I’ve already talked a lot about why YouTube marketing is worth the investment, so now I want to explain how you can get started on the platform.
I know it can be intimidating to transition to video marketing, but remember that this is a step your local business NEEDS to take! With that said, let’s talk about the first steps in setting up YouTube marketing for your business.
Set SMART Goals
Before you create your channel, you need to figure out what you want YouTube marketing to do for you. In my experience, the best way to plan your marketing strategy is to align it with SMART goals. Here’s a breakdown of what that will look like:
- Specific: Saying “I want to make more money” is not a goal, it’s a wish. If you don’t specify exactly what you want to happen, then there will be no way to determine whether or not your plan succeeded. When setting this goal, instead of saying, “I want to make more money,” you might say, “I want to drive traffic to my website from my YouTube videos.”
- Measurable: Of course, just saying that you want to drive traffic to your website isn’t quite enough, either. If you get 1 click to your website from YouTube, does that mean your plan was successful? Probably not. That’s why you need to specify an exact number that you’re aiming for. To improve the current goal, you could edit it to be, “I want to drive 10,000 new visitors to my website from YouTube.”
- Attainable: There’s no sense in setting yourself up for failure. If you’ve got 0 followers and no prior videos, then expecting 10,000 clicks to your website probably isn’t realistic. To make this goal more realistic, you could change it to, “I want to drive 200 new visitors to my website from YouTube.”
- Relevant: Is your current goal going to help you reach your overall marketing goals? If you’re looking to drive engagement and positive sentiment with your brand, then it doesn’t really make sense to focus on clicks to the website. But if you’re looking to generate sales and conversions, then so far you’ve got a good YouTube marketing goal.
- Timely: How quickly do you need to reach that number to consider your goal a success? Because earning 200 clicks in a week and earning 200 clicks in a year are very different results. For the final edit to this goal, you could say, “I want to drive 200 new visitors to my website from YouTube within the first month of YouTube marketing.”
That’s how you set a real goal that will prove valuable to your marketing strategy. Even if you fail to reach it, you’ll have a much easier time determining what went wrong. Nobody starts out perfect, so set these goals to test yourself and find ways to improve!
Commit to a Schedule
Posting content isn’t something that you can just do whenever it’s convenient. You need to establish and maintain a regular posting schedule if you want to grow your YouTube following. At the beginning, this will mean a lot of testing to see on which days your videos perform best, but there should be a regular schedule once you’ve figured that out.
When you have a regular posting schedule, it’s much easier for followers to engage with your content because they know when to expect it. When you drop the ball, they lose faith in your brand, so be sure to set a schedule that you can reasonably handle!
Take the First Steps
These are the basics that need to be established before you can really delve into YouTube marketing. Stay tuned for Wednesday’s blog where I’ll go into the nitty gritty of making your first YouTube video!
Need some help setting up YouTube marketing? Schedule your free consultation with The Go! Agency!
