With the advent of YouTube, video marketing strategies are coming to the forefront and not without cause. People look for quick ways to obtain information and what better way than a video surmising all relevant points within minutes. Over a billion users use this forum to discover, watch, and share originally created videos. This untapped database is ripe for the picking and businesses are just about realizing this opportunity for their business message to reach millions of prospective customers.

1. Leverage the outreach of YouTube
YouTube is the #2 search engine and the 3rd most visited website worldwide closely following Google and Facebook. It provides accessibility like nothing else – through every possible smartphone in the market or from the luxuries of your home television. It provides simple, smooth-flowing content to the audience on their terms – how and when they want to watch it. That’s the beauty of YouTube. All small businesses should use this direct communication opportunity with their potantial customers. 

2. Ease of the interface
YouTube provides you with ease and simplicity in usage that no other video hosting site can possibly provide. All you need to do is create an account, and manage a channel wherein you can make your playlist of videos customized to the needs of your business. The fact of the matter is that this ease, this effortlessness of the YouTube interface is very much favorable for the audience, thereby increasing the accessibility.

3. First Step to Visual Branding
The power of visuals in promoting any business is of paramount significance, and YouTube provides the perfect platform for that. Common sense dictates that video is preferred any day over audio or text and by creating engaging content in YouTube, you can develop a piqued niche interest among your viewers. Interestingly enough, YouTube engages the audience through its different features and by playing with the tags and keywords, you can scale up your views. In the end, the success of the video platform is essential to branch out into other types of content and eventual sales for your small business.

An example of product concept explanation video that we use to explain the concept behind Budo.

Budo is a leading cloud-based web development platform created with one goal in mind: to help people get online without technical skills and a big budget. Budo is a Website Builder and Content Management System. Budo also allows you to embed YouTub video in your website!

4. YouTube as a social network
What many people have yet to discover is that YouTube is effectively speaking, a social network. Some of the outlined attributes will just go to prove this fact:

• You get to add friends
• Subscribe to channels
• Discover people with similar interests by gauging their comments
• Interact with videos by leaving comments
• Connect with your audience through your channel.​

As a small business owner, you can use this to your full advantage by personalizing your channel to adhere to your customers’ needs and interests. With this approach and mindset, you get to explore and gauge a whole lot of parameters and possibilities.

5. YouTube channel v/s Website
People have begun to use YouTube channels similar to a homepage of a website. Your channel becomes the homepage and each video you post subsequently becomes a subpage. For a small business, to expect video views on their created websites to cross the million mark is unrealistic, to say the least. On the other hand, using YouTube as a foundation to build upon a large number of audience and then moving on to your personal or small business website when the time is right is a much more feasible idea.

6. Building Customer and Industry Influence
YouTube viewers seek for content which is informative, engaging and helps to solve their problem. Many stalwarts of the industry have resorted to YouTube videos to disseminate their knowledge and expertise in various fields. Businesses could cash in on this principle by creating how-to videos, video tutorials, and informative sessions relevant to their enterprise. In the long run, this can create a base for credibility, expertise, and through-and-through influence on the industry, and more importantly, respect among the customer database.

7. YouTube Advertising
While small businesses have realized the potential of advertising through Google and Facebook, they are yet to discover the untapped potential of YouTube in this context. 2 kinds of advertising can be exploited within YouTube:

• Keyword Bid - The first one is within the search option of YouTube in which you get to bid for keywords. You get a video and its thumbnail instead of a text (as is the case in Google) and moreover the bidding is much cheaper as compared to Google pay-per-click.
• Promoted Videos - This second one is the crux of the actual advertising program that YouTube intended for its users. When you make an individual video about your business, you can promote that video subject to certain keywords and YouTube will flash that video when the users search relevant topics. The entire process can be achieved for a nominal fee with a guarantee of substantial returns.
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8. Integration of Social Media Marketing
YouTube and Facebook are the core of all possible cross-platform interactivity between social media for your marketing strategy. The added advantage of minimal bandwidth usage by YouTube just ascertains that fact. To simplify things – Videos are the most interactive, fun way to reach out to your audience during the marketing phase. Once you link all other business profiles – LinkedIn, Twitter, and Tumblr – with a video, you can exponentially increase your outreach.

Fun fact: 323 days’ worth of YouTube videos are watched on Facebook every minute.

It cannot be denied that the YouTube platform provides the most cost-effective transmission marketing strategy for social media far more comprehensive than the conventional television. YouTube provides the perfect ground for staging a product or service and simultaneously, maximizing the outreach and brand visibility. In the end, it all boils down to how effectively can you use this tool at your disposal.

By Rahul Chowath