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Marketing has always been about using the latest technology to get your message across. There’s no point in having a fantastic campaign that is never appreciated by anybody. YouTube is the second largest search engine, making it a great place to go for potential customers.

This week’s blog at First Digital Media looks into YouTube Marketing and how you can use it for your own benefits.

History of YouTube

Since being brought to life in February 2005, YouTube has become one of the largest platforms online. More than 1.8 billion people use this and 100 hours of video content are uploaded each minute. With such a huge following, it isn’t difficult to see how this area has been tapped into by the marketing community.

As a result of the number of people accessing it, YouTube is now the second largest search engine. It’s only beaten by owner Google, who purchased the streaming service in November 2006.

Wide Reach and Successful Returns

Today, there are around 23 million different channels on YouTube. To add to this, at least 200 channels have over 10 million subscribers. There is something for everyone from gaming and music to instruction videos on how to hold a cat. It is this that makes it a great place to reach potential new customers. Many people have been able to build careers for themselves and reach out to those who they never would have been able to in the past.

However, it can be a difficult thing to balance. One of YouTube’s biggest stars Pewdiepie is no stranger to this. As the second largest channel at 100,876,836 subscribers, the gamer has faced a lot of criticism over the years. Opening yourself up online can risk bad press, but this is the same of every platform. Despite this, he’s still estimated to be earning £6.5 million a month from Ad revenue, merch and other projects.

He isn’t the only person to have found popularity and money from the platform. Other channels making a fair amount include Dude Perfect (£2.8 million per month), VanossGaming (£2.1 million per month), DanTDM (£2.1 million per month), and JuegaGerman (£1.8 million per month).

Will It Work For Me?

Becoming a millionaire doesn’t happen for everyone. Although, that doesn’t mean YouTube isn’t worth the time. Creating videos about your products or services can be incredibly beneficial. Creating a channel is fairly simple to do and, using the right approach, you can start to increase your followers.

If you are looking to make videos, then consider your content and what message you are putting across. Are you looking to sell, inform or entertain? This will give you a clearer idea of what to create. You also need to think about editing software, music and copyright, and SEO.

It may not be your first thought, but SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is needed on YouTube too. After all, it is a search engine. ‘Clickbait’ is a well-known term thrown around by YouTubers and refers to the title of a video. Titles on YouTube are what a viewer sees first along with a thumbnail. Getting this right is important, just as much as the description. Words and phrases used here will be taken to rank videos and display them to in right searches.

Don’t Forget Ads

On top of creating your own videos, you could also look at using YouTube for advertising. We’ve all come across Ads while watching videos so you should be aware of them. In fact, these ads per click are often cheaper than Google AdWords. Estimates suggest a YouTube ad click is priced at £0.08-0.25 ($0.10-0.30) per click compared to Google Ads at £0.66-1.32.

Advertisements are divided into 3 different types:

TrueView

These are the Ads that you’ll see most often. You’ll only pay for this if a user interacts by either watching for more than 30 seconds or clicking on it. These can be either skippable (12 seconds – 6 minutes) or non-skippable (15-20 seconds).

Two different formats of TrueView exist which are Video Discovery and In-Stream. Previously known as In-Display Ads, Video Discovery appear on the homepage of the platform as well as search results and related video suggestions. In-Stream is as it says and appears before a video or stream. In most cases, these can be skipped after 5 seconds.

Preroll Ads

We’ve all been there when you can’t skip an Ad and this is what preroll is. A viewer will have to watch the video and they are no longer than 20 seconds. These are usually at the start of a video but can be placed in the middle (mid-roll) in videos that are over 10 minutes. Preroll Ads are on a PPC (Pay Per Click) basis, making it crucial to make the most of the time you have.

Bumpers

As the shortest Ad, these last no more than 6 seconds and play before a video starts. These are best used to advertise a bigger video or campaign, drawing people to watch your content.

Changing the Future of Marketing

The world of marketing is always changing. More and more options are becoming available, with YouTube marketing being one of them.

To find out more about what we do here at First Digital Media, including YouTube and Video Marketing, please get in contact with us.

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