Most B2B marketers already know that video is king when it comes to content marketing. 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool and 90% of video marketers have used YouTube.
However, the number of B2B brands that have truly embraced and thrived on the world’s #1 video site is still relatively low. YouTube still represents an excellent opportunity for B2B marketers willing to invest time and effort into a robust video marketing strategy.
Creating videos for YouTube requires a completely different approach compared to testimonial videos or onboarding videos. The videos that perform well on YouTube can also serve as an excellent pillar for your multichannel content marketing strategy.
In addition to the benefits of video marketing as a whole, here are some specific benefits of YouTube for B2B marketing:
Repurpose Video Content
The content that performs best on YouTube are explainer videos, presentation videos, customer service videos, and teasers. These videos offer a much more authentic view of your company and your expertise.
This makes the videos you create ideal for repurposing content. One video created for YouTube can easily generate additional blog posts, podcasts, infographics, and social media posts. This content can all link to other pieces of repurposed content, increasing views and engagement.
Improve SEO
Google continues to push video as a preferred content source. Since Google owns YouTube, videos on the channel are more likely to show in Google search results.
Here are three key ways Google serves video content in their SERPs:
- Organic Listings with Video Thumbnails: YouTube pages that appear in organic search results show a video thumbnail, which helps the content stand out from other results and increases clicks.
- Video Answer Boxes: Google’s answer box appears at the top of SERPs and provides a quick and easy answer to questions. Google includes videos in these answer boxes that can be played right from the search page.
- Video Carousel Boxes: Another result appearing above the organic results is the video carousel box – a collection of video content that stands out above webpage results.
If you’re working to move up the SERPs, answer boxes and video carousel boxes are great ways to appear above organic rankings in searches that aren’t well served by video content.
YouTube Analytics
YouTube has a robust analytics platform that provides valuable insights to improve YouTube performance and also your overall content marketing strategy and customer research.
Google support put together a good visual guide for how to use YouTube’s expanded analytics reports:
Metrics such as Average View Duration and Key Moments for Audience Retention can show you the parts of your videos your audience is most and least interested in. You can also see this in the grey scroll bar on other channel’s videos. Learning what parts resonate the most can help identify topics to create new videos on, repurpose ideas for blogs and infographics, and create shorter clips for social media.
Audience insights can show you Content Your Audience Watches and Channels Your Audience Watches. These are great insights to learn what your audience is most interested in so you can tailor your content strategy to address their needs.
You can also learn How Viewers Find Your Videos, including Top Referral Sources and Suggested Videos. Suggested Videos show you what content YouTube believes is most closely related to your own. These insights, combined with Channels Your Audience Watches, can help identify competitors or other channels to collaborate with. Speaking of which…
Building Relationships
While many companies use YouTube to host videos that will live on their website and landing pages, the site is still a social network. YouTube can be used to create and build relationships with industry experts and influencers.
Using the insights above, you can identify other companies and channels to collaborate with through interviews or other content. Inviting contacts outside of YouTube to join a webinar or interview-style video is another great way to engage with contacts and grow your network. This creates extremely valuable content and helps expand your reach.
YouTube also allows you to reply to viewer comments and engage with your audience at a higher volume compared to your owned media.
YouTube Ads
In 2024, 69% of marketers have spent money on video ads. YouTube Ads offers a great way to reach a highly targeted audience and get more exposure for your website, lead magnets, or YouTube channel.
If your main goals are brand awareness, YouTube Ads may be an especially attractive option. Ads only cost if viewers watch 30 seconds. Then it costs an average of $.10-.30 per view. If a user only watches until the Skip option appears after 5-15 seconds, you get free brand exposure.
Reasons for Not Using Video Marketing
Some of the main things keeping B2B companies from adopting YouTube are a lack of time (33%), feeling video marketing is too expensive (20%), and not knowing where to start (15%).
Outsourcing video marketing to a content marketing agency can help solve these challenges. The number of companies using a mixture of in-house and external teams to create videos has increased 31% since last year (from 29% in 2023 to 38% in 2024).
Monomyth Marketing can help your B2B YouTube marketing by providing video strategy, scripts, editing, and production services to make video marketing easy and cost-effective. Learn more about our video marketing services here.
