YouTube Shorts Marketing Strategy: A Comprehensive Guide
YouTube Shorts presents an opportunity for businesses to reach a large audience in a cost-effective manner. In this not-so-short guide, we’ll explain the potential value that YouTube Shorts has for businesses and will provide some real life examples of business using Shorts effectively.
What is YouTube Shorts?
If you’ve spent any time on YouTube, you’ve likely noticed the emergence of short, vertical video (a.k.a. YouTube Shorts). YouTube Shorts is a short-form video feature that was launched by YouTube in 2020. It offers users a 60-second video creation platform that includes music and editing tools. The feature has been rolled out globally and has become popular among both users and businesses.
The Benefits of YouTube Shorts
YouTube Shorts offers the ability to reach a massive and diverse audience. With over 2 billion monthly active users, YouTube is one of the largest social media platforms in the world. By leveraging the power of YouTube Shorts, businesses can access a vast pool of potential customers locally and globally.
In addition to reaching a large audience, YouTube Shorts also offers cost-effective marketing opportunities. Compared to traditional advertising methods, creating and distributing content on YouTube Shorts is relatively inexpensive, making it accessible for businesses of all sizes.
YouTube Shorts provides businesses with creative opportunities to showcase their brand in an engaging and eye-catching way. The platform offers editing tools and the ability to incorporate music and special effects, allowing businesses to produce unique and appealing content that captures the attention of their target audience. Whether promoting a new product, sharing company news, or engaging with your audience, YouTube Shorts provides a platform for businesses to connect with their customers.
Downsides of YouTube Shorts
While YouTube Shorts offers many benefits as a marketing tool, there are also some downsides to consider. Understanding these challenges is important for the success of your marketing efforts.
One drawback of YouTube Shorts is its limited functionality compared to other video platforms like TikTok and Reels. These platforms offer a wider range of features and editing tools, making it more challenging to create unique and engaging content on YouTube Shorts.
Another challenge of YouTube Shorts is standing out in a crowded space. With millions of videos being uploaded to the platform every day, businesses face intense competition for the attention of their target audience. To overcome this challenge, businesses must create high-quality, relevant, and engaging content that stands out from the crowd.
Types of Business Content that Performs Well on YouTube Shorts
In order to maximize the impact of your YouTube Shorts marketing strategy, it's important to understand the types of content that perform well on the platform. Some of the most popular and effective types of content include:
How-to videos: Teach your audience something new and show off your expertise by creating short, educational videos on a particular topic.
Behind-the-scenes content: Give your audience a glimpse into your business and humanize your brand by showing the people, places, and processes behind your products or services.
Product demos: Demonstrate the features and benefits of your products or services in a visually engaging and informative manner.
User-generated content: Encourage your customers to create and share their own content showcasing your products or services, and reward them for doing so.
How to Optimize YouTube Shorts for Maximum Organic Reach
To get the most out of your YouTube Shorts marketing strategy, it's important to optimize your videos for maximum reach. The formula is fairly basic. It’s to create content that people want to click and holds their attention when they do click. Then do that again and again.
Here are a few additional considerations for maximizing organic reach:
Create high-quality, visually engaging content: Use bright colors, eye-catching graphics, and engaging music to make your videos stand out from the crowd.
Keep your videos short and sweet: The attention span of the average viewer on YouTube Shorts is limited, so keep your videos concise and to-the-point.
Use keywords and tags to improve discoverability: Just like with any other content on the platform, it's important to use relevant keywords and tags to make your videos more easily discoverable by your target audience.
Engage with your audience: Encourage your audience to engage with your content by asking questions, running contests, or responding to comments and feedback.
Are you a data nerd? Check out this post that explains how to scrape metadata from any YouTube channel or playlist. This is especially helpful to see what sort of content competitors share that have collected a lot of views.
Incorporate YouTube Shorts into Your Larger Marketing Plan
YouTube Shorts is not for every business, nor should it be considered the only channel that businesses use. Rather, consider YouTube Shorts as one of several potentially great channels for your business.
YouTube Shorts is particularly good at driving awareness and engagement for your brand. It’s more “top-of-funnel” content. Other channels like search or email are very likely more effective at driving conversions.
To help you get a better understanding of how to use YouTube Shorts effectively, let's look at a few examples of businesses that are doing it right.
McDonald's: The fast-food giant has been using YouTube Shorts to promote its menu items and drive engagement with its target audience. They create short, visually engaging videos that showcase the various items on their menu and the unique features and benefits of each.
Nike: The athleticwear brand is using YouTube Shorts to promote its products and connect with its target audience. They create short, visually stunning videos that showcase their products in action, demonstrating the features and benefits of each.
MrBeast: If anyone has mastered the YouTube algorithm, MrBeast has. He creates absurd content and challenges, which are representative of the state of social media. MrBeast has 131M YouTube subscribers on his main channel, and recently created a second channel, MrBeast2, which is entirely for YouTube Shorts and short clips.
In conclusion, YouTube Shorts presents a unique opportunity for businesses to reach a large and diverse audience and promote their products or services in a cost-effective manner. By leveraging the power of this platform, businesses can connect with their target audience in new and exciting ways and drive brand awareness and user engagement.