Unlocking The Potential Of Youtube Influencers For Business Growth

Over the years, the online marketing landscape has evolved. Marketers are no longer relying only on conventional strategies such as SEO, paid ads and social media marketing for boosting reach and increasing sales. They are widely leveraging influencers as a part of their digital marketing strategy. Now when it comes to this form of promotions, you will probably think of Instagram and Facebook as the main promotional channels. However, YouTube has totally changed the dynamics of the influencer space and emerged as the most credible channel today.

Considering the fact that it has millions of users, YouTube serves immense potential as an advertising tool. Moreover, you cannot deny the engagement value of this video marketing channel. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that marketers are rapidly adopting YouTube as a part of their influencer strategy. Whether you have already embraced this tactic or are still planning to do it, you need to know the right way to do things for unlocking its true potential for your business growth. Here are some tips on leveraging YouTube influencers for the best results.

Establish the campaign objectives

Any campaign should begin by establishing its objectives so that you can create an apt roadmap for its implementation. Do you want to create a buzz about a new launch? Is the campaign meant to increase your brand awareness? Or do you want simply to increase the size of your audience? Knowing the campaign objective is critical for identifying the right YouTube influencer, defining the content storytelling and choosing the relevant KPIs to track the campaign’s performance. In fact, the goal itself will decide the direction ahead!

Choose the right influencer

Once you are done with the identification of the goals, the next obvious step would be to choose the right YouTube influencer. Collaborating with someone with a large number of followers makes sense but this should not be the only basis of your choice of the influencer you can trust for driving the initiative. Here are a few factors that you should bear in mind while choosing the right promoter for your campaign:

• Relevance: Look for an influencer who is relevant to your niche, product or service. The only way to connect with the right set of audience is to prioritize relevance. After all, you cannot expect a tech specialist to promote your beauty brand.
• Reach: While relevance is critical, the reach of the influencer is equally important for any brand. So you must check the number of subscribers they have on their YouTube channel.
• Engagement: Getting to connect with the right audience will not do the trick unless the influencer is capable of engaging them with the right kind of content. Do have a look at the comments they get on their videos to understand how the viewers interact with their posts.

In addition to these key factors, collaborating with an experienced influencer definitely gives you an advantage. Someone who knows the industry and marketing landscape well enough can definitely offer expertise and insights to enhance the campaign for better results. The campaign’s budget is another factor that has an impact on the choice of the influencer. Obviously, you will have to settle for a micro-influencer if you don’t have a budget to collaborate with a star. However, thus can be a smart approach if you want to reach a smaller audience more effectively but with smaller spending.

Rely on influencer platforms

Besides considering the right factors for onboarding YouTube influencers, you should base your decision on data rather than instincts. Essentially, your influencer marketing strategy should be based on the demographics of the YouTube channel you plan to leverage. Though you may start looking for popular influencers in your niche on Google or YouTube, the task will be tedious because hundreds of channels will probably turn up. Conversely, you can use a data-driven influencer platform to shortlist the right influencer for your campaign. While this will definitely save your time for finding the best fit, you will also have better chances of getting a high ROI with the campaign.

Trust your influencer

Once you invest all the effort in finding the right influencer for driving your campaign, fostering a trustworthy relationship becomes vital. Influencers win the marketing game for brands because they create valuable content that has the potential to keep their audiences hooked. So it becomes important for brands to give them the freedom to create posts according to their creative expertise and industry experience. Things get tricky with YouTube as a promotional channel because video production is a cumbersome task which requires significant capital and labor. Influencers, therefore, expect competitive compensation for all the creative effort and you should be willing to provide that.

Prioritize user-centric content

Another significant aspect of winning the YouTube game for your brand is the creation of high-quality, user-centric content. You cannot deny that good content is the foundation of an effective marketing campaign and YouTube campaigns are no exception. In fact, an impressive video can do wonders for your promotional plan. However, your influencer needs to go an extra mile to create an interesting narrative that has all it takes to get the attention of the target audience. Seasoned influencers know what really works for their audience but it always pays to think beyond the conventional. Some of the most popular types of video content for this channel include brand storytelling, product reviews and testimonials, and demos, tutorials and how-to-videos.

Insert calls-to-action

If the influencer’s followers find interest in the video, they will probably want to explore your product or know the brand better. Giving them an easy route to dig deeper and reach the next level of connection surely makes sense. The best way to do it is by having a clickable link in the video itself or adding one in the video description. This link serves as a Call-To-Action that serves the benefit of increased traffic to the website. Creating a compelling CTA is all about using value-focused words that build urgency and drive action from the target audience. Similarly, they need to be placed at the logical decision-making points to get more clicks.

Engage continuously and consistently

A successful collaboration with YouTube influencers is not a one-time initiative. Rather, it is a continuous and consistent effort because just having them post a promotional video is only half the work done. You need to monitor the results by keeping track of the audience interaction with the content. Replying to their comments is a smart approach to start conversations and build long-term relationships with your target audience. At the same time, brands should also invest in long-term collaborations with their influencers. Staying in touch even after the campaign is over is a good idea. You can even incentivize them with gifts and freebies once in a while to maintain cordial relationships. Fostering connections is important because you may need to onboard them again anytime in the future as well.

Finally, performance management of your campaign is another critical aspect that you cannot ignore. After all, you would want to invest in a specific strategy only if it delivers the expected results and adds value to your brand. Defining a step-by-step analytics framework and measuring the quality of the audience reached through the campaign is the best way to assess the value it delivers. Creating a ROI-driven YouTube influencer campaign requires a lot of hard work but the results that you can get by doing so makes the efforts worthwhile. So you should surely follow the aforementioned tips and guidelines to get the best results.