YouTube Marketing| the Ultimate Guide Of Hacks

YouTube Marketing| the Ultimate Guide Of Hacks

YouTube Marketing

YouTube marketing! I don’t think it is a new word for anyone who is reading or not reading the article on YouTube Marketing.

If you are hatching plans for video marketing, then YouTube is the best channel to market your videos and make them viral to reach the maximum. That means you need to be savvy about it.

YouTube is the second most visited website of the internet world. It has more than a billion active users.

Virtually, it has no competitors and even the users are increasing day by day spending more time in watching more videos online.

Even the platform is so extensive that it can be accessed in 76 different languages.

“For YouTube, India is the largest and also the fastest growing audience”the video streaming service’s CEO Susan Wojcicki.

According to the State of Inbound report-

“YouTube has always been a source of entertaining content. It also claims to be an essential tool for marketers. Around 48% that is nearly half of all the marketers plan to add YouTube to their marketing strategy over the next 12 months”.

With the improved marketing strategy, there will be a flood of user’s attention. But the good news is you don’t need to flood thousands of rupees in YouTube advertising.

Look, if you have created a good channel that is laden with the quality content that your users want you are going to grab attention. You are definitely being able to get eyeballs that you actually need to drive users’ acquisition through YouTube.

“YouTube has more than 265 million active users in India”ComScore Data

According to ComScore Data-

“India is now both the biggest audience and one of the fastest growing audiences in the world. YouTube today has become the first stop for users to consume content, whether they are looking for entertainment or information. It is this incredible variety of content combined with the growing reach that makes YouTube a perfect platform for brands to drive personalized engagement”.

The consumption of YouTube on mobile phones has increased to approx. 85%, with a 60% watch time coming from outside of the six largest metros in India.

It is noted that more than 1200 Indian creators have crossed almost one million subscribers mark. While if we retrospect 5 years ago figure, then there were only 2 creators with a million subscribers.

Do you know, YouTube not only increases your audience but also improve your SEO and overall brand presence.

Well, while talking about how YouTube can be the secret weapon in every Indian marketer’s arsenal, the CEO of GroupM Asia Pacific, Mark Patterson said-

“User behavior has shifted massively to mobile video and therein lays the opportunity for marketers today. With the growth of YouTube in India, it is an amazing time to be a marketer, as you can do full funnel growth, creative storytelling, and cross-channel planning easily”.

Before moving forward towards our actual topic, I want to ask something from all the readers reading these.

“Have you ever watched a video on Youtube related to Youtube marketing or YouTube SEO?”

If I am not wrong the answer is- “Yes”.

You might have read some books also.

Then you might not be very interested in reading this. But, think once.

Are you sure whatever you have watched is perfect?

Are you sure all the strategies told you by those “YouTube Experts”, are actually going to work for you also?

Personally, I bet, they are general things, which might have worked when there were hardly competitors, but now the competition is too hard to get over to.

I think you need to read the rest of the article on YouTube Marketing because I think it is not your fault.

Trust me, these videos and books by so-called YouTube experts are misguided. In several cases, it is actually a complete opposite of what you actually need to do to get your video on top.

I know you have already tried everything like:

Introduction

Video lengths

Different combinations of keywords

Tags etc etc etc...

You can follow this advice to the core, but the only problem is following the wrong advice can cost you…..big time.

Here I am going to tell you a few tips which will cost you nothing but will provide you eye-catching subscribers on your videos.

So, let’s get started!

How to get a great channel layout

The first thing that we should start with is how to get a great channel layout. When your audience will visit your channel, they should make out easily what you are and what kind of videos you have on your channel.

In this blog post, I am not going to get into the weeds of how to upload a cover image or a profile picture or steps to upload a video. This is all very easy and YouTube already has all these steps.

You don’t need any instructions to do all this. But, if still, you want everything should be served on your plate, then watch this video below for your reference:-

As you see in the video, maintaining a YouTube channel takes a lot of time and planning.

You can see this is how my channel looks:

Youtube marketing

You can see that my color scheme and value proposition is very simple. I publish videos every day, according to the CTA.

There are so many queries I get from my viewers, about SEO, Social Media, and about me as well.

So, I have posted videos which are relevant to my viewer’s wishes.

You can see I have created many videos on these topics and also have organized them into different sections.

With the help of this organized technique, my viewers get an idea of what types of video content I publish.

This is what I personally recommend everyone to do.

  1. Create regular content, so that you consistently keep updating your channel with content.
  2. Write great titles, which are very important on YouTube, regardless of how great your content is.
  3. These days’ marketers are increasingly using arrows and circles in their YouTube thumbnails and even in their social graph images.
  4. put your logo on the thumbnail, so that even if no one clicks, you are still able to draw awareness and spreading your brand, as I did with my logo.

youtube marketing

YouTube SEO And Video SEO: Important tips for ranking videos

Well, as mentioned earlier also, YouTube ranked second in the race of the most popular search engine.

So, we do a lot of things in order to rank high on YouTube videos. Let’s see what you might have actually done:

Tested different combination of keywords

Concentrated on video lengths

Focussed on your introductions, tags and more…

Now, if I say I have got the formula for ranking videos that actually worked for me. I know you might be thinking one more so-called “YouTube Expert” advice.

But, seriously, I think you should concentrate on reading.

I have actually come out with 9 justifiable strategies that will definitely be going to work for you as well.

So, here we are starting with the first one:

a) Front-load your keyword

What does that mean?

Whatever keyword you have chosen for your video, you need to front-load it.

youtube marketing

When you are aware that the keywords you are choosing can rank well, the formula to make them rank well is to put those keywords in the title and description.

You should also mention these keywords as many times as you can in your video as well.

But, remember you just need to mention the keywords as and when required. Too much keyword stuffing will make you look untrustworthy and spammy as well.

So, write descriptions with keywords you have chosen and make it easy for your users or audience to find more information about you.

b) Boost video engagement signals

Well, when watching a video on YouTube, how many times you have noticed people making a comment, “If you have liked this video then subscribe it and make a comment below”.

The reason behind this is if you get more comments it signals YouTube that the video is getting audience engagement.

But, the question is how to make people comment?

Instead of putting a generic “Call To Action (CTA)”, it is better to put a hyper-specific call to action at the end of your video that works best.

So, instead of asking them to “leave a comment below”, we should ask the viewers something like “which strategy they are going to follow first”.

This will not only compel the audience to comment rather they will be keen to write about the strategy they have liked.

[NOTE: More comments equals to more audience engagement].

c) TAB formula for video tags

Keeping the important term first and foremost is the key to optimizing your tags. You should use quotes for your keyword phrases.

So, for this purpose, I have found the formula, which I have named as “TAB formula”.

TAB- Target, Alternative and Broad

Target– Target Keyword goes first

Alternative– Then alternative keywords in about 2-3 words

Broad– Broad keywords (1-2) the goal of these broad tags is to just give YouTube more context about your video.

Most of the people use tags on YouTube are completely wrong.

Remember your video tags are designed to help YouTube understand the content of your video. That means you don’t need to get a lot of tags to get the job done.

Indeed you need tags to link YouTube and Google. If you will use whopping so many different tags for your videos then YouTube will get confused about what your video is all about.

So if YouTube doesn’t know what your video is actually about, then you are not going to rank on YouTube.

Now in the picture below, you can see that my target keyword i.e., “YouTube SEO” came first, and then the rest.

I have used only one keyword or tag to represent my video. So, it is good to rank up high on YouTube.

d) Use CTR magnet thumbnails

CTR, as you all know, is Click Through Rate.

You might know that Click Through Rate is an important YouTube ranking factor. You can get more and more clicks using CTR magnet thumbnails.

So, now the question is “what are CTR magnet thumbnails?”

CTR magnet thumbnails are specifically designed to get more clicks on YouTube search engine.

Now, I am going to tell you about a step-by-step process.

  1. Use Non-YouTube colors in your thumbnail- You can see that there are three colors used on YouTube.

White

Red

Black

You have to use those colors which are not part of the YouTube channel.

youtube marketing

So, it is always recommended to use the color scheme such as green, blue, purple, orange or grey.

You can see that I have used orange, blue, etc in most of my videos.

youtube marketing

Or grey and yellow just like this one:

e) Use big-bold text in your thumbnail– I have seen most of the time that thumbnails with text get more clicks than the thumbnails without the text.

That’s why I recommend using maximum of 30 characters of text. You can see I have used the text with maximum of 28 characters.

Please have a look at how to make thumbnails for your YouTube videos.

f) Write mini blog posts for your video descriptions

You are recommended to write a mini blog post. This blog post will tell the audience about what the video is all about.

Initially, I used to write a small description of my video, and that was a big big mistake I did.

So, after a lot of testing and analysis, I have found that long descriptions help videos rank better on YouTube.

The main reason is that longer videos are helpful in knowing what your video wants to say. So I recommend you to write a description of around 100-200 words.

g) Boost video length

Ok, when it comes to video SEO then, what do you think-“Shorter videos or longer videos”?

Well, according to my research, when we analyzed some millions of YouTube videos, we have discovered that longer videos generally tend to outrank shorter videos.

A few years back YouTube said- “we focus on those videos that increase the amount of time that the viewer will spend watching videos on YouTube”.

youtube marketing

This proves that YouTube ranks those videos that have a longer period of watch time.

You can see that my video length is between 8 and 14 minutes.

youtube marketing

So, the recommended the length of your video should not be minimum of 14 minutes.

h) Use brackets and parentheses in your video title

Yes, it is true that YouTube uses CTR as a ranking factor and also thumbnail is a big priority equation. But please don’t forget about your title. It is very important and huge.

You can see what YouTube has to say about the titles:

“Well-written titles can be the difference between someone watching and sharing your video or scrolling right past it”.

So, in order to increase your CTR, you need to add brackets and parentheses to your titles.

In fact, according to research by Hubspot and Outbrain, it is said that-

“Headlines with bracketed clarification for e.g. {photos{, {interviews}, {video}, {slideshow} etc. performed 38% better than headlines without clarifications, suggesting readers are more likely to click when they have a clear picture of what lies behind the headline”.

Let’s take an example:

On YouTube, you have typed in to search for “how to grow YouTube channel”,

youtube marketing

then the result may be something like this-

But, if you change your title to this

youtube marketing

This will increase your clicks by more than one third.

In fact, parentheses work so well that I have used them in almost all my videos.

youtube marketing

And here are some examples, you can use in brackets for ranking high:

(Fast!)

(Case Study)

[New Research]

(True Story) etc.

i) Rank In Suggested Video

YouTube SEO is a lot more than rank in search results. You can get more views by appearing your video as a suggested video.

Suggested video is to show up your video in the sidebar next to the video you are watching.

That means if your video is shown as a suggested video next to the popular video, that will gain views.

But it can be done!

Very simple!

Use the same tags that the popular video uses. When YouTube sees your tags matches the tags of the popular video that means your video is about the same topic. Then you will automatically be shown as the suggested video.

So, in order to see the tags, you need to look at the source code of the page. To view this on Google Chrome, you need to right click on the page and click view source code.

Image result for view source code of a youtube page on google chrome

Then a page with HTML coding will come up. You have to look for the keyword section of the page. The keyword that appears is the tags of the video.

You can also use the tools like TubeBuddy or vidIQ, which will show you the video tags without going to the source code of the page.

Make sure you have to copy the tags word by word. If your video is ranking next to the popular video in the sidebar, then it means YouTube has ranked you next to the popular video.

j) Use the current year in your video titles

YouTube wants to see titles that are current and relevant. So, you should include the current year in your video title.

When you use the current year in your video titles, you instantly stand out in the search results and in the suggested videos in your sidebar.

This says that you will definitely get more clicks and views. You might have noticed that people search for Keyword + Year on Google and YouTube.

So, when you add these keywords and yearn your video title, you are entitled to rank higher than the other videos.

I recommend you to watch this video below for a better understanding and knowledge of YouTube SEO.

Well, Video SEO is another important ranking factor, which I have merged with YouTube SEO. Please have a look at the points mentioned here. If I a less somewhere in writing, this will help you in providing more knowledge.

How To Get More Views on YouTube

What happened?

“Are you uploading videos on YouTube on a regular basis, but still unable to get more views?”

I am sure, it is that way only!

Here I am not going to repeat the same old thing again and again. “Upload your videos on social media”.

Rather I am going to tell you about some tips that are actually good for the advanced YouTubers.

So, the first one in my list is:

a) Get More Audience Interaction

“Do you have to talk to your audience on call?”

Huh…

Is it possible?

NA

In fact, YouTube says that:

“Videos are ranked based on a variety of factors including how well the time, description, video content match the viewer’s query. Beyond that, we look at which videos have driven the most engagement for a query”.

That means YouTube promote those videos that have audience engagement.

So, by audience interaction, I mean that you have to do something which will compel your audience to revert you. Here are the suggestions:

1. Give your audience multiple choice questions

Why do we have to do this?

The reason behind this statement is that people love to give their opinions. So instead of asking your viewers to share their thoughts, give them an easy multiple choice question.

For e.g. when I am suggesting my audience to use 9 strategies for YouTube SEO, then at the end of the video I will ask them to write to me which strategy they are going to use first.

2. Secondly, reply to every single comment

You should reply to each and every comment that you get. When users see that you are engaged with each and every comment you are getting, they like to write more comments.

More comments mean more views.

You can see that I have replied to almost every comment I have got from my viewers.

YouTube Marketing

Let’s move on to our second step which is the promotion of your videos.

b) Promote your videos on Quora and other online communities

Well, Quora, Forum, Reddit are the best platforms to promote your videos and get more and more views and high rankings.

Now here is the process of promoting your videos.

The first step is to search for the communities where you can promote your YouTube videos.

You can search for the keyword related to your videos in let say Quora. You will find some of the questions which can be answered by you if they are related to your video content.

Then write some content about the keyword you have searched for and then at the end of the content, you should attach your video. This way you will be able to promote your video and also get more views and subscribers as well.

c) Optimize For A Session Time

This might be the #1 ranking factors on YouTube.

You might have heard about:

Audience Retention which is basically the percentage of your video people has watched.

Total watch time which is actually the minute’s people has watched your video.

Both of these factors are important for ranking high on YouTube.

Well, there is another metric that people usually talk around is “session Time”.

Session time is the total amount of time that people spent on YouTube after they are still watching your video.

That means if a user watches your video and close down the browser that will be bad from YouTube point of view. But if that same very user watches another of your videos after watching one of your videos, then it will increase your audience retention and watch time.

Thereafter your videos will be shown in the suggested videos on the sidebar. And this will increase your session time.

youtube marketing

d) Optimize Your Videos Around “Video Keywords”

You might have noticed that YouTube videos are dominating Google search results. In fact 55% of the Google keyword searches appear from around 82% results from YouTube.

You have to optimize your videos around the keywords that are ranking on the first page of Google. I generally call keywords that have video results in Google “Video Keywords”.

These video keywords can be:

How-to keywords (“how to tie a tie”)

Reviews (“Beats by DRE review”)

Tutorials (“Setting up WordPress”)

Fitness & Sports (“Cardio Kickboxing”)

Funny Videos (“Cute Cats”)

Now, How can you search for the video keywords?

You have to check out a keyword on Google search box. If you have found even a single YouTube video on that keyword it will mean you have found one keyword for your YouTube video.

e) Optimize Your Channel Using The PAS Method

You usually do this mistake initially when we publish our videos. You don’t care much about your YouTube channel.

Well, even I used to think the same way that my channel doesn’t matter. As long as my videos are optimized, I am all set.

But, my studies showed that I was wrong. When I studied lots of successful channels, I have realized that you need to put a lot of efforts for optimizing your channel.

If you put inadequate efforts to optimize your channel you will definitely get more views and in turn more subscribers.

Now let’s talk about the PAS method. So what does PAS stands for?

P-Playlists

You need to properly set up your playlist on your channel page. I use the name of my playlist whatever came in my head. That lets you go away from boring playlist titles which we named as:

Link Building Strategies

White Hat SEO

A-About

Firstly, your “About” section helps YouTube understand what your channel is all about.

S-Subscribers

Now, you need to optimize your channel for getting more subscribers. Well, I think you will subscribe to a channel which looks like this:

youtube marketing

Instead of the channel which looks so dull like this:

f) Promote Your High-Retention Videos As A Card

youtube marketing

Sometimes your channel has a video that has a lot of potential to rank high, but it needs a push. Here I will tell you how to give a push.

Firstly, you need to login to your YouTube Analytics and click on “Audience Retention”.

youtube marketing

Now, look at the Average view duration

If you want to get more views on your videos you have to add a card to your videos. If you do this, your one video will get attached to other videos.

This small step will increase your views and watch time too.

g) The Facebook Preview

This is the hack which is recently discovered and it works really great.

From the YouTube experts, we have usually heard of publishing or promoting your videos on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

But, if you are just linking your video with your post, then it is a big mistake you are doing. Rather I would suggest you use “Facebook Preview”.

So what you have to do is, you have to upload your video clip on the Facebook page. This clip should be between 30 and 90 seconds.

Then write a post that contains the title of the video. You don’t need to fantasize anything. “Short and sweet works best”!

So that way the focus will be on your video. You might be seen in most of my videos, you write “full video in comments”. Then I give the full video link in the comment section.

youtube marketing

youtube marketing

h) Optimize Your Videos For SVO

The next important step is to optimize your video for SVO and get more and more views.

S- Suggested

V- Video

O-Optimization

Most of the time you think people will search on YouTube search engine and they sleep on suggested videos.

But truly that is really a bad idea.

Because it is analyzed that a vast majority of the audience on YouTube doesn’t come from YouTube searches rather they come from suggested videos.

In fact, if you will look at the analytics, you will find that the vast majority is coming from the suggested videos.

i) Create emotionally Compelling Titles

Well, not many people talk about video titles. In fact, YouTube says that-

“We-written titles can be the difference between someone watching and sharing your video, or scrolling right past it”.

So, it is important to write compelling or click-bait titles.

Check the video:

How To Get More YouTube Subscribers in 2019

Here, I will tell you 9 proven strategies on how to get more YouTube subscribers in the year 2019. These are some of the advanced techniques which only successful YouTubers knows.

So, let’s get started with strategy #1!

a) Turn Your Watermark Into A Subscribe Button

You might have seen a branded watermark. You can add a branded watermark to your YouTube video. A branded watermark is an icon that sits on the right-hand corner of your YouTube Video. Just like this:

youtube marketing

Watermarks are cool because anybody can subscribe to your channel without stopping the video.

But the bad news is most people use watermarks that don’t work.

So, this simple change in your watermark that will look like a YouTube subscriber can increase your subscribers up to 70%, without interfering the watch time on your video.

b) Use The TOP Formula

It is no doubt that a trailer video on top can change the render viewers into YouTube subscribers. Now, how do you have to create a trailer that will actually work?

For this, we need to follow the TOP formula.

T- Target Audience

O- Original Story

P- Pitch To Subscribe

Firstly, you have to address your target audience in the first 10 seconds. In this way, the person watching your video will come to know if this video is for them.

Like most of my videos on YouTube shows that they are related specifically to digital marketing people.

Secondly, you should tell about your original story. Your original story will make them realize, why you have made this YouTube channel.

Your original story is very powerful, that is because your original story will help your channel to stand out from thousands of other channels.

Finally, cap your trailer with your pitch to subscribe.

You have to push viewers to subscribe to your channel. So, don’t be afraid to ask people to subscribe to your channel.

In fact, YouTube suggests you to ask your viewers to subscribe to your channel. It says-

“You want to give your viewers a lasting impression so end with an explicit asks for viewers to subscribe”.

Like at the end of the video I always ask my audience to like, share and most importantly subscribe to my YouTube channel.

c) No Comment Left Behind

We have discussed this earlier also, that not even a single comment should leave unanswered.

The main reason behind it is, if you reply to each and every comment you get from your viewers, it increases your views and more views results in more subscribers.

When you reply to your viewer’s comments it gives them a sense of feeling that you are responding to them and this will brings in more comments. More comments will tend the viewers to view your video and subscribe to it.

d) The “Winner Takes All” Technique

This is one of my favorite technique to get more subscribers on YouTube.

Here I am going to tell you the step by step process:

Login to your YouTube analytics

Now, click on Subscribers

Click on YouTube watch page

youtube marketing

Now, you can see from the bunch of videos you have published on your YouTube channel, which videos get you more and more subscribers.

I usually call these videos winners, because they have proved to generate above average amount of subscribers.

d) Strong Channel Positioning And Branding

Strong channel positing and branding is one thing that has skyrocketed my subscriber base.

You usually think that as long as you publish great videos, you don’t need to brand or position your channel any sort of way. Obviously, I was wrong.

When I started the positioning and branding of my channel, I have found that my subscribers and views increase rapidly.

e) Use a “Next Video” In Your End-Screen

If one person is watching a video then you have an opportunity to turn that person into a subscriber.

But, imagine if that same person got to watch more videos from your channel, then it is more likely that the subscribers will increase.

Now, how you are going to do that?

Promote the next video in your end screen. Just imagine, when someone has done with watching your video, and then he might be thinking what next?

But, if you are featuring video next to the video they are watching, you are actually giving them the answer to this question.

Basically, it is another opportunity to show your content and make them subscribe.

You should spend some 10-20 seconds on the end screen, and add a bigger subscribe button like this:

youtube marketing

As you can see in my videos I have set a prominent subscriber in the end screen.

youtube marketing

You just have to simply put the text “Next Video” into your end screen. I mean you can use any other phrase also.

Such as:

Watch out the next

Check out this video

Or any other phrase such as a tick mark etc.

Now link your video to the text, using the YouTube end screen feature. Well, this is true that your next video increases your total watch session.

When we have analyzed the metrics of YouTube success it says that-

“Channels and videos with higher watch times are likely to show up higher in search results and recommendations. In addition to this, it says that watch time benefits don’t evaporate when viewers stop watching your content. If a video on your brand’s channel drives them to watch more videos, the channel earns some watch time credits for the cumulative minutes accrued”.

This clearly means when someone watches your next video on YouTube, it is likely that you will rank high on YouTube and which leads to more views.

Let’s move on to the other strategy which is actually a controversial one:

e) Not To Worry About Publishing Consistently

Well, what I got to know from the YouTube experts is that-

“The secret to growing our YouTube channel is to publish videos on a consistent basis. If you don’t publish even a single video every week, you are not going to get any subscribers”.

I am not saying that this advice is meaningless, but sometimes it is misguided. In fact instead of publishing 100 videos, better focus on giving your 100 percent in publishing your video.

So, it is really important to focus on the quality and not on the number of videos.

f) Boost Audience Retention

It is a massively important YouTube ranking factor. We have talked about the importance of audience retention earlier in this article.

Let me show you what YouTube has to say on this:

youtube marketing

So, in general, the more audience retention brings you more views and more views equal to more subscribers.

Well, you can enjoy this video on how to get more YouTube subscribers.

YouTube Marketing- Conclusion

Well, if you have read YouTube Marketing according to its length, then you are going to be a YouTube star.

The purpose of the article on YouTube Marketing is to take all of you out of the myths of ranking high on YouTube.

In the end, I just can ask to apply the principles which are outlined here and grow your business on YouTube.

Maybe all these hacks of YouTube Marketing may not work in the first try but they will continue producing high-quality content.

You will get success in YouTube Marketing with patience and practice. So get out there and shoot.

I am sure that you have liked my YouTube Marketing hacks. Please like, share and subscribe to our YouTube Channel.

You can also leave a comment below and one more way to join us is by filling up the FORM here.

In Your Service
Dhairya Singh Chauhan
Digital Dhairya

About the author

Dhairya Singh Chauhan is a Google certified professional who has achieved hundreds of number one rankings over the past 5-years. Dhairya has consulted countless clients on SEO and how to make money online, from small family-owned businesses to international brands.

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