I know YouTube isn’t exactly anything new (it first launched all the way back in 2005), but there are still many businesses – individuals or companies – who have not utilized YouTube to promote their products, services or even their brand identity, values or personalities!

YouTube is the world’s 2^nd largest search engine, owned and leveraged by THE largest: Google. So, YouTube offers some major benefits when it comes to leveraging the vast network of viewers, subscribers, searchers and customers that are using both YouTube and Google on a daily, hourly, “minute-ly” basis!

If you’ve been thinking about it for, oh, a decade, there’s no time like the present to create a presence for your business on YouTube, and make the most of these valuable benefits…

1. Reach a beyond-massive audience

It’s a fact: YouTube gives you access to over a billion users worldwide. Users who generate billions of views and many of those views spanning from seconds to minutes to hours of watch time! YouTube also reaches more 18-49 year olds than any cable network in the US. (source: YouTube press)

Yes, we’ve all seen some YouTube videos that only have a handful of views on them, but that doesn’t negate the potential that the platform offers. You have to start somewhere, and build upon it by crafting interesting, engaging videos, by sharing more videos as time goes on, or by using built in services to promote your videos and reach your ideal customer.

Which brings us to…

2. Reach a targeted population of viewers and potential customers

YouTube and Google both have such highly developed platforms that help us leverage viewer and user data for advertising, marketing and more.

YouTube gives everyone accessible and affordable tools for promoting your video to a targeted demographic of viewers. For a relatively small spend, you can now direct your video’s message to your ideal prospect, client or customer.

3. Invest in YouTube viewers who are qualified for your offering

I could have titled this benefit “Place Ads”, but that doesn’t communicate this benefit clearly enough. Sure, you can place ads, but ads such as TrueView ads (the skippable ads that play before other videos), you only pay when a viewer has opted in to continue watching your ad to 30 seconds. This means, you only pay for a view when it is likely to be by someone who wanted to keep viewing your video.

4. Build traffic to or on your website

When your video is discovered through a search, or is watched on YouTube, an interested viewer will likely follow up by seeking out your web presence and visiting your website.

Moreover, if your YouTube video is then embedded ON your website, the proof of activity on your video will benefit your video and your site. All of this positively impacts your SEO.

5. Enhance your SEO

With healthy activity on your video, in relation to search results as well as traffic to your website is all digital proof of value to your content (your video, your site, what you have to say, offer or sell) All of this contributes to enhancing you Search Engine Optimization, or ranking position in search results.

The more you actually prove that your video and site and services are useful for individuals in need of them, the more a site like YouTube or Google will “recommend” you, by placing your site or video higher in the results page.

6. Gather valuable feedback

This can be done a couple of different ways: by monitoring the analytics on your video (numbers of views, how long viewers watched, where they dropped out) or by prompting viewers to share feedback in the comments section below.

All of this can be useful in understanding more about what your viewers respond positively to, what questions they want answered, what features they like best, and so on.

Conclusion

With so many valuable benefits to using the YouTube platform in your marketing, it’s down right silly not to have a presence there! Of course it all starts with a video (or two, or fourteen!) but this is the easy part – if you’re working with an expert video production company.

They can discuss your needs with you, as well as your budget, and plan out videos that are designed to help you achieve real business goals, and reap the real benefits of distributing video on YouTube.

They can even help you promote your videos, to reach targeted prospects and customers… Talk about a total package!