As a small business, one of the most important things is to advertise your wares and make sure that you can find new customers. However, advertising is difficult because of how many options you have when it comes. You can get a TV ad, or signs and billboards. But one of the most effective ways for small businesses to advertise their services is through YouTube.
All small businesses should have a YouTube channel. From advertising to live demonstrations, a YouTube channel can increase company awareness, help answer customer questions, and is one of the cheapest ways to promote yourself. Investing in a youtube channel is worth it.
Not only this, but YouTube is the second most visited website in the world, and each minute nearly 700,000 hours of videos are being streamed. And of all these hours of video streamed, roughly 32% of users have watched a how-to tutorial and 28% a product review video within the last week. Below are just a few more reasons why you should have a YouTube channel.
Creates a Community
One of the biggest things that YouTube can do for a business is create a community around it. Many people want to support small businesses rather than massive ones throughout the whole country, however, these people need to be able to find your business. When you create a YouTube channel and begin putting videos of products of events, people will begin to discover you and this can lead to a community forming around your business.
This community will help support you, and can even act as another method to draw in new customers because they will tell their friends about your business. YouTube is one of the more effective methods of creating a community because it is very easy for people to digest information through videos. And these videos will create a bond between your business and all of your customers because you are giving your brand a personality.
Website Optimizing
Using YouTube videos can help your website allow faster download and usage speed and get special attention from Google in search results. Normally, when you place a video on a website, it will increase the amount of bandwidth that the site uses. This will cause slower loading speeds when potential customers are trying to enter your site, and also will lead to a slower download time if the customer needs to download items or information.
Also, because YouTube is owned by Google, any site that is using YouTube videos will get special attention in the results. And while placing keywords on your website can also increase the chances that you will appear on Google’s front page. Because it processes around 40,000 search queries a minute, any help to get your page to be first can result in traffic through your site and spending on your product.
Solve Customer Problems
YouTube can help business owners answer some of the most common questions that they face. Through different videos, you can show how to assemble, install or use different products. Then, when customers have any questions, they can find these videos on your site, resulting in a customer who is happy and also grateful for the assistance your site provided.
This also applies to products from other businesses. Many people are searching for tutorials on how to use a product and by having them you can establish a good relationship with a potential customer for the future. Another benefit is that once you have created these videos, they can remain on your site and generate publicity for years to come.
Time-Efficient and Measurable
That is one of the best reasons that having a YouTube channel can benefit a small business. When you create a video to answer a question a customer had or show a demonstration, that video can be found for years. Even after you have forgotten about the video, it will still be promoting your business. And when it comes to advertising, YouTube can allow you to reach 2.56 billion different users spread throughout the whole world.
Having a YouTube channel also means that you can see the success of different videos allowing you to see what people within your community are interested in and not. Through YouTube Analytics you can see things like # of views, likes, dislikes, shares, age of viewers, gender of viewers, location of viewers, and average watch time. This information can quickly give you all the knowledge you would need to create effective ads and show you who your target audience is.
Social Media
Just like Facebook and Instagram, YouTube is a social media site and can be used as such. And just like on both of those other platforms, YouTube is all about constructing a following of people who support you and your business. And as said by Sean Cannell, focus on one of the social media platforms until you have created a solid following. After that, you can diversify and bring many of your following with you.
YouTube being a social media site also means that you can interact more with your community. Through the comment section on videos, you can see what your audience thinks you’ve done well, and what you’ve done poorly. You can also answer any other questions that people have placed there as well. Lastly, you can also use any other social media that your business has to promote your videos. By copy and pasting the link, you can quickly tell your communities about events held or a new product launched.
Open Opportunity
Despite being the second most popular site in the whole world, only 9% of small businesses use YouTube. One of the main reasons is because creating longer, higher-quality videos is slightly more difficult, but for any business that puts in the effort, they have the opportunity to tap into one of the biggest markets in the world.
Having YouTube videos not only can promote products that your business is selling and answer questions, but by creating videos, a small business can potentially make money from the views as well. There are plenty of factors that determine how much a video makes, but typically it is about $3-5 per every 1000 views.
