15 Ways to Run a Business and Make Money on YouTube
Instantly increase sales by making a couple of videos? It doesn’t work that way (although I really want it to). Only systematic work can strengthen a brand’s position and make it popular. And for this work to be effective, you need to start by developing a content strategy for video marketing.
Before engaging in video marketing, you need to understand where you have to go and what efforts you have to make. To do this, a content strategy is created. This will be the roadmap without which it is easy to go astray without getting to the end goal.
The task of a content strategy for video marketing is to answer the questions:
- who you will be creating content for, who your target audience is, what their interests are;
- what thoughts need to be conveyed to the potential buyer and what will help the user decide to contact you;
- what your competitors are offering, what are the pros and cons of their content
- what types and formats of content will be suitable for brand promotion in your target audience;
- how to evaluate the effectiveness of the work done;
- what resources will be needed to effectively implement your objectives.
Without a content strategy, you’re just creating content. It can be great, but it can’t do what you need it to do. The content strategy forms the basis of a content plan and a promotion plan.
There are no hard and fast rules in developing a content strategy. It is an individual work, which depends on the area of business, the chosen topic for the channel, target audience, budget, the amount of time you can allocate to the content and so on.
But there are some steps that you should definitely go through to get a return on your investment in your own YouTube channel. A great investment is the views, likes and subscribers to https://lowcostsmm.com, which will quickly raise the YouTube channel. There you can also raise – comments or cheap bots.
Analyze
Common mistake business owners make is to create content for their tastes or for all users from 5 to 90 years old at once. The interests of clients, the specifics of the business, and trends in the sphere are not taken into account at all.
But if there is no understanding of what the work will be for, there is no sense in waiting for the result. This is why when developing a content strategy, you have to study at least three aspects:
- Your own business.
- The target audience.
- The activities of competitors on YouTube.
The purpose of this analysis is to understand what to talk about and what is in demand at this point in time, as well as to formulate your company’s advantage over others.
Your own business
Analyze your own content: topics and formats of publications, their frequency and periodicity, channels of communication with customers. Determine what is of most interest to your audience. Using Yandex. Metrika, Google Analytics and your own CRM, research the main sources of traffic, the key queries which drove the traffic to your website, and the content that generated the most visitors or sales.
The resulting data – information on the most popular and effective posts and videos – is the basis for a core content strategy for video marketing, i.e. a description of the most popular types, kinds and topics of content.
Target audience
The study of the target audience will help determine the format of the video channel and its content. Analytics systems (Yandex.Metrika, Google Analytics) will show sex, age, geographical position, long-term interests of the site visitors.
If there are regular customers, ask them what information directly or indirectly related to the products of your brand they lack. Collecting testimonials, an email survey won’t hurt either.
If there’s not enough information, you can interview employees who work directly with customers: why customers choose your company, what they want to get from your products, what problems they experience.
Knowing your customer, you understand how to communicate with them, what can interest them, and what their problems can be solved by starting a YouTube channel. The briefest portrait of the customer for one of the segments of the target audience you will create.
Competitor activity on YouTube
Identify your niche competitors by analyzing YouTube search results for keywords. Having determined the list of competitor channels, conduct a detailed analysis of them manually and with the help of analytics systems: Social Blade, LiveDune, Popsters, VidIQ, Whatstat, Kedoo, Vlogster.
Study what content is posted on the channel (type, type, formats, topics, publication frequency), the number of subscribers, their level of engagement, dates of channel creation, video design and description, tags, audience activity (likes, dislikes, comments), whether videos are optimized, etc.
As a result, you’ll understand what topics and formats are “popping” and be able to identify niches in which content will look most advantageous. Competitors are not the enemy, they are a source of ideas.
Using someone else’s experience, it’s much easier to find convenient channels of communication and create the content people want. Under no circumstances should you evaluate the material of your competitors from the point of view of “like/dislike”. The subjective opinion of the business owner and his potential clients may be completely different. Be objective.
Setting goals and objectives
Before you create anything, you need to answer the question, “What is it all about?” You don’t want to get into an uphill battle for your audience’s attention just because “YouTube is trendy” or “We want to try making videos about us.”
Example goals:
- Increase traffic to the site, new leads, expand the audience of email subscribers;
- growth of recognition, increase of brand loyalty;
- to create an image of expertise;
- interaction with the audience to optimize business processes and increase sales, etc.
Note that setting a goal like “Increase sales with YouTube” would be wrong. The result is difficult to measure, it is not clear when to expect the result. That is why we advise you to set smart-targets: specific, measurable, achievable and with specific timelines. That is, in our case, the right goal would be: “To increase annual sales by 10% by December 2019 through customers who come from YouTube.
In this situation, the objectives are immediately clear: you need to increase traffic from the video blog, to increase brand awareness. How to do this is decided individually for each company.
You can focus only on organic traffic or additionally promote your YouTube channel. It is also clear from the goal how and when to evaluate the result. Analytics systems can help calculate the exact number of customers who came to the site thanks to the videos published by the brand.
Choosing the idea and format of your YouTube channel
The idea of a business video blog is what you will tell your audience in each of your videos. Secrets of repairing specific brands of cars, tricks for active travelers, reviews of industrial equipment opportunities – these are all YouTube channel ideas. A good idea allows you to release a large number of videos on a topic, and also gives you the opportunity to touch on topics that are close in meaning.
An idea unites all the videos released on the channel. Choose an idea that is close to your business and understandable to you. For your YouTube channel to give the impression of an authoritative source, the content must be expert, detailed and cover the topic in detail. Without expertise, business content doesn’t work.
That is, you must understand the subject matter in detail. If you talk about something in which you have little knowledge, it is bound to come out. And the company’s reputation will be greatly damaged. In addition to the idea, you need to decide on the format of your YouTube channel. Format – is how you will offer your viewers video content.
Entertainment formats are not suitable for business. This content should be partly present in your videos, because a “dry” video is passively perceived by viewers, they want more dynamics and gamification of the received information. However, you shouldn’t turn your brand video blog into an entertainment channel either.
We recommend concentrating on teaching and expert formats
Educational format. A video that helps the user understand a question, teaches him some secrets and techniques. This is a detailed expert video, after viewing it, the audience begins to understand something. Video tutorials, instructions, “how-to” videos – this format is always in demand. And you can “sell” your product in such videos. For example, by showing how to properly use the features of your service.
Or how to choose your product so that it best meets the needs of the buyer. Expert format. Simply put, this is theory without going deeper into practice. Material for those who want to use a product or service without a complete understanding of how it works.
Video lectures, interviews, comparisons and reviews – help to answer all the questions of the audience without overloading it with technical details. You can publish videos about the company, its facilities, employees and traditions – by showing your business, you demonstrate your openness. Videos, where you answer questions from the audience, are also informational content.
If you like any types of videos from your competitors – see how well they are perceived by viewers, assess the weaknesses and strengths of such content. You shouldn’t artificially limit yourself, but there’s no point in blindly copying someone else’s work, either. Your job is to create content that is relevant and valuable to your audience. By offering value to customers in your videos, you relay the image of usefulness to the entire company.
Preparing a content marketing and channel promotion strategy
Once you have an understanding of what videos will be published on your YouTube channel and for whom, in what format and what you will talk about in them, you can proceed directly to forming the content strategy and promotion plan for the channel.
Describe in a nutshell how you are going to influence your target audience, when the video-magnets (Hero-content) will be released, what events in the life of the company should be mentioned on the channel, etc. Based on the overall strategy, you can create monthly content plans, which already prescribe in detail what and when will be released.
At this stage, it is important to determine the resources for implementation. Based on the total budget for video marketing, determine:
in terms of video production:
- Will you equip your own studio or outsource video production. Read about what equipment you need for video production here;
- what human resources are necessary to implement the content strategy; do you need to set up a new department dedicated only to video production, or can you distribute duties among the existing employees; will you do everything yourself, or will you ask for help from outside writers, editors, camera operators and other specialists; how will you choose your employees and what criteria will be used to assess their work?
- Whether you need to negotiate with rights holders to use licensed content in your videos. Read what you need to know about copyright on YouTube;
- how much a single video should cost; and whether there are any ways you can reduce costs, such as renting equipment to shoot instead of buying it. Check out 6 low-cost video formats;
- who is responsible for the result, what credentials he or she needs.
in terms of video promotion:
- Whether you’re going to use any services and programs to promote or whether you’re going to attract only organic traffic;
- Who will promote the brand’s videos and YouTube channel. Will you do this yourself or hire an SMM specialist. What will be more profitable, an in-house specialist, a remote employee or an agency. How to evaluate their work, who will control it;
- What proportion of the budget will go to advertising and paying for the staff responsible for promotion, and whether it is possible to optimize these costs;
- whether there could be any collaboration with other companies’ video blogs. If so, which ones, under what conditions, and what will be required for joint work.
Result
Developing a content strategy for video marketing is the first and most important step in creating a business channel. Through meticulous analysis – of the product, competitors, target audience and resources required – you will assess your own readiness and create a formalized plan of action and answer the following questions:
- What topics and materials the target audience is really interested in;
- What the brand can be useful for the audience;
- How to position the company, what format of video will be used;
- How often the video material will be published;
- What channels of information seeding will be used;
- How the channel will interact with the main website of the company and other social networks;
- What budget will be allocated to the YouTube channel;
- what metrics to use to assess the result;
- What will be the end result;
- how to promote the channel and content;
- what resources will be needed to implement the strategy?
Such elaboration will benefit not only your product video marketing but also the company’s other promotional activities.
