By: Larry Kotch, co-founder, thebrainsmarketing.co.uk

With over 2 billion monthly users, YouTube has become one of the most far-reaching and cost-effective marketing solutions for businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re looking to create brand awareness, establish yourself as an industry leader or generate leads, creating informative and educational YouTube content can help you to achieve your marketing goals and significantly boost your ROI.

Here at The Brains, we regularly use Youtube to connect with new and existing audiences, and it has also proven to be an invaluable source of generating high-quality leads at an incredibly low CPL.

YouTube as a tool for lead generation 

YouTube has become one of the biggest go-to sites for information with Millenials and under ’40s, which means that almost every topic, no matter how niche, has some level of search volume. Whether you’re looking to learn how to change a tap or you’re wanting to know how to create more effective B2B nurturing strategies, YouTube has the answer.

Granted, YouTube has become incredibly saturated, so content that you create on topics with exceptionally high search volumes will likely not lead to impressive view figures, unless you already have a large following. As a result, it pays to be specific and become laser-focused on a singular subject. 

If you’re a business looking to implement Youtube content into your marketing strategy, start by doing some keyword research to see what keywords are associated with your industry and look at highly asked questions.

Create content that addresses very specific questions within your industry to help attract potential leads who are particularly interested in your specialisms and services. If you want to go a step further, consider answering questions at particular stages of the sales funnel. For example, if you’re looking to market a product or service, you can create a series of YouTube videos to guide your prospects into the marketing funnel and nurture them towards a final conversion.

By creating content based around highly specific subjects, you will be attracting audiences that you can potentially add to your lead nurturing list. For example, at the end of your video or in the description section, you can provide links to leads magnets and webinars that require prospects to enter their information before gaining access. You can then use this information to add prospects to your lead nurturing campaigns to keep people informed about your business. Additionally, you can add direct contact information or links to your calendar, so that prospects can arrange a one to one meeting with you or a member of your staff.

Using YouTube to generate leads can be one of the most cost-effective CPL strategies available, as creating YouTube videos doesn’t have to break the bank, but has the potential to attract high quality leads at a low cost. In fact, sometimes it only requires a decent phone camera, a circle light, a microphone and a white wall, all of which can be accessed for around £1000. 

At the end of the day, it’s the quality of the content you create and the value and insights it provides to the user that really matters – if your content helps a multi-million pound B2B business save on its marketing campaigns, they might come to you for more solutions and even hire you to look after their future marketing campaigns.

One of the main benefits of utilising YouTube as a part of your lead generation strategy is that the possibilities are endless – the community is so vast, and with the ability to access industry leaders and influencers, there’s no limit to what you can achieve.

Growing your brand and engaging with your audience

If you’re looking to engage with your audience and promote your brand, YouTube provides several ways to do this.

In 2021, people are looking to put a face to a business and engage with them on a more personal level. Creating content that shows who you are as a person forms a level of trust and personability that allows you to stand out from your competition.

While marketing strategies like SEO can be great ways of rising above your competition, the process can often be more time consuming and expensive than creating highly targeted and personable YouTube content.

Using YouTube as a means of boosting brand awareness is not exclusive to the B2C and ecommerce sector. More and more B2B businesses are utilising YouTube as a way of connecting with their audiences. B2B brands such as Cisco and Intel are two excellent examples of brands that have successfully used YouTube to communicate and engage with their audiences.

It’s important to remember that prospects are looking for people they can resonate with, so it sometimes pays to “push the boat out” and create content that sticks in people’s minds. Things such as animation, graphics, comedy, and music can all be excellent forms of content to help stand out and for your audience to remember you.

In addition to being memorable, it also displays a level of confidence that you’re willing to attach yourself to your brand for the whole world to see. By connecting your face to your brand, you inspire your audience to take an interest and believe in your business.

Creating a sense of personability also helps when it comes to the sales process. If people have a sense of who you are, they will feel more comfortable when it comes to doing business and competing transactions.

Combining Discovery ads and organic search to maximise results

Unfortunately, unless your video has a few thousand views and has plenty of engagement, it isn’t likely to make it to the first results page – and if your video isn’t on the first results page, it isn’t likely to generate thousands of views and have lots of engagement…

This chicken and egg situation is one of the drawbacks of YouTube.

However, much like PPC and SEO, there are a number of ways to increase your reach on YouTube by combining paid search and organic strategies.

If you’re new to YouTube, investing in discovery ads can be a great way to get your videos seen by potential leads as they search for related keywords and topics. Similar to how PPC ads appear at the top of Google SERPs above the organic search results. YouTube discovery ads appear as ‘suggested videos’ for people watching similar content to your own. 

Discovery ads are relatively cheap, and for around £100, you can start creating a discovery ad campaign to direct traffic to your page, which in turn will increase your organic ranking.

Summary

YouTube is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow your business, create brand awareness and generate leads. By creating highly targeted content that answers frequently asked questions within your industry, you can establish yourself as a thought leader and a valuable source of information. 

The ability to add a layer of personability to your business is also a unique trait to marketing on YouTube and provides a cost-effective way to engage with your audience and stand out from your competitors. 

If you’re looking for a marketing solution that has the potential for minimal CPL and colossal ROI, YouTube marketing might be just what you need!