How to do marketing with YouTube

The world of videos is on the rise on the web. YouTube, although it is in a phase of great transformation (it is starting to have many competitors, a problem that it did not have to manage before), is an extremely useful tool for marketing and capturing new customers.

Every month 1.9 billion users log on to YouTube and more than 70% do so from smartphones!

The market is still expanding and setting up an effective YouTube marketing strategy is a solution (perhaps integrated with other web marketing strategies) that can be very profitable.

How to do digital marketing with YouTube

To market with YouTube, just like all web activities, it's crucial to set up and manage a strategy:

• Purpose: why you are investing money and time in this project, what you want to achieve;
• Analysis: if you are convinced and know your goals, now conduct a market analysis and understand if your sector can be profitable;

Some useful tips for marketing on YouTube:

• Take care of the channel's appearance: to market on YouTube you need to make your channel attractive and appealing to potential customers. Therefore, pay attention to: profile picture, cover image, and harmonious video thumbnails that maintain your brand's visibility;
• Pay attention to titles and SEO: just like with websites, YouTube video titles are crucial in an SEO strategy and consequently affect your online marketing. Focus on specific keywords that align with your target audience. Tags should also be consistent;

Other useful elements to set up for marketing with your YouTube videos include YouTube cards.

YouTube cards are represented by the "i" icon at the top right of the video.

These are very important as they are an excellent tool for capturing the user's attention and keeping them engaged longer on your channel, thus allowing them to consume new content.

Not only that, with this tool we also strongly advise you to include external content to YouTube such as social media and websites.

How to insert cards in YouTube

To insert YouTube cards into your video, you must:

1. Go to "Creator Studio", in the "video manager" section;
2. From the contextual drop-down menu of the video where you want to insert the card, choose the "Cards" section and go to add card. Now you will need to choose the type and features of your card and click "Create".

There are also end screens which follow the same logic and are even more visible. Follow the same procedure but select Final screen.

Another important element is YouTube Playlists.

How to create playlists on YouTube

In the cards, you can also include playlists. These are collections of videos that cover the same broad topic.

This operation is excellent for helping users understand your thematic focus, and on the other hand, it will also make it easier and more convenient for them to find content of interest.

To create a playlist on YouTube, simply select "create playlist" during the video upload process, and here you will collect all the videos that deal with the same subject.

How to produce a video for YouTube

Finally, let's look at some advice on how to produce your own videos:

• Brevity and clarity of content: few but clear concepts, just a few minutes of video to have everything that the user is looking for, without running the risk that they become tired or even not click on your video due to its excessive length;
• Consistency and management of a weekly or monthly editorial plan, tailored specifically for your needs.
• Start leveraging YouTube stories: contrary to what might seem, they are actually an excellent tool, especially after the success this format has had on Instagram and Facebook. Great for increasing engagement and user attention. This feature expires after 7 days and is only available to accounts with more than 10,000 subscribers;
• Titles and voice search: we've talked about the importance of managing YouTube video titles for SEO purposes but connected to this topic, it's also important to talk about an increasingly popular feature: voice search. Video titles should also be made up of simple keywords so that users can exclaim them during a voice search on Android or with Siri!
• Always add the possibility to manage subtitles: more and more users watch videos without sound, so it could be an important support for your marketing to be able to implement subtitles in your videos, offering an additional convenience to users.

How to earn money with YouTube

Let's now look at the actual channels and tools for earning money on YouTube:

• Advertising and sponsors: to earn one euro from your YouTube channel, you need 1000 views. This means that if you don't get a million views a month, you will never earn a decent salary.

These tools bring in passive income, as a well-made video can always generate views.

In this case, you need to focus on quantity. To activate monetization (i.e., link the Adsense account), you must have at least a thousand subscribers and 4000 hours of viewing in one year (certainly not an unachievable goal).

Sponsors, on the other hand, are the old "paid promotions".

In fact, you need to promote a product during a video. Either you propose yourself to promote it by agreeing on a fee, or, in the best-case scenario, the sponsor contacts you to promote their specific product.

This technique is used by influencers who leverage their channel context to make themselves appealing to potential sponsors. From sponsor to sponsor, one can start earning several hundred euros up to actual contracts that lead influencers to really earn well.

• Merchandise and products: this other way of earning linked to the content you create on your YouTube channel can only work if you start to become known and manage to attract the attention of users who recognize in your videos a phrase, a logo, any distinctive sign that leads them to say: "yes, I'll buy a t-shirt because I like it!".

T-shirts, posters, mugs, in short, anything that connects your YouTube channel to the visual memory of the user, can be marketed.

In this case too, you must be followed by many subscribers and become a true brand. Experts recommend at least 100,000 subscribers. 

• YouTube Affiliation: to earn with YouTube affiliation, you will need to create specific videos with product reviews, or simply showcasing the use of such products (described in the video bio), which will be linked to an affiliate link. Commissions are not high (10-15%), but as we have already mentioned in many cases, if you go for a good number of clicks, you can really start earning quite well.

In short, YouTube is a world of its own that follows the same logic of web marketing.

Once you find your niche, you can truly start earning from your passions and your subscribers will follow you waiting day after day for your videos!

Integrate your YouTube business with framework

Framework360 is a comprehensive platform for everything related to digital marketing, and as such it could offer you various tools to exploit to enrich your business, along with YouTube, let's see some examples:

• Working with both platforms: An effective method could be to work on both platforms, offering video content related to what your website deals with. For example, you could create a video-course site with Framework360 and provide previews through your YouTube channel, or offer video guides for the operation of your online site, and so much more.
• Creating a merch site: Having previously discussed the creation of merchandise, the platform will provide us with various intuitive and quick tools for creating our own e-commerce site, through which to sell products related to our channel.
• Leveraging the video block of the visual builder: Framework360 gives you the ability to use your videos to enhance your web pages or even create a landing page; in fact, it will suffice to use the intuitive visual builder of the platform to insert a video via link, directly into the dedicated block.