How to market your eCommerce store on YouTube?
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When you are looking for options to market your eCommerce store, there are numerous channels and platforms that come to your mind. From a website to an Instagram account, businesses are trying out various methods to boost their sales online. One such revolutionary yet odd option for businesses to try out is YouTube.
Using YouTube to market your eCommerce store can be one of the most viable and cost-effective channels to try. The world’s most famous video sharing site can be the blessing you need to not just gain a prominent position in the market but to also get closer to your customer base. Not sure why you should market your eCommerce store on YouTube and how to go about it? Let’s have a closer look at the benefits and best practices for the same.
Benefits of using YouTube to market your eCommerce store
Before we get into how one can use YouTube to market their eCommerce store, let’s have a look at the benefits of doing so.
Worldwide audience with massive traffic
Like we already mentioned before, YouTube is the most popular video sharing site in the world. It is used internationally by billions of users and to choose to market your eCommerce store on YouTube opens up numerous opportunities to expand your customer base. Plus, you can also make use of the massive traffic that the site receives every single day. No matter the customer base you are trying to target, you will find excellent opportunities regarding the same when you market your eCommerce store on YouTube.
Rank higher on Google search engine results
You might often see video results when you search for something in Google’s search engine. Whether you are looking for a particular song or a review on a certain product, you are likely to receive video results at the top of the web page. This is made possible because optimizing your videos for SEO on YouTube can help them rank higher in Google search engine results as well. Likewise, if videos related to your eCommerce store do well on YouTube, they will enable you to gain visibility in Google search results as well.
Get closer to your target customer base
One of the biggest reasons for customers to alienate from a certain brand is that they do not find them warm and welcoming. If a business cannot connect well with their customers consistently, they come off as aloof and cold resulting in losing their customers. Excellent video content can help your brand develop a warm and charming personality that comes with a personal touch. Your customers will love watching your videos and connecting with the content you are sharing. Plus, interacting with them in the comments section can help you strengthen such customer relationships further.
Market your eCommerce store on YouTube: Best Practices
If you are convinced about the untapped potential of YouTube in helping you increase your sales and build a larger customer base, the next natural question arises – How do I go about this? Owing to how large the world of YouTube is, it can get quite daunting and overwhelming to decide where to get started. Here are some of the best practices that you should keep in mind when you choose to market your eCommerce store on YouTube.
Talk about the value that you offer
Consider this: You are a coffee brand that sells freshly roasted coffee beans. A person wouldn’t want to buy from your brand simply because you can offer them the product. They would rather buy coffee beans from a brand that can help them learn how to use these coffee beans the best, which roast would suit their taste palette and what equipment they need to make themselves a cup of coffee.
The key with YouTube when you are trying to market your eCommerce store on it isn’t to just talk about what your product is and what its features are. The idea is to push these features in the background and have an honest conversation about what value you can offer. So, try and come up with content related to how your products can offer value to your customers or how they can use your products to add ease and convenience into their lives.
Build partnerships with YouTubers
YouTube has become a powerful platform for influencers to connect with their audience and push them towards purchasing a certain product. In fact, the endorsement of a product by an influential personality on any social media channel can drastically affect the purchasing decision of your target consumers. When you are looking to market your eCommerce store on YouTube, consider building meaningful partnerships with YouTubers.
These YouTubers are essentially YouTube users who have a large number of subscribers. Even if you and the partner serve the audience in different ways, pick someone who you share a similar audience with. The key here is to not talk about your product to a huge customer base that is largely uninterested but to a tiny niche that is highly interested in purchasing from your brand regularly. You could either send free samples to this YouTube partner or build a contract with them where they endorse your products and you sponsor them.
Involve your customers directly
Why not turn your customers into your biggest brand ambassadors and get them to market your eCommerce store on YouTube? By involving your customers directly, you are showcasing yourself in the market as a brand that is loved by many and how others can get value in a similar fashion. One of the best ways around this is to host a contest asking your customers to upload a video to YouTube in which they talk about what they love about your product and why they love it.
This could either be a simple product review video, an ad or even a short film. This will help you turn your customers into your voice where they will endorse your products to their own audience. Remember, always give your customers some incentive to upload such videos. Setting up a cash reward for the ‘Top 3’ videos or sending your winners gift cards can be amazing incentives to be given out.
Address negativities around your brand
We always strive to build a brand that never has to go through any negativities in the market however, bad press is ultimately unavoidable. YouTube offers a fantastic platform for you to be able to address this negative press and salvage the situation well. To clear up the situation, create a mindful and explanatory video where you address the situation thoroughly and offer an explanation or an apology.
For eg. If you are a sports accessories company and have been receiving extremely negative press about not being an environmentally conscious company, you can prepare and post a YouTube video to address the same. If you haven’t been following regulatory norms, offer an apology and talk about how you plan on changing things going forward. However, if you are an environmentally conscious company and are taking all measures necessary, create a video featuring a tour of your manufacturing plant and show all the processes that are contributing towards ensuring lowest possible pollution levels.
Keep an eye on the analytics
You can be as creative with your content on YouTube as possible however, you also need to take care of numbers at the end of the day. YouTube offers a comprehensive set of analytics features that help you understand how well your videos are doing on the platform. Important analytics features on YouTube include interactions, viewing time, click on cards, average duration, location of users and traffic sources. Each of these analytics features help you identify what your strengths and weaknesses are.
When you are trying to market your eCommerce store on YouTube, it is very important that you treat it like any other platform where you are trying to make sales. If you notice that your viewers are ditching your videos right in the first thirty seconds, you might need to work on grabbing their attention better. Similarly, if you notice that your viewers are watching your entire video but you still don’t see any changes in sales, you might want to include cards in the end of your videos as a CTA to redirect them to a particular landing page. These analytics can help you pave a way forward and take care of everything you are doing wrong in your YouTube marketing strategies.
Conclusion
There was a time when YouTube was simply a platform where people heard songs and watched videos. As time has progressed and the business world has become more digital and advanced, companies have shifted to numerous online platforms to market their products and services. One such platform to have taken the eCommerce world by storm is YouTube. If you are new to the market or are simply looking for new channels to boost your eCommerce sales, use the above tips to help you get a kickstart. When used smartly and consistently, YouTube can be one of the most viable platforms for you to market your eCommerce store.
