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Four Tips to Improve Your YouTube Marketing

#1: Just as it’s true with a written blog post, or, indeed, any other form of advertising, content is king. That means that your YouTube video must tell an original and interesting story. People are simply not going to have much patience with a boring or conventional video. Engaging your audience is key, and it’s not always important for your content ideas to relate directly to your product or business. This is particularly true if you’re in an industry that’s hard to get people excited about. What sometimes is more important is linking your business with content that connects your product or service with a positive emotion. Think outside the box and remember to keep it interesting.

#2: While nobody expects your video to be Hollywood quality, it’s still important for it to be watchable. That means it must be clearly seen and heard. Make sure your camera is in focus and correctly aimed on the subject you are shooting. Also, be sure that your lighting is sufficient. In addition, understand that bad audio can tank your video within seconds. Even the most polished visuals will be wasted if the sound is too low, or there is too much interference or background noise. Viewers have come to expect a credible level of technical expertise. Don’t disappoint them.

#3: Make sure your video is find-able and that it reaches its intended audience. Focus on the title, the description, the tags, and the keywords. It’s important to remember that people who find your videos on YouTube are usually in the discovery stage of the buying process and not yet ready to make a purchase. For this reason, it’s important to choose keywords that are relevant to people who are looking for new information and to provide video content that educates them based on those keywords. Remember: the goal of your YouTube video is to warm up and qualify prospects. So, use your video as a call to action and make sure it’s easy for viewers to link back to your website, where you can continue the selling process.

#4: Sad to say, in most cases, one video, however brilliant, will usually not be enough. In other words: volume wins. Publishing consistently on a regular basis creates a “cadence” with your audience. Instead of stumbling on your videos, sometimes just by chance, they begin looking for your content and make a habit of checking your channel, looking for your next YouTube gem. And it’s this cadence that you ultimately want. The more times your loyal viewers come back, the better. The best advice for creating a content cadence is to set the tone from the beginning and let your audience know what to expect. Make your first video an introduction to what sort of content you will be publishing, and how often—and then whatever cadence you set for yourself, make sure you follow through. If you don’t, your audience will leave.

Marketing on YouTube

YouTube, the video-sharing website, was created in 2005, and since then has become one of the largest, most visited websites in the world. YouTube has massive traffic and viewers with over 1,325,000,000 people utilizing it for personal, educational, and commercial reasons. There are currently 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day – that’s five hours of video content every second! 4,959,000,000 YouTube videos are viewed daily, and the total number of hours of video watched on YouTube each month is approximately 3.25 billion.

Today, YouTube is a critical marketing tool for any company in any industry. In fact, since its launch, the Top 100 Global Brands have published a total of 258,000 videos across 1,378 YouTube channels, attracting over 9.5 billion total views. What helps makes YouTube such an essential element of any marketing strategy is its ease of importing and uploading video content. With a simple flip camera, or even a mobile phone with video capabilities, basic videos can be created. And because of its easy-to-use format, messages on YouTube can spread quickly and efficiently across a variety of mediums including Facebook and Twitter, embedded in websites, and via email. In addition, the end user does not need a special viewer, such as Windows Media Play or Quick Time, to view a YouTube video.

Marketing experts agree that there is no simpler, more direct, and easily absorbed way to display information than through video content. 15 seconds of video can be more engaging and provide more observable information than an entire page of ads. And because consumers are no longer satisfied by physical ads or static marketing, and, more than ever, want interactive, aesthetic, and engaging material, YouTube video marketing, when used efficiently and intelligently, can help build trust and establish a company’s authority. Uploading video content, which contains a company’s views and ideas, provides an aura of expertise and influence. By uploading videos with tips and strategies, businesses can not only get attention, but also provide help and value to their customers.

Beyond viewing of the video, YouTube offers marketers several different ways to connect with their target audience. For example, viewers are able to leave feedback and comments on the videos. This allows viewers to interact not only with each other, but also with the company. This opens a line of communication between customers and company. Businesses are able to reply to comments, post questions, opinions, and engage with their viewers. This can have a remarkable impact on branding because new viewers will be able to see and read the back and forth communication between the business and other viewers. This humanizes the business, and makes them appear as approachable, professional, and helpful.

In order to maximize YouTube’s potential, the following best practices should be followed: • Produce video content as consistently as possible. The best-performing brands publish high volumes of content on a regular schedule.
• Learn and perfect YouTube’s architecture and SEO rules. The best-performing brands take more care in optimizing their videos and channels, and maintain more playlists and video tags.
• Videos do not need to be over-produced; content tends to be more important than video quality.
• Integrate YouTube videos with all other online marketing strategies. Facebook and Twitter are among the most important sources of traffic on YouTube.
• Apply branding consistently and methodically. Top performers brand their videos in both the video content itself as well as in metadata, which includes titles, tags, and descriptions.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Most social media platforms have their own built-in data analytics tools, which enable companies to track the progress, success, and engagement of their ad campaigns. Companies can address a range of stakeholders through social media marketing, including: current and potential customers, current and potential employees, journalists, bloggers, and the general public.

Social networking websites are based on building virtual communities that allow consumers to express their needs, wants, and values, online. Social media marketing then connects these consumers and audiences to businesses that share the same needs, wants, and values. Through social networking sites, companies can keep in touch with individual followers.

To this end, companies make use of platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram to reach a much wider audience than they can through the use of traditional print, TV, and radio advertisements alone, and at a fraction of the cost. In return, customers can now post reviews of products and services, rate customer service, and ask questions or voice concerns directly to companies through the same platforms. This has changed the ways that companies interact with customers, as a substantial percentage of consumer interactions are now being carried out over online platforms with much higher visibility.

In fact, today, over 80 percent of business executives define social media as important, and over 97 percent of all consumers search for local businesses, online. 25 percent of all mobile phone usage is dedicated to social networks, 75 percent of consumers say they rely on social media to influence their buying decisions, and 47 percent of Americans say that Facebook is their number one influencer of purchases.

Other commonly-used social media platforms include: Google+, LinkedIn, Whatsapp, Yelp, Foursquare, and YouTube. However, there are dozens of new social media platforms popping up all the time, as the use of social media marketing becomes more ubiquitous and sophisticated. Below are a few, lesser known platforms:

• Engagor – a comprehensive platform that helps businesses better engage with their customers in real time, by monitoring conversations about a brand or product across all major social networks, news websites, blogs, and forums.
• SocialCentiv – This self-serve platform lets users comb Twitter for potential customers using highly targeted metrics, such as those in their neighborhood or those seeking their specific product and services.
• HashAtIt.com – Dubbed as “The Social Search Engine,” HashAtIt.com collects status updates, tweets and other posts, allowing users to search for the most popular hashtags on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest — all in one place.
• Sparksfly – Sparksfly offers meaningful, targeted consumer engagement based on user-generated data.
• Sociota – Sociota is a social network management and monitoring platform offering the ability to integrate multiple Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+ accounts.
• Pushup Social – Pushup Social is a plug-in that lets businesses easily integrate a social network into their existing websites.
• HootSuite – With HootSuite, users can manage multiple social networks, schedule messages and tweets, analyze social media traffic, track conversions, and measure campaign results — all in one user-friendly dashboard.
• LeadSift – LeadSift mines millions of social media conversations, cutting through the noise to deliver relevant, quality leads based on metrics set by users, such as geographic information and keywords.
• SnapRetail – SnapRetail turns the average small business owner into a social media marketing powerhouse with ready-to-use social media content. The service offers a library with thousands of customizable, prewritten social media posts to choose from, eliminating the difficulty of crafting attention-grabbing updates.

The Importance of Online Marketing in 2017

Ecommerce continues to grow and competition will ramp up, as well, in 2017. This means that customers will be harder to win, easier to lose, and fussier on price and user experience. The low barriers to entry and the fact that consumers can switch from brand to brand with the touch of a button, means that those who fall behind when it comes to customer experience and pricing strategy will lose out. So, the savvy online marketer will have to keep up with the latest trends in order to stay ahead of the pack.

Here are some tips for online marketing in 2017:

 Influencers are becoming increasingly important because they are considered credible and, unlike classic advertising, their opinion is trusted. To be successful in 2017, you will need to cooperate with bloggers, YouTubers, etc., and win them over with your products and services.
 Just as influencers need be enlisted, so must users. Users who are convinced of something are an ideal marketing instrument because they transfer their conviction to the wider market.
 Customers will have to be better informed and more inspired; it’s no longer enough just to offer products that are accompanied by a description. Shoppers want more. Products must be accompanied with ancillary information and collateral subject matter. The inspiring and informative incorporation of products and services into offers will influence purchase decisions and increase visitor numbers in 2017.
 Chatbots are small programs that function like a real chat partner. For this reason FAQs can be found on practically every internet site. But clicking through a long list of questions is often frustrating. Chatbots can perform these tasks considerably better. The user can ask his questions and the software answers interactively. Interested parties as well as customers arrive at their answers quickly, and receive the desired assistance in short order. So Chatbots will make customer service and customers’ lives easier in the year 2017.
 Live video is becoming increasingly important. With live streaming, the interested party feels more connected to what is shown. It’s an especially powerful tool to introduce a new product or service.
 Old SEO tactics are becoming outmoded. For example, beginning in January, advertising that customers are unable to bypass will be used as a criterion by Google to rank a site lower. So in addition to inspiring content in order to rank high, websites will have to put the user first. Say goodbye to annoying pop-ups.
 Native advertising is gaining importance. This includes articles in blogs, portals etc. that have not been created by an editorial team, but by an advertising agency or a company’s marketing department. Good native advertising is characterized by high-quality content. The reader is encouraged to read the article, although it is still advertising. (Native advertising should always be identified as such; otherwise blogs and advertisers are gambling with their credibility.)
 Virtual reality and augmented reality will make completely different marketing measures possible in 2017. They allow the user to be involved, and not just to stare at a screen.
 Platform as a Service is now one of the hottest trends in ecommerce. Just look at the incredible success of Platform as a Service businesses like Uber, Spotify, and AirBnB. The smart online marketer should consider selling anything that is used or consumed regularly via a subscription model. The high disposable incomes of today’s Millennials means plenty of cash for subscriptions, but their low wealth means there is never much in the bank for big one-off purchases. So, there really has never been a better time to sell your product via a subscription model.
 Mobile devices now make up over half of all web traffic and continue to grow in importance. However, mobile (phone and tablet), while accounting for 59 percent of all sessions by device on ecommerce sites, count for just 38 percent of revenue. In 2017, the smart online marketer will understand that mobile is king for research, but desktop is still where consumers do their buying.

The Power of Online Marketing

Online, or digital marketing, is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies. It includes any effort to spread the word about a company that uses the internet as an advertising medium.

Over the last two decades, online marketing has become an absolute necessity for every business that wants to reach its target consumers. No longer can a company put an ad in the Sunday newspaper and assume that everyone will read it and then go out and buy its product. In fact, these days, if your business does not have an online presence, it might as well be invisible.

Indeed, online marketing has become so pervasive that is has resulted in a paradigm shift in the customer/advertiser relationship – people are now in control of their marketing experience and businesses must use various internet platforms in order to adapt to the changing expectations of consumers who are wanting ever-more sophisticated offerings throughout the purchasing journey.

But even though the balance of power has shifted in favor of the consumer, businesses should not be unmindful of the many advantages that online marketing offers. For example, the use of digital marketing allows brands to market their products and services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year. It also allows them to offer customer support all the time, and not just during “normal” business hours. In addition, the use of social media platforms allows brands to receive both positive and negative feedback from their customers, which helps them decide quickly which products are popular and which may need to be put out to pasture.

Another advantage is that digital marketing is easy to be measured, allowing businesses to know the reach that their marketing is making, whether it is working or not, and the amount of activity and conversation that is involved. The results of traditional broadcast marketing simply cannot be measured nearly as accurately.

In addition, there are many powerful arrows in the online marketing quiver – any of which may prove to be the one that hits a potential consumer where he or she lives. They include:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a methodology of strategies, techniques, and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – a paid version of SEO where marketers pay for display ads in order to drive traffic to a company’s web pages
• Content Marketing – the creation of valuable media and content made available to potential customers who are searching for information about a particular product or service. It may include articles, blogs, videos, etc.
• Social Media Marketing – using one or several social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., to engage with customers and build relationships
• Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) – paid ads on search engines and social media sites
• Affiliate Marketing – a type of referral marketing where companies promote each other’s products
• E-mail Marketing – contacting customers who have given permission to reach them via their email accounts

Most businesses, these days, engage in omni-channel marketing, which employs a mixture of these strategies in a synergistic way, in order to maximize their effectiveness. And it’s a wise advertiser who learns to harness and master the power of online marketing.

Salesforce in San Francisco

Salesforce.com is a cloud computing company headquartered in San Francisco, California, with regional headquarters in Morges, Switzerland, India, and Tokyo. The company was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive, Marc Benioff, and his partners, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez. The company specializes in SaaS – Software as a Service – a licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted.

In June 2004 the company’s initial public offering was listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol CRM and raised $110 million. Today, Salesforce is one of the most highly-valued, American cloud computing companies with a market capitalization above $55 billon. It has nearly 20,000 employees and revenues of $7 billion per year. Salesforce.com has its services translated into 16 different languages and has over 2.1 million subscribers.

Salesforce’s main product is a CRM (Client Relationship Management) system that helps companies automate such tasks as customer information, contact and case management, communication tracking and scheduling, and sales opportunities and forecasting. It gathers, organizes and disseminates everything there is to know about which products are selling, which customers are buying, and how the sales force is performing. With all of a business’s information on customers, prospects, and leads stored on a single online platform, everyone in the company has access to the latest information.

And because Salesforce is in the cloud, it can grow and scale as needed. It’s full-on CRM product starts at $65 per user per month and the most expensive version goes for $300. Features can be added without adding costly infrastructure and upgrades are instantly implemented as soon as they’re available, without disruption. Salesforce’s CRM system is fully mobile, so that data is available on any connected device, at any time – desktops, laptops, tablets, and smart phones. In addition, its common platform works across all channels, including social, Web, email, and customer call centers.

Salesforce.org is the philanthropic arm of Salesforce.com. Salesforce.org donates one percent of the company’s resources (defined as profit, equity, and employee time) to support organizations that are working to “make the world a better place. Salesforce.org provides a full-featured, ten-seat user license available to nearly all United States 501c3 non-profit organizations or overseas equivalents. Additional licenses are deeply discounted for public interest groups. As of March 2014, Salesforce.org supported 20,000+ higher education and non-profit customers, and has donated $53+ million in grants. In addition, as of July 2015, Salesforce employees have collectively donated more than 1,000,000 hours in volunteer labor to thousands of charitable organizations worldwide.

Finding New Ways to Reach Customes Online

While the media used to reach customers may have changed dramatically over the last several years, there are some things that haven’t changed in the world of marketing: before you can sell your product or service, you first have to engage your target audience. And in order to engage that audience, you must reach out to them where they live. And today, the vast majority of people live online.

It’s axiomatic that every business must have an attractive, well-organized, and well-structured website rich in information. It must contain the relevant keywords so that it can rank as high as possible on all search engines, and it needs to have as many inbound, outbound, and internal links as possible.

Most important, it must include useful and original content that will resonate deeply with its intended audience. By maintaining a blog that targets potential customers’ interests, a business can position itself as a thought leader and expert in a particular industry. Finally, every website must be optimized for mobile and tablet usage, with as much video content as practicable.

In addition, to having a website, many businesses prosper with the use of paid channel advertising, specifically Google AdWords. Buying ad space on Google, or on another search engine, such as Bing, puts a company’s website on the engine’s first page, where most web surfers begin, and often end, their searches.

But in order to really reach the present generation of shoppers and consumers, a business, today, must know how to leverage the many social networks that people now use to communicate with one another. While the average person might only spend 15-30 minutes per day on social networks, many others spend multiple hours each week. That suggests that any strategic marketing plan must include a steady dose of social media.

The most widely-used social network is, of course, Facebook. Facebook provides an opportunity to showcase products, share company news and milestones, and present pictures and blogs that can engage and entertain the Facebook universe. It is an excellent way for people to see new content with every post. Facebook has a simple sign-up process that can establish a business online in minutes and it’s fairly easy to customize how a company can represent itself to its users.

Of course there are many other social networks that can be utilized to engage its users. Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc., all have possibilities for the savvy business owner to exploit. The most important thing to remember is the importance of finding out where one’s potential customers are spending their time and then maximizing the relationship opportunities better than the competition.

Remember – regardless of the type of media used, the most important factor in getting and retaining customers is keeping them interested and engaged in your company’s product or service. We may talk to each other via many different electronic media, but keeping it human and personal is still the key to business success.

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