Video marketing strategies have taken the centre stage from past some time with YouTube becoming a hot site for businesses to promote the products and services they offer. This platform that was launched in 2005 gets more than 400 hours of video uploads every single minute today. If you are thinking of video marketing, you need to explore the medium of YouTube marketing because of its phenomenal reach and popularity.

YouTube boasts of more than a billion users, which is almost one-third of all the internet users. To enhance your visibility among these huge viewers, you need to keep YouTube optimization in mind. Here are a few things that need to be addressed even before starting video production and marketing.

Make Storytelling Your Sales Pitch

Video content is consumed four times more than written content. If the subject line of an email includes the word “video”, it increases the opening rate by 19% while the click-through rates increase by a whopping 65%. It is these actual data figures that inspire people to include video content on their landing pages as having it on a landing page increases the conversion rate by 80%. Now to make the right use of this excellent medium, you need to concentrate on providing value to your customers. If you concentrate more on promoting your product or service, it will simply annoy your audience and they will abandon the page immediately. Though your basic aim of posting the video content is sales pitch only, it should be delivered subtly. You should do a thorough research about what your targeted audience is looking for, their needs and desires and then build a concept based on that. Make storytelling your sales pitch and the product or service you want to showcase should be delivered through the story.

Deliver in the First Few Seconds

The viewers’ attention span is very less and unless you engage them right from the word go, they will simply move on. The first 10-seconds of any video is very crucial because if you can’t grab their attention in the first 10 seconds there is a strong likelihood of them abandoning it. Data suggests that 33% of the viewers abandon the video in the first 30 seconds, while nearly 60% of viewers are lost within the initial 2 minutes. Thus, make sure to generate curiosity and engage your users in the first few seconds. It should be clear to them in the initial 10-15 seconds as to why it is important for them to watch your entire video.

Have a Clear Focus

You should know clearly why you are uploading the video. Is it for conveying some information, for educating the viewers or for entertaining them? Depending on these end goals, plan the video production and YouTube marketing strategies. For example, an informative video will have details about a specific product. You have to build a storyline keeping that product in mind.

It can also be a ‘how-to-do’ type of a video if you are selling, let’s say some kitchen appliance. You can then build your storyline around why it is required and how it can save your time. Demonstrating its working or including things like what can go wrong and how to rectify it can be some interesting points to include in your video. In this case, the video becomes educational in nature. Thus, the aim of uploading the video will dictate the type of content that should be included in it.

You need to understand that YouTube is a soft sell medium and you should make videos keeping this in mind.