One of the most effective and cost efficient ways for any business or corporation to dramatically increase their website traffic is by releasing video content via YouTube on a regular schedule.
Often when creating an SEO (search engine optimization) strategy, business owners and marketing pros will focus primarily on their existing website, and often won't look for other sources of online traffic. A big emphasis is typically placed on their website copy, the URL structure, and so on. However, it is arguable that it's equally, if not more important to focus SEO efforts on other platforms as well, such as YouTube, in order to draw from a more extensive and responsive pool of potential customers.
Many people are surprised to learn that YouTube is actually the second largest search engine in the world, (next to Google of course), and since Google now owns YouTube, it makes perfect sense that YouTube videos are now heavily integrated into Google's search engine results. What this means for business owners, is they now have an alternate method for ranking highly in search engine queries by creating dynamic video content that is valuable to their target customers, rather than just relying on text based website copy. One of the big benefits of harnessing this ability is the fact that there is simply less competition on YouTube, which means theoretically it is easier to get a high ranking on Google using YouTube videos, than it is to get a high ranking with a traditional website.
Here's an example of how branded YouTube content could help a business drive traffic in a real world scenario:
A restaurant chain wants to start selling some of their products through their website (barbecue sauce, cookbooks, etc.). Rather than simply optimizing their website and hoping that they will get some traffic from users on Google searching for their brand of sauce or cookbook, they can opt to produce low-cost, regularly updated video content that will help them rank well in Google and YouTube searches. The restaurant chain might choose to release a weekly 2 minute video spot where their head chef speaks to camera, giving cooking advice on a specific type of cuisine, and throughout the video he/she could be plugging their products and directing the viewers to their website.
This formula is quite simple and extremely adaptive in that in can be used by nearly any type of business, and there is no limit to the amount or type of content that can be released. That said, there are two key components to having this strategy be successful: Consistency and quality. First off, you don't want to just produce a single video, put it up on YouTube and wait for the traffic to roll in. Unfortunately no matter how great that video is, it just doesn't work that way. Much like website content, your YouTube channel needs to updated regularly in order to ranked well, and in regards to the quality - it simply has to be there. Yes, these are web videos and they don't need to have feature film level production value, but they should look very clean and professional, and the content should be well thought out and deliberately planned.
Many of our clients are pleasantly surprised to find out that this type of content can actually cost very little to produce, and can yield some dramatic results in regards to their sales. In fact, YouTube content is probably bang for the buck the most effective way of marketing online when done properly. In comparison to a traditional corporate video (which has it's own advantages), YouTube content typically requires less supplementary footage/b-roll, which means more videos can be produced in a shorter amount of time. It isn't uncommon to shoot 10 - 15 videos in a single day and release them weekly over the course of several months.
We work with many businesses to create concepts, develop strategies, and facilitate the production of YouTube based branded content that is intended to drive traffic and increase sales. For more information on how this works and how you can tap into the power of YouTube content, feel free to contact us any time - info@creativerebellion.com
The Creative Rebellion Team