15 YouTube Marketing Tips to Boost Engagement and ROI

And 10 YouTube Statistics Demonstrating How Marketing and Advertising on YouTube Can Benefit Your Business

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Philip Mandelbaum
07/12/2023

A left-rear view of a social media marketing manager sitting at his desk, editing a video for a YouTube marketing campaign

If video marketing isn’t part of your digital marketing strategy, you’re missing out on a captive audience of more than three billion video viewers — and falling behind the 86% of marketers currently using video to promote their brand. Already, eight in 10 consumers have purchased an app or other software after watching a brand video, and 91% actually want more video content from companies. Good thing, since video marketers achieve a 54% increase in brand awareness; 66% of video marketers generate more leads per year; and 93% of marketers say they’ve landed a new customer from a video on social media. Of course, like every other digital marketing strategy or tactic, whether you should invest in video marketing depends most on profit potential — and 92% of video marketers now say video marketing provides “good ROI” (versus only 78% a mere five years ago). The only questions, then, are where, when and how to host and promote our videos — in addition, obviously, to posting short-form vertical videos on TikTok and Instagram. The answer: YouTube.

Although Wistia — trusted by the likes of Zendesk, BambooHR, and Intuit Mailchimp — offers a variety of unique benefits for brands, particularly in regard to lead generation (CTA) capabilities, on-site video player customization, third-party integrations and advanced analytics, there is no viable alternative to YouTube as a social media video platform.

A 3D rendering of a 'YouTube concept', with the YouTube logo and two red hearts floating above what appears to be a black computer keyboard

10 YouTube Statistics Digital Marketers Can’t Ignore

YouTube is the second largest search engine, trailing only Google
Consumers spend more time on YouTube than any other website (and twice as much time as spent on Google)
YouTube is more popular for video streaming than Netflix
Three quarters of all consumers use YouTube
Social media users are 400% more likely to use YouTube to research a brand than any other social media platform
Social media users are 200% more likely to buy something if they see it on YouTube
Three quarters of all YouTube users say YouTube makes them more aware of brands
Seven in 10 users have bought a product after seeing it on YouTube
Nearly half of all social media users follow brands on YouTube
Forty-one percent of all social media users want brands to post on YouTube more frequently

Point blank: Social media is the best place for brands to connect with their target audiences, build brand awareness, boost online engagement and generate leads — and YouTube is the only video marketing solution worth your investment.

What is YouTube?

Launched in 2005, a year after the first video-sharing site Vimeo hit the web, YouTube is an online video hosting and social networking platform with nearly three billion active users. YouTube’s largest cohort is users aged 25-34, though YouTube is also the most popular social media platform for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, with 95% and 85% usage rates, respectively. Originally designed merely for uploading and sharing personal videos and non-copyrighted clips, today YouTube is the primary vehicle for millions of major brands and influencers to reach their audiences with organic and paid video content. YouTube’s most popular topics are sports and gaming; the primary reason consumers use the app is to search for songs, games, cartoons and dances. Users can use YouTube to search for their favorite brands, products, trends, keywords or videos; like, share and save videos; create their own playlists; subscribe to their favorite channels; engage with brands, influencers and friends through video comments and community posts; go live; and upload their own videos. In September 2020, YouTube introduced video shorts, to compete with the likes of TikTok and Instagram. In the last half decade, the Google subsidiary has also added YouTube Kids; YouTube TV, to compete with the likes of Netflix and Hulu; YouTube Music, to compete with Spotify and Apple Music; YouTube Premium, a paid YouTube and YouTube Music subscription service, “ad-free, offline, and in the background;” YouTube Shopping, for showcasing and selling your products; YouTube Ads, for paid promotion; and YouTube Studio for advanced content creation, performance analysis and user data collection.

A view from behind of a person with long pink hair watching on a laptop, surrounded by cosmetic products, a YouTube influencer video tutorial, applying makeup as illustrated in the video

What is YouTube marketing?

As the second largest search engine in the world, YouTube is not only a social media platform or video hosting service — it’s the starting point for millions upon millions of consumers and their brand, product and topical queries. This, alone, is reason enough to invest at least as much in video content creation and YouTube advertising as you do on Google Ads. And that’s not all: consumers spend more time on YouTube than any other website, including Google and stream more video on YouTube than Netflix. In fact, three quarters of all consumers use YouTube, and the app’s ad reach encompasses more than half of all internet users — internet users who actively search for shopping opportunities. Social media users are 200% more likely to buy a product or service if they see it on YouTube, and 70% of YouTube users have made a purchase after seeing a video on the social media platform.

YouTube marketing, then, incorporates all the organic and paid social media marketing strategies and tactics your brand employs specifically on YouTube to attract and convert potential customers. Another term for YouTube for Business, YouTube marketing is designed to help brands target the right audiences, build brand awareness, boost online engagement, and generate leads.

Marketing on YouTube can (and usually should) include:

Organic short- and long-form content, including brand and product introductions, case studies and customer testimonials, behind the scenes tours, and how-tos
Playlists, for organizing your video content by theme, type, business line, etc.
Paid ads, including skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, in-feed video ads, bumper ads, outstream ads, and masthead ads
YouTube Studio and Google Ads Asset Library, for organic and paid video content creation tools and support
Community posts, for announcements and user engagement
Influencer marketing (e.g., unboxings or product reviews) and user-generated content (e.g., unboxings or testimonials)
Shopping, with products in your pinned channel store and in a product shelf beneath your content, promoted in your live streams and with a shopping button on your videos

If you’re wondering how to optimize your marketing and advertising on YouTube, follow my top tips.

What is a YouTube marketing strategy?

A YouTube marketing strategy includes your target audience(s), goals, KPIs, editorial plan, content calendar and content development and distribution processes and procedures, as well as the campaigns you’ll run and the AI and other martech you’ll use to achieve your goals. There are seven steps to developing and optimizing a YouTube marketing strategy that works.

7 Steps to Developing Your YouTube Marketing Strategy

1. Define Your Audience(s)

Here’s how to find yours:

Use your zero-, first- and third-party data to learn as much as you can about your existing customers, subscribers, website users and YouTube followers
Use any feedback your YouTube marketing managers and coordinators may have logged to identify gaps and opportunities
Use surveys and focus groups to learn more about what customers, prospects and the general public think of your brand, products/services, and YouTube presence
Develop user personas, including personal background, professional background, user environment, preferred content types, preferred devices, preferred communication methods, attitudes, interests, motivations, needs, goals and pain points, buying motivation(s), and buying scenarios
Map out the customer journey, identifying all the different paths a YouTube user might take toward making a purchase; the thoughts, feelings and actions of your prospects and customers at each stage of the customer lifecycle; and how you’ve been using YouTube to recruit, retain, upsell and/or partner with customers
Use a CDP and/or DXP to organize and manage all your customers and prospects, segment audiences based on your user personas, and improve the empathy and personalization exhibited in your marketing on YouTube

2. Establish Your YouTube Marketing Goals

To ensure clear direction for your YouTube marketing strategy:

Define goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based (SMART)
Start with your overall business goals, proceed to your long-term strategic marketing goals, move on to your social media marketing goals, and conclude with your YouTube- and campaign-specific goals
Identify the social media marketing KPIs against which you’ll measure your YouTube campaign performance — found exclusively in the full report, The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing
Outline your expectations for each stage of the customer journey

An old fashioned, white Olympic-style tri-level (three-tiered) podium with the Roman numerals I, II and III, in the foreground sitting on what appears to be a platform, with the bleachers, stadium lights and surrounding pine trees in the background

3. Conduct a Competitive Analysis

To understand what your competitors are doing well or poorly on YouTube, and identify successful tactics you can incorporate into your social media strategy:

Use your SEO tool, apps like Glassdoor and the various social media platforms to identify your key competitors
Confirm the social media platforms used by your key competitors
Search your competitors’ names, account handles and relevant hashtags on YouTube to determine what they’re sharing and how their audience and the public are responding (social listening)
Track your competitors’ YouTube performance, using your predefined KPIs
Track characteristics of your competitors’ behaviors on YouTube, including what, when and how often they post
Focus on your top five competitors, and audit their most popular and most engaged followers, as well as any influencers or users who generate content for their brand
Benchmark your YouTube marketing performance against the competition
Perform a SWOT analysis, determining your YouTube strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
Identify gaps in your existing YouTube strategy
Strategize methods for addressing any gaps, weaknesses, threats or opportunities

4. Audit Your YouTube Account, Content and Campaigns

Once you’ve clarified who you’re targeting and what you hope to achieve with your marketing on YouTube, look back at what you’ve already created — and how it performed — to identify trends and determine what can and should be repurposed.

Start by asking yourself:

Which types of YouTube content have and have not worked?
Which types of YouTube campaigns have and have not worked?
Which of our user personas have been most and least engaged?
Which of our user personas have been most likely and least likely to convert to customers?
Who are our most and least valuable business and influencer partners? (Learn more about influencer marketing.)
How does our YouTube presence compare to that of our competitors?

Then, perform a Keep, Kill, Refresh on your YouTube content marketing and paid and organic campaigns, as follows:

Content

Delete any off-brand, inaccurate, stale or erroneous content (Kill)
Properly name, file and store any content that can be reused as is (Keep)
Optimize any content that could provide added value if updated and enhanced (Refresh)

Campaigns

Replicate any campaigns that performed particularly well (Keep)
Optimize any campaigns that could perform even better with behaviorally informed edits and enhancements (Refresh)
Archive any past campaigns that underperformed (Kill)

5. Outline Your YouTube Content Development and Distribution Responsibilities, Processes and Procedures

Before you begin planning and then creating custom content for YouTube, you need to secure buy-in from all parties on how your content will be produced and disseminated. Specifically:

Who are our YouTube content marketing strategists?
Who are our YouTube content creators? Writers? Graphic designers? Video editors?
Who are our partner content creators, including YouTube influencers, other brands and customers who provide user-generated content?
Who are our YouTube content reviewers?
Who are our YouTube marketing managers?
Who are our YouTube marketing coordinators?
Who are our YouTube data and performance analysts?
How are the content themes and subjects determined?
What types of content are being created? And what unique step(s) does each type require?
How are deadlines determined?
At what cadence is the content released?
How is content posted? Do we use a social media marketing platform or other third-party AI-powered social media app? (I list my preferred social media martech solutions in The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing.)
What type of project management style are we adopting (e.g., agile)?
What project management software are we using (e.g., JIRA, for agile)?

6. Develop Your YouTube Editorial Plan and Content Calendar

Finally, you can flesh out your YouTube marketing ideas, based on your findings from each of the preceding steps.

Be sure to supplement what the customer data and platform and web analytics tell you by:

Interviewing internal stakeholders on trends, topics and techniques they think most appeal to your YouTube audience
Asking your YouTube followers — and, in particular, your most engaged followers — what inspired them to follow you and engage with or share your content
Asking your customers what, if anything, you’ve done on YouTube that has contributed to them making a decision to purchase your product or service
Asking your partner YouTube influencers what it is about your brand, products/services, values or YouTube presence that inspired them to work with you
Asking past YouTube followers and customers what it is about your brand, products/services, values or social media presence that inspired them to unfollow you or stop spending

Once you’ve finalized your editorial plan, you can create your YouTube content calendar.

Use the project management software you selected earlier to build out a master calendar, as well as the timeline for each campaign, project and assignment, assigning all roles from development to approval and from distribution to monitoring, analysis, iteration and optimization.

The Top 15 YouTube Tips for Marketers

Create a brand account, and optimize your channel with a branded username, handle, URL, header, profile picture, and thumbnails; SEO description; trailer videos; playlists; social handles; links; and contact details
Create playlists for your videos based on theme or content type (e.g., office BTS, tutorial or unboxing)
Join the YouTube Partner Program to earn revenue from Watch Page and Short Feed ads; channel memberships; your YouTube store; Super Chat, Super Stickers and Super Thanks; YouTube Premium subscriber views
Post regularly (once a week)
Go Live, and create vertical Shorts
Engage with your subscribers using the Community tab
Create excitement for new video releases with the Premiere function
Optimize all your videos, including a channel intro and outro, graphic visual cues, interactive elements, captions, and subscription info
Optimize all your video metadata, including title (60-70 characters; includes SEO keyword(s), a number and brackets/parentheses; represents content; sparks curiosity), description (includes detailed outline of video content; SEO keyword(s); and CTA with external link), and tags
Include custom thumbnails, closed captions, cards and end screens for all videos
Make the appropriate selections for language, location, recording date, chapters, and video category
Tag your products in your videos whenever possible
Enable video and audio remixing to expand your reach
Take cues from the most popular YouTube accounts and emulate the best practices of your top competitors, testing a variety of video types, formats and techniques to determine what most resonates with your audience(s)
Promote, promote, promote until you reach 100,000 subscribers and achieve verification (and don’t stop there)

7. Monitor, Analyze, Report, Iterate, and Optimize

Based on the KPIs you’ve identified as being most appropriate for your organic and paid efforts, your analysts should be constantly monitoring your YouTube campaign performance and providing reporting to your YouTube marketing strategists, managers and coordinators to inform ongoing iterations and optimizations.

The truth is: You can always split-test something else. And you can always optimize further.

Before you get started, be sure you’re set up to measure performance against the most important metrics — available now, if you download the full report, The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing.