You Tube a land of Brand Opportunity

You Tube marketing is not new, but the potential of you tube is massive. If you sell a product that lends itself to being on film then why not give it go? The ease of setting up an account and promoting your video makes it accessible to all.

I recently revisited an experiment I ran over year ago with my team at a old company and was pleasantly surprised that 1.52 min short video of the LG Shine had received in excess of 225,000 views, a rating of 4, 195 comments and more importantly comments had been made within 11 hours of me checking, over a year since it was posted!!

This video had a brief post and pre roll of the company logo, not a bad piece of cost free branding. But of course it was not free, as there was an opportunity cost involved along with the time and effort taken.

From a marketing perspective though the key consideration is what return on investment will this action take. And it is there where expectations should be set up front.

So here is some advice on winning approval for a You tube marketing action plan.

1. Don't go trying to convince your boss that You tube is a free marketing channel, it's not, it will requires time – your time, a designers time to edit the film and possibly the right kind of software. The very least appreciate this fact, but explain how your time will be repaid.
   
2. Consider the best option of in video advertising for your product. Is it pre-roll, post-roll or both? Continuous scrolling or placement. Decide which option complements your film, and which option will not put off your audience.
   
3. In film advertising is acceptable, but remember the person watching the video you have posted will in all likelihood be interested in what's in the film and not who it belongs to, being over aggressive will provoke a negative response or worse still abandoned views – make this point to prevent over aggressive advertsing
   
4. Set out KPI's for the activity and benchmark it accordingly – believe me unless your product is completely new there will already be film out there on the subject.
   
5. Key metrics to consider should be:
   Number of views /videos watched
   Frequency of views – Trend
   Video Ratings
   Number of comments (if feasible why not think about measure the negative / positive ratio of comments?
   Comment recency
   Connections
   
   
6. Benchmark these by looking at the level achieved by your competitors, actual or in film on You Tube
   
7. Further to this check out site referrals from you tube and monitor any improvement, and of course track sales if you are tacitly asking or not by using the most appropriate source available.
   
8. But set out that this in effect is a branding exercise. If you have the information set it against the cost of achieving your predicted level of views to that achieved through a TV campaign
   
9. Monitor brand searches before and after, see if there is any growth – obviously be sensible and be aware that not every increase can be easily squared with your You Tube campaign.
   
10. Don't forget to mention the Community marketing opportunities and generation of back links and new traffic to your site!
    

Looking at setting up a you tube channel, check out this post by Masternewmedia.org or this You Tube Marketing forum

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