When most businesses think about how they want to generate leads, they typically gravitate towards PPC ad platforms like Google AdWords or Facebook Ads. As a result, YouTube is often overlooked.
Unfortunately for these businesses (but fortunately for you), YouTube can be a fantastic platform for capturing new leads.
In this post, I’m going to show you exactly how to use YouTube to generate more leads for your business.
Why Use YouTube to Generate Leads
There are a ton of reasons why you should be using YouTube to grow your business. The first is that videos on this platform are extremely search-engine friendly. Not only do they rank well in Google’s video search, but they also appear in YouTube’s own search engine.
Why does that matter? Google is the top-rated, most used search engine… and YouTube is the second.
That means that if you want people to see your content, turning it into a YouTube video gives you two legs up.
YouTube is also a video sharing platform and video is exploding right now. It is the most dynamic and engaging type of content viewers can access online, and it’s often valuable for both businesses and viewers. Because it’s so dynamic, it’s the perfect platform to tell your brand’s story in a way that will resonate with your target market.
The last big benefit? YouTube videos are highly shareable, much more so than Facebook posts or tweets. You can share a single YouTube video on every last social media platform, if you want, and it won’t feel out of place.
[tweetthis]YouTube videos are highly shareable, much more so than Facebook posts or tweets.[/tweetthis]
All these benefits translate directly into more sharing, more visibility, and more lead generation. Now that you understand the benefits, let’s discuss how to do it.
1. Brand Your Business’s Channel
You want your channel to be branded from top to bottom—or, more accurately, from your YouTube channel art all the way to your thumbnail images. This gives your YouTube channel—and all the videos within it—a more professional and credible appearance. This is essential in building trust from your viewers, which in turn is necessary for lead generation purposes.
The channel “Beauty and the Boutique,” pictured above, is a fantastic example of this. Her channel icon matches her channel art (which is the banner that stretches the top of the page). Her channel art also has the same color scheme and font as the thumbnails of each individual video. As a result, her channel looks professionally put together, making her seem more of an authority.
2. Utilize Keywords Effectively
One of the biggest advantages to using YouTube as a lead gen tool is that it’s really easy to find things. If you want to actually benefit from this particular perk though, you need to make sure the text surrounding the video is fully optimized for search. This means having plenty of keywords.
All of the text describing your video is searchable in both Google and YouTube search engines, so you want to get the most out of it. This includes the video’s headline, description, and tags. Use a combination of specific short and long tail keywords to make it easier for your audience to find your videos when they’re looking. YouTube is a fantastic search engine, after all. Treat it like one!
If you’re wondering where to start, SEMrush has a fantastic Google keyword research tool. Keyword Tool also has an incredible YouTube keyword researching tool that is specific to the platform.
3. Add Clickable CTAs
Getting video views is great, but ultimately, you want to convert those views into leads. Adding clickable call to action buttons at the end of your videos is essential to capturing lead information.
Many businesses make the mistake of saying, “Click on the link in the bio for more info!” Conversely, a clickable-CTA doesn’t require the user to scroll and find the link; it’s directly in front of them, significantly increasing the odds that they’ll click. And no matter where this YouTube video is shared, those CTA buttons will always be active.
To add a clickable CTA to your YouTube video, click to edit your video, and then navigate to the “Cards” tab. Choose the “Link” option, after enabling it if you need to.
If you’re setting up a link CTA for the first time, you’ll need to verify your account and add an associated website. Note that you’ll need to add in the URL for the specific site address you want to send users to—not just your general homepage.
Once you do this, create the card by choosing an associated site, and then add a card title (which will only be visible to you), a CTA, and a text snippet. You can also choose an image to add to the CTA.
Add your newly created card to your video. You can place the CTA at any point of the video. It’s often most effective when placed at the very end of your content, when users have no incentive to remain on the page.
4. Send Traffic to Specialized Landing Pages
That CTA we just added to your videos needs to send users somewhere. If you want to capture leads right away, the best place you can send them is right to a landing page. However, you don’t want to just hope that they’ll convert once they notice your newsletter subscription box on the side of your blog.
For best results, your landing page should be clean, organized, and entirely focused on generating leads. For instance, you can use contrasting colors and different sized text to emphasize the CTA on the page. It’s also essential that your landing pages are secure, so that users feel comfortable submitting their information. With landing page creators like Pagewiz, software can create highly customizable templates that are mobile responsive and secure.
Most importantly, perhaps, is that your landing page be consistent with the offer or message that you used to send users there. If you’ve offered a free e-book as a lead magnet, you don’t want to swipe it out with a free trial of your software—even if the trial is the better value. If your landing page and in-video offers aren’t consistent, you’ll confuse and frustrate viewers and they won’t opt-in; they’ll click away instead.
5. Organize Your Content into Playlists
In most cases, businesses typically create multiple videos for a single campaign that all end with similar CTAs and send viewers to the same landing page. Grouping these videos into a single playlist is one of the best things you can do when it comes to nurturing leads. That way, if users aren’t ready to click on your CTA, they’ll automatically be ushered to the next video, which may nudge them closer to clicking.
The video suggestions that come as a result of intentionally created playlists also keep users bouncing around on your own YouTube channel longer, instead of leaving to view content created by your competitors. And the more content they watch from you, the more they’ll trust you and remember you. Even if they don’t convert as a lead right away, they’re more likely to later on if they’ve watched more than one of your videos.
6. Respond to Comments
In many cases, potential leads and customers won’t necessarily reach out to your customer service team to ask a question or voice a concern; they’ll drop it in the comments section of your video. Because of this, responding to comments is crucial. It gives you the chance to answer questions and overcome objections.
Even more than that, responding to comments and engaging with potential leads gives you the opportunity to build relationships and trust. Users love to see businesses that interact with their content on social media sites, and this can go a long way in helping you generate those leads. People are more likely to sign up to hear from you frequently if they respect and trust you.
To easily monitor the comments on all your videos, you can go to the “Community” tab, found within the creator’s studio. You’ll see tabs containing all published comments and comments held for review. You can use this feed to find recent comments so you can respond to them as soon as possible.
7. Partner Up With Influencers
Joining forces with well-known influencers can increase the visibility of your content by bumping its shares and can earn you the trust of new users more quickly. Featuring testimonials from industry influencers can be particularly powerful and helpful when it comes to generating more leads.
There are different types of influencers you can reach out to, and in almost all cases, choosing influencers in your industry and niche will benefit you most. Getting an endorsement from Jon Loomer on your Facebook Ads software, for example, would be a heck of a lot more meaningful than a similar endorsement from a big-name celebrity. That celebrity probably has more followers, but if they don’t belong to the field, their opinions don’t mean a lot.
In many cases, micro-influencers are your best bet for helping you to create authentic content that will generate leads on YouTube. Micro-influencers typically have around 10,000 followers on social media, and can include bloggers and industry thought leaders. Their audiences are smaller than major influencers, but they are typically more trusted and respected by their very engaged audience.
[tweetthis]Joining forces with well-known influencers can increase the visibility of your content[/tweetthis]
8. Get to the Point Fast
Both your headline and the first few seconds of your video are critical, and you need to get to the point and grab your users’ attention immediately with both. Statistically, if you don’t get users interested in your social video within the first three seconds, they click away. That’s not a lot of time.
To help with this, all videos should start with an interesting, engaging hook. The first images, text, or words should be enough to make a user stop in their tracks. In the example below, the video’s narrator tells users why they should care about the subject of the video within the first second and a half, stating that “a team without trust isn’t really a team.” That’s a pretty powerful, impactful statement that will make users want to listen to the rest—and to find a solution.
And since you can share your YouTube videos on multiple social media platforms, adding captions is always a good idea; many videos start on auto-play, which has the sound turned off until the user enables it.
9. Provide Value
This is the crux of content marketing: it only works when you’re providing real, nearly tangible value to those consuming your content. There’s two parts to this equation: your video needs to be valuable enough that users are willing to consider signing up for whatever lead gen offer you have, and the offer itself needs to offer enough value to get them to actually sign up.
Tutorials and educational, informative videos are great for this purpose. They’re immensely valuable because they provide actionable, educational content that reiterates your business’s authority and expertise on the subject. This is especially true if you’re able to offer an in-depth solution to the viewer’s problems or pain points that would help sell them on your product.
Similarly, offers like e-books and whitepapers are great lead magnets to increase lead generation results because they’re so valuable and provide incredible knowledge for free. Users can download these resources and refer back to them at any point.
10. Share the Video Everywhere
All the steps on this list will give your YouTube videos everything they need to get conversions, but sharing those videos everywhere will increase the lead gen potential tenfold. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.
YouTube videos can be shared on all different platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even Pinterest. You can also embed these videos within blog posts on your site, making your content more dynamic and interesting, and on the landing page you’re using to capture lead information.
The more your video is shared, and the more platforms it’s on, the larger reach it will have. This means more views, and a lot more leads.
Conclusion
If you want to generate more leads through social media, you should start investing time into YouTube. This video-sharing platform will perform high in search engines, has great clickable CTAs that will take users right to your landing page, and has content that’s easily shared across multiple types of platforms. Your campaigns will see increases in both visibility and engagement, helping you capture more leads and guide them closer towards conversion.
Christopher is the co-founder and CEO of Snappa – the software that helps you create online graphics in a snap.
