With more than 1 billion users and 300 hours of video being uploaded every single minute (YouTube, 2015), YouTube is fast becoming the world’s go-to video platform. The platform states that 6 billion hours of video are being watched monthly, spanning across 56 countries and in 61 languages. The important thing about YouTube is that users are very much in control. They expect brands to inform, entertain, and provide utility to them, when, where, and how they want it (Google, 2015). So where do the biggest brands sit within all of this? Well, Touchstorm’s study ‘The Touchstorm Video Index’ discovered that within the top 5,000 channels on YouTube, an elite group with at least 43 million views each, only 74 members are brands, or in a harsher statistic, just a slim 2%. Samsung have 5 channels on this list, all from different product groups, more than any other brand. Also, interestingly, The Mormon Church outranks three of the top major brands, Apple, Microsoft, and IBM. Perhaps most shocking of all, out of the top 100 brands on YouTube,  50.4% of their content receives less than 1,000 views, as shown below.

 

 

With the recent rise of YouTube personalities such as Zoella averaging over 2 million views per video, do brands really stand a chance on this platform? Co-Founder of vidIQ, Robert Sandie, states where brands may be going wrong:

‘Not every brand thinks of YouTube as a social network… They think of it as a place to dump videos and hope engagement occurs. They need to be actively participating and commenting to get the full benefit.’

Pixability, a YouTube Video Marketing site, completed a study titled ‘The Top 100 Global Brands: Key Lessons for Success on YouTube‘. Amongst other findings, one thing that stood out was the strong presence all of these brands had on the video platform, making it a critical element of their digital marketing strategy (Kearney, 2013). Attracted by the rapid rise of social media (Dickey and Lewis, 2010), businesses are increasingly using platforms such as YouTube as part of their marketing strategy (Gallaugher and Ransbotham, 2010), although only a small number of firms actually feel comfortable in the new environment (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). If your business wishes to use YouTube as a marketing tool, it is vital that you not only engage regularly, but you are committed to providing good quality content, as anything less may cause more harm than good to your brand.

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Who has been using YouTube to their advantage?

 

GoPro

GoPro has an impressive following of 2.4 million subscribers and a recent campaign, ‘The Adventure of Life in 4k’, attracted over 4.6 million views in just 2 weeks. As a 6-part series, the video below demonstrates just one of these. This content is shareable, authentic, and interesting, making it the perfect video for increasing engagement with the brand.

 

John Lewis

The infamous John Lewis Christmas advert was released on social media before being screened on TV, a smart move by the company, as it attracted more than 7 million views in the first 24 hours. Now, just 5 months later, the video boasts over 23 million views. Interestingly, this cost-effective way of posting content directly to consumers seems to have paid off for the department store, with added shares, likes, and comments. However, John Lewis’ budget is somewhat out of reach for the average company, having spent a reported £7 million on the production of the 2 minute advert.

 

Wren

During early 2015, fashion giant Wren commissioned a video titled ‘First Kiss’, which went on to be the most viewed fashion video of all time, leading to over 100 million views on YouTube and a 14,000% increase in sales. An incredibly smart move by anyone’s standards. However, the original tweet including the YouTube link only attracted 450 retweets, so was it an intentional marketing strategy, or pure luck?

 

If you take a look at the top 74 channels (including the likes of Coca Cola, Nike, Lego, and Xbox) and additional successful channels, you will see a pattern begin to emerge. All have authentic, consistent, and to put it simply, clever content. Despite the harsh statistic of only 74 brands sitting in the top 5,000 channels, it won’t come as a surprise that some of the most subscribed to channels are those of celebrities, with the likes of Rihanna, One Direction, and Katy Perry all holding over 15 million subscribers. In today’s world in which children are practically born with a smartphone in their hands, the odds are automatically stacked against brands competing with world-wide superstars.

 

So, what can your brand do to stand out on YouTube?

The YouTube Creator Playbook for Brands suggests the following 10 Fundamentals to Create Content People Love:

1. Shareable content, in which the creator identifies subject trending matter and creates content accordingly. Also, it is wise to connect through emotions and appeal to your audience’s values.

2. Collaboration, by identifying popular YouTube creators who share your target audience. For example, Zoella (aka Zoe Sugg) is one of the most popular ‘YouTubers’ out there, boasting over 8 million subscribers. If your brand were to share her target audience of mainly teenagers and young adults, she would be the perfect collaborator. She has already collaborated with major brands such as FeelUnique. Collaborative projects enable the joint and simultaneous creation of content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).

3. Having discoverable content by creating ‘evergreen’ content that will be searched for over time, such as how-to-videos. Also, by creating videos around trending events, your content will surface with the sudden rush of traffic surrounding the topic.

4. Being accessible and putting the viewer at the forefront of your creative process. Would the video immediately grasp their attention?

5. Being consistent in format, schedule, elements, and voice. It will increase fan loyalty and compels your audience to return to something they are already familiar with.

6. Targeting certain demographics by studying similar content to yours and determine which groups are engaging with it.

7. Creating sustainable content by ensuring your content has longevity by way of careful planning and considered concepts. 

8. Conversing with viewers, as with any social media platform, making an emotional connection with your viewers increases the consumer-brand relationship. By asking for their feedback and responding to their comments, you can make them feel valued.

9. By including interactive content you can involve your audience, allowing them to develop a sense of ownership.

10. Creating authentic content by putting passion at the forefront of your videos, as users will quickly tell when this isn’t apparent.

A few more tips…

Cross-market between different social media platforms. From the Top 100 Brands on YouTube, the top 25% had higher Facebook (330 times greater) and Twitter (89 times greater) video sharing than the bottom 25% (Kearney, 2013).

Take video optimisation seriously. Within traditional SEO methods, Google prioritises webpages with YouTube embeds. Additionally, YouTube is the second largest search engine, ergo discoverability is key.

 

 

 

According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more adults in the USA aged 18-34 than any TV network, as of mid-2013. Furthermore, rather than just being watchable content, users can like, share, and comment, therefore increasing engagement and allowing brands to gain instant feedback.

Additionally, 18-34 year olds would choose YouTube as the best platform to explore their passions. This is extremely good news for the likes of fashion brands, as there is a direct correlation between the consumer and their passion for the clothing.

 

 

When an individual within the 18-24 year old demographic wishes to learn about a product, they are now most likely to do so by using YouTube. This would explain why YouTube personalities who are collaborating with big brands are receiving so many views, as users trust their opinions and hope their videos will influence their views on certain products.

 

 

Social media is substantially different from other media (Godes et al, 2005 and Hoffman and Novak, 2012) and must be treated as such. Youtube is becoming more popular by the day and it a fantastic way for your brand to use social media to its advantage, however to do so you must be committed to a digital marketing strategy which fully integrates YouTube within it, as you must create engaging, creative, innovative, and interesting content – not an easy feat when these uploads should also aim to be regular. With all of this in mind, YouTube is a perfect social platform for your business, particularly regarding the above information regarding 18 – 24 year olds, and should be used to its full potential.

 

 

 

References:

Dickey, I.J. and Lewis, W.F. (2010), “The evolution (revolution) of social media and social networking as a necessary topic in the marketing curriculum: a case for integrating social media into marketing classes”, Society for Marketing Advances Proceedings, pp. 140-143.

Gallaugher, J. and Ransbotham, S. (2010), “Social media and customer dialog management at starbucks”, MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 197-212.

Godes, D., Mayzlin, D., Chen, Y., Das, S., Dellarocas, C., Pfeiffer, B., Libai, B., Sen, S., Shi, M and Verlegh, P. (2005) The Firm’s Management of Social Interactions. Marketing Letters, 16 (3/4), pp. 415–428

Hoffman, D and Novak T.P. (2012) Toward a Depper Understanding of Social Media. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26 (2), pp. 69 – 70.

Kaplan, A.M. and Haenlein, M. (2010), “Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media”, Business Horizons, Vol. 53 No. 1, pp. 59-68.

Kearney, G. How the Top 100 Brands Use YouTube for Marketing. [Online] Available at: https://concept5.com/how-the-top-100-brands-use-youtube-for-marketing/ [Accessed 23 April 2015].

Ratcliff, C. YouTube strategy for brands: 10 of the best. [Online] Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/63832-youtube-strategy-for-brands-10-of-the-best/ [Accessed 23 April 2015].

Styles, I. Where brands are going wrong on YouTube. [Online] Available at: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/articles/where-brands-are-going-wrong-on-youtube/1485 [Accessed 23 April 2015].

YouTube. What 18-34 year olds want from brands. [Online] Available at: https://think.storage.googleapis.com/docs/youtube-insights-stats-data-trends-vol4_research-studies.pdf [Accessed 23 April 2015].

Zitron, E. When strangers kiss, do marketers win? [Online] Available at: http://www.inc.com/ed-zitron/first-kiss-viral-video-marketing.html [Accessed 23 April 2015].