How Brands Use YouTube in a Multichannel Strategy
[Originally published on the Dash Hudson blog.]
Content in motion is on the rise across visual channels this year. Brands are finding new ways to incorporate video content into everything from email marketing to Pinterest, but YouTube is surprisingly still uncharted territory for some brands. So, how are brands successfully incorporating the video medium into their multichannel strategy?
YouTube is the world’s third most used website, behind Google and Facebook, and it’s the second largest search engine after Google. Considering YouTube is solely video, its share of online usage is huge. 73% of U.S. adults use YouTube on their mobile devices, compared with 69% for Facebook, 37% for Instagram and 28% for Pinterest, and the percentages continue to fall from there for other platforms such as LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, and Reddit.
YouTube dominates in terms of content consumption, with 2 billion active users, and 1 billion hours of content viewed per day. That said, there are still many brands out there for which YouTube is a horizon yet to be explored — a distant land where the locals speak in different metrics, the sun rises and sets according to a different algorithm, and the engagement window lasts forever. The gulfs between brands’ subscription figures only solidify this notion. Across established brands, some have millions of subscribers, while others have just a handful.
YouTube presents the opportunity for brands to deepen their connection with consumers through storytelling and education. With brands investing in video content across marketing channels, YouTube is where your long-form content should live before you slice and dice it for other mediums. This means that you can maximize your content, while creating a consistent visual story across channels.
We looked at some of the leading brands’ YouTube channels to see how they’re using the biggest video search engine in the world as part of their multichannel marketing strategy.
Long-form Brand Messaging
YouTube offers brands the chance to tell their story without cutting out the details. It’s every brand marketer’s dream to have a platform where you can share an unfiltered, uncropped, untrimmed narrative of your brand’s message, mission, and core values.
Shopify
Gillette
Spotify
Squarespace
Lights, Camera, Product Education!
Beauty brands are often ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting different formats and branching out to multiple channels — and YouTube is the perfect place to educate customers on products and how to use them. But it’s not just beauty brands leveraging YouTube — brands across industries are creating compelling videos to tap into audiences’ eagerness to learn and get lost in a never-ending stream of video content.
NARS
Fenty Beauty
OUAI Haircare
Huda Beauty
Behind the Scenes
BTS content performs well across the board. Brand fans love getting a behind-the-scenes look into the world of their favorite companies, especially when it involves some familiar faces from Hollywood. This is a minimal effort tactic that can make a big impact on your reach.
Vogue
Puma
The Ellen Show
REVOLVE
The Birth of Influencers
YouTubers were arguably the first influencers. Bloggers who were early to the YouTube game amassed millions of followers and some have created successful brands of their own. Brands are using their star power and cult followings to create viral videos of their own.
Vogue
Apple
Nike
Allure
Sally Hansen
Series
With or without influencers, series offer the comfortable cadence and regularity of TV, but on-demand, and not too long. Series topics vary from fireside chats, interior design, clothing hauls, time-travelling through trends — the possibilities are endless.
Urban Outfitters
Allure
Pretty Little Thing
Cosmopolitan
Shopify
Architectural Digest
In an ideal world brands will be where their customers are. This means that brand marketers will know where their customers spend their time online, what their favorite apps are, and what types of content they like to engage with. YouTube is one part of the journey to an impactful multichannel strategy, but it’s potential for engagement offers a not-to-be-missed opportunity for brands to build deeper, longer lasting connections with their fans.
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