YouTube as a marketing channel

In recent years, YouTube has grown into a widely exploited and, in terms of targeting opportunities, an effective marketing channel for companies of different sizes. Channel popularity is explained, for example, by the fact that the service has 1.9 billion active users per month and the average mobile session on YouTube lasts more than 40 minutes. YouTube’s superiority is also reflected in the fact that YouTube videos are consumed more than Facebook and Netflix videos combined.

YouTube’s role in digital marketing as a whole

When you think about your sales funnel, YouTube does not work on its own. However, along with other advertising, it can increase conversion rates significantly. Therefore, careful planning of how the video supports other marketing or social media activities is paramount. We are happy to help with this, together with our partner Rulla Media.

If you are going to use YouTube as a marketing channel, know your audience, provide regular high-quality content that benefits them, and align it correctly. Also, be sure to redirect them from your video back with a call-to-action that suits your website. While it is a good idea to take advantage of the same video theme at the same time on both Facebook and YouTube, there are many differences between these promotional video formats which should be taken into account when producing videos (most importantly audio, aspect ratio, and working video length).

YouTube is also important for search engine visibility

YouTube is the world’s second most popular website in the world, and according to several ratings, also the second largest search engine, so take advantage of the fact that Google is increasingly including relevant video results in Google searches. As a result, high-quality and regular video production also helps your company’s search engine visibility.

Because the multi-service purchase process can be long and often starts with Google for a problem or solution, such as “how to change banks,” it is helpful for your company to have high-quality video content produced for the most common questions from your customers. It is also a good idea to optimize your video with Google and YouTube search results in mind.

Advertising on YouTube

There are several different ways to do YouTube advertising. A commonly used advertising format on YouTube is a skipping video ad, which is usually between 15 and 35 seconds long, and can be skipped at the 5-second mark. For other ad formats, non-skippable video ads, or video ads that appear in YouTube search results.

In addition to the traditional ad formats offered by YouTube, producing video content together with an active tuber can be a viable option. YouTube is no longer just a video service for teens, people over 35 are the fastest growing user base, which is also reflected in commercial collaborative videos. As a result, on YouTube, you can come across adult tubers who have ended up in a commercial partnership, such as Shimano, Finavia or, for example, a company for forest machines.

It is also worth remembering that with banners on Google’s Display network, you can also cover YouTube placements, such as those that appear at the top of the list of recommended videos or at the bottom of that video that you are playing.

YouTube as a marketing channel

Simply producing a video and choosing the right YouTube ad format will not make a successful campaign. YouTube is one channel among others, so start by drawing up content and a publishing plan to answer questions: what, to whom, when and where.

Before you start advertising on YouTube, think about what your concrete goals are for video advertising and with which metrics you measure the success of advertising. To get the most out of video advertising, the broader goals of advertising need to be clear and work with video advertising.

Why does it make sense to advertise on YouTube? The video is simply much more illustrative than textual content. For example, it is much more illustrative to describe restaurant services – cooking, serving and the entire restaurant environment in a video than with text. For example, business reference insurance is also easier with video than with text.

Different videos are suitable for different purposes. If, for example, there is room for improvement in building trust, customer reference videos are a concrete help. In a situation where justifying the price of a quality product needs help, or you want to speed up the buying process, a quality product video will help. If your business’s problem is that customers do not properly understand you’re your service does and how it solves their problems, services demonstration videos will help in a situation like this.

Target YouTube advertising

Targeting YouTube advertising is remarkably effective, especially when compared to TV advertising. On YouTube, videos can be directed to a specific cold audience, especially based on the user’s interests (based on custom or Google’s completed audience ratings), but also based on, for example, the user’s location, age, or a combination of these. Video ads can also be targeted to, for example, a YouTube channel or even an individual video – as well as certain channels can be excluded from targeting.

In a broader campaign, you can tell a story in more of your videos and take advantage of YouTube video ad series. This ad format accurately specifies that the viewer will not be shown another video ad until they have watched the first one and so on until the entire series is viewed.

You can also use YouTube user data for Google Display advertising, for example, by targeting specific ads only to those who have watched a particular video in its entirety.

On the remarketing side, YouTube advertising is a really effective tool when used correctly. For example, you can target a specific video to people who have performed a micro conversion on your site or have been interested in a specific product or product category. Also, be sure to specify how many times and how long the user will see your ad.

What to consider for YouTube advertising

Most important things to consider YouTube advertising has regularity and quality. To differentiate yourself from your competitors, these are minimum requirements. Also, don’t use a video that’s so artistic or eye-catching that your product is put on the back burner. Thirdly, I would make distribution at least as important. If you visit a random Finnish company’s YouTube channel, you are likely to come across the fact that the company has produced a lot of and regular video footage, but you can tell from the views that the distribution has been minimal. When paying for video production, you should also invest in video distribution, especially since YouTube advertising is affordable and you only pay for actual views.

YouTube and other marketing channels

With YouTube advertising alone, it is practically very difficult to make a trade. However, YouTube advertising strongly supports other marketing channels. For example, advertisers who take advantage of YouTube video ads and search network advertising at the same time have a in- 3% higher conversion rate than advertisers who take advantage of search network advertising only. Such a large difference in conversion rate already has a clear impact on the business. So multi-channel is worth it.

If you want to ask more about targeting and measuring video advertising, or if you want to plan and map your company’s goals for video production, contact us.