Its no secret now, YouTube marketing is huge and it is dominating video marketing world over. With many consumers using it in their daily lives as a form of education, inspiration, and entertainment. YouTube ads have a massive impact on the purchasing decision and brand loyalty of a consumer.
YouTube is the biggest social media video platform in Uganda and the world over.
The Relevancy of YouTube Marketing in Uganda
According to statscounter YouTube enjoys 4.75% of Uganda's Social media traffic
That may look small to you, however, if you crunch it down to the actual numbers, it's easy to see why youtube marketing should be a big deal for marketers.
The statistics from socialbakers show that successful Ugandan marketing channels have in excess of 219 million views. According to alexa.com youtube ranks no.2 in global internet traffic and engagement. This makes Youtube extremely relevant in today's marketing mediums.
Below is a 10 step guide for businesses that want to get started with YouTube marketing.
10-step YouTube marketing strategy for Ugandans
Step 1. Create a YouTube business channel
Creating a YouTube channel using a personal Gmail account only enables one user to login. Whereas creating a brand account allows different members of a business marketing team to log in simultaneously.
For further instructions on creating a YouTube business account click the link below creating a YouTube for business account.
Step 2. Learn about your audience
After creating a YouTube business channel, you gain access to the YouTube analytics dashboard. The dashboard gives you all the YouTube insights and statistics your channel gets from its viewers. Eventually, this enables advertisers to understand audience behavior, demographics, interests, generated revenue, video interaction and average view count.
These insights and analytics help you to refine your videos and marketing techniques to fit your audience.
Learn what kind of video content your audience resonates with most and dislikes from YouTube analytics tab.
Step 3: Interact with your video subscribers and viewers.
The comments section on YouTube video provides valuable insights for your videos. Respond to inquiries and provide feedback to your viewers in the video comments section. This provides your leads more informative solutions that your business provides after they have watched your video. In addition, you can access the community tab on YouTube to have better interaction with your subscribers. On Top of the communities page, create opinion polls to have a deeper understanding of your audience and their interests.
Step 4. Research your competition
Doing competitive analysis on your competition YouTube channel won't hurt. In fact, you can improve your business YouTube channel content and marketing by analyzing your competition. Take note of the videos that get the most views on your competitors' channel. Watch them and get a sense of the kind of content that audiences in your niche like and interact with the most. Read through the comments section and in-case your brand is mentioned give a comment to respond to your potential customers.
Your potential customers love to see how you interact with your community. So actively interacting with your audience gives them the confidence to purchase your products.
Other than just reading through the comments section, see what keywords are constantly being used in the video comments section. The keyword in the video title counts as well. Use these popular keywords to rank highly in YouTube search results.
You also need to make sure that your competition is not running ads on your YouTube videos. That would be stealing your market, you can block these using Google ad’s manager. For more instructions on how to use google ads manager click on this link Allow and block ads.
Step . 5 Learn from your favorite channels
When it comes to YouTube marketing, you need to pay attention and be critical about your favorite YouTube channel. Think about it. There is a reason you always go back or refer to your favorite channels. There is a reason you watch their videos. Understand their techniques and the practices they use to gain all the traffic they get on their channel.
Your favorite YouTube channel may not even be relatable to your niche. But your business marketing team can adapt their strategies and reap a huge following by utilizing these strategies.
YouTube is also an incredible source of inspiration and a huge source of information for your own channel. A lot of its content revolves around self-starters. So watching these videos can inspire advertisers to come up with successful marketing strategies that will boost the revenue and sales of businesses.
In simple terms, there is less guesswork and little to brainstorm about since all the information you need is on YouTube. The information your audience needs is on YouTube, so adopt the strategies of successful you-tubers and you will become a leader in your niche as well.
Here is a link of the best YouTube channels you can find best YouTube channels to help you up your digital marketing game.
Step 6. Optimize your channel to attract followers
The next step after optimizing your videos for search, is to optimize the channel itself for your viewers by making it attractive. Add graphical images and edited videos on your Youtube channel head. Create an eye-catching image banner of roughly (2560* 1440 pixels)
Step 7. Optimize your videos SEO to get views
Optimize your videos for YouTube search. For advertisers to gain value from their videos, the YouTube videos to be published must be well optimized for its audience.
Step number one of optimizing your brand’s YouTube video is to pick the right keywords for your title. In Uganda keyword trends like “pakalast”, “kisanja hakuna mchezo”, “Togikwatako” to mention but a few can gain traction with the local community. Choosing keywords that resonate well with your community and location matters a lot on YouTube.
Google tools and features like Google keyword planner which we wrote about earlier can help you to come up with the right keywords for your videos.
The keyword must be relevant to the title. Click-baits should always be avoided in order for your brand marketing to be respectable. Match keywords in your title with other common terms like the one mentioned above.
Lastly, your video title should contain no more than 60-70 words as recommended to avoid some words being cut off on the YouTube search results page.
Step 8. Upload and schedule your videos
After creating well-optimized SEO for your videos, you can place them in rotation. YouTube is a platform that has become more popular than television. Many of your subscribers will treat your channel like a Television station so it is important to schedule your YouTube videos.
Share your content on a regular consistent schedule.
Upload and schedule your videos using creator studio or other integrated tools like Hoot-suite. Hoot-suite enables your marketing team to promote your YouTube videos across different social media channels all in one dashboard. For more instruction on how to schedule your video visit how to schedule YouTube videos.
Step 9. Advertise on YouTube
Paying for YouTube adverts is one effective way for an advertiser to market a business online. The platform has 2 billion monthly subscribers and over 50 million content creators so paying for adverts will result in a significant increase in views.
There are six YouTube ad forms:
- Skippable video ads
- Non-skippable video ads
- Bumper ads
- Overlay ads
- Display ads
- Sponsored cards
For more info on how to use these YouTube ad formats, follow the link YouTube advertising.
Producing YouTube ad videos that are relevant and engaging is very important for YouTube. Making targeted, short and entertaining videos is the key to the success of most YouTube ad campaigns.
Step 10. Work with an influencer
Using a popular influencer with video marketing works extremely well for brands. Uganda's Anne Kansiime who is the most followed Ugandan YouTuber has done it successfully for multichoice and GOtv. Bringing in to life concept of video marketing by adding some fun and making it short and lively. Research indicates that 60 percent of YouTube subscribers and viewers trust the opinions of their favorite influencers. Tapping into the audience popular video influencers have established yields huge returns.
