According to a recent study by Pixability, the top 100 Global Brands all have something interesting in common: They publish a lot of YouTube videos. The study indicates that these brands produce anywhere from 78 to 500 videos per month. But it’s not just a matter of cranking out a lot of content. These top brands, including MTV, Disney, and Thompson Reuters, understand the importance of full scale YouTube video marketing and integrating their YouTube channels with their websites, social media, and overall internet marketing strategies.
These top global brands have increased their YouTube publishing rate by 73% since 2009 and collectively generated over 9.5 Billion views. And perhaps the most striking finding was that only one of the top 100 global brands doesn’t (currently) have a YouTube channel.
How Aggressive YouTube Video Marketing Can Help Your Business
Most businesses don’t have the budgets of Disney or Thompson Reuters. But you can apply the same principles to your own brand, no matter how big or small. There are some key takeaways from this comprehensive study that you can put into practice for yourself:
You Must Continually Produce Content
The most successful companies have 50% more videos than the less successful companies on the list. They produce high volumes of content on a regular basis. This certainly makes sense for media companies, but it is probably impractical for most businesses to produce and upload 16 videos per day.
If you don’t have the budget of a top global brand, you can still get yourself on a regular video upload schedule. By creating an “editorial calendar” of videos, you get yourself in the habit of producing and uploading content regularly. You don’t have to produce a new video each week in order to stay on a schedule. It could be helpful to work with a video production company to create a lot of content at once, and then develop a publishing schedule to push it out regularly over time.
You Have to Optimize Your Videos
You can’t ignore SEO when it comes to YouTube video marketing. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and it has its own set of optimization guidelines. Slapping videos up and hoping people find them will get you nowhere fast. You must tell YouTube what your video is about, and you must structure it properly so the content can be indexed and found. According to the Pixability study, the top 25 performers were those who took the most care in optimizing their video content.
Integration With Your Other Marketing Efforts is Essential
YouTube is not an island unto itself. In order to make your videos work for you, they must be integrated into your overall marketing efforts. You have to push your content out socially, your videos must fit into your branding strategy, and you have to target a specific audience. Many of the top 100 brands are experts at hyper-targeting – they will produce a video series for a very specific, but highly engaged subset of their audience. By targeting specific, highly-engaged groups, they maximize the effectiveness of their content.
Great YouTube Video Marketing is Worth the Investment
One of the biggest hang-ups that keep businesses from investing in video marketing is cost. It’s a lot cheaper to invest in social media marketing than it is to invest in YouTube video marketing. But when you integrate video marketing with your other efforts, you get a much larger, longer reach. Social media updates are forgotten in a matter of seconds. But according to the Pixability study, YouTube videos have an incredible shelf life:
Not many other forms of marketing get that much attention 52 weeks after creation.
Videos Don’t Have to be Viral
Viral videos get a lot of attention. And many businesses feel as though they have to create something “viral” in order for their video to be a success. Banish that thought immediately. First of all, creating a viral video is statistically unlikely. And second, viral videos don’t generate sales. They may give you a lot of traffic, but the odds of turning over a million viewers into paying customers is unlikely.
The videos that consistently offer the best results are those that are targeted to a very specific audience. So don’t get too hung up on total views, concentrate on producing videos that will have an impact on your target customer.
You can check out the full study here. Are you surprised by any of the results? Tell us your thoughts.