YouTube Videos Should Be Part Of Your Content Marketing Strategy

Ensure that your YouTube videos are part of your over­all con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy by fol­low­ing these key steps and guid­ing prin­ci­ples.

Greg Jarboe By Greg Jarboe from SEO-PR. Join the discussion » 0 comments

For brands, one of the keys to suc­cess on YouTube is defin­ing pri­or­i­ty objec­tives. Is it to build aware­ness? Influ­ence con­sid­er­a­tion? Dri­ve online or offline sales? Grow loy­al­ty? What role do you want your videos to play in your con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy?


Last week, we unlearned what we had learned about suc­cess­ful TV adver­tis­ing strate­gies. Now, we’re ready to learn the first of sev­en ways to improve your video mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

To begin with, your YouTube videos should be part of your over­all con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Although this appears obvi­ous, some senior mar­keters have put mak­ing videos into an orga­ni­za­tion­al silo, or (worse) have out­sourced this to an agency that isn’t a mem­ber of their ded­i­cat­ed con­tent mar­ket­ing group. As a result, their YouTube videos aren’t appro­pri­ate­ly con­ceived, tar­get­ed and mea­sured, or (worse) are mere­ly a mon­tage of B‑roll post­ed in hopes that the clips will wind up on TV in future super PAC ads.

If you want an exam­ple, just watch “McConnell Work­ing for Ken­tuck­ians,” which was pub­lished on March 11, 2014.

Jaime Fuller of The Wash­ing­ton Post wrote about this YouTube video in a sto­ry, “How ‘McConnelling’ came to be the hottest thing on the polit­i­cal web.” She said, “Ear­li­er this week, the cam­paign of Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) released an ad with no words. Only Mitch McConnel­l’s smil­ing face. The Inter­net respond­ed in kind by insert­ing McConnel­l’s face where it was meant to be. No, not in super PAC ads. At the end of ’90s sit­com title sequences, obvi­ous­ly.”

So, how do you avoid being “that guy”? Well, there are three key steps to build­ing YouTube videos into your con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy:

  • Define your core con­tent strat­e­gy. There are four main ways you can pro­vide intrin­sic val­ue to your view­ers.
    • Inspi­ra­tion: YouTube has brought to light thou­sands of inspir­ing sto­ries. For exam­ple, watch “Dan­ny MacAskill – ‘Way Back Home’” on the Red Bull chan­nel.
    • Enter­tain­ment: Some videos are plan-and-sim­ple guf­faw­ing­ly fun­ny. For exam­ple, watch “Girls Don’t Poop — PooPourri.com.
    • Enlight­en­ment: These are doc­u­men­taries sim­i­lar to what you’d see on PBS. For exam­ple, watch “Always #LikeA­Girl.
    • Edu­ca­tion: Edu­ca­tion­al videos show how to do things and use prod­ucts. For exam­ple, watch “Google Search: Reunion.
  • Define your con­tent cre­ation strat­e­gy.
    • Hygiene con­tent: What is your audi­ence active­ly search­ing for regard­ing your brand or indus­try? What can serve as your 365-day-rel­e­vant, always-on, PULL con­tent pro­gram­ming? For exam­ple, prod­uct tuto­ri­als, how-to con­tent, cus­tomer ser­vice, etc.
    • Hub con­tent: The con­tent you devel­op on a reg­u­lar basis to give a fresh per­spec­tive on your target’s pas­sion points. (For exam­ple, ver­ti­cal­ized con­tent about a prod­uct line.) This is often stag­gered through­out the year.
    • Hero con­tent: What con­tent do you want to PUSH to a big, broad audi­ence? What would be your Super Bowl moment? A brand may have only a few hero moments in a year, such as prod­uct launch­es or indus­try tent-pole events.
  • Define your con­tent dis­tri­b­u­tion strat­e­gy.
    • Store: You’ll need a cen­tral place to store and orga­nize your con­tent to ensure that it’s acces­si­ble to your audi­ence any­where, any­time. Con­sid­er using a YouTube chan­nel linked to your oth­er prop­er­ties as your con­tent hub.
    • Deliv­er: An edi­to­r­i­al cal­en­dar will help you ensure your brand’s con­sis­tent pres­ence through­out the year and align con­tent pro­gram­ming with your mar­ket­ing cal­en­dar. Con­sid­er a three-tiered cal­en­dar that includes hygiene, hub, and hero con­tent.
    • Acti­vate: Giv­en the abun­dance of con­tent on YouTube, it’s key to not only pro­duce great con­tent but also to ensure it’ll reach your desired audi­ence with a sol­id acti­va­tion and pro­mo­tion strat­e­gy. The right acti­va­tion strat­e­gy depends on the con­tent type. Hero con­tent should be acti­vat­ed by a mas­sive pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign across mul­ti­ple chan­nels. Hub con­tent calls for more tar­get­ed acti­va­tion.

There are also five guid­ing prin­ci­ples will help define how YouTube videos should fit into your con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy.

  • Know who you are try­ing to reach. You know your core audi­ence and your tar­get demo­graph­ic; now you need to inves­ti­gate exact­ly how they behave on YouTube. What videos do they watch? How active are they on social net­works? How do they use their mobile devices?
  • Know what prob­lem you’re try­ing to solve. Define your brand’s pri­or­i­ty objec­tives on YouTube. What role do you want your videos to play in the mar­ket­ing mix?
    • Build­ing aware­ness: Will users be able to recall and rec­og­nize your brand, prod­uct, or ser­vice after watch­ing the video
    • Influ­enc­ing con­sid­er­a­tion: Will users con­sid­er pur­chas­ing your prod­uct or ser­vice after watch­ing this video?
    • Dri­ving online or offline sales: Will users be more like­ly to vis­it your web­site or store or pur­chase your prod­uct after watch­ing this video?
    • Grow­ing loy­al­ty: Will users be more like­ly to rec­om­mend your brand, prod­uct, or ser­vice after watch­ing this video?
  • Know your brand on YouTube. What does your brand stand for with your tar­get demo on YouTube? What do they know about your brand? Do they know what you do or make? YouTube Ana­lyt­ics can help you see how your con­tent is cur­rent­ly res­onat­ing (or not) with your tar­get demo.
  • Know the com­pe­ti­tion. Spend some time look­ing at what your top com­peti­tors are doing with their online video con­tent. Vis­it their YouTube chan­nels and see what’s per­formed well for them, and look at what they’re up to across the entire dig­i­tal ecosys­tem. What are they doing suc­cess­ful­ly? Where are there oppor­tu­ni­ties for your brand?
  • Know what suc­cess looks like. Now that you’re on the path to mak­ing great brand­ed videos, how are you think­ing about suc­cess? Is suc­cess about views? User engage­ment? Or oth­er met­rics fur­ther down the fun­nel? Once you’ve deter­mined what suc­cess looks like, you’ll need to track relat­ed met­rics before, dur­ing, and after the video release to see if it moved the nee­dle.

That’s how to ensure that your YouTube videos are part of your over­all con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Up next: we’ll take a look at 10 fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples have emerged for cre­at­ing con­tent that peo­ple will love.

Greg Jarboe

Written by Greg Jarboe

President, SEO-PR

Greg Jarboe is President and co-founder of SEO-PR, an award-winning content marketing agency that was founded in 2003. He’s the author of YouTube and Video Marketing and also a contributor to The Art of SEO, Strategic Digital Marketing, Complete B2B Online Marketing, and Enchantment. He’s profiled in the book Online Marketing Heroes, a frequent speaker at industry conferences, and writes for Tubular Insights and The SEM Post. He’s an executive education instructor at the Rutgers Business School and the Video and Content Marketing faculty chair at Simplilearn.

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