Five YouTube promotion mistakes that even experienced professionals make

30-second summary:

• Targeting the wrong audience can lead to poor engagement on your YouTube channel. Competitor analysis will help you solve this problem.
• A well-structured plan for promotion will help you measure the results of your YouTube marketing campaign.
• By setting the right metrics, you can set your campaign in the right direction from the very start.
• Optimization of your YouTube channel is just a multiplier of quality.
• Creating user-centric titles will help you make content more clickable and user-friendly.

YouTube is a great platform to introduce your product or services to new audiences. In fact, YouTube has an overwhelming reach of two million active users globally. Yet, if you want to use Youtube promotion for your products, there are some common mistakes and pitfalls that can prevent you from succeeding. 

1. Targeting the wrong audience 

Many marketers make the same mistake of failing to identify their target audience. This often leads to the poor performance of their YouTube channel and poor engagement. So, if you notice that your YouTube channel doesn’t perform as well as expected, while the content quality seems to be in place, the problem may be rooted in targeting the wrong audience. 

How to avoid this mistake?

It’s really easy to slip into believing that your product suits everybody or chose the wrong audience. Yet, there is something you can do to avoid this mistake altogether. 

Competitor analysis is one of the best ways to indicate the right audience for your brand. Evaluate what your competitors are doing and who their target audience members are. Chances are that if your niche aligns, your audience will align too. 

Besides analyzing your competitors, it’s useful to conduct analysis through the YouTube search. Go to YouTube and type in multiple search queries that match the user intent of the audience you’re targeting. Then, check out the demographics details of the audience who watches the videos from search results. 

2. Not having a clear strategy 

Not having a clear strategy is a common mistake many marketers face. Beings caught up in creating videos, marketers typically tend to forget about creating a well-structured plan for promotion. 

When it comes to promoting your videos on YouTube, intuition isn’t the best thing to rely on. Any successful promotion strategy relies on a specific plan and calculations, rather than inner marketing instincts.

How to avoid this mistake?

You can’t build a YouTube promotion campaign without first developing a strategy. You can’t put your video out on the platform and hope for the best. So, make sure to set clear objectives and goals to measure the performance of your campaign. Also, you should have a content plan that includes detailed information on the role of your YouTube content as a part of the broader branded content efforts. 

3. Tracking the wrong metrics 

While it’s important that you know the goals and objectives of your YouTube promotion campaign from the very start, the type of metrics you’re tracking is important as well. Being caught up in the pursuit of views, comments, and likes, marketers often fail to set the right metrics. This may set your campaign in the wrong direction from the very start. 

How to avoid this mistake?

Likes, shares, and comments are important. Yet, there are metrics that can do a better job indicating customer engagement. Here are just a few metrics worth measuring to evaluate the performance of your YouTube promotion efforts.  

• Conversion rate: Conversion rate is a must-follow metric you should keep an eye on. If your YouTube efforts are aimed at promoting a particular product or business in general, the conversion rate is your go-to metric to track. 
• Average view duration: The total number of views can be misleading. Out of 100 people who watched your video, only 10 could have watched it till the end. That’s why it’s important to measure the average view duration. The average view duration is the total watch time of your YouTube video divided by the total number of plays and replays. This metric will help you get the best estimate of how well your videos perform. 
• Views to subscribers ratio: If you’re trying to grow your channel with promotions, you shouldn’t be concerned about the number of views your promotions get. Instead, you should be looking at the ratio of views to subscribers. If a video you promote is getting lots of views but none of the viewers subscribe to your channel, you’re not getting anywhere. So, you should aim at keeping your views to subscribers ratio between 8% and 12%. 
• Traffic source: Keeping track of the traffic source won’t help your video promotion efforts directly, but you can gain some valuable insights from keeping track of this metric. Traffic sources will help you understand which promotions deliver the best results. 

4. Valuing YouTube optimization over content quality 

Let’s imagine that you’ve uploaded a video on YouTube and have been hugely disappointed by the number of views it got. What is the first thing you’re going to look at? Most people’s answer is optimization. 

When getting fewer views than expected, marketers often think that they didn’t use the right keywords or metadata.  Here’s what they fail to realize – optimization on YouTube is just a multiplier of quality. If the quality of content is poor, no amount of optimization can suddenly make it an instant viral sensation. 

How to avoid this mistake?

Optimization can have a major impact on the performance of your channel under one condition. Your content must be of high quality. So, focus on the quality of your content first and don’t rely on optimization tools alone.  

If you’re not particularly sure how to start your journey towards the top quality content, seeking advice online is certainly helpful. Search for online resources and eLearning courses, like LinkedIn Learning, to diversify your content and ensure its high quality.   

5. Writing titles for SEO 

Often professions who are comfortable with SEO, write titles for YouTube algorithms rather than the user.  Here’s a problem with this approach – if the title isn’t interesting enough, users are far less likely to click on it. 

Click-through rate can have a major impact on the performance of your YouTube channel, far more impact than any SEO benefit that a well-optimized title can provide. 

How to avoid this mistake?

Make sure all video titles are user-centric. If you want to strategically format titles, make sure that the first part of the title is written specifically for your audience. Getting users interested has far more value than your SEO efforts. 

Final thoughts

These five mistakes can drown even the most well-implemented YouTube promotion. Now, as you’ve learned how to avoid these mistakes, you can incorporate a better performing strategy and see the improvement of results. Good luck implementing your newfound insights in real life.

Connie Benton is a chief content writer, guest contributor, and enthusiastic blogger who helps B2B companies reach their audiences more effectively. You can find her on Twitter at @ConnieB34412379.

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