Module 4 - Marketing your channel off site

How do you use PR to grow a YouTube channel?

Ask your PR agency to work in the realms of digital PR, so you are getting coverage online rather than just in print. Public relations is a very traditional medium and concept, but there are four ways it can help increase channel subscribers and get more views.

The first is a really simple thing. If you have an agency and you are targeting key media, make sure the boilerplate of your press release lists all your social channels, including a link to your YouTube channel. That means if a journalist picks up an interesting story from your press team and it is structured around a video you have posted, they can direct their readers into the channel very easily. Leave it out of the boilerplate and you never get that.

How do you make a video more likely to go viral?

Treat virality as a PR brief, not an accident. The shareable content of videos is unreal. I suspect a lot of you watching this get sent a lot of videos via WhatsApp, from YouTube, via different social platforms, over Messenger or over email.

If you have an agency, I would challenge them to think about what they can do from a PR standpoint that also integrates video. Perhaps you could do something very funny that was very shareable to amplify your product, your service or your brand. Especially where videos have a comedy effect, that virality tends to reach out to audiences very fast.

When you distribute it through PR channels, do include a link to that specific video so you get all that traffic to all the right places.

How do brand ambassadors and influencers help?

Brand ambassadors build the credibility of a brand, a product or a service, and they also create a PR opportunity. If you are including brand ambassadors or influencers in video content to promote your service or brand, look at the ways you can use that influencer from a PR perspective too.

If you have an influencer talking about a new product, can you work with that influencer and their team to make sure the video is covered from a PR perspective? The more traffic you get, the more you are showing signals to YouTube that you are an interesting channel, and the more likely you are to get thrown up in suggested content. You build a subscriber base that wants to keep coming back to hear from your influencer or brand ambassador and find out about your products or services.

Why go live on your channel?

Live video is something that is not tapped into by many, so it is a strong PR play. If you have a product or service you can talk about in a live sense, these days we are all consuming content online, and going live is still open ground.

If you can go live and bring in a brand ambassador, a celebrity or an influencer, it is going to help get more eyes on your YouTube channel and drive more traffic.

How should email marketing point people at YouTube?

Put a link to your YouTube channel at the bottom of your emails so people understand you have a presence there. Always make sure that link opens in a new window, so you are not taking them away from the email.

Do the same on staff emails. The people you do business with will then come across your channel as well. This applies to B2B emails and to any consumer driven emails going out to your target market.

You can also embed video into the email itself so it takes people through to the channel. If you are talking about a new product or service, include a video in the email campaign. These days it does not matter so much from a load time perspective, because everyone's devices are built to cope with that.

Then use social links wherever possible. If your email opens by talking about a specific product, link that to the YouTube channel where you talk about the product or service in more depth. The more links there are, the more opportunities your target market has to click into your channel and watch more.

Which social platforms should you focus on, and how?

Cross promote the channel from whichever platforms you already run, rather than trying to be everywhere. I am sure you have got lots of different social platforms, and sometimes you are a little bit at a loss as to which one you should focus on. It can feel like an arduous task unless you have a big team. One minute it is Twitter, then TikTok, then Facebook and Instagram, and where does it all end? It becomes a full time job very quickly.

Build cross promotion into your general content and schedule it forward. If you take one video, you can always talk about it in 10 or 20 different ways. Schedule that content and then you do not need to think about it again.

Teaser content is the important one. Say you have a five minute video on YouTube that took a long time to create and edit together. Why not slice that up into 10 second chunks and push those out on other platforms such as TikTok or Instagram Reels, saying hey guys, if you want to find out more about this topic, go to our YouTube channel. Slicing content up to act as a teaser into the channel is really valuable and easy to build in. If you have adverts online in other places, use all the linking opportunities to drive traffic back to YouTube as well.

What offline channels can drive people to YouTube?

Anything you already print, display or hand to a customer can carry a route to the channel. That includes out of home advertising, print, point of sale and packaging.

QR codes saw their heyday some years ago and did not really take off, but since the pandemic they have become part of everyday life for everyone. Most smartphones are QR code enabled without needing a QR app, so I would definitely build QR codes into packaging, point of sale and print wherever you can.

With out of home, look at ways to use your video creative in print. Say it is a billboard, and you have a celebrity or brand ambassador on your channel who is getting great views and great traction. Why not use that piece of content on the billboard: this is what we are talking about, come and join the conversation, come and take part, because this is what you are missing out on. You may want to look at that from an overarching campaign perspective, so it becomes strong across all the touchpoints.

What is the activity for this module?

List every marketing channel you have, online and offline, and ask where each one could amplify your YouTube channel. If you have a bricks and mortar store, is there signage pointing people to the channel? What does it say on the bottom of your receipts and your e-receipts?

What happens if a customer phones your hotline or your customer service area? Would you tell them about YouTube? Is that something you could try and test? Could you use extracts from YouTube while people are waiting on the telephone?

These are some really innovative ways you can trial to see if you can increase your subscribers. You cannot just rest on a wing and a prayer that you are going to bring an audience in simply by having a presence on YouTube. Yes, you are there and you have taken that step, but the more ways you can direct people to YouTube, even more better.