Youtube simply does not receive the love it deserves in Australia. The video platform serves double duty as the 2nd biggest search engine in the world while also holding an outsized influence on Google search results. Combine this with its massive reach and influence and it's a 3'fer.
For many marketers, bite-sized video content for TikTok and Instagram dominates production schedules - especially for small to mid sized B2C companies. Sure, a good always-on strategy should include great, fun-sized video content with a few dance loops and puppies, but it becomes a time & budget burglar very quickly.
More often than not, this 'feed the beast content' plays for half a day and then disappears into the ether creating no lasting SEO footprint and little bang for buck.
Optimising videos for YouTube has a positive and lasting effect on your business’ search results, and embedding these videos on your homepage increases traffic flow and dwell time leading to increased desire to purchase. It is simply a must-have media.
Sounds easy, right?
The costs are much lower than those it takes to feed to beast of always-on media, but it is just as easy to churn out mediocre or off-target content so you have to have an in-depth understanding of what works and why - this is what the world’s biggest brands do day-in/ day-out. Fear not -it is affordable to businesses of any scale if they get the planning right.
Youtube accounts Social Brain ran and produced content for in 2021 spanned multiple B2B and B2C industries and all saw a traffic uptick of 4x~25x vs previous performance.
Unlike instagram and TikTok where the earnest amateurism of User Generated Content is charming and can even be its strongest asset, official company accounts on YouTube do need to be more exacting with the content they publish.
A good litmus test for this was 2 videos produced for a B2C company Social Brain runs a Youtube account for; the videos covered the same products and an identical event held in 2 different locations. They were balanced in terms of copywriting, playlist integration, channel strength and other variables.
The performance of the professionally produced content was over 5x stronger over the course of a year. This accounts for an identical promotion strategy and being hosted from the same account. TBH this was a known outcome that over the course of 15 years developing Youtube content and channels I hadn’t had the opportunity to quantify; I have always advised against mixing content sources. In this instance it was good to put a number on suspicions.
People don’t often approach video with the multivariant testing rigour they do websites, but they should.
Yearly organic impressions and organic views for a month for one of SB's Youtube clients.
Youtube accounts Social Brain ran and produced content for in 2021 spanned multiple B2B and B2C industries and all saw a traffic uptick of 4x~25x vs previous performance. These Youtube accounts also saw content ranking near the top of Google search results for general searches and video searches where they previously had no presence.
Importantly, the average time viewed of each 2-3 min video produced was north of 1min 20secs. This is sticky content that businesses see real returns from because the views are substantial and relevant - not 20k people ‘watching’ an insta paid promo video for 3secs or one person re-watching a video 10 times - 85% of these Youtube views were unique and all the views were organic.
As I'm sure many Aussie business will come to realise, a Youtube channel is not just a ’nice to have’ or a box to check - it should be a cornerstone of any serious business’ content and media plan. The battle for business success is taking place online and with search, ads, and Youtube. Google controls the army, the navy, and the airforce, the other players are just insurgents.
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