With billions of active monthly users, YouTube is one of the largest platforms at the moment that is only expected to grow in the following years. The website clearly offers great potential, but its popularity also makes it highly saturated and incredibly competitive, representing quite a challenge when it comes to reaching success.
Whether you’re a small creator or a business attempting to expand its audience, a good marketing strategy will be needed for growing and thriving on YouTube. To that end, here are some of the most important steps you should follow, from optimizing YouTube videos to advertising on this website:
1. Analyze your audience
Figuring out exactly what your audience wants can be difficult, which is why it’s essential to consider aspects such as who you are making videos for and what they are watching already. Spend some time analyzing your target market, their demographics, which channels they are following at the moment, and what types of YouTube videos podcasting they are watching.
YouTube’s own Analytics tab can provide brilliant insights into the interests and demographics of your audience, while social listening might enable you to search the platform for specific keywords and mentions of your brand. You can then use this information for your video content strategy.
2. Research your competitors
A great tactic for growing on YouTube quickly is seeing what is currently working for your direct competition, and then attempting to do the same thing but better.
Begin by visiting competitor channels you already know of, and conduct a competitor analysis that includes their subscriber count, average video views, video quality, posting frequency, main topics, audience perception, etc.
It might also be wise to consider their most popular videos, their brand voice, how they are presenting themselves, and how you can differentiate your brand from theirs. Compare these findings to your own channels and set goals according to your competition in order to stay motivated to continue growing and reach success.
3. Leverage SEO software
There’s no doubt that optimizing your videos for SEO and YouTube’s algorithm is key to marketing success, but that can be a difficult goal to achieve on such a complex and often puzzling platform. To make this process a bit simpler, utilizing effective YouTube SEO software might be the best course of action.
A tool like this can help you find the right keywords, generate tags and titles, perform channel audits, track your rankings, and optimize your videos to increase your chances of success.
By improving your rankings through YouTube SEO, you will be able to increase your views, gain more followers, and grow your channel fast with the best possible strategy.
4. Edit Your Videos
You can’t get anywhere with YouTube marketing if your videos aren’t edited very well. It is important to make YouTube videos using good lighting and sound effects.
To edit your videos, you can use a YouTube video editor and make them fun to watch. You can import, trim and cut footage very easily. If your videos are interesting, then audiences will stick to your content and they can share your videos also. It can also help you grow your channel.
5. Optimize your channel
Along with optimizing each video, you should aim to optimize your entire YouTube channel as well. Ensure that your Youtube logo picture and channel description reflect your branding, and utilize some helpful tips that increase your chances of success.
For example, you can group your videos into categorized playlists that are organized according to their topics, or create a trailer for your channel that acts as a short commercial.
Within the videos themselves, you can include a direct call to action, ask your audience to subscribe or interact with your channel, use custom end screens, add closed captions, etc. Even these tiny changes can engage audiences and get you more subscribers.
6. Schedule your videos
Once your channel and videos are optimized, it will be time to finally post them. And while that might seem like a particularly simple and straightforward process, your scheduling strategy can have a big impact as well.
For instance, you should consider the times when your audience is most active and when they are most likely to view your content. This will be the ideal time of day to post your videos.
Similarly, you should choose a specific schedule for posting, whether that means monthly, biweekly, weekly, or daily, and then make an effort to stick to it. Although small, your posting schedule can have a great effect.
7. Invest in advertising
Once you have a deeper understanding of your audience and the most effective tactics, you can use YouTube ads to your advantage. Whether you select banner ads placed on the website or in videos, or even video ads that play before other people’s content, this will be a great addition to your marketing campaign either way.
Similarly, you can try influencer marketing, such as partnering with a big channel or advertising with a popular creator. This can help to increase your outreach, engage audiences, boost views, and improve your subscriber count as well. Just make sure to select the right solution for your YouTube channel and main goals.
Growing and thriving on such a competitive platform as YouTube is never an easy task. However, the right marketing strategy and the effective tips mentioned above will help to ensure long-term success.