.
Why should you capture emails?
If you have a simple and cheap product that solves a problem then you can direct people immediately to a sales page. Its a no brainer. People are either ready to purchase or they’re not. But if you’re selling a higher priced item, or something more complex that requires your audience to be more persuaded about the value of the product, or if you’re market needs more warming up before they buy, then the best thing to do is to capture their contact information. And you can do this on your website.
Perhaps you have a signup form on the home page. Or on your blog. Or you might use what’s called a lead capture or squeeze page. Which is designed around capturing email addresses.
So why should people give you their email address? Usually its because you offer them something valuable and relevant; e.g. a white paper, or a how-to-guide, or a series of email or video tips around the reason that brought them to the site in the first place. And so, as your audience consumes your content, it deepens the relationship, helps position you as the expert, and provides evidence, over time, as to why you are the person or company to help solve their challenge.
If you want to create a video to promote your business on YouTube, please contact me at Dream Engine. I’d love to help.
Ryan Spanger is one of Melbourne’s most respected and sought-after video production professionals. Ryan founded Dream Engine in 2002, and specialises in helping medium to large corporates, government departments, and the non-profit sector to connect with their audience more effectively by using video.
