Could a YouTube marketing agency grow your business?
As a business owner, producing content and managing a marketing strategy at the same time can be daunting. Luckily, you don’t need to juggle both at once.
Why consider YouTube marketing?
Since the mid-2000s, social media has revolutionised the way we communicate, consume and behave. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram pioneered a new opportunity for marketers, whilst more recent apps such as TikTok offer ways to target younger audiences with advertising.
Throughout the pandemic and subsequent lockdown, the number of users across these platforms has only increased. Research from Statista has shown that almost one billion hours of video are consumed each day on YouTube alone, with 500 hours of content uploaded to the platform every minute.
All this means one significant thing for marketers – YouTube is one of the best social media platforms for ads. In fact, 55 per cent of professionals use the video-streaming website as part of their marketing strategy. It’s cost-effective and highly customisable, allowing businesses to make the most of their budgets whilst yielding a great return on investment. So, here’s everything you need to know about YouTube marketing and how a specialised agency can help you thrive.
What is a YouTube marketing agency?
Due to its success, YouTube is now a crucial aspect of every successful company’s marketing strategy. However, to make the most of this, it’s usually best for content creators to outsource this area of work to industry experts within a YouTube marketing agency.
By working with professionals, you can rest assured that you’ll reap the rewards of a bespoke strategy, designed specifically for your needs. This leads to increased traffic, higher brand awareness and better search engine optimisation (SEO), to name a few.
A YouTube marketing agency will help to define your target audience and adapt a full strategy to support engagement and conversions by helping with content creation, distribution and analysis.
What do YouTube marketing agencies do?
There is a wide range of ways in which a YouTube marketing agency can help grow your online presence and, ultimately, bring more success to your business.
Video production
A good agency will have a dedicated team of professionals on hand to produce high-quality content for you, including adverts, interviews, event coverage, testimonials and much more. The main benefit of outsourcing your video creation to an agency is that you’ll gain a lot of time to put towards other important matters, while getting fantastic results with exceptional content.
SEO
Marketers employ tactics to push web pages as high as possible in search engine results. In other words, the further your content is in Google rankings, the more likely people are to view it. This process is known as SEO.
When it comes to YouTube, content creators face the same challenges. For example, there are millions of results for the search term ‘how to change a tyre’ – so if you’re producing this type of video, you need to beat the competition. One of the best ways to do that is by appearing high up in the search results.
That’s where a dedicated YouTube marketing agency comes in. These experts will use a vast array of tactics to help your content thrive, covering areas such as promotion, engagement and keyword inclusion. Additionally, the team creating videos for your channel will utilise captivating editing techniques to ensure viewers don’t lose interest. With all of that focus on the important metrics, your videos are sure to be seen by a much larger audience.
Copywriting
The description of a video is an integral factor when it comes to ranking on Google and YouTube searches. When you partner with a marketing agency, you’ll gain access to highly experienced copywriters who know every trick in the book when it comes to keywords, length and link placement.
What does this mean for you? In short, it means search engines will favour your content over the competition. On top of that, the writing team of your agency partner will endeavour to create bespoke web pages that embed your YouTube videos, leading to higher engagement and much more visibility.
YouTube ads
YouTube ads are by far one of the most effective ways to drive growth for any business. However, for many organisations, marketing isn’t a familiar task and can be frustrating. That’s why it’s best to partner with a professional agency. In turn, you’ll start to see much higher success rates and an increased return on investment.
Who should use YouTube advertising services?
To give some perspective on the size of YouTube’s user base, here are some key statistics regarding the platform.
- With 14.3 billion visits per month, the site is more popular than digital giants like Amazon, Facebook and Wikipedia
- Over 30 billion hours of YouTube content are consumed by users each month
- 70 per cent of people have admitted to buying from a business after seeing it on YouTube
As you can see, YouTube is one of the biggest and best spaces to place your ads, regardless of your niche or industry. Here are three of the main benefits of putting your content on the platform.
Cost-effective
YouTube ads are run on the Google ads platform, which means there’s no need for a large budget to begin your journey. Starting low with your marketing strategy is a great way to help you figure out the right metrics to focus on. As you start to understand your target audience more clearly, you can scale the campaign budget accordingly.
An important aspect of YouTube marketing to take into consideration is that you’re not just spending money on ads – you need to factor in how expensive it is to produce content and the cost of measuring campaign performance, too.
High visibility
YouTube is a melting pot, with users from all over the world and with varying profiles, interests and needs. This means that your target audience is probably already on YouTube. Whether you want to focus on a very specific niche or millions of people, you can achieve both on the platform due to the sheer amount of users it has.
Targeting
YouTube is known for offering many targeting options and you’re able to test a variety of them to refine the perfect audience for your ads. Some of these metrics include:
- Age
- Gender
- Keywords
- Channels
- Interests
- Household income
- Topics
- Device
It’s best to avoid including too many targeting options in a campaign, as it will make it more difficult to identify exactly what’s working for you. If you’re certain your ads won’t be well-suited to specific audiences or demographics – exclude them. Then, focus on how to target the right people and start creating content that serves your objectives best.
Are there different types of YouTube ads?
There are two different formats you can choose from when placing ads on YouTube. These are video ads and display ads. On the desktop version of the platform, you can bid for both, whilst the latter isn’t available on mobile. Generally, video ads are preferable, as they reach across every version of the site, including on TV, game consoles and apps. Within the two formats, there are several types of ads you can choose to run on YouTube.
Skippable video ads
These can be skipped after five seconds of watch time and may appear before, during or after the video a user is viewing. Because of this, it’s vital to spark interest from the audience immediately, otherwise people will skip as soon as they can.
Non-skippable video ads
Usually 15 to 20 seconds in length, these ads can’t be skipped by users. They may also appear before, during or after a video and the duration can vary depending on which region the ads are targeting.
Bumper ads
Bumper ads are unskippable but only last for six seconds and are ideal for retargeting and recycling previous ads. However, with so little time to play with, you’ll have to construct a very clear and engaging message.
Sponsored cards
Sponsored card ads display other content that’s relevant to your video, including events, products or promotions. These come in various sizes and appear as a teaser, which users can click on to reveal additional information.
Overlay ads
Overlay ads are only available on the desktop version of YouTube. They appear as a popup that the user can remove. These are either images, text or a combination of both.
Display ads
Also only present on desktop, display ads appear above or below suggested videos, or to the right of the video being watched. Unlike other options, these ads don’t interrupt a viewer’s video
Why is YouTube marketing so important?
After Google, YouTube is the most visited website in the world. It’s also home to the ‘viral video’, which refers to content that spreads rapidly to a wide audience. Coupled with other marketing avenues, professionals redirect traffic to YouTube videos as a way of achieving large volumes of traffic and, ultimately, conversions.
A huge audience is great news for any business, but shouting about your product or service without a solid plan is counterproductive. Successful YouTube marketing requires a carefully planned strategy, which is exactly what you’ll get from working with a specialised agency.
What services do YouTube marketing agencies provide?
Marketing is not something that comes naturally to many people. In almost any case, it pays to hire professionals to get the job done right. After all, you want your business to be as successful as possible, right?
Working with a YouTube marketing agency means you get to focus on what you do best, whilst industry experts make sure everything is optimised and reaching the right audience. Generally, the services offered can be broken down into three areas, although your agency should create a bespoke strategy for your needs.
Content marketing services
The primary focus of YouTube marketing is to make sure the content you post is discovered and consumed. This means there’s a great opportunity for videos that inform, engage and add value for users. As such, an agency will offer:
- Research, strategy development and consultation
- Topic development
- Scripting
- Audience and competitor analysis
Video creation services
A good agency will have a team of videographers, editors, producers and other professionals that are ready to help create amazing YouTube content for your business, including:
- Planning
- Scripting
- Storyboarding
- Shooting
- Editing
These services are ideal for any business looking to profit from YouTube marketing, especially if it doesn’t have the right people in-house to create content.
Video optimisation services
Something that’s overlooked by many organisations is that you can’t simply put out content and hope for the best. The most successful businesses constantly refine their approach to ensure their videos are performing well in search.
Therefore, having a marketing agency on your team will help to increase your reach and visibility, with services such as:
- Keyword research and SEO
- Optimising titles, descriptions and tags
- Monitoring search visibility
All of the above are generally ongoing services that your agency will offer, but if you need a one-off service, just get in touch with a quote.
How does YouTube marketing help digital businesses?
YouTube marketing is one of the best tools in the shed when it comes to increasing your visibility and traffic. Even if you don’t create that many videos for your business, you can still reach wide audiences by advertising on other people’s content.
There is so much traffic on YouTube that you might feel like you’re guaranteed to find your target audience, however that’s easier said than done. Like most things in life, you can’t just expect immediate results without a solid plan.
Partnering with a marketing agency means that you’ll receive high-quality content for both your own website and YouTube, linking the two to create useful backlinks and increase the traffic to your content from Google searches.
YouTube marketing agencies in the UK
Once you’ve decided to enlist the help of a YouTube marketing agency, the next step is to pick the best-suited partner for your specific business goals. Each has its own specialisation, which means you have to be able to decide which works towards your demands.
Here are some of the key questions you’ll need to answer first:
- What are your business goals and objectives?
- Does the agency understand your values and targets?
- What area of expertise do you require?
- Does the agency have a great portfolio of similar work?
How can you start YouTube marketing?
The first step to YouTube marketing is creating your channel. This will become your ‘home’ on the platform and it’s where you’ll publish videos, engage with your audience and analyse data. You’ll need to brand your page accordingly, including your profile and banner images, channel description and links to your other social media accounts.
Now you’ve got a channel set up, it’s time to refine your target audience and figure out what type of content would be engaging for them. This is where it’s useful to conduct market research and data analytics – both of which can be time-consuming and monotonous tasks if you’re not an industry expert.
A competitive analysis of your competitors will help you to delineate goals, as well as understand what’s working well for them and potentially identify any content gaps that your business could fill. It pays to partner with a YouTube marketing agency, as all of the research and planning will be done on your behalf, allowing you to focus on running your company.
Once your channel has been set up and you’re producing regular, consistent content, your marketing partners will monitor and optimise everything from thumbnails to engaging with your audience. In turn, you’ll start seeing more traffic and conversions.
I need a YouTube marketer, can you help?
Axonn is a full-service digital marketing agency, which means YouTube marketing is something we know inside out. We work as an extension of your own marketing team, collaborating to achieve a shared goal. So, if you’re looking for a YouTube marketing agency, let’s have a chat.