Every January, millions resolve to lose weight and get in shape. Undoubtedly, many of those resolutions will be broken soon after they’re made.
Fitness brands know this and ramp up their marketing efforts in the New Year. Many have turned to YouTube to reach these aspiring hard bodies, employing smart marketing tactics that we can all learn from to reach consumers with online video.
Here are few ideas for YouTube resolutions you can deploy for your business this year:
1) Keep videos short and sweet
TRX Training designs and sells suspension-training equipment that can be difficult to explain through words alone. When they first started experimenting with YouTube, they found their content was too long and their channel was hard to find. They cut the length to around 1 to 3 minutes each -- explaining what the TRX product is and how to buy it.
Experimenting with video length can be an easy way to drive video views. Consider splitting lengthy videos into a three-part series. By looking at your YouTube Analytics dashboard, you can understand how far people watch into your video and at what point they drop off -- helping you test your creatives and better understand what captivates your viewers.
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2) Test a special promotion
Maximizing the value of your banner space and call-to-action overlays by promoting limited-time offers can mean the difference between a moderately successful video and a monster hit. Just ask Mike Chang. He launched a "New Year's Giveaway" campaign on his Six Pack Shortcuts brand channel, uploading new videos each day while increasing his video ad marketing to gain maximum exposure for the new content.
Chang promoted his new product, Insane Home Fat Loss, with this New Year’s promotion for an exclusive 70 percent discount to YouTube viewers. The promotion became a significant driver of revenue in January and they sold out in three days earning them 31k new subscribers in January thus far.
3) Use ads to drive traffic to your content
Fitness products that promise to help sculpt your abs without hours of crunches face an uphill battle: consumers tend to be skeptical that they work. To combat this, ab-toning business Flex Belt used video ads that demonstrate in detail how their tool works to tighten the core. As a result, traffic to the Flex Belt web site has soared, and so have sales. TrueView video ads alone drove a 70 percent increase in sales.
TrueView in-display ads drive viewers to your videos and YouTube channel because they reach people actively searching for or watching videos related to your topic. With more than 5 million channel views in just one year, Flex Belt saw a direct correlation between site traffic, direct response sales, and ad spends, particularly for searches on the Flex Belt brand name.
Hopefully these success stories helped inspire YouTube resolutions of your own!
Baljeet Singh is Group Product Manager on Video Monetization at Google, responsible for enabling video advertising on YouTube. Baljeet has worked on other video products at Google including DoubleClick In-Stream, AdSense for Video, and AdSense for Games. Prior to this role, Baljeet was a Product Manager on the DoubleClick publisher products, including DART Sales Manager and DART for Publishers. Baljeet has an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.
