YouTube Marketing: Your Ultimate guide for 2024

With more than 2.3 billion active users worldwide, YouTube has been clearly ruling the video entertainment space. The app is also the second largest search engine, standing right behind Google.

Such overwhelming exposure has made Youtube an effective tool for marketing, and various organizations have leveraged the video platform for their marketing campaigns, giving rise to the term ‘Youtube Marketing’.

Also, if you want to learn in-depth about social media marketing and how to leverage it for your business, do check out the convenient and flexible online digital marketing courses that impart industry-relevant knowledge and skills to ace the domain.

What is Youtube Marketing?

The practice of leveraging the Youtube platform to promote businesses and services is Youtube Marketing. The marketing technique can be in the form of organic traffic, ads, influencer marketing, etc.

If you are looking for a bullet-proof marketing plan for Youtube, then this is the article you must bookmark.

Steps to create a Youtube Marketing Plan from Scratch

Tip 1: Optimize your channel to attract followers
Tip 2: Leverage Youtube Ads for a bigger reach
Tip 3: Utilize Influencer Marketing
Tip 4: Leverage youtube shorts
Tip 5: Know your audience
Tip 6: Analyze your competition
Tip 7: Take tips from your favorite channels
Tip 8: Optimize your videos to rank higher
Tip 9: Regularly upload relevant videos
Tip 10: Analyze and Improvise

A detailed explanation of the 9 Tips for an effective Youtube Marketing plan

Tip 1: Optimize your videos to rank higher

Ok! Let’s get famous.

With thousands of channels and millions of videos already on the Youtube platform, the only way to get your video noticed is to optimize it based on the trend.

Youtube recommends content to its users based on how Google recommends search queries to its users. But, there is a big difference here, as Youtube also takes into account the watch history and personal preferences of every individual.

And that is why no two users are served with the same content on the homepage, and their search results will not be a 100% match.

How to optimize the videos?

Keyword Research: This activity helps in determining the words/ phrases that people have searched for the most. There are various tools available to perform this task.
Where to add them? You can add these keywords to the title, video description, and video tags.
Use timestamps: If you have a pretty long video, then provide timestamps to the users so that they can “Skip to the Good Part”. This activity will help in making the user watch the video rather than move on to the next.
Detailed description: Explain to audience A to Z about your video and what is discussed in the video. You can also add in website links, links to other social accounts, products/ services, etc.
Create an engaging thumbnail: The thumbnail plays a significant role in attracting users to watch your video. Make it engaging and creative that lures the viewer to click on it to watch your video.
Be responsive: Youtube is a community and social network. So, responding to user comments will show the users that you value them and their time.

Tip 2: Utilize Influencer Marketing on Youtube

As per hootsuite.com, 70% of viewers bought the product that was featured on Youtube. And that is the power of influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is nothing but a youtube creator with a large subscriber base advertising your product/ service through their channel and videos.

Although influencer marketing is an excellent option for marketing, there are a few aspects to check before forging a partnership with the creators.

Find a channel/ influencer who aligns with your brand and its value
Ensure the channel/creator produces high-quality content

If you want to know more about how to utilize this channel of marketing, check out this guide for influencer marketing

Tip 3: Leverage Youtube Ads for a larger reach

Till now, we have discussed everything related to the organic growth of a Youtube channel. If you feel that your organic growth is not as expected and want a wider reach, Youtube ads are your next best option.

Youtube gives you an option to select the type of ads you want to display and charges you accordingly. Running ads too requires a solid strategy, in the absence of which it is just going to be a waste of money.

Know exactly who you are targeting
Optimize the channel and its description
Before running ads, have at least 7 to 10 videos on your channel for visitors to know about your niche.

Types of Youtube Ads you can try out:

Skippable in-stream ads
Video discovery ads
Non-skippable in-stream ads
Non-video ads (The ones as banners and overlays)

In-depth details regarding Youtube Ads will be discussed in our upcoming blogs.

Tip 4: Leverage youtube shorts

For those of you who don’t know, Youtube Shorts is a youtube feature launched in September 2020 that rivals Instagram reels and Tiktok. The youtube shorts video durations ideally range from 15 seconds to 1 minute.

In late February of 2021, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced that videos on the India-based Shorts player receive 3.5 billion cumulative daily views.

With such a huge potential and reach, youtube shorts are being leveraged by marketers and users to cater to a wider audience.

Optimizing youtube shorts is similar to optimizing youtube videos. The most promising feature of shorts is that unlike Instagram Stories and Tiktok reels which deletes by default in 24 hours, it stays forever.

Tip 5: Know your audience

And now is where the real work begins! How to decide the video content?

For this, you have to determine two things:

Who your audience is
What they love watching on social media, especially Youtube

If you already have a channel running, then the Analytics tab in your Youtube Studio can give you insights about your audience and their preferences.

Also, by visiting your competitor channels, you will know which content is getting more reception from the audience and which is not.

Tip 6: Analyze your competition

The quick hack to grow faster on Youtube is to figure out what your competitors are doing. Some of the pointers that you have to analyze about your competitors are:

Number of subscribers
Views per video
Frequency of upload
Video Quality
Audience feedback in comments
Content topics they post about

And here are some questions for your self-analysis that can help you plan your strategy.

What made their videos popular among viewers?
How are they presenting themselves?
What’s their background and video setup?
What can you do to make your channel unique?
Content ideas I can extract from their channels

Your primary goal must be to grow your subscriber and audience base, and if you are a competitive rat like me, you will plan on crushing your competitor’s numbers.

Tip 7: Take tips from your favorite channels

Some channels are your favorite because of reasons like

Content
You find the presentation interesting
The video thumbnail is catchy
The channel art is creative
Their video VFX and edits just grab your attention and many more.

But, what has made you love them, can be a factor that can make your channel be preferred by others too. Hence, it is crucial to pinpoint what makes your favorite channels your FAVORITE!

Tip 8: Regularly upload relevant videos

That’s it. You are now ready to make your video live.

Youtube Studio has the option to either release the videos right away or schedule them for later, or even release them as a Premiere. You must also figure out the best date and time your audience will be online so that your video gets the best initial push while it is posted.

Tip 9: Optimize your channel to attract followers

Optimizing your video is not enough to attract the audience. You have to optimize your channel as well. The channel art, banner, and profile photo must reflect your brand and the context of your videos.

How to attract more subscribers?

Group your relevant videos under a playlist
Use a channel trailer to give the audience a hint of what your channel is about
Ask your audience to subscribe to your channel, like, comment, and share your video
Engage with your audience
Add subtitles and closed captions to your videos

Tip 10: Analyze and improvise

Feedback and improvement are a significant part of any marketing strategy. Analyze how the channel is performing frequently by checking the built-in reports available in the Youtube Studio. These built-in reports help in:

Knowing where the audience is coming from
Subscriber count and its activity
Views obtained per video/overall
Top videos during a specific period
Watch time per video
Impression for channel/video
Click-through rate, and many more

Tools for Youtube Marketing

Now that you know the tips and tricks for youtube marketing, let’s make your work easier. Yes, there are various tools available for youtube marketing that can help you perform your tasks faster and efficiently.

Here are 7 Incredibly powerful tools for youtube marketing

S.No	Tool Name	Key Features
1.	Tubebuddy	My personal favorite: It shows the prospective keywords, competitor keywords, performance, etc.
2.	VidIQ	Keyword research, competitor analysis, thumbnail generator, etc.
3.	Canva	Create beautiful thumbnails and posters.
4.	Buzzsumo	Provides trending topics to create your videos around
5.	Keywordtool.io	Provides the right keywords
6.	Hootsuite	Manage and schedule video releases effectively.
7.	Youtube Studio	In-house video analytics and management tool for YouTubers.

If you want to read about how an American company named Hasbro utilized the youtube content strategy to grow business, click on the link to redirect to the article.

And if you are just a beginner and want to start a Youtube channel afresh:

Youtube is part of Alphabet Inc., and you would require a Google account to sign in to Youtube.

Create a google account if you do not have one already
Use the new Gmail account or an already existing one to create the Youtube Account
Now, login to the Youtube account, and create a Brand Account and channel.

It is advisable to use a brand account to manage your youtube channel rather than using your account as the brand account will allow multiple users in your team/organization to manage and update the Youtube channel.

Once the channel is created, set up your:

About info
Channel Art
Social links

Concluding thoughts

Youtube marketing has been a very effective tool for marketers and is leveraged by organizations to market their products and services. With the online advertising space seeing only the rising trend, it is advisable to adopt youtube marketing as one of the marketing channels for your business.

Also, if you are interested to learn more about the marketing techniques that include youtube and other sources of online marketing, the PG Program in Strategic Digital Marketing can help you upskill and stay updated in the digital marketing domain.