Best YouTube Strategies for Small Business Owners in 2022

Put YouTube to Work for Your Small Business in 2022

*Updated August 26, 2022

Small businesses must take advantage of every marketing and customer engagement opportunity available, and often this means balancing the cost and finding ways to do it yourself. When it comes to video marketing for business building, YouTube is a good place to start.

YouTube has billions of viewers and visitors daily, some with specific needs in mind and others who are just browsing. Tapping into this pool of potential customers doesn’t require great expense. It also shows your customers that you have the skill and expertise to meet their needs.

Setting up a YouTube channel is free and it can be linked with any existing Google account, such as Gmail or Google+. Be sure to build those profiles for your business, since viewers will be able to click through to them from your channel.

Setting up and customizing your channel is the easy part. Creating quality content to engage viewers—and gain subscribers—is where you’ll need to invest most of your time.

As with anything in marketing, consistency is key, writes Kiely Kuligowski for Business News Daily. In How to Use YouTube for Small Businesses, Kuligowski writes that subscribers will quickly begin to expect new content. You’ll need to provide it to keep your brand relevant. Aim for a minimum of one video a week, posted at a consistent time. But if you can manage it, two or three videos a week is ideal.

Cater to your audience

You’ll need to consider your existing audience and customer base to know what kind of content will engage them the most. This could be product highlights, videos to launch or introduce new products, how-to videos (using a product, troubleshooting, do-it-yourself videos), or informational videos about your company or industry. 

You can use videos to introduce customers to your company. Employee introductions, corporate profiles, and company history videos can be fun ways to boost customer engagement by showing the humanity behind and within your small business.

Customer testimonials are a video marketing must-have, writes Charles Broersma in 10 Reasons YouTube is a Must for Small Businesses. The article, written for the Internet marketing platform Cazbah, says testimonials help build reputation and trust in your business. Video reviews of your products or services, made by real, satisfied customers, give potential customers the confidence to commit to a purchase. Invite happy customers to record a short video sharing their experience with your small business and product.

Video marketing should be in keeping with your brand tone and style, but expand into fun videos, too, Broersma writes. Engage in social media challenges as they arise to help personify your brand and show that your small business is fun and easy to work with. Lip sync videos and dance videos are good ways to engage with pop culture and show the fun side of your business. Additionally, hashtag themes can be engaging too, such as “Motivational Monday,” “Wisdom Wednesday,” or “Flashback Friday.”

Search Engine Optimization

Just like with blog posts and websites, video marketing requires at least basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Knowing what keywords relate to your video, writing a good description, and properly titling your video can make all the difference in getting your videos to rank high in search results. 

The more specific and unique you make your title, the higher it will rank—especially when you’ve included relevant keywords. Generic titles will get lost among the myriad videos available.  For example, a video titled “YouTube for Beginners” doesn’t give a lot of information about the content. “YouTube Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses” is a more specific title that incorporates keywords and targets a specific audience.

Be sure to include your small business web address in each video description, so customers can easily click through and explore content or products related to your video. You can also include links to your other social media platforms, encouraging your viewers to follow your pages for additional content.

5 tips for creating quality content

1. Call to action

A call to action is important in video marketing, writes Megan Totka in a guest blog post for Wishpond, an Internet marketing platform. In 12 Tips for Using YouTube for Your Small Business, she writes that this can be as simple as a “comment, subscribe, share” tag at the end of each video. But where possible, your calls to action should be specific and intentional.  

Let’s say you make a video for Earth Day. Your call to action could be making a purchase where proceeds are donated to a certain environmental fund, you could call for your viewers to donate on their own, or you could call for your viewers to clean up a local park and post a photo using a specified hashtag.

Another common call to action is posing a thoughtful question for viewers to answer in the comments. Continuing with our Earth Day example, you might ask viewers to share one way to be more environmentally friendly or why taking care of our planet is important to them.

2. Closed captioning

YouTube offers free captioning with just the click of a few buttons. According to Totka’s post, this is an invaluable service that makes your content accessible to a wider customer pool, while also showing that you are committed to care and compassion. You can further your accessibility by creating short video companions to any blog posts and articles, so the information is available in audio form to anyone who needs it. Keep in mind that using the automated closed captioning might result in some transcribing mistakes, so you will want to review your videos for accuracy and may even consider doing the captioning yourself.

Additionally, you may want to consider providing closed captioning in different languages to reach a broader audience.

3. Calculated video lengths

Video length will depend on the content. A how-to video will naturally be longer than a product teaser, which will be somewhat shorter than a full product introduction. YouTube provides analytic reports for your videos, so you can experiment with lengths and see what your viewers respond best to.  

As with any information distribution, you want to make sure you provide quality content that answers the question or provides information in the best and clearest way possible. Customer engagement will help you navigate this. When viewers provide feedback on your videos, comment back with individual and unique responses, then take their feedback into consideration when planning your next video.

Hootsuite’s analysis of social media video lengths notes that viral attention getters should be around 2 minutes in length. But if you want to do longer videos, don’t worry. Hootsuite’s Guide to YouTube Marketing has a solution: include timestamps in the video description so that viewers can click through to the relevant information

4. Scope out the competition

Take the time to do some research one what your competitors and other brands you admire are doing. Then take their strategies and do them better. By looking at what a popular competitor is putting out, you can understand what engages your mutual audience and capitalize on the opportunities.

YouTube’s SEO relies significantly on personalization, so your quality content can be recommended to your target audience—possibly even at the end of your competitor’s videos! Same but different can be hard in the marketing world, but it’s worth your time and effort in order to build up your audience base.

5. Commit to the work

Although video marketing through YouTube is essentially free in terms of money, it can be costly in terms of your time. You’ll spend time shooting videos, editing, creating campaigns, and engaging with customers. If you are serious about building your small business, however, setting aside time for videos will be a no-brainer. For beginners, setting aside two hours a week to work on YouTube content is a great place to start.

Engaged viewers create paying customers

While small businesses must focus on sales in order to keep growing, the sales focus can’t outweigh the customer focus. Engaging customers, even with fun videos that aren’t sales-focused, will build your business and brand recognition, driving more customers to recommend, purchase, and ultimately sell your business and products for you.

Making time for video marketing is a must. With the opportunity for live videos on nearly every social media platform, including YouTube, it’s easier than ever to provide your followers with a quick snapshot into your business. An update on a project you’ve mentioned, a behind-the-scenes look at the process, or a short employee interview can keep your video presence interesting, boost customer engagement, and personify your small business. As you make time for video marketing, you will gain experience that makes creation easier and more natural.