Four Steps for Getting Your Marketing Message on YouTube

Many small business owners hope their YouTube videos will be the next viral sensations. Even if your video doesn’t achieve such great heights, YouTube remains a great low-cost way to publicize your business and increase your brand awareness. We’ve identified four steps that can help you achieve YouTube success.

1. Don’t deviate from your tried-and-true marketing messaging. Unless your video is the debut piece of a brand new marketing campaign, stick to marketing that works. That doesn’t mean you can’t experiment with humor, a story, or another device to show your business in a new light. But you should reinforce how your business solves customers’ key pain points with language they’ll encounter in your other marketing materials.

Fair warning: Tastes in humor vary. What you consider funny may be boring or offensive to others. When dabbling in comedy, make sure the script reflects a funny situation rather than relying on esoteric cultural references or irony for laughs. The latter two have a tendency to go over many viewers’ heads.

2. Know your limitations with technology.  If you’re comfortable behind the camera, go for it. But if you’ve never even held a camcorder and aren’t tech savvy (or you plan to star in your video), leave the filming and editing to someone else. If you’d like your video to have a little pizzazz, check out local video production firms, many of which offer very reasonable rates.

Getting in contact with your local college’s film students or the high school’s AV club could cost less with a negligible sacrifice in production quality.

 3. Create a YouTube channel for your company or the campaign. YouTube isn’t just about the video. By following these instructions for creatinga YouTube channel and  uploading a YouTube video, you can include your Website address, branding and contact info where your videos reside.

If you plan to create a series of videos, or your videos are part of a specific marketing campaign, create a channel for the campaign. For one or two videos that are more associated with your business than a specific campaign, create a channel for your company.

4. Promote your video via social media. Considering 48 hours’ worth of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute, odds are your video will get lost in the shuffle. Posting the link on your personal and business Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking sites is a good start, but go a step further.

Spend a little time sharing your video link with local media, thought leaders, and anyone related to your field or relevant to the campaign (if, for example, your campaign involves racecars, send a tweet to Jeff Gordon). Their retweet could result in hundreds or thousands of views.

You may not notice an immediate bump in sales, website hits or whichever metric you use to gauge success. Yet the small investment and cumulative marketing effect can lead to larger rewards. 

About Business Owner’s Toolkit
With an emphasis on problem-solving dating back to 1995, Business Owner’s Toolkit™ (www.toolkit.com) offers more than 5,000 pages of free cost-cutting tips, step-by-step checklists, real-life case studies, startup advice, and business templates to small business owners and entrepreneurs. The site also offers a monthly newsletter, up-to-date news topics, and Ask Alice!, a column that closely follows industry trends and provides trusted advice to inquiring site visitors.