Ask any real estate agent what’s one of the most important factors that’ll determine how easily they’ll be able to sell a home at a premium price and they’ll tell you—that it’s all about location. Even if you were selling the most palatial home—you’d probably have a pretty hard time getting top dollar for it if it was located in the middle of the desert.
However, when a home in the right location is placed on the market—even if it was subpar, it would have a much better chance of selling at a premium price.
The same reasoning applies when it comes to product marketing. If your aim is to give your brand the best chance at selling your products—it’s all about location! And when it comes to social media—there may not be a better location to showcase your brand’s products to consumers in the present, and especially in the future—than YouTube.
What makes YouTube so special right now?
As we encounter the many technological advances of the 21st century—as a society, we often tend to take things for granted that would’ve been considered miraculous 25 years ago. Things like being able to watch movies on your phone, deposit a check into your bank account simply by taking a picture of it, and submitting job applications for positions miles away while you’re out to dinner with friends, are now par for the course.
A digital platform that didn’t exist 20 years ago—is also another one of the things that’s being taken for granted by far too many startup owners and marketing professionals that work for them. That platform is YouTube.
YouTube is the world’s second most-visited website (with its parent company Google being #1). Every day, approximately 122 million users log on YouTube to be entertained, informed, and communicate with others. Yet, YouTube is often disregarded as a key digital marketing platform by startups—with the sentiment being that marketing on YouTube is reserved for the bigger brands.
I’ll tell you why that’s a big mistake later, but first—let’s discuss why YouTube could be an even better platform for you to utilize for your brand’s benefit not only now—but also, in the future.
Why YouTube will be so significant in the future
One of the reasons why YouTube’s parent company—Google, is so innovative—is the fact that they’re so great at observing where their competitors are going, and beating them to the punch by getting there first.
Google has been able to inculcate that same innovative thinking with YouTube.
For example, when YouTube execs observed how millions of people began increasingly gravitating more towards short-length videos via TikTok—they responded with their own platform that featured short-length videos to rival TikTok—called YouTube Shorts—which according to Business Insider, has been a major hit—now averaging over 30 billion daily views.
Not only that, YouTube also took it a step further—by challenging TikTok in the smart TV sphere.
As first reported by Protocol, in the coming months—YouTube has plans to roll out a new feature that'll allow users to view YouTube Shorts on their big screen TV’s at home—which will only give YouTube Shorts an even bigger advantage over TikTok, thus, making it an even better option for consumers to view content moving forward.
How to market your products on YouTube
Where a lot of startup founders, as well as their marketing teams—go wrong, is when they relinquish YouTube to bigger brands just because they have larger advertising budgets. They assume that YouTube marketing is only for paid advertisers—which couldn’t be further from the facts.
YouTube, like most other major social media platforms—is basically free. Which means that it costs absolutely nothing for you to either upload Shorts, or lengthy videos featuring your brand’s products on the platform.
Here’s a way you could do that:
Let’s say your startup’s primary offering was an app that helped new mothers find the most commonly used products for infants at the lowest cost from retailers. You could create and upload a video which would serve as a commercial for your app titled “How To Find The Most Affordable Products For Your Baby.”
The video could feature new mothers sitting in a living room discussing how they initially struggled finding affordable products for their newborns until they discovered your app.
Due to the fact that people search YouTube for just about everything these days, once your video/commercial is uploaded on YouTube—anyone searching for affordable products for their infants on YouTube, as well as Google—will be presented with the opportunity to view your video.
By placing a link to a landing page on your website in the description of your video—millions of people searching for affordable products for their newborns would instantly be able to purchase your app or become a new subscriber—all thanks to a video that cost you nothing to create or upload.
After you upload a few videos showcasing your startup’s offerings—you could then begin experimenting to see which types of videos resonate most with viewers by creating monthly or seasonal campaigns that your audience could look forward to, which could lead to them becoming subscribers of your channel so that they won't miss your new videos.
You could also engage with your audience in the comment section whenever they reply to one of your videos (positively, of course). All of this would lead to your app not only being placed, but also becoming a mainstay on the second most-searched website in the world…for free! (Sorry, but I cannot emphasize that part enough)
Conclusion
One of the cons of us all being exposed to so much technology, so fast, is that it often creates perplexing problems that those who came before us—long before the internet ever existed—never had to experience.
Having said that, I believe that our ancestors absolutely would have appreciated the technological advancements that have made life so much more convenient for us. Things like Google Maps, Amazon Prime, and most certainly YouTube. Think about it, where else besides YouTube could you learn how to replace your car’s transmission and work out like The Rock in less than 35 minutes? Exactly!
So, now that you know just how many people and potential customers are already on YouTube—as well as how you could attract them towards your offerings—the only thing left for you to do is take action by meeting them there. And give them one less thing that they’ll have to search for (because they'll be subscribers of your channel).