YouTube for Business - Introduction

Forbes magazine says that YouTube generates over a billion views per day. To put that in perspective, in the time it takes you to finish reading this page YouTube users will view around a quarter of a million videos.

An audience this size is hard to ignore. In our work with clients we searched for studies about this audience and what one can do to reach it as part of a marketing program. When we established there was little that has been published we decided to create it. After all, Entertainment Media Research was founded over a decade ago by the former head of music information for MTV Europe with the belief that the coming digital revolution would bring together the worlds of entertainment and marketing.

With entertainment expertise and quantitative research skills we serve entertainment, media and consumer businesses around the world from our base in London and are therefore ideally positioned to study the impact and opportunities that YouTube has come to offer. We started by undertaking a comprehensive audit of usage, attitudes, and preferences of YouTube users in a robust online survey of 1,758 US residents. 

The sample was then weighted to the demographic representation of the US online population. We then applied the findings from this proprietary research to inform our YouTube User Guide and in doing so, remove wherever possible assumption from the marketing process. YouTube Revealed: a marketer's guide to understanding and making the most out of YouTube.

Our primary objective in writing this report is to help marketers sharpen their understanding of the YouTube phenomenon, grasp the marketing implications and flatten the learning curve to putting this knowledge to highly effective use. The User Guide therefore combines detailed practical advice at the functional How To level, with strategic thinking and background information. Here's a brief overview of what you'll find in the User's Guide.

YouTube is already a place where many kinds of businesses are starting to promote their wares so we begin with a review of how YouTube was founded and developed. But YouTube is developing fast, as changing demographics and evolving possibilities make it a place that is even more attractive to marketers of all kinds. Of course, teenagers and young adults are the dominant users right now but they're far from the whole story. We fully expect YouTube to change to such a degree that over the next three years its demographics will more closely match the online population as a whole. Every marketing-driven business needs to understand this market-place and how best to exploit it before its competitors.

The key marketing objective is to achieve a viral impact through user recommendation or "word of mouse." This is much easier said than done so we detail why and how people come to YouTube today, what are their primary reasons and how this is changing as the demographic usage mix inevitably changes. We identify the most popular types of video by demographic and we review the controllable and non-controllable factors that affect viewing of a particular video.

We move on to review the patterns of typical YouTube sessions. We cover what the "Watch Page" looks like along with advertising possibilities to ensure you get the most out of the available feedback. We analyze what happens after a YouTube visitor has watched a video and then recommend how you should structure your content to exploit this trend and optimize your opportunities for engagement and branding.

Much has been made in the mainstream media about the YouTube community. We cover some of the ways that marketing into this community is uniquely different. We will suggest to you that brand channels are an effective way to concentrate your marketing efforts on YouTube. In our chapter on channels we look at the place of channels on YouTube today and how to make your brand channels work most effectively. We review what YouTube users think of advertising on YouTube and what some of your options are today. Those options are bound to change as YouTube seeks more ways to make the site profitable.

Throughout the report we share key insights on how best to apply your marketing skills to YouTube whilst pointing out where the fundamental principles still apply. People or businesses who buy your product or service will still buy for the same reasons they always have. The marketing research you've done about important benefits and messages will still be relevant; only the environment of YouTube will be different.

On YouTube, video is central. You will therefore discover ways to use video to build awareness, convey benefits, and support sales and service. On YouTube, word of mouse is crucial and the community is in control. We know that integrated marketing programs that tie YouTube marketing efforts to other marketing and branding efforts are generally the most successful so we‟ll show how best to facilitate the process.

YouTube offers marketing challenges and opportunities for everyone. Giant companies like 3M, Nestle, and IBM are already using it as part of their marketing and so are individual service firms. Whether it's the mass market or the farthest end of a long tail, you have the opportunity to derive important marketing benefits from YouTube. 

As there are special challenges for different markets and companies, we offer suggestions about how to adapt your use of YouTube for different kinds of businesses. There are chapters for B2B marketers and small businesses as well as chapters on ways to use YouTube to improve your relationship with existing customers and ways to use YouTube for marketing research.