The great thing about advertising online is that you can inexpensively reach potential clients, create brand awareness, and have various channels at your disposal geared toward multiple audience segments. While many small businesses tend to take advantage of sites and platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram, one that gets overlooked sometimes is YouTube. As a small business, if you are not leveraging the extraordinary reach of YouTube, then you’re missing a huge opportunity. This article looks at some key ways to strategically implement YouTube into your overall digital and online marketing campaigns.
Benefits of Using YouTube for Small Business
First off, why should you use YouTube? Among some of the critical benefits of this platform are:
– YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. Meaning you get an extensive reach.
– YouTube is a visually driven platform. Studies have shown that people respond better to visual ads and promotions than they do simply written ones. Video, you might say, is indeed king.
– YouTube is free to use. You can easily create a channel and post content monthly, weekly, or even daily for free. This is important, especially for smaller businesses that may not have a big advertising budget.
– YouTube can help you generate backlinks. If a video performs exceptionally well, people may be inclined to link to it. This can only help your small business.
Six Tips for Using YouTube to Benefit Your Small Business
1. Create and then customize your channel. When visitors click on your account name, they will arrive at your track or your YouTube page. This is why you want to take the time to customize your channel by your brand. You can include your logo, relevant images, and a thematic color palette. It’s all about brand consistency, and YouTube can play into this.
2. Pay attention to video descriptions. Creating dynamic videos for your target audience is undoubtedly crucial. But you don’t want to overlook the video descriptions. Such descriptions need to be informative and concise and incorporate those keywords that people will most often use to find your business. SEO optimization when it comes to YouTube is essential.
3. Launch new products on YouTube. What better way to truly show potential customers what your product is all about than by creating a demonstration video and posting it on YouTube. Here is a cheap way to directly show people your product’s various facets and detailed benefits.
4. Use it for PR purposes. In other words, let’s say your business experiences a crisis, or you would like to address a more significant societal or cultural issue. YouTube could be an excellent platform for doing so. Videos that you post don’t necessarily have to be of the marketing variety. You can use YouTube to enhance your PR efforts. You can post public-driven messages. Get creative in terms of the content you develop for your YouTube channel.
5. Spend some time on your thumbnails. The thumbnail is the image that will appear when people search for videos. The thumbnail should indicate what the overall video is about, and at the same time, it needs to be eye-catching and thus entice people to click on it. There are a few different thumbnail creators available online. You might also consider hiring a YouTube specialist to maximize the value that you gain from any content posted.
6. Be sure and promote your YouTube channel. If you spend a great deal of time customizing the channel and then creating videos to post, yet you fail to promote your channel, who will see your efforts? The answer is no one. You might post about your YouTube channel on social media. You could integrate a link to your channel on your website. Any way you can think of, try and figure out how to spread the word about your small business’s new YouTube channel.
If you’re not currently using YouTube, it is time to start. And you don’t need to spend a ton of money creating videos. A simple iPhone video will suffice in the beginning. It’s about gaining exposure and getting your brand in front of people.
First Union Lending is Here to Help
If you are a small business looking to expand your marketing efforts, and you’re considering hiring a digital marketing expert, then we have a loan to help you do just this. Our loan programs are fast and flexible, and designed with small business owners in mind. We offer short-term loans, SBA loans, and merchant cash advances, among other financing types. Even if your credit score is not where it needs to be, we might still have a funding solution for you. All of our clients are unique, and therefore all of our clients get the special attention they deserve.Call today and let’s get started together.