Marketing Your Business With YouTube

This is a guest post written by Angie Picardo. The views expressed in this post are entirely the author’s own and may not reflect those of Freelance Copywriter’s Blog. If you are interested in submitting a guest post, please get in touch with your ideas

Video is a great way to interact with your customer base, and YouTube makes this process painless. Business owners, entrepreneurs, and self-employed people can all find ways to leverage YouTube for their business needs: promotion, engagement, and more.

Not Just Another Storefront

First, using video is a great way to humanize your business. One thing that people like about small businesses is that they are not faceless conglomerates, and posting videos on YouTube is a great way to prove that you definitely have a face.  If you’re an entrepreneur or self-employed person, then letting customers see who you are can communicate that you don’t have anything to hide, plus it can help you put your best foot forward when communicating with new or potential clients. You can upload an introduction video—either for yourself as a person or for the business—to let people know who you are and what you are about. People also really love a story, so if you can communicate your business motivations into a narrative, that can be especially endearing.

A really great way to use YouTube for your business is to provide video user guides or demonstrations to let customers know how to use your product. If you’re a local baker, you could show videos for how to make awesome sandwiches, the right way to store bread, or some basics on cake decorating. These sorts of videos give customers new ideas for how to use your products and give them an opportunity to see you work. If you’re self-employed or provide a non-tangible service (consulting, tutoring, etc), instead of user guides, you could explain what your intake process looks like, or share a before and after video from a client. This way, potential customers know exactly what to expect when they work with you and they will be much less apprehensive about the whole process.

Interactive Opportunities

Next, YouTube can also be used to engage your customer base. There are a few ways to go about this. First, when you create a video, you can end with any kind of question or comment that asks watchers to sound off in the comment section. Be sure to actually respond to the comments! Users love it when they get a response from their favorite brands. Second, you can ask for video responses. In a video response, users upload video to YouTube and mark that it was “in response” to another video. When people watch either video, there will be a link to the other on the page. Third, you can have video competitions for customers. These could involve asking customers to use your product in a wacky way, taking the product to the coolest destination, or creating their own guide for how they use the product. Again, if you deal with a service, rather than a product, you could try having people respond to you with how they have improved. If you are a Spanish tutor, you could ask students to create videos of them speaking Spanish as responses to your videos.

Be Yourself

YouTube allows users to customize their “channel” page, which can be a good way to highlight content or link to other channels. Users can select a video to be featured at the top of their channel page, usually a new video or a most viewed. Since this page is customizable, it is a good place to inject some branding. Choose a color scheme and banner that reflect that of your business. This will help customers remember what they are looking at and it will visually distinguish your page. Another part of your channel page can be your “favorite” channels. This is a good opportunity to work with other businesses or to promote other people in your town or field. If you are a baker, you might favorite the channel of a local sandwich shop, or of any other services you use. In turn, those businesses can favorite you and you will be cross-promoting each other.

Finally, as a general piece of advice for video: keep it short and be engaging. Users will not watch very long videos, even if you believe it is a work of art in advertising. For best results, keep videos under five minutes. If  you have something to say that takes more than five minutes, break it up into several videos and create a series, like “Awesome Sandwich Making Part 1,” follow up with your other parts. Make sure you can create an engaging video. If you don’t feel you have the ability to do so, find a staff member with a charismatic personality or hire an advertising firm to help you out.

About the author:

Angie Picardo is a staff writer for NerdWallet. Her mission is to help consumers stay financially savvy, and save some money with the best high yield CDs.