Is your business or brand on YouTube? If not, it needs to be, Daisy Whitney reports in this week’s New Media Minute. It’s the second biggest search engine on the Web and that means visitors are going there and plugging in names like “H&R Block,” “Billy Elliot: The Musical” and “Wal-Mart.” Those brands all have YouTube channels and this episode digs into when such channels are effective in guiding consumers to a purchase and the stumbling blocks you’ll want to avoid.
Daisy Whitney
Every Brand Needs to be on YouTube
July 21, 2009
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Every Brand does not need a YouTube Brand Channel. The reality is many marketers are having buyers’ remorse with their $1 Million You Tube Brand Channels. After Google takes their $1 Million and the creative agency gets their $200,000 fee to develop the assets plus the cost to produce the video assets, Google then does nothing to distribute these channels other than upselling the marketer on more clicks. YouTube Brand Channels alone are missing a critical and obvious element to success and that’s distribution. Take a look at the limited views and subscribers on most of these. If I am reading the posted stats correctly even H&R Block is showing only 137 subscribes and 26,500 “Channel Views”. Come on now. Not sure that’s H&R Blocks best use of $1 Million plus. Not to say that these YouTube Brand Channels are a bad thing for showcasing video and content but they are just one element to effective digital marketing and in many ways are simply a duplicative efforts and distractions from a company’s existing web site and the myriad of micro-sites they have already been sold and long abandoned. Sure, brands should be posting their videos to YouTube and every other content aggregator out there, but does the brand really need another $1 Million micro-site in the form of a YouTube Brand Channel? Or would that money yield better results invested in distributing video and content across the web in more scalable and flexible ways. Take that $1 Million and seed paid video views to your target audience. Distribute brand content and social tools to users across the web using Rich Media Display Creative that can reach your audience practically anywhere and measure. If you do have a YouTube Brand Channel or are thinking about creating one, do not stop there. Smart marketers will not simply rely on Google, by paying them even more money for clicks to Google’s own page, which is what your YouTube Brand Channel really is. Take that video and content and broaden its reach and make it discoverable than you ever can trying to drive clicks to your Channel. Talk with clients who have already jumped on Google’s YouTube Brand Channel band wagon and you will find the adage “if you build it, they will come” does not apply. Currently, without an effective distribution strategy layered in, the only one winning with Brand Channels is Google.
On the take for You Tube?
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