This one should be obvious — you need a website to link to when you make your videos. This can be a blog, or ideally, a product page on your RP Online store.
Depending on your marketing strategy, you can also link out to your profiles on other social networks such as Twitter or Facebook.
The best option is to use a dedicated landing page for each video. That is, if your travel accessories business has a video on “how to pack your bags like a pro”, it should link to a separate landing page on the items mentioned in the video. This requires more work, but you’ll see fantastic conversion rates.
A willingness to help
It might sound counter-intuitive, but to truly sell on YouTube, you must abandon all expectations of selling. Instead, you must strive to help your viewers by offering them valuable advice. Hard sales tactics almost never work on YouTube; generous advice and entertainment does.
Once you have these three requirements, you can jump right in and start making your own videos.
A Three-Step Guide to Selling on YouTube
The process of selling on YouTube can be broken down into three discrete steps: creating videos, getting traffic and promoting your channel.
Let’s look at these three steps in further detail.
Step 1: Create Videos
You can’t really market yourself on YouTube without making your own videos. This can sound like a daunting task, especially if you’re not very comfortable being on camera. However, once you have a decent recording setup (see above) and some ideas, you’ll find that making videos is easier than you think.
What kind of videos you should make will depend entirely on your product. Here are some video ideas you can try:
1. Answer questions
Your customers will likely have a number of questions about your product, both before and after the sale. Make a list of these questions and answer them via video to make your YouTube e-commerce more effective. You should also monitor social media for additional questions and send out your reply in a video. Think of these as a video version of your FAQs.
2. Show the manufacturing process
“Behind the scenes” videos tend to do really well on YouTube, especially when it comes to branding. If you make your own product, it’s a good idea to show the manufacturing process in detail. It’ll reassure customers of your product’s quality and give viewers a glimpse into your business culture.
3. Create topical content for your industry
“Behind the scenes” and Q&A videos have limited audience potential. Topical industry focused content, however, can reach a much larger viewership. This content should aim to help viewers understand a problem and find solutions. It can also focus on entertaining them with trivia, facts and knowledge.
For example, if you sell travel accessories, you can make videos on how to pack your bags better, or share a list of top things to pack before traveling. If you want “virality”, you can make short, informative videos like the kind made by Buzzfeed.
4. Feature user stories
How do actual customers use your products? Interviewing users and sharing their stories can be a great source of video content. Get in touch with your customers and ask if you can feature them on your channel. Many will wholeheartedly agree (especially if you offer to promote their business/blog in the video). Either ask them to come into your studio, or interview them in their home/office. This is a great branding tool and also works as a customer testimonial. This is exactly how YouTube e-commerce works.
5. Share reviews made by others
Lastly, your YouTube channel shouldn’t be limited to your own video content. It should also share content made by others, particularly video reviews made by other vloggers. You can usually find such reviews by searching for your product name on YouTube. Asking the vlogger if you can feature the review on your channel is another way of how to sell on YouTube. Most will be happy to see their content spread further.
Step 2: Get traffic to your site
The next step after making the video is to direct the video traffic to your site or landing page.
Fortunately, YouTube offers multiple methods to let users interact with your video content. Let’s look at some of these.
1. Video annotations
annotation
Annotations are the bread and butter of YouTube marketing. Use them to place call-to-actions at different intervals in the video. Ideally, you should have:
An annotation at the beginning, middle and end of the video linking to a landing page.
- An annotation linking to your website on the logo.
- An annotation to any similar videos on your channel.
- 2. Video descriptions
seo-description
The video description is often overlooked as a method to get leads and clicks. This description should include multiple links to your landing page, along with an actual description of the video. Make sure to use keywords here (don’t overuse them) to get SEO benefits as well.
3. Interactive cards
Cards are a recent addition to YouTube’s arsenal of marketing tools. These are interactive elements that can be inserted inside a video to do different things — show products, websites, other videos, and even raise funds directly from the video. Check out Google’s help section to see what kind of card is right for you, and how to use it.
Step 3: Marketing your YouTube videos
Once you’ve made your videos and uploaded them to YouTube, it’s time to promote your channel.
Depending on your existing marketing skills, this might be the easiest, or the toughest part of selling on YouTube. Let’s look at some tactics you can employ anytime, regardless of skillset: