Use YouTube to Promote Your eCommerce Business

By Adam  |  11 Aug 2015 15:00:00

In the modern world, if you want to run a business on the internet, you need to make use of social media marketing. There are the obvious two: Facebook and Twitter, both of which I have written about before, but there's one large thing which I have not yet addressed: YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google and is one of the most popular networks on the internet. YouTube is a service which allows its users to upload their own videos; other people can then subscribe to each user and be updated on all of the new videos they produce. Views, likes and so on are all monitored.

Many businesses make use of YouTube as a promotional tool, but it is significantly harder to do so than it is to do with Twitter or Facebook. Firstly you're going to need a fair amount of video making and editing skills. If you're not really that experienced at making videos, how can you be sure that everything will have good sound quality? Can you ensure good continuity? Will you be able to add titles and a soundtrack? I know that sounds like pretty advanced stuff, but these are all things you'd need to know if you wanted to make YouTube videos for your business. If you quickly made a video on your phone camera and uploaded it directly, it would not reflect well on your business because it would just come across as unprofessional.

What you also need to think about is what your videos are going to be. Ideally, YouTube videos should be interesting and entertaining; people should be able to appreciate them without them coming across as obvious pieces of advertisement. In that way, YouTube marketing is also a form of content marketing; if you make videos on subjects that are related to your business, then potential customers will find you when they search for the things they are already interested in. But what can you make videos out of? Well, do you sell gardening supplies? Make a video of gardening tips, showing off the products in the process! Do you sell kitchen supplies? Make videos of yourself making nice food, again, using your products in the process! Do you sell second hand books? Make videos about your favourite books or have discussions about novels! Whatever your product, there will be at least something you can do.

For some businesses, YouTube marketing will be a better fit than for others. If you sell office supplies it is going to be hard to find many appropriate ideas for video marketing. Don't forget that you can be creative too: if you thought of a little comedy sketch which seems to fit the tone of your business, then make it! Put all of your creative ideas to use. Plus, if you don't have the ability to create high quality video content (in terms of editing, sound and picture quality) then perhaps you could try Vine. Vine is similar, but the videos are only six seconds long, so you don't need to worry about those things.

So if it's within your capabilities, you should consider using YouTube for marketing purposes. Many people have become successful through use of YouTube alone! But if you don't even have an eCommerce website yet, why not sign up to Sellr now? It is completely free.