So Your Business Has a YouTube Channel, What’s Next?

What the Heck Do I Do With Our YouTube Channel?

If you’re a larger business, your brand has likely created a YouTube channel at some point in time. You may have inherited this part of marketing or even contributed to the creation of a video, but how do you know if this video content is making an impact? Have you been able to tie revenue goals to this project? Did you set KPI’s (and for that matter what KPI’s can you even set for YouTube?)? Is your team just making video content for the sake of it? Lastly, have you ever revisited poorer performing content to see if there are any YouTube optimization opportunities?

3 Tips for Leveraging Your YouTube Channel to Impact Your Business

Set KPIs & Goals (Please)

The most consistent issue I see popping up across every client with a YouTube channel is that they have never even considered setting goals for their videos. Are you using YouTube to point users to a new product or service? Is it a general awareness play, or are you just uploading a commercial you aired on TV? When you keep these types of questions in mind, you can start to build KPI’s around these objectives. Here are a few examples of the types of KPI’s you might set for different video types of video content.

Goal: Promote a New Product or Service on Your Website

KPIs:

• Referral sessions from YouTube to your designated product page
• Conversions from users who arrived via YouTube
• Conversions where YouTube was a touchpoint prior to conversion

Goal: General Awareness

KPIs:

• YouTube Views
• YouTube Watch time
• YouTube Likes
• YouTube Shares

Goal: Promote Your YouTube Channel

KPIs:

• YouTube Views
• YouTube Watch time
• Clicks to other videos on your channel
• New Subscribers

Use these goals and KPI’s the same way you would with a conventional website. Identify why you’re falling short or exceeding goals, and iterate on how you produce content to better meet your business objectives.

Add CTAs to Your YouTube Channel

This seems like a straightforward one, but in fact, it’s not. Almost all of the clients I’ve worked with at Seer had not added any sort of CTA (Call to Action) before the start of our project.

So what types of calls to action can you add to your videos? Glad you asked; I’ll share some of the ways Seer itself has used YouTube to push users throughout our channel or back to our domain. Using links with UTM parameters allows us to know exactly what these users did once they clicked back to the Seer Domain.

You can use this Google Analytics UTM builder to shape your own links.

Interact With Your Audience

Once you create a video and share it online, it’s out there in the ether, ready for anyone to find it. If you make really interesting content, folks will post comments. Take time to respond to an interesting user question or answer potential customer questions. If you work in a business that sells mobile offices and someone asks you the specifications, share them. If someone asks you if a product you’re highlighting is still available, let them know the answer.

Our founder responds to dozens of comments on our YouTube videos because he knows it can make a difference in showing that he cares enough to reach out.