VideoYouTube For B2B: Immediately Actionable Tactics to Boost Online Video Marketing

YouTube For B2B: Immediately Actionable Tactics to Boost Online Video Marketing

YouTube for B2B? A holistic program of steady, engaging, well-optimized content and methodical use of low cost YouTube ad units fan viral flames to blow out your hard-fought video creative, and crank ROI all the way up the beanstalk. Here's how.

youtube-b2bSure we all know about sexy viral videos, blending rakes, and beefy dudes in underpants, but what about YouTube for B2B?

In reality, a holistic program of steady, engaging, well-optimized content and methodical use of low cost YouTube ad units fan viral flames to blow out your hard-fought video creative, and crank ROI all the way up the beanstalk.

Let’s take a look at immediately actionable tactics any B2B company can use to boost their video marketing efforts.

Research and Optimization for Discoverability

B2B video marketing has a lot to do with creating useful content for the right niche community. It isn’t about getting a ton of views, it’s about getting the right people to view your video.

There are a number of ways to find your audience in YouTube. Start by doing a few core searches and documenting the users/channels relevant to you in the SERPs.

youtube-search-commercial-hvac-installation

Be sure to note when the last time they logged into the account.

youtube-latest-activity

Create a spreadsheet that sorts relevant users based on the last time they logged in. Include as much data as possible. Our process identifies all videos indexed in YouTube for a particular search term. Details should include:

  • Video rank
  • Last login date
  • Video rank for the search term
  • Video URL
  • Channel URL
  • Username
  • Video upload date
  • Channel subscriber count
  • Total video views

youtube-videos-indexed-by-search-term

Mining Users from Comments

YouTube recently retired a tool in TestTube called “Comment Search.” The tool allowed you to find users based on the comments they left on video watch pages. When they took the feature away we had to find another way to get at that juicy data, after all, people sometimes reveal tidbits about themselves in comments you couldn’t find anywhere else on YouTube.

The work around uses Google and simple search operators to mine comment threads. Here’s how:

youtube-mine-comment-threads

Evaluate Your Community for Active Users

Identify relevant users subscribed to the company channel with a high subscriber count and more importantly, signs of recent activity and engagement. These are the users to interact with regularly. If they are content creators themselves, leave a thoughtful comment on a relevant video, give it a thumbs up and/or favorite it.

Find Out Who is Sharing Your Content

Make a list of sites that have embedded or shared links to your videos. When you publish a video down the line that is relevant to one of these sites, share it with the publication manager. You can find this data in YouTube analytics > Traffic sources > External websites.

Retargeted Video Ads

AdWords for Video allows you to use remarketing lists to display TrueView video ads. There is also several preset remarketing lists in Adwords for Video to choose from. The list needs 100 users before you can remarket to it. Check out the preset lists, they revolve around engagement with your content, both positive and negative.

adwords-for-video-preset-remarketing-lists

Call to Action Overlay Ads

Call to Action overlay ads are a package deal with TrueView InSearch and InDisplay ad units. You don’t pay for clicks on CTA ads, but beyond putting a live link in the description or gaining access to external linking annotations, it’s the only way to send traffic off of the watch page to an external site. Use the CTA overlay ad to promote a white paper giveaway or special offer.

To set this up, create an InSearch or InDisplay video ad. Go to “Video Manager” and “Edit” the video you are promoting. Next add in the headline, description and image URL and destination URL.

Transcripts

Examine Analytics to understand the language and location of those viewing your videos. If it warrants, consider creating translated transcripts for the videos.

youtube-translated-transcripts

The easy way to do it is to allow YouTube to generate the English transcript and edit in the UI if it is incorrect, which it usually is. Have a look at how botched the machine transcript is below.

youtube-botched-machine-transcription

Download the time stamped .sbv file, translate and re-upload.

Conditional Redirects

Conditional redirects are a way to filter users access to the brand channel based on a user’s language, location, age, or gender. For example, a filter could specify any user from Russia should be directed to a separate channel with brand videos recorded in Russian. The approach is an investment, but also allows videos to be optimized for important keywords in other languages. This feature is only available for Brand channels.

Example Redirects:

youtube-example-redirects

Are you using tactics that weren’t listed here? Please share them in the comments below.

Resources

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index
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