YouTube Marketing: 13 Tips to Grow Your YouTube Channel

Oftenly disregarded by digital marketers when creating their brand’s social media strategies, YouTube is a platform with a huge marketing potential.

YouTube has grown to become very popular for the online users worldwide,  since it is the second largest search engine, has 2.7 billion active users, and around 30.000 hours of content are uploaded on the platform every hour.

YouTube marketing is a really serious business. But believe it or not, using YouTube for marketing may be just that one missing piece that will skyrocket your business.

13 tips on how to improve your YouTube marketing in 2024

1. What is youtube marketing
2. Why is YouTube marketing important
3. 13 tips on improving your YouTube marketing

• Brand your YouTube channel
• Learn more about your YouTube audience
• Use SEO best practices to refine your YouTube videos
• Optimize your YouTube content
• Keep an eye on your competition
• Engage with your audience
• Start using YouTube Shorts
• Empower your YouTube videos to get subscribers
• Cross-promote your YouTube videos
• Implement YouTube ads to grow traffic
• Make lives on YouTube
• Use influencer marketing on YouTube
• Check your performance with YouTube Analytics

1. What is YouTube marketing

Youtube marketing consists in posting video content on YouTube about your brand, products and services with the purpose of promoting them.

By developing authentic, original content you will stir the interest of your audience through your brand’s attractive persoanlity and creativity.

If the products and services you’re promoting in your YouTube videos are also solving your audience’s pains, that’s even better.

YouTube marketing can also be facilitated through influencer partnerships. This will help you spread the word about your products and services even faster.

Moreover, influencers who have more subscribers and address a wider public will also help you increase your audience and number of subscribers.

Boosting your YouTube marketing via YouTube ads has also become a common practice. YouTube ads help users decide on what products to buy after they’ve seen a review or a how-to in an ad.

2. Why is YouTube marketing important

YouTube marketing is important for your brand because it can help you increase brand awareness, transforming more users into subscribers, and slowly building a loyal community.

In 2024 social media users prefer to see more videos than any other type of content. YouTube statistics show that YouTube users watch 1 billion hours of video content every day.

So there’s your sign that you should be building a strong YouTube presence in order for your marketing campaigns to get a performance boost.

YouTube marketing can help you grow your brand awareness and fostering brand trust within your target audience.

Posting YouTube videos with product releases, brand storytelling, testimonials, tutorials and reviews usually provides your audience with a high-quality perception about your products and brand, which ultimately increases buying possibilities.

Creating accurate and detailed videos that show the perks of using your services and products are bound to convince people who are searching for similar products.

3. 13 tips on improving your YouTube marketing

Developing a YouTube marketing strategy is not a fast plan. You need patience, attention to detail and a well-researched plan to make sure you check all the boxes.

Here is our step-by-step guide on how to create a YouTube marketing strategy:

• Brand your YouTube channel

The name you use for your YouTube channel sure clearly be the name of your brand. This way, it will be easier for your audience to find you.

Your YouTube channel will be your brand’s mirror, showing all your video content about your products, services, and brand stories.

When setting up your brand’s YouTube channel, make sure you add a profile picture, a banner, a channel description, some social media links, and custom URL. You can easily design your banner and profile picture using a tool like Canva.

For good marketing on YouTube you need to brand all your thumbnails, descriptions and video titles to be recognizable for your audience.

Establishing a design for all your thumbnails and then following it for future videos will help you maintain consistency.

• Learn more about your YouTube audience

Marketing on YouTube, like on any other social media platform, cannot exist without an audience. That is why you have to find out who your audience is.

By looking at data with the help of a YouTube native analytics app or a specialized YouTube analytics tool like Socialinsider, you can find out how many users have been watching your videos without them being your subscribers.

You can also see who are the returning viewers and who are some new ones. The great part is that you can also check what type of content they usually watch on Youtube. This will give you insights on how you can adjust your content to make it fit their needs.

Finding out about their age, you learn what age group is watching most of your content. This insight will help you design content for that specific age group, already knowing what they like.

Learning their location helps you decide on the best time to post, taking into account the hours when they are awake scrolling on YouTube.

Based on all these insights you get for your video marketing strategy, you can develop a subscriber persona and then design videos that will attract even more of them, increasing the number of subscribers.

• Use SEO best practices to refine your YouTube videos

SEO practices do not apply only for blog posts or social media posts. When designing your YouTube marketing for your business, you need to consider using tags and keywords based on your audience’s searches.

Before posting your YouTube videos, make sure you comply with a few simple rules to improve your SEO and don’t get into the “unwatched pile” of videos on this platform.

• Title and descriptions - Try to insert your keywords naturally and also consider translating them in other languages to reach an even bigger, international audience.
• Tags - With these tags you can tell your audience and also YouTube’s algorithm what your video’s about. Carefully choose your tags because they impact your videos’ ranking.
• Thumbnails - Do a little research and check top videos to take their thumbnails as an example. See if they’ve included their brand’s name or a person’s face to attract viewers attention and make them stop scrolling. Usually, thumbnails that include text and facial expressions generate more clicks.

You have to keep these tips into account to make sure the YouTube algorithm is on your side. Promoting your YouTube videos on other social media platforms will help boost the engagement. And the algorithm really likes that and it will favor your videos more.

• Optimize your YouTube content

In order to stand out in a sea of billions of YouTube videos you have to implement a unique approach and promote trustworthiness.

If people relate to the content you post and they find it reliable, then you will be able to build a community around your brand.

To develop creative high-quality content for your YouTube channel, you need to do an extensive research regarding:

• find your audience’s pain points - find them and address them in your videos
• create your brand’s story - tell it exactly as it is, making it relatable for your audience
• check YouTube trending keywords - include them in your video content by both saying them outloud and include them in the video’s description.
• record with high-quality equipment - no one likes pixelated videos. Make sure you offer your audience great visuals.
• make your video to look professional - for this to happen you have to invest time and financial resources in post-production and editing.

• Keep an eye on your competition

Developing a competitive analysis is another step towards successful marketing on YouTube. Seeing what your competitor is doing on their YouTube channel can be used as inspiration, but also as a source of learning what to avoid.

With the help of a YouTube analytics tool, take a look at their analytics to see their YouTube videos’ performance and take notes.

This comparison between Semrush and Ahrefs’ YouTube channels shows the clear distinction between their different approaches when it comes to YouTube marketing.

While Semrush has posted more videos in the last 12 months, they didn’t get neither a higher engagement, nor a higher number of subscribers compared to Ahrefs.

The thing is not about posting a lot of videos on YouTube, but about posting with consistency. Ahrefs managed to attract a wider audience with less videos, creating quality videos.

When it comes to top videos for both Ahrefs and Semrush, it looks like Ahrefs really knows their way when it comes to thumbnails and keywords.

They even wrote those thumbnails exactly like a user would search for that topic. I’d say they’ve got to know their audience.

Ahrefs’ YouTube marketing tactics clearly made a difference since they managed to have higher engagement than Semrush. Their engaging high-quality content triggered viewers to add comments and it increased their number of views.

When developing a competitive analysis on YouTube, look at:

• What is their content about?
• How many views did they get to their videos?
• How often do they post?
• What’s their approach when it comes to thumbnails?
• What type of videos do they post more? (testimonials, product launches, tutorials, brand story, etc)

Answer all these questions to make sure you empower your YouTube marketing with the insights collected from your competitive analysis.

• Engage with your audience

Now that you have learned a few things about your audience, you know what their interests are and you’ve adjusted your YouTube videos accordingly, it’s time you engage with them.

By answering their comments and showing your appreciation towards your subscribers every time you see them interact with your videos, you will make them feel seen, feel important.

Reasons like these will transform them into a loyal community. Make sure you quickly respond to their comments with a friendly reply. It is important to answer their queries and resolve their issues as soon as you see their comments.

This way, you will prevent their problem from turning into a negative review for your brand’s customer service or products.

To make your viewers engage even more with your YouTube videos, you should also post videos with Q&As where you ask them to leave some questions in the comment section.

• Start using YouTube Shorts

Getting used to watching short videos on other social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, YouTubers were thrilled to see something similar appearing on YouTube to satisfy their need for short-form videos.

YouTube Shorts look a lot like Reels on Instagram and Facebook. Short-form videos will help you attract those viewers who are on this platform only to see short content.

This type of YouTube content comes more in-handy for viewers who are using the social media platform on their mobile devices.

YouTube stats show that 63% of YouTube watch time comes from people who use mobile devices. That’s one of the main reasons to consider creating YouTube Shorts to market your brand.

• Empower your YouTube videos to get subscribers

Getting more users to subscribe to your YouTube channel will provide you with a lot of features you could use in your future YouTube content.

What’s even better is that YouTube’s algorithm, known to work in mysterious ways, will also rank your videos higher if you have a higher number of subscribers.

Now that you have these tips the only thing you have to do is create YouTube content that solves your audience’s pain points.

If you win them over with your testimonials, product release videos for products they really need and tutorials on how to use them, you are likely to get them to subscribe.

If viewers trust your YouTube content, they will want to subscribe to be notified next time you post a new video.

What can draw them even more is that you set a publishing schedule on YouTube so that they’d be around when you post new videos. You can even schedule your YouTube marketing videos ahead of time.

Another trick that can help you satisfy your viewers’ need to get them to subscribe is to ask them at the end of your videos what they’d like to see next. Getting inspiration directly from your YouTube audience will help you even more to get more views and subscribers.

• Cross-promote your YouTube videos

Marketing on YouTube doesn’t mean that you only have to post your videos on YouTube. Surely, that’s your starting point, but you should also consider cross-promoting your YouTube videos.

Luckily, YouTube makes it easier for everyone to share YouTube videos to any other social media platform, like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Incorporating YouTube videos into your LinkedIn marketing strategy can boost engagement by showcasing video content to a more professional audience.

Make sure you also add links to your YouTube channel in your blog posts. This will help readers find more visual content on the topics they were reading about.

• Implement YouTube ads to grow traffic

Giving your YouTube videos a little boost with YouTube ads has never done any harm. Using YouTube ads in your marketing strategy can drive traffic.

With a YouTube ad campaign you can reach a wider audience and so increase your website traffic. This will lead to custom messaging for your YouTube’s target audience.

Even if you decide to give your YouTube marketing a little boost with ads, don’t think that an ad campaign can replace the power of organic content. You still have to design high-quality content for your viewers.

There are 3 types of YouTube ads:

• In-stream ads - They can start running at different moments during video. Some of them are skippable, while others are non-skippable.
• Overly ads - You cannot skip this type of YouTube ads. They look like text or banners and they generally appear on top of videos.
• Bumper ads - These are the type of ads that everyone sees before a video starts. You cannot skip them.

You can experiment with all of them at first so you can see which one drives more traffic. Then, you can stick to that particular YouTube ad format throughout your campaign.

• Make lives on YouTube

Hosting lives on YouTube can really contribute to a higher engagement. Viewers will see this as an opportunity to directly interact with your brand, ask questions and solve their queries.

By planning a periodical Q&A live or how-to live (in which you are able to show your viewers your products’ features), users get to see the human-side of your brand.

And this is a factor that contributes to building a stronger, more loyal community around your brand. If they can associate a fec with a brand, they will feel more close to the brand.

Ideas for hosting lives for YouTube marketing:

• industry trends
• giveaway
• webinar
• podcast
• live interview
• product demonstration
• unboxing
• competitors and challenges
• behind the scenes
• tutorial
• product launch

• Use influencer marketing on YouTube

With the help of influencers on YouTube you can reach an even wider audience if they have a high number of subscribers.

These creators can help you increase brand awareness, drive traffic and increase your number of subscribers. They have the power to convince their subscribers to also become your subscribers.

You can partner up with YouTube creators who can promote your services and products in their videos.

For  influencer marketing on YouTube you can try:

• testimonials
• unboxing videos
• tutorials on how to efficiently use products and services
• product reviews
• giveaways
• day-in-the-life video

• Check your performance with YouTube Analytics

After all has been said and done, it’s time to measure your YouTube marketing performance by checking social media analytics.

Using a specialized YouTube analytics tool like Socialinsider can help you get key metrics and a benchmarks analysis where you can compare yourself against your competitors.

In the YouTube native analytics app you can get a detailed breakdown on YouTube metrics. In the Overview section, you get to see the main YouTube KPIs like video views, watch time and number of subscribers.

In Content, you can see a breakdown between videos, shorts and lives. For videos and lives, you can check detailed YouTube insights like impressions, impressions click-through rate, average view duratio, how viewers find your live streams and top videos.

In the native analytics app, for YouTube Shorts you can check views, likes, subscribers, how many subscribers chose to view and top Shorts.

With the help of YouTube analytics you get to report on your campaigns and better acustom your next YouTube marketing campaigns to fulfil new goals.

Final thoughts

Having a well-researched YouTube marketing plan will help you to engage and build your audience.

So now that you've discovered some tips for a successful YouTube channel, you can go out there and see how YouTube marketing works best for your business.

Frequently asked questions on YouTube marketing

1.Is YouTube marketing worth it?

• Develop high-quality YouTube videos
• Establish collabs with other creators
• Sign up in YouTube Communities
• Use tags and keywords
• Optimize your descriptions and video titles
• Create a thumbnail that includes your main keyword and attracts the audience

2.How do you do SEO for YouTube marketing?

• Find a good keyword
• Add verified and accurate closed captions
• Include a transcript in your video description and make sure you check it for spelling mistakes
• Provide your YouTube videos with subtitles in multiple languages
• Create a keyword-optimized title, tags and description
• Repeat your main keyword in your YouTube video
• Include your main keyword in your thumbnail

3.What is the best YouTube strategy?

The best YouTube strategy is to be consistent and post creative content regularly to make sure you keep your audience engaged.  It is also important to include main keywords and tags in description and title and also reply to your audience’s comments.