YouTube Marketing and SEO Masterclass | A Full Hour of Questions and Answers

This session is a panel discussion between Simon Young, Vince and Andy, answering a run of real questions people type into Google about YouTube marketing, growing a channel and running YouTube ads.

How do I get 1,000 subscribers on YouTube fast?

The honest answer is either a genuinely shareable piece of content or paid ads, because organic growth alone is slow. Simon points out that they took one channel from 1,000 to 20,000 subscribers in two months using ads, without a large budget, which he calls the easiest route. Vince adds that ranking your videos to the top of the searches is just as important, because once people find you organically YouTube starts recommending your videos too, which further accelerates subscriber growth. He also notes, half-jokingly, that buying a channel that already has 1,000 subscribers is technically the fastest way of all.

How do I monetise my YouTube channel?

You need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months, after which you can switch on monetisation in your channel settings. Once enabled, adverts run against your videos and you start earning revenue from them. Vince notes this requires a Google AdSense account and that YouTube still has to approve you, so monetisation is not instant even once you hit the thresholds. Beyond ad revenue, brand partnerships and collaborations become available once you build an audience, but the panel's view is that selling your own products or services is the fastest, best, and most controllable way to earn from a channel.

How do I get more subscribers for free?

The best free route is still ranking your videos to the top of search, alongside creating content that is genuinely shareable, which is easier said than done. A further tactic is asking other people for interviews, which lets you tap into their existing audience when they share it. Simply and repeatedly asking viewers to like, subscribe and comment throughout a video also helps. Once a channel passes 1,000 subscribers, the Community tab becomes available, which the panel compares to a YouTube version of Twitter; its content was, at the time, getting shared fairly widely even though take-up of the tab itself was still low.

Can I buy fake subscribers, and should I?

Yes, sites such as Fiverr, Upwork and services like QQ Tube will sell subscribers, but they are bots rather than real people. The panel is blunt that this is vanity: buying subscribers does not tell you how many are genuine, what effect your content is actually having, or how good it really is. There is also a practical risk, because Google is understood to track bot networks, and the panel's answer is simply "don't", since it can penalise your channel.

What is the best way to get subscribers on my channel?

Real subscribers, not fake ones, and that starts with making great content matched to the audience you actually want to attract, in other words a message to market match. On top of that, videos need to rank near the top of search, because there are stats showing that only the first five results in a search actually get watched with any regularity; fall outside the top five and you are unlikely to be seen at all.

Why does it take so long to get subscribers on YouTube?

Partly because people are not buying fake ones, and partly because the content simply is not compelling enough yet. The panel makes the point that clicking subscribe is a high bar: most people watch a video without ever being asked to subscribe, and even when asked they often cannot be bothered. Getting the right audience, rather than just any audience, is what lifts the subscribe rate; the phrase used repeatedly through the video is "message to market match", which Simon jokes he had never heard before despite 30 years in marketing.

Is channel engagement rate important?

Yes, and total watch time in particular is the single most important ranking factor, because the longer people stay on the platform the more advertising YouTube can show and the more it earns. Vince says the strategies the team uses can rank videos to the top of search even on a brand new channel, which they say they have proven repeatedly, so while engagement matters it is not an absolute barrier for a new channel.

How do I find out how many people are watching my channel?

Within YouTube Studio's analytics tab, both at channel level and on individual videos, you can see exactly what is happening on a daily, weekly, monthly and all-time basis.

What should I do if people aren't watching my channel?

Consider honestly whether the content is right for your audience or engaging enough, and revisit the type of content you are making. The panel's short answer beyond that is to seek help getting your content found.

What is YouTube marketing?

YouTube content broadly splits into two areas: education, such as tutorials that solve a problem, and entertainment, such as music or gaming. Within either, the content has to be genuinely valuable and then has to be found, because great content that nobody finds gets the same result as mediocre content: no one pays attention. Beyond ranking organically, there is the paid route. Simon explains that huge numbers of brands are moving into YouTube advertising simply because so much content is uploaded every minute that YouTube's ad inventory can never really be filled, unlike Facebook, where feed space and reach are finite and getting more crowded with ads. His concern is that many brands take a broad "spray and pray" approach, relying on the fact that a skipped ad under 30 seconds costs nothing rather than targeting properly. His preferred approach overlays demographics, keywords, competitor visits and placements so that costs come down and conversions become more reliable, while also improving on-channel engagement and watch time, which in turn helps ranking.

How do I use YouTube marketing for my business?

The short version is to work with a specialist or an agency with a track record of results, who can both rank your content and run your ads for you.

Is YouTube good for marketing?

Yes. The panel's view is that the biggest danger for most brands is treating one channel as a silver bullet rather than thinking across the whole marketing mix. In their experience, a YouTube-first strategy puts a business in front of customers, raises awareness, generates a strong return, and drives click-throughs cheaply, and as part of a wider marketing mix it delivers, in their view, the best return of any channel currently available online or offline. One difference from television is attention: with a TV ad you do not know whether anyone in the room is actually watching, whereas YouTube is described as a "lean-in" medium where people are actively paying attention to what they chose to watch. The panel also points to a broader shift in how people consume media over the last decade, with far more video being watched, much of it on mobile.

How do I use YouTube marketing for my business, specifically?

Treat it as one part of an omni-channel approach, particularly strong at the top of the funnel for cheap, wide awareness. Andy, drawing on his accountancy background, highlights that YouTube lets you measure a campaign end to end, including true cost per conversion, which makes it possible to scale spend predictably and build that into cash flow forecasts and stock planning. Vince sets out a four-step framework: first, identify your avatar or target market; second, make videos that are genuinely relevant to those people; third, make videos designed to rank organically; and fourth, make videos designed to run as ads. He adds that a fifth step, a multi-channel or remarketing layer, can make success more reliable still. Simon adds that one advantage of working with a specialist media partner is that they can prove results on a single video before you commit to spending, something traditional SEO generally cannot do given how long organic ranking can take, whereas videos can sometimes be ranked within a day or even hours.

Is YouTube effective for marketing?

Yes, and Simon offers two examples from client work. In one, a traditional media buying colleague on a call with a prospective client observed that working with a specialist YouTube team like theirs teaches the client far more about their own customers through the data than they knew before, which then helps when proposing other channels such as out-of-home, shelters or TV. In the other, a cycling holiday business assumed its market was men in their 40s with disposable income, but running ads revealed a younger demographic than expected, which reshaped the client's marketing entirely. Both examples are offered as evidence that YouTube's data has value well beyond the platform itself.

What are the benefits of using YouTube?

Beyond understanding your audience better, Simon points to Google's own stated ambition to become predominantly a video business, something it said publicly a few years before this recording while aiming to be "mostly video" by 2020, a goal it had not yet hit because not enough businesses were making video. He notes most of the huge volume of content uploaded to YouTube every minute is still entertainment or gaming rather than business content. Where the right content reaches the right people, brand awareness and website traffic improve markedly, and ranking a video at the top of YouTube can also help it appear near the top of ordinary Google results quickly. To illustrate why Google is investing so heavily in video, Simon uses a "best barbecue" example: at 49 and researching an expensive purchase, he would watch video reviews rather than rely on a text listing, whereas he says a 20-year-old searching the same term would behave differently and want a different answer. Video lets Google measure exactly how long someone watches and where they disengage, feeding that into a personal profile in a way static text cannot. He connects this to Google's longer-term ambition around voice search, which he calls AEO, answer engine optimisation: to answer a spoken question well, an engine needs to understand engagement against the specific question asked, which is why he calls video the bridge between text-based search and answer engines. He guesses proper voice search of this kind could be three, five or ten years away.

Should I use a specialist YouTube ads agency?

If you have the budget and need the expertise, yes, because YouTube advertising is considerably more complicated than it first appears, in Simon's words "a lot more complicated than just pressing a boost button on Facebook". He describes a system the agency built two or three years earlier, which they call IDAH, for intelligence driven ad results: essentially a programmatic system with human intelligence layered over it, continually adjusting campaigns. He argues that with billions, possibly trillions, of possible placements across the Display Network and YouTube, it is easy to waste money without knowing where to place ads, and that having managed clients who have spent millions through the agency has let them test, learn and refine that placement strategy over time. You can run YouTube ads yourself through your own Google Ads account, as agencies on Facebook often do, but the panel's view is that you risk wasting money without specialist knowledge.

Can I set up a YouTube marketing campaign myself?

Yes, and Andy says it is not the setup itself that is the hard part, it is managing a campaign well over time. Simon warns that Google's own objective is to get advertisers to spend as much as possible, including through calls from Google's own account teams suggesting changes, and gives the example of the "Maximise Conversions" objective: choosing it can feel like it should maximise conversions, but in practice it tends to mean spending the full daily budget while maximising the opportunity to show your ads, not necessarily to the right audience. After 20 years working with Google Ads, he says he still does not fully understand every part of it, and that anyone who claims total mastery is mistaken. He mentions a book he and Andy were due to publish around April or May that year, which discusses patience and the risk of "tinkering", tinkering being what he calls the thing that kills these campaigns, drawing a comparison with Facebook advertisers who check and adjust campaigns hour by hour rather than letting the algorithm learn.

Why don't many people use YouTube advertising yet?

Vince's short answer is that Facebook has simply been the dominant platform in recent years, and that YouTube is harder to get started with because it requires video rather than a simple image and text ad. Andy adds that the barrier to entry, producing the video, is often more perceived than real, since it is easier than people think, but that many who try YouTube ads themselves lack the experience to make them convert, give up after one attempt, and conclude it does not work. Unlike Facebook's "boost" button, YouTube needs patience, budget, conviction and a real strategy, which he sees as a sign of enormous remaining opportunity precisely because so few advertisers are using it properly yet. He calls YouTube "a proper advertising platform" that rewards marketers who build and manage campaigns properly with correspondingly better results.

How is YouTube advertising going to affect the marketing industry this year?

The panel expects a significant shift once people grasp that Google will let good content reach the top of search quickly, effectively giving everyone a fair chance regardless of size, with quality then determining what stays there. Andy recalls a creative director at a large creative agency in the north of England saying, the day before this recording, that this was exactly the opportunity they had been looking for. As evidence the shift is already under way, the panel mentions roughly 16 proposals sent out in January alone to brands globally interested in moving into Facebook and YouTube advertising, alongside a broader trend of marketing departments being tasked more directly with lead generation and ROI as in-house resource shrinks elsewhere.

Are lots of businesses moving from Facebook to YouTube advertising?

Not yet, in the panel's honest assessment, mainly because many businesses still do not fully understand the opportunity, even though some brands are starting to grasp it. They note the US market is roughly a year or two ahead of the UK, while Vince jokes that Italy is probably around five years behind the UK. One advantage repeated here is that on YouTube you generally only pay once someone has watched past 30 seconds, which gives large amounts of brand awareness effectively for free, unlike Facebook; the panel's advice is to move now for a first-mover advantage.

Who is the best for YouTube marketing and advertising strategy?

The panel treats this as an oddly framed question, because YouTube should be part of a wider omni-channel marketing and advertising strategy rather than something judged in isolation against other channels. Simon explains that questions like this, and most of the others answered in this video, come straight from Google's "people also ask" suggestions under a search, which record the actual questions real people type in, however oddly worded. Pressed for a genuine answer, the panel's view is that the best are whoever can get and consistently sustain real conversions, and they mention trying to build a network of some of the best YouTube marketing partners globally.

Can you advertise a product on YouTube?

Yes, absolutely, and the panel gives two live examples: a UK-wide furniture company and a global brand, both with large product ranges, that they were talking to at the time. YouTube lets you tell a story around a product, educate viewers about it, entertain with it, and show it in use, all without the fixed, expensive ceiling of a normal 30-second TV commercial where you cannot be sure who is really watching. Because you are not paying by the second the way you would for TV airtime, an ad can run for far longer, for example showing not just how a barbecue works but people actually cooking and enjoying food on it.

How many views do you need before ads show on your channel?

For monetising your own channel, the requirement is the same as before: 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. That is different from running your own ads to promote a product, which can start on very small budgets and can be live within an hour of setting one up.

How do I advertise a product on YouTube?

There are two routes: the organic route, ranking your videos in the top five results for the keywords your audience searches, since views drop off sharply outside the top five, and the paid route, which moves faster. On the paid side, Simon describes a rough formula: grab attention within the first three to six seconds, educate the viewer, then invite them to click through for more information. A common misconception is that ads must be short, around 30 seconds to a minute; in practice a YouTube ad can run for 10 or 20 minutes, as long as it keeps holding attention, which gives you the chance to move someone from a cold viewer to someone ready to buy within the same video.

What are the different types of ads on YouTube?

The panel describes bumper ads, short and unskippable, shown ahead of content; in-stream ads that interrupt whatever someone is already watching; and discovery ads that sit among search results or suggested videos. In-stream ads offer a technique Simon calls a "pattern interrupt", where a highly relevant ad, using his barbecue example again, appears while someone is already researching that exact topic, so it feels like a continuation rather than an interruption; he expects more of this kind of topically matched advertising over the following year to 18 months. Discovery ads appear carrying a small ad badge but are often clicked anyway because people tend to click whatever sits at the top of a results page; they are good for brand awareness but, unlike in-stream ads, do not offer the same call-to-action opportunity.

What audience should I use to advertise my products on YouTube?

Start by genuinely understanding your customer, or avatar, before you try to build an audience, because you cannot target well until you know what your customers' lives and interests actually look like. Simon contrasts this with traditional pay-per-click, where a keyword search triggers an ad click that might cost anywhere from 50p to £10, or even £20 to £30 in the most competitive niches. On YouTube, the stronger approach is building "in-market" audiences from what people have searched for and which sites or apps they have visited, using his own example of researching golf clubs across several retailer sites, which marks someone as in the market for that product. That lets an advertiser show a low-cost video ad, sometimes for as little as one or two pence, to someone another business has already paid to attract to their own site, in effect benefiting from a competitor's traffic spend.

Is it a good idea to work with YouTube influencers?

It depends, and size alone is not the deciding factor. Simon describes a fashion influencer with roughly 7 million subscribers and questions how much of that audience is genuinely in-market for a given product versus simply watching an attractive influencer. He believes audiences are increasingly wise to paid product placement, and expects the market to move toward influencers only promoting products they genuinely use. As an example of value, he contrasts a £200,000 spend on four pieces of influencer content, two posts and two stories across YouTube and Instagram, with the same budget spent directly on YouTube ads, which he estimates could reach around 100 million people, of the right kind. He also challenges the usual engagement-rate maths: a 7-million-follower influencer with a 2% engagement rate implies roughly 140,000 engaged people, which sounds impressive to a brand, but much of that engagement is often with the influencer rather than the product being promoted, so the brand does not necessarily benefit as much as the headline number suggests.

What products work best with YouTube advertising?

More than people assume, including in b2b. Andy recalls being in a board meeting where directors assumed their customers were not on YouTube, until one director in his fifties admitted he personally was. He gives an example of a highly engineered, specialist tool product, not an obvious fit for YouTube, that performed extremely well using simple how-to videos, generating around 160 downloads that led to a £900,000 order. He adds that plenty of straightforward consumer products also perform well. Simon separately makes a wider point about how success is measured: talk of ROI multiples such as five, eight or ten times return misses the point if it ignores profit margin, since a campaign selling a product with a 15% margin is very different from one with a 50% margin, and it also misses lifetime value, since a low-margin product can still be a worthwhile customer-acquisition play if it leads to later upsells where the real profit sits.

Which industries use YouTube advertising the most?

Currently, coaches and course creators lead the way, often because they already succeeded with Facebook ads and have since moved across. The panel estimates that 99% of businesses are still not using YouTube ads at all. As a counterexample to the idea that only certain industries work, they mention a screwdriver manufacturer that took convincing but went on to sell over a million pounds of product in a single month from a campaign that cost £10,000, straight off the back of that first month. Their conclusion is that almost any industry can work, provided expectations are realistic and the business is prepared to play the long game rather than expecting a single magic campaign.

How do I build an audience on YouTube for my product?

Again there are two ways, organic and paid, but paid is usually the faster route because YouTube's targeting is unusually precise, and because ads skipped before 30 seconds cost nothing, brand awareness builds up cheaply. One under-used tactic is building an audience of people who reached the checkout pages of competitors' websites specifically, rather than just any visitor, since those are people a competitor has already paid to attract and who are clearly close to buying. From there, organic discovery tends to follow as the video starts appearing in suggestions too, which Simon compares to rolling up a snowball.

Do I only pay when people watch my videos?

Largely, yes, in the sense that ranking a video organically at the top of search costs nothing at all. The panel's recommendation is to use paid ads to support organic activity rather than relying purely on either one. Because YouTube ads are typically free for the first 29 seconds, the free brand awareness on offer is, in Simon's words, unlike anything else he has seen, especially compared with a 30-second TV ad, which you pay for in full. He recalls marketing directors reacting with genuine amazement when told that, past 30 seconds, a view might cost as little as a penny or two, and calls it, in his opinion, the best piece of marketing he has seen in 25 years in the industry.

Can someone buy my product when they see it on YouTube?

At the time of this recording, YouTube's click-and-buy functionality was in beta and being trialled across different countries. The panel expects it to develop into full click-and-buy capability across the platform over the following couple of years.