Lessons SME’s Can Learn from YouTube Greats

In the modern world, every business is an online business. Those that aren’t, should be. The age of social media offers SME’s and entrepreneurs the potential to reach massive audiences with minimal financial investment. By investing your time into a video marketing campaign, and situating yourself as a company that produces content, you’ll find a way to get your product to your customers.

Right now, there’s no better medium to promote your product than YouTube. YouTube videos are the perfect way to get your content, and your brand across to potential customers. Countless companies have made use of YouTube successfully and this is our aspirational guide to how you can achieve the same success.

Be Compelling

The first step to creating an effective YouTube marketing campaign is to produce compelling content. If you try to simply shove your product in front of viewers before drawing them in, you can put them off. In order to captivate your audience, you need to think outside the box.

In order to produce compelling content, Android’s YouTube channel made use of emotive content of friendships between animals. The topic of the linked video has nothing to do with Android’s product directly, but it does emphasize the idea of communication and partnerships between even the most unlikely of friends, a notion that the Android brand has been built on.

By drawing you in with an emotionally provocative video, the connotations leave the end viewer with the impression of the Android being a brand that cares about environmental stability and communication. Though they don’t mention a product specifically, they portray themselves as a brand you want to trust.

If you were to attempt to emulate the success that Android had with this video, the starting point is to define what your business stands for, what it represents beyond the products and services.

Become Iconic

One company that has personified capturing their audience’s imagination is Red Bull. Their content has featured extreme human feats, with the highlight of a man freefalling from the earth’s atmosphere. Clearly Red Bull presents itself as an energy drink for the daring. By personifying themselves as a daring brand, Red Bull draws audiences to associate their products with being daring and full of life.

By seeing these positive feats of human endurance and extreme sports prowess, people come to associate Red Bull with positivity. This marketing campaign is particularly clever. Red Bull needs only to make its product seem ‘cool’ by associating it with this devil may care attitude, for it to be appealing to customers. Even if you’re not interested in the product itself, videos of the atmosphere jump are innately appealing.

Again, this idea related to representing the brands values, not just products and services. Regardless of your businesses sector or size, you can still represent more. Even the smallest local business can be pro-community, for instance.

Answer Customer Questions

Using YouTube to answer customer questions can be an extremely effective method of gaining an audience and fan base. This is particularly important if your product is directed at a fringe market. The results can be incredibly rewarding.

Taking this idea to extremes were YouTube legends, BlendTec. Their “will it blend” series took YouTube by storm and became one of the webs first viral businesses. Just think, it all came from answering a simple question: Will it Blend?

On a slightly more practical level, Vape Club were quick to recognise the sheer volume of search queries surrounding vaping. Not just the products, but “how to” searches. Armed with just a camera and their own expertise, they started a series of vaping beginner’s guides on YouTube. Their flagship video has amounted nearly 1,400,000 views since Feb 2015.

Taking an Unconventional Approach To Every Day Products

It may be surprising, but one of the most innovative ways to promote a brand was seen with Walmart. Walmart’s YouTube channel produces content all the way from tutorials of new products to recipes for customers to use. What makes their content stand out is, rather than focusing common products, they showcase food ideas that break convention. For instance, Pumpkin Flatbread.

The channel currently has around 235,000 subscribers which is impressive given that this is a readership who will receive notifications when Walmart puts out a new video. Without diversification, it would be difficult to cultivate a dedicated following for such an everyday offering as grocery shopping. So, take your products and see if you can promote yourself on the fringes of convention.

Demonstrate Your Value Offering

If you want to take the direct approach then you need to demonstrate your products value. One of the best examples of this is Lego. The Lego channel produces daily content that ranges from product displays to video stories with Lego animations. This content shows off what can be done with Lego, and puts it into an entertaining format. Lego only needs to show its products to its target market (younger audiences or collectors) to demonstrate its value. Those who like what they see on the Lego channel, are likely to go through to the Lego website to purchase products in future.

For SMEs, you need only demonstrate the value of your product on YouTube, and you will be able to increase the amount of people who want to use your products. You don’t need an extortionate budget either, though the Lego animation videos will have been expensive to make, the product previews would not have been. Don’t be afraid to get your product out there and emphasize the value that you have to offer the world.

YouTube and SME’s: A Dynamic Duo

The value of YouTube as a promotion tool has been evident for the brands above. The key to making your video marketing campaign successful is to produce compelling content whether that be creative, informative, helpful, endearing, emotive, whatever it takes to simply get your brand out there.

The more potential customers become accustomed to your brand identity, the more likely they are to buy your products in future. By promoting your content through YouTube you’ll be forced to make your videos interesting to viewers. Even with limited budgets, you can ensure that your content will be shared across many strands of social media.

If you do it right, it could be your video trending across YouTube and Facebook!