YouTube is the second-biggest online social media platform behind Facebook, with over 2.7 billion users each month. In the past decade, YouTube has gone from $800 million in annual revenue to over $31.5 billion, highlighting its ever-growing presence in the digital lives of consumers. 

Companies that use YouTube for their marketing efforts have access to a vast and diverse audience. YouTube is a platform for product research and helps influence purchasing decisions.

In this guide, we'll explore how to use YouTube marketing to grow your business and improve your brand profile. We'll also offer YouTube marketing tips to help you succeed on the platform.  

What is YouTube marketing?

YouTube marketing means using the social media platform to promote your brand. There are three main ways companies market on YouTube: 

  • Create your own organic videos
  • Run a YouTube influencer marketing program
  • Advertise on YouTube 

Why is YouTube marketing important?

Still wondering if YouTube is right for your marketing strategy? Here are just a few reasons why YouTube marketing makes sense: 

Reach a large audience

With over 2.7 billion monthly users, YouTube is the second-biggest social media platform, sandwiched between Meta giants Facebook and Instagram. 

Enhance search visibility

YouTube is part of the Google family after Google acquired the user-generated content platform in 2006 for $1.65B. Google seeds search results with YouTube videos, and they appear in the enhanced search engine results pages and rich search features when you perform a Google search. 

Boost brand awareness

YouTube gives you access to a high-intention audience that is actively researching products like yours. This, coupled with the extremely large audience, makes the channel an effective way to increase brand awareness. 

Build trust and credibility

Companies gain trust and credibility on YouTube when partnering with quality influencers. Creating your own video content that helps inform potential customers about your products in useful and meaningful ways (for example, installation guides, how-tos, or product walkthroughs) can also help. 

Drive sales and traffic

YouTube marketing has a direct sales link because you can include links in the video descriptions. Brands drive direct sales and web traffic using: 

  • Links on your own content 
  • Affiliate links on influence content 
  • Links on YouTube ads 

Generate leads

Just as you can drive sales and traffic, YouTube links help drive leads to your website. The platform's targeted ads help you engage your most high-intention customers and capture their info. 

Earn additional revenue

Above all else, YouTube is a content channel, and if your content is really great you can monetize it. Let's say you're a large auto parts brand with a guide to performing repairs on your channel. As that channel becomes popular, you can start earning money from those videos. 

YouTube marketing strategies and tips

Because YouTube is as large and popular as it is, breaking through the noise can be challenging. These tips and best practices for YouTube marketers can help amplify your campaign: 

Create a YouTube channel for your business

Step one is to create a YouTube channel for your business. This is where you'll post content and upload the ads you want to insert into YouTube ads and preroll. Your channel should feature: 

  • Company name
  • Logo
  • A brief description of your company
  • Social media links
  • Website link

Best practices for YouTube channel profiles include using a custom URL to track referrals from your channel, uploading a channel trailer that helps introduce your channel/brand, and ensuring that your brand thumbnail, banner image, and other images are all consistent with your branding guidelines. 

Discover your audience's preferences

It's one thing to understand your target market. It's another to know how your YouTube audience prefers to engage with content on the platform. 

Using a mix of competitor analysis, social media listening, and other tools, you can find out how your preferred audience interacts with YouTube content currently. Helpful information to find out: 

  • Which channels those customers subscribe to 
  • Which videos they engage with most 
  • What those users search for on YouTube

Analyze your competitors

Start this process by collating a list of competitors' YouTube channels. Armed with this list, you can start to explore what makes them successful (or otherwise) and use their content to inspire your own video strategy. 

Brandwatch Benchmark can help you explore competitive performance on the platform.

Key quantifiable data to assess include: 

  • Subscriber count
  • Subscriber growth over time
  • Video and channel views
  • View growth over time
  • Average engagement
  • Likes
  • Comments

You can also look at things like what your competitors' video thumbnails look like, what their best-performing videos are, what their posting schedule is like, and what types of content seem to be driving the best results. 

Insights into your competitors' YouTube channel results can help you optimize your own video marketing programs. 

It's not only competitor channels that can help. Popular video content from across YouTube can help inspire your own video content. It can also help you decide where to direct your video ads to get the biggest impact and amplify your YouTube channel. 

Plan and create your content

Your YouTube videos should have a clear purpose and strategy behind them. Planning your content involves: 

  • Setting a video schedule
  • Choosing what types of videos to create 
  • Identifying which videos fit which of your marketing strategy goals
  • Choosing what video formats to use and when — for example, YouTube Shorts vs long-form content

The best YouTube videos have a basic script to help keep the content sharp and on point. Videos need to be compelling and engaging. That's why it's important to have a clear goal for each video and to research popular videos to get ideas. 

Optimize your videos to get views

YouTube search relies on three main categories: 

  • Headline/title
  • Video description
  • Video tags and metadata

Make sure your videos are optimized for search by researching which keywords your audience is searching for. Also, look to the most popular videos in your category to see what types of headlines and descriptions resonate. 

Create a thumbnail that makes your video compelling in the sea of content that shows on the YouTube search results page. You'll notice that on many popular videos, the thumbnail is created separately and uploaded for the video. Often, it contains the title of the video to make it stand out more. 

Promote your YouTube channel

Because views and engagement are so important to the YouTube algorithm, you'll need to actively promote your channel to drive views. You can do this by promoting your videos directly on YouTube, but it can also be smart to reach outside the platform. 

Share your YouTube content on social media, your website, and other channels. The more you can drive views and engagement from outside the platform, the more YouTube will reward you by showing your video in more searches and recommended listings. 

Test YouTube advertising

YouTube advertising works to promote your brand or product to viewers who are using the channel for entertainment or research. YouTube allows for detailed targeting so you can get your product in front of the users you know will interact more with your ads. In the example above of the auto parts brand, they might also buy YouTube ads on videos that show how-tos for automotive repairs. 

YouTube has three main types of video ads: 

  • Pre-roll bumper ads: Short ads that run before a video starts and usually can't be skipped. These are often 5 seconds long.
  • In-stream ads: Ads from 5 seconds long all the way up to 60 seconds long that run at various points during videos. They can happen at the beginning and at set intervals through a YouTube video. These ads are usually skippable. 
  • Stand-alone feed ads: Videos that are served in user feeds on the homepage, search pages, or alongside videos related to the subject matter in the ad.

YouTube also offers ads that run on the header of the site, known as the masthead, just as you'd see display ads on any other website. YouTube can even place your video ads on mobile devices throughout the Google ecosystem in a paid campaign.

Testing these various ad types will help you reach a wider audience. 

You should also link your existing content using end screens and cards. These tools help you connect relevant videos in a chain to maintain engagement on your channel from video to video. 

Try working with YouTube creators

YouTube creators are among the most powerful aspects of the platform. Popular creators give you access to thousands, if not millions, of subscribers. Extremely popular subscribers like MrBeast have as many as 330 million subscribers, and there are creators in every genre you can imagine. 

Brandwatch Influence can help you find the YouTube influencers that best suit your marketing goals – whether they're a mainstream creator with millions of subscribers or a more niche influencer that you know engages with your key demographic and talks about the problems your product solves. 

Common content you'll find in YouTube influencer campaigns include: 

  • Unboxing videos. These videos create excitement and brand value for your products. When an influencer does an unboxing, it helps the viewer feel their excitement and creates desire for the product they're interacting with. 
  • Product reviews. Both paid and unpaid reviews help increase product awareness and credibility.
  • Tutorials, guides, and how-tos. Videos that help guide your potential customer, make your product more appealing and accessible, and help create trust with the audience. They also promote product awareness. 
  • Giveaway contests. Contests and giveaways are great tools for driving engagement and boosting followers. When an influencer runs a contest or giveaway, it amplifies the reach of the campaign to their fans. 

YouTube creators offer a ready-built audience, credibility, and experience in creating compelling, engaging content. 

Evaluate and adjust your strategy

YouTube marketing is the same as any other marketing strategy — success comes from consistent evaluation, adjustment, testing, and assessment of your plan. To do that, you need to track key metrics like viewer count and engagement, as well as assessing your performance against competitors. 

Using social media analytics tools will help you gauge your success and refine your video marketing plans to maximize results. 

5 YouTube marketing tools

Here are some of the most popular and effective YouTube marketing tools that can help you manage and optimize your YouTube performance: 

BrandwatchBrandwatch is a comprehensive social media management and consumer intelligence tool that helps some of the world's most valuable brands understand and engage at the speed of social. Brandwatch offers six main tools that help you devise, manage, and monitor your YouTube marketing efforts. They include: 

Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a comprehensive social media management and consumer intelligence tool that helps some of the world's most valuable brands understand and engage at the speed of social. Brandwatch offers six main tools that help you devise, manage, and monitor your YouTube marketing efforts. They include: 

Benchmark

This tool helps you perform competitor research so you can assess your competitors' and industry leaders' performance on YouTube. Benchmark gives you access to YouTube metrics and insights from followers to average views and durations so you know who to emulate and how. 

Measure

Brandwatch Measure powers your decisions with data. It compiles key YouTube data, including views, watch time, and demographics, in an easy-to-use dashboard so you can assess and optimize your channel performance. 

Listen

Listen is a tool within the Brandwatch social media management solution that uses social listening to give you up to 12 months' worth of comments and mentions so you can understand what your target audience is saying. 

Engage

Engage your audience with the Brandwatch YouTube management tool. It lets you connect with your YouTube audience by replying directly to comments and subscribers. Feeds and notification workflows help you respond faster and boost engagement.

Influence

Brandwatch's Influence tool helps you find YouTube creators, manage those relationships, and implement your campaigns. 

Consumer Research

Collect YouTube videos and comments with the Brandwatch Consumer Research tool. You can then monitor and track those videos or comments to get actionable insights into your target audience. And you can do it alongside data from across the social and broader web.

The comprehensive suite of tools makes Brandwatch a great option for any brand trying to break through with YouTube marketing. Its easy-to-use dashboards and customizable reports deliver fast, accurate, and actionable insights you can use to amplify and optimize your YouTube campaign. 

YouTube Analytics (Native Tool)

The native YouTube analytics tool is a powerful way to track metrics, including: 

Views Engagement Demographics Video view times The reports inside YouTube's Creator Studio include data on where your audience found your content, which content is performing best, and even offer inspiration for future campaigns. To access this information, go to your channel and then click "Analytics" in the left sidebar. 

TubeBuddy

TubeBuddy is a YouTube extension that helps creators optimize their videos. It lets users compile data reports, generate thumbnails, and perform keyword research on competitive videos. This plug-in tool makes it easier to upload things like end card templates to multiple videos at one time and helps creators manage their YouTube uploads. 

VidIQ

This keyword research tool for YouTube highlights trending keywords and subjects in an effort to help you optimize your video title, thumbnail, and description. It offers insights into the popular and trending keywords across YouTube so you know what to use in your next video, and it can even give you a keyword SEO score on your current content. VidIQ also offers some reporting on your own YouTube channel. 

Canva

Canva is a graphic design tool that features specific tools to make creating videos easier. These include: 

  • Music tracks
  • Stock videos
  • Video templates
  • Thumbnail templates
  • Animations

Canva is great for creating a consistent YouTube brand image thanks to its easy-to-use templates and video tools. Using Canva video editor makes it easier for a new YouTube channel to start uploading videos faster and with higher quality. 

FAQs

Is YouTube marketing effective?

According to one Google report, 40% of users who discovered a new brand on YouTube went on to make a purchase from that brand. Industry feedback shows that many marketers see an increase in performance and direct sales when they invest in YouTube marketing. 

How much does YouTube marketing cost?

YouTube marketing costs vary widely depending on the type of campaign you're running. A partnership with an influencer might cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars. Video ads are usually measured in cost per mille. In this case, it's cost per 1,000 impressions. Expect to pay between $3 and $10 for an efficient ad campaign. 

What are the different types of YouTube ads?

The main types of YouTube ads are in-stream ads, which you see during videos. These include short, non-skippable pre-roll ads at the beginning of a video or longer, often skippable ads that run at various points during a video. 

There are also display ads that show in the feed of a user, like on the homepage on the masthead or embedded in a search result table alongside other relevant videos. 

What are the key metrics to track in your YouTube marketing strategy?

The key to YouTube marketing success is to monitor your video analytics. We recommend users track viewer counts, engagement rates, and audience demographics at a minimum.