There’s more to YouTube than silly cat videos?

Let’s chat about YouTube. I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent many wasted hours watching silly cat videos. YouTube is a fun source of entertainment, but it also has many benefits for marketers. According to Hubspot, more than half of all marketers (55%) use YouTube as part of their marketing strategy. One-quarter of internet users spend 10 hours or more watching videos, and YouTube has more than two billion active users worldwide. YouTube can be accessed in 76 languages.

YouTube Success Story

I decided to investigate YouTube marketing success stories. A quick search tells me there are many. Companies such as United Airlines, Rakuten, Hershey’s, Pringles, Adidas use YouTube for strategic marketing purposes.

I found a case study about a company called Tulane’s Closet. I’ve never heard about Tulane’s Closet before but now I’m intrigued. Tulane’s Closet was founded by a veterinarian who had been asked for years for an alternative to plastic cones dogs need to wear after surgeries. I can tell you first hand owning Labrador Retrievers for years that they can cause more problems for the dogs. According to Stephanie Syberg, Owner and Developer of Tulane’s Closet, the cones can cause animals to have trouble eating, drinking and even sleeping. That’s when her concept began for Cover Me by Tui, a breathable, one-piece, post-surgical pet garment. Stephanie’s goal was to create awareness for alternative to pet cones. She decided to try YouTube. She created videos showing how the product works, how to put it on, how comfortable and practical it is. She also used ad targeting to reach the right audience. She chose to target people searching for pet supplies, veterinarians and dogs. Tulane’s closet now sells to over 500 veterinarians across the United States and the world. Her sales have nearly doubled each year since she started marketing on YouTube!

“YouTube is great for people who are just starting a new business, or for small business owners like myself, because we’re all on a budget. Starting with just $5 a day for video advertising, we were able to reach an enormous number of people interested in helping their healing pets. I feel like I’m living the American dream to have come up with an idea like this and turn it into a success. And I think a lot of dogs are happier right now, too.”

Stephanie Syberg, Owner and Developer, Tulane’s Closet

According to Strike Social, there are six recommended tips for YouTube advertising success.

1. Know your audience and how to reach them. Without proper research, you may miss the target group you are trying to reach.
2. Create engaging content. Be clear about what your business os offering and why it is relevant to the consumer. Play rates drop significantly after 45 seconds. You want the most important messages to be given early in case viewers stop watching.
3. Establish your ground game. Enhance engagement by directing traffic from your video to your YouTube channel or website. Create a clear call to action.
4. Optimize your YouTube ad campaign. Once your campaign starts, you will need to take time to study the advertising metrics that are important to you.
5. Include YouTube Analytics to get the full picture. When you analyze the performance of your ad, use parameters provided to you by YouTube Analytics.
6. Advertise, optimize, analyze, repeat. To see benefits of YouTube advertising, you’ll need to be persistent. Continuously review and analyze the data provided to you by YouTube Analytics and make incremental changes are required.

“YouTube and other sites will bring together all the diverse media which matters to you, from videos of family and friends to news, music, sports, cooking and much, much more.”

Chad Hurley

YouTube Failures

Now that I’ve talked about YouTube successes, I decided to look into possible failures. It looks like there are a lot of them to talk about. Do yourself a favor and watch this. Top 10 Marketing Fails. It’s both hilarious and cringeworthy. It also proves that bad commercials never go away. The marketers that created these ads know they will unfortunately live on forever in the world of YouTube.

To avoid these failures, unbox social gives us 10 reasons why your YouTube marketing strategy could fail.

1. No clear objective for your YouTube marketing plan
2. Uploading videos that look more like ads for your brand’s products and services
3. Not targeting the audience that matters and focusing on a wider audience base
4. Following what others are doing and curating similar content
5. Expecting the user to take action without clear CTAs
6. Taking SEO lightly
7. Posting videos at irregular intervals
8. Taking a stand on social issues without understanding the audience’s psyche
9. Relying only on YouTube for increasing brand reach and engagement
10. Going with the same flow of video content and not experimenting

If you watched the video above regarding YouTube marketing fails, I think you would agree that these fails could have been prevented with a little more thought and planning. Seriously though, what were they thinking?!