A variety of dynamic marketing approaches have cropped up in this new era of marketing as technology progresses with powerful and cost effective tools and solutions. One of the increasingly popular marketing approaches for many businesses today is YouTube business marketing.
Modern consumers love a more dynamic presentation of business offerings today. Hence, it is not surprising to have businesses clamoring for more dynamic marketing approaches that include video marketing. Videos are becoming more popular with consumers who are more inclined towards audio, visual and animation over text based marketing approaches alone.
YouTube Platform
Videos are found to be extremely effective in entertaining, educating and instructing but innovative businesses are using videos in promoting their brand and offerings very effectively. Video advertising is not a fad with the availability of the YouTube platform to encourage its widespread coverage in low cost.
YouTube allows all types of home-made or professional videos to be uploaded and accessed easily. YouTube is a well-known video hosting site that reaches millions of users across the globe. Few technical skills are required in manipulating YouTube platform to promote a business on a video.
The business owner or marketer should be more concerned about the skills and techniques in producing an appealing video that could benefit the business when released on YouTube as there are more and more videos uploaded on this platform daily. Successful video marketing must generate loads of web traffic to the web business site from a simple and short promotional video that is entertaining, captivating and informative to viewers.
YouTube accepts almost all types of videos without regards to its category or professionalism as long as its basic terms and conditions are satisfied. Hence, a well designed and produced video would need to incorporate the best of YouTube business marketing skills and tactics that make it a great video on the platform.
Nevertheless, there may be certain pros and cons which a business owner or marketer must be aware of as they adopt YouTube marketing strategies.
Pros of YouTube Marketing
One of the outstanding advantages of YouTube marketing is the Viral-ability of the approach. Millions of users surf YouTube every day for the latest video regardless of the topic and duration.
YouTube provides an ideal platform for every marketer to achieve massive viewing audiences quickly to boost their business. YouTube has become the second largest search engine with about 55% consumer traffic on the Internet in 2014.
A well designed and developed business video is capable of securing a high page ranking from popular search engines. A first page listing on the SERP of search engines would augur well with the business and brand. The video could go viral if the content is appealing, captivating and relevant to viewers.
Another advantage of promoting videos on YouTube is a strong support by Google as YouTube is wholly owned by the popular search engine. A strong market reputation with a solid track record boosts the reliability of the platform in promoting and supporting the videos uploaded. Viewers presume a certain degree of quality when videos are uploaded on YouTube.
Moreover, it would be assumed that videos on YouTube would be favored by Google to enjoy better page rankings with the search engine results page over other hosting agents’ videos. A YouTube video enjoys a better chance of a higher ranking by Google to attract more viewers and traffic to the web business site.
YouTube marketing offers a great advantage to new and small business owners or marketers who are cash tight in their business endeavors. This free and cost effective marketing platform offers a great opportunity for entrepreneurs and marketers to garner more potential leads using very few tools if the designer is focused on the objective and theme.
Visitors could be engaged freely and be convinced of the business opportunities in a short 2-minute video which provides more information than a written article in article marketing.
Cons of YouTube Marketing
Every business tool has some rough edges which the entrepreneur or marketer must be aware of to avoid potential pitfalls in results. One of the prominent disadvantages of YouTube marketing is a ‘No Guarantee’ outcome as the facility is free without coercion on viewers to support the business. Moreover, if the video is not well designed or set up with an opt-in feature or clear backlink, viewers may not be directed to the right website.
There is no guarantee on desired outcomes with YouTube marketing as viewers have the final say in supporting or rejecting the video content or business offer. Viewers may like the video and be entertained by it, but may not be inspired or compelled to follow on with the opt-in or support to the business.
YouTube does not offer too much flexibility in customizing videos which would allow better videos to be produced. YouTube has certain restrictions on videos posted on its platform that limits the dynamism of the video as a promotional business video. This could be experienced from the limitations of YouTube on calls-to-actions feature which other video hosting platforms are more open and generous.
With this free posting platform, all sorts of active user interactions are permitted. Hence, it is worrisome for entrepreneurs or marketers to receive poor or negative reviews on their promotional videos which could not be erased or hidden from view. This would form the entrepreneur or marketer’s worst nightmare which could be detrimental to the business reputation.
A lot of hard work is required to generate a captivating video to survive the harsh competition on YouTube as related videos are placed on the same page by the platform system. There are many choices of videos on the same page to view which implies that a video must be captivating even at the start of its footage.
Conclusion
Many factors must be taken into serious consideration when putting up a promotional video on YouTube. Although the free facility provides a strong platform to draw more organic traffic, it may not be easy to secure the desired volume if the pros and cons of YouTube Marketing are not properly understood and applied.
