YouTube—Are You There Yet?

There may be a lot of buzz about those funny viral videos on YouTube, but did you know video sharing is also great for B2B marketing? If you haven’t started using YouTube in your online marketing strategy, there’s a whole new audience waiting. Here’s how to maximize your online presence with YouTube video sharing.

The Audience
Did you know that twenty hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute?  Consumers demand information quickly these days, and that includes business owners. Their lean budgets and tight schedules require them to find helpful information they can digest quickly.

Today’s Web-savvy public devours YouTube videos, comments on them and helps them “go viral” without a big financial investment from video producers. YouTube’s simple video upload process and enormous global audience make it the perfect place to inform consumers about your solutions.

With a B2B audience dominated by adults over age 35, you can tailor your video segments to answer serious questions your target audience faces. Here are some ideas for maximizing your online marketing with YouTube videos.

The Strategy
Just about anyone with a good quality camcorder and video editing software can create an interesting YouTube video. If your video is simply someone speaking about a topic, a webcam can also work.

When you’re ready to get started, create a YouTube user profile and be sure to link back to your websites and blogs. You’ll also want to tag your videos with the appropriate keywords so they’ll appear in search results.

There are several ways smart marketers are using YouTube to increase sales.
1.    Subscribe to YouTube’s advertising services and take advantage of sponsored videos, YouTube’s Brand Channel and formal video ad campaigns to reach more customers.
2.    Create “interactive” video opportunities such as video contests based on your products. These can be advertised on your website, blogs and other marketing channels.
3.    Create original content that’s useful and interesting to your target market. These aren’t ads, they’re video segments showing how something is done or discussing topics relevant to your industry. They can even be funny vignettes that sympathize with problems people might be facing. The key is to make them easy to watch (in the right video format for YouTube) and interesting enough to cause viewers to comment on them.
4.    Sharpening video production skills and content increases the chance your video segments will be featured on the YouTube search results and home page. Pay attention to viewer comments so you can shift with your audience.

YouTube represents a tremendous B2B marketing opportunity. Learn to create video content that captures your market’s interest. Start small with a free YouTube membership if your marketing budget is strained.

Track what viewers are watching by using the free YouTube Insight tracking tools. Experiment with topics, backgrounds and styles until you find what your target audience responds to best. With a little creativity and attention to viewer preferences, you could be the next YouTube marketing success.

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