SBM 071 : How to Use YouTube to Drive Paid & Free Traffic with Owen Video

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Using YouTube Videos to Drive Traffic

For the common folk, YouTube is just that place where you go to watch cat videos, mems, and the latest movie trailers. But for businessmen and would-be online entrepreneurs, YouTube can be an effective tool to reaching to quite a lot of people and get any brand recognized.

For this session, we will discuss why YouTube can also be an ideal platform to help drive enough traffic to your business and how.

Why YouTube?

First things first, why should you even consider YouTube to be an effective marketing tool. There’s primarily two answers for that.

• 1. It’s Popular
  Statistics do show that YouTube is now one of the most popular websites to visit as of the mid-2010s. As a matter of fact, YouTube has close to 30 million visitors per day and at least 5 billion videos are viewed in it in the same time period. Plus, it is quite popular amongst 3 key demographics: children, teens, and young to middle-age adults. (source: https://fortunelords.com/youtube-statistics/).If that was not enough, YouTube has allowed Google to earn as much as $4 billion every year and its partners and stars have earned as much as $16 million on an annual basis since the early 2010s. With that amount of traffic and money coming through the site, it goes without saying that you might want to consider employing the platform for your own ends.
• 2. It’s Practically Free
  It goes without saying that it costs next to nothing to have your videos posted and shared on YouTube. Unlike traditional media, you don’t have to pay in YouTube to get ad space. Once you have an account, you can start posting videos and then get those videos linked to whatever site you have in mind.Aside from that, you can earn from your video ads with every view linked to other YouTube videos. So as long as your video follows YouTube’s guidelines and policies, it should earn a modest amount for you in the long-run. If you have quite a lot of video ads in the platform, you should be able to have a generous return of investment in no less than a year.

Free or Paid?

YouTube ads come in basically two flavors: free or paid. Both of these have their pros and cons, too.

• Free Advertisement
  This is perhaps the more natural of the two as it allows for a more organic ranking in YouTube and the various search engines. With the right keywords, your prospects can easily find your videos ranked in the site or search engines like Google and then click through to view it. If you plan the keywords right, you can have your videos ranking to the top in all related search queries.The only problem to this is that it takes quite a while for your videos to start ranking properly. At most, it takes months for your videos to rank at the top.
• Paid Advertisement
  This is basically the more conventional ad out of the two videos and is, for the reasons of advertising, the more preferred version to use. As a paid ad, your videos can reach the top of the search engines as soon as they are posted.The only drawback to this is that most learned viewers would avoid clicking through a paid ad since they will be labelled as such and, of course, you would have to fork out a bit of money to get them to the top.

  However, you can easily find a workaround with this if your videos have the trappings of a free video and you create it in such a way that it does not sound too ad-heavy. You can also target other similar channels and make your video look like its one of the recommended videos to play next. Basically, it’s the quality of the content and how you present them that should determine whether or not the video is worth engaging with or not.

YouTube’s Algorithms

Without getting too technical, here’s how YouTube’s search algorithms basically work: Once a person types in a certain set of key words, the algorithms then do their job by creating a list of recommended videos by looking at how these videos match the keywords typed in by the viewer.

For instance, if a viewer types in “Chiropractors in America”, YouTube’s algorithms will then come up with a list that showcases, well, the top Chiropractors in America. How the algorithms determine if the videos match the search query is by looking at their tags and, of course, the title.

You can use this to your advantage by titling your video in a way that it fits what most viewers would type in regards to queries of that subject or something similar. There is also the trick of adding in qualifying words like “top”, “cheapest” and “best” in order to give some emotional element to your titles. If you do it right, you can have your videos listed as one of the recommended videos and might even play next to a competitor’s video.

If you use this for a handful of your videos with similar content, you increase the chances of at least one of those videos reaching the top of search engine results and being found to next videos of similar nature.

Wait, isn’t This Clickbait?

Videos like this (source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBDLWvlIVag) will orient viewers on what clickbait is and how you can avoid it. It’s basically content with highly engaging titles that entice viewers with a promise while offering something that is different once they click through.

In recent years, YouTube has cracked down on clickbait and other forms of false advertising which led to a lot of channels that used clickbait to gain viewers to disappear from the search engines once the new algorithms were applied.

The bad news about this is that what you are essentially doing i.e. leveraging the search engine algorithms with your titles and keywords can be seen as clickbait if the search engine gets smarter. However, the good news is that it doesn’t have to be depending on the content in the video. So as long your content matches the title, you should be okay. Just lay it off with the highly deceptive titles such as “You wouldn’t believe what happens next…” or something similar to that.

Building Your Video

Aside from the title, there are other things that you should do right when planning or publishing the video such as:

• 1. Tags
  This is something that a lot of content creators often overlook but the right tag does tend to increase the chances of one’s videos being noticed by YouTube. The site allows for at least 500 characters for the tags which means you should find the most relevant tags for the video. They should be something short and sweet like SEO keywords. You don’t even have to use all 500 characters as 250 or below would do. The more concise yet relevant the tag is, the more effective it will be.
• 2. The HookIn advertising terms, the hook is that line that will catch the attention of your viewers or “hook” them to watch the rest of the video. This should be the introductory part of your video and the right one should be effective enough in keeping your viewer’s attention long enough for them to finish the entire video.There is no definite formula for this but a good hook is one that poses a question that will be answered by the video. Identify the need that your viewer may or may not be aware of and entice them with something that can solve that question.
• 3. LengthIn recent years, YouTube has started to take a look into the length of the videos of creators and are seemingly favoring those that go beyond the 10-minute mark. As a matter of fact, not a lot of ads would be shown on videos that reach only the 5-minute mark or less.
  
  So what should be the ideal length for your video? The answer is in watch time. Your video should be as long as it needs to be to get the video across. A 20-minute video might be good for ads but you need to remember that the average watch time for videos is at 8 to 10 minutes. Keep your videos within that range and you should be okay.

  On the flip side, stretching your video just to reach the minimum length is not ideal. It might even cause your channel to get demonetized if you are not careful.

• 4. Entertainment
  The one factor that YouTube has always been looking for in top-ranking videos is the entertainment factor. Entertainment is basically the ability to get the attention of your viewers from the start and sustain it long enough for the video to end.You might be thinking that animation is the most effective content on YouTube but this is mostly a case to case basis. There are times when animation is not as effective as someone simply talking in front of a camera depending on the subject.

  Also, there is the issue that animators find YouTube to be the least accommodating platform for their content. (Source: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/ideas-commentary/is-youtube-making-it-harder-for-animators-to-make-money-102408.html).

  As such, the best way to keep your content entertaining is to find the tools that are the most relevant to your video. If the subject matter covers something that is direct, technical, and simple, having too many animations in the video might not be the best route to take. If you do use animation for videos, it is best to use it only to emphasize a point or enhance a certain part of the video such as the start and end.

• 5. The DescriptionYour video’s description should act like an abridged version of your entire video. Write it in a way that it gives the viewer a glimpse as to what they can expect from the video in what it covers or what problems it solves. It’s not even necessary that you go beyond a paragraph just to describe the entire video. Keep things short so as not to distract the viewer from actually watching the video.If your video is quite long, you can even use the description to help your viewers get to the parts that they want. This is what is called in YouTube as a timecode which allows the viewer to skip through entire minutes to get to the part that they need.
• 6. The Call to ActionThis is where you entice your viewers to do something to complete an experience that your video has introduced. If possible, you should have the call to action included in the video itself like enticing the viewers to do something like subscribe, head on to the links in the description, or go to this website to learn more about this topic. This will actually increase the interactivity in your videos which, in turn, should consolidate traffic coming into your websites.

The Formula for the Best Video Ad

Your video ad should reflect your business the most while also carrying on an effective message. As such, there is no template for the best video ad out there as one ad should be different from another.

However, the best ads always follow the same, simple scheme:

Problem – Solution- Credibility-Call to Action

If possible, your opening statement should have you posing a question or issue which should be solved in the middle of the ad. The middle of the video should revolve around you explaining why the solution is the best or why it is a credible one. Then, it should end with a call to action, enticing the viewer to do something so that they can also provide a solution to that problem by themselves.

In Conclusion

If you have done the basics of the video right, your YouTube video should do more than getting your brand name across quite a lot of people. In time, it would funnel in a lot of traffic to your site which should allow for a better reach for your brand online.

Have you tried creating your videos based on these tips? Did it allow you to reach your target market or beyond? Let me know in the comments below!

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS: 

• Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

OWEN IN ACTION

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