There is a lot of information on the web on why every business or brand should have a YouTube channel. However, having a channel on this giant site is dependent on a number of factors: your niche, type of content, and the specific goals that you have in your YouTube marketing strategy. But what really do you gain from YouTube? Is it just a concept that many businesses follow blindly? Let us delve more into measuring the marketing value of YouTube:
The main aim
In order to comprehend the marketing value of YouTube, it is important to understand the viewer’s main aim. As a platform, YouTube is beneficial in a number of ways: as a social site, community site and as an advertising platform. Despite these benefits, the aim of viewers is to watch videos. It does not really matter how the users end up on YouTube, (whether via social media, direct navigation, or via universal search) all they want to do is watch videos. Viewers hope to find something entertaining or informative, rather than find products to buy or services to use. They could go to Youtube to watch news a few times, but they seldom go there to get recommendations for the best hotels or restaurants or even directions for travel.Why should the user’s main aim be a concern to any marketer?
To fully exploit the marketing potential of YouTube and reach your goals in your YouTube marketing strategy, you need to work towards your viewer’s main aim: education and entertainment. This means that your content needs to instruct, entertain or inform. The right content allows viewers to not only get informed and entertained, but to also know your brand. They tend to trust it and associate it with positivity.Here are more benefits of investing in good content
- Integration on social media
Social media platforms embed YouTube videos on their platforms. This allows more users to access your videos. They need not even leave the social platforms.- Video news releases
Video news releases are a great way to get coverage from high authority sites, especially those that deal with news. YouTube becomes the best platform for video new releases.How to measure YouTube’s marketing value
1. Branded search volume
Branded search volume is the most valuable indicator of success in your YouTube marketing campaign. It does not matter if your marketing campaign entails advertising on YouTube, seeding content on various community platforms, or even YouTube SEO.Branded search volume is basically the number or percentage of users who are searching for your brand or service via search engines like Google and Bing. To get to know your branded search volume, you can :
- track percentages in increases in brand traffic
- movements on Google trends
- look at search queries in Google webmaster tools
If you have been doing a PPC campaign for your brand, buy unlimited exact match impressions for the brand. You will then need to check for any increase in impressions over a period of time.
Another way to measure branded search volume is by tracking brand mentions. A good tool for this would be Fresh web explorer. Better still, enterprise level companies can run brand recognition surveys. This helps to gauge the increase in unprompted recall.
Other ways of measuring the marketing value of YouTube:
2. Referring traffic
This is a rather small indicator of success in your YouTube marketing campaign. It however it shows the interest created by your videos. It comes from viewers who have left YouTube to explore your site. This means that your video content is very impressive. Referring traffic is highly dependent on where you place links back to your site. There are 3 options:- In the description
- As an Ad overlay link - to get this, you need to set up the content for advertising
- Within annotations - this requires you to be a You Tube partner. You can even allow pre-roll ads from other brands on your videos.
3. Engagement
YouTube analytics offers a 'relative audience retention' report. It briefly allows you to get to see how good your video is, in terms of Google’s standards. This analysis is based on the viewers who watch the entire video. Engagement is one of the major factors that Google and YouTube use to place your video in search engine results. This means that as a marketer, you must aim at minimizing the probability of viewers failing to watch the entire video. You should aim at a high 'average view duration'. If some videos have excessively lower average view durations, you can remove them. This will help in the overall reputation of your YouTube channel.A precaution
Views are not a good measure of YouTube’s marketing value. They are just hits and are triggered when a viewer loads the video, regardless of whether they actually watch it. The fact that your YouTube video has many views doesn’t necessarily mean that it has high value content or it is engaging.Instead of counting views, there are more useful metrics, for instance:
- unique non-bouncing visits
- conversion rates
- and time on site
Like aforementioned, you need to think about how including YouTube videos in your marketing strategy will help you accomplish your goals. Better still, you need to find out whether your target audience and influencers are watching YouTube videos, especially those related to your niche. If they are, you need to create a YouTube channel that will provide them with value and entertain them as well.
Conclusion
Almost every business or brand can have a YouTube channel. The important thing is to provide value and entertain your customers. After ensuring that you have a way to harness the power of YouTube, measuring the marketing value of YouTube will be a worthwhile task. It will help you to make necessary adjustments in your YouTube Marketing strategy.
Advertisement
