YouTube for Ecommerce: How to Use Video to Maximize Your Sales

Processing over 3 billion searches a month, YouTube is currently the world's second-largest search engine in the world, coming right after Google. People turn to YouTube for everything: music videos, entertainment, parts from their popular shows, interviews with their favorite actors, cat videos. They also turn to YouTube to look for specific products they think of buying. In fact, as much as 33% of customers prefer to learn about a product through a video before they make a purchase. And this is where lies an opportunity for the ecommerce business owners and marketers.

If you’ve recently started to think of incorporating YouTube into your marketing strategy, in this article, we’ve compiled a list of 5 effective ways you can use the video-sharing giant to maximize your ecommerce sales.

1. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is all the rage now. It focuses on partnering with social media influencers operating in specific niches to promote your product to their audience.

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective strategies today, because influencers have credibility in their fields, and their relationship with their followers is based on trust. Their followers actually want to see what they have to offer and are more willing to give the product a try than, let's say, they receive an ad for the same product.

As on other platforms, influencer marketing on YouTube is booming. But what makes YouTube a more effective platform is that while on platforms like Instagram and TikTok users can only upload short clips, YouTube videos can be longer, thus providing the content creators more space to talk about all the functionalities of the product.

Another key difference of YouTube from other platforms is that it has the power to direct traffic to your website while educating the audience about your brand through a reputable person. This can be done with a well-thought-out YouTube influencer marketing campaign, promo codes, and unique offers. You can even host live streams to further engage your audience just make sure to explore the difference between lossy vs lossless compression to guarantee ensure your live streams maintain high quality.

Here are some examples of YouTube influencer marketing campaign types you can implement:

• Product reviews;
• Day-to-day vlogs;
• How-to videos and product guides;
• Unboxing videos.

As you work towards growing your online store, B2B influencer marketing should have a prominent role in your business playbook. While this may seem costly, note that there are different types of influencers: nano, micro, macro. Start with influencers who are ready to meet your budget, and move to bigger ones as your sales grow.

2. Make FAQ and How-to Videos

Before making a buying decision, when people come across a product, they start to research it. And chances are that research will start on YouTube. So, when you create or buy a YouTube channel for your ecommerce store, invest time and effort to give as much information as you can about your brand.

An FAQ video where you answer key questions related, let's say, to the shipment, return policy, quality of the product, customer support, and the warranty can go a long way in establishing trusting relationships with your potential customers.

Another type of video you can make is the how-to video. This is one of the popular YouTube trends you should follow if you want to educate your viewers. Tutorials or make an explainer video  on how to use your website to purchase a product and how a specific product works are both valuable videos your audience is sure to appreciate.

3. Partner With Compatible Brands

It's true that the online world is crowded with brands trying to establish themselves and gain their share of the market, but it's a misconception to believe that all of them are your competitors.

There are many companies out there that may have a similar target audience and values, but they are selling different products. Partnering with such brands gives a powerful opportunity for cross-selling.

Finding those companies and partnering with them on YouTube is very simple: you reach out to them for a collaboration, and then both channels make videos featuring each other. This allows both channels to tap into the subscriber base of the other brand and showcase their offering.

One example of such an effective campaign is the GoPro x Red Bull collaboration:

Again, you don’t have to start collaborating with big brands! Partnerships with smaller brands are also a great place to start as you work towards growing your brand. Make sure your team is also on the same track. So whether you have a big marketing department or you conduct all types of business operations on your own, leverage the talentful workforce you have. Consider implementing management tools like FactoHR, BambooHR, and others to simplify this process.

A great example of it is a collaboration between Justine Leconte and Jenny Mustard, fashion influencers. Apart from being social influencers, they both have their small brands: Justine is a fashion designer, while Jenny is a writer.

As part of the collaboration, they made a video when they answer 10 commonly asked questions. One part of the video was on Jenny’s channel and the second part was on Justine’s. This gave both of them an opportunity to promote themselves among an already interested audience without risking anything.

4. Embed Videos In Product Pages

When it comes to ecommerce shopping, only around 3-4% of the website visitors make a purchase. While there may be different reasons for that, incomplete product information may be one of them. Unlike traditional retail stores, with online shopping, customers don’t have the chance to see, even sense the product before purchasing, and this may result in a lack of trust.

Including a video of the product on the product page can be an effective solution to this problem. 73% of shoppers say that watching a product video makes them feel more confident about purchasing the product, as they can see the product in action.

One of the simplest ways to incorporate a video into your product page is to upload the video to YouTube and embed it on your site.You can also embed YouTube widget on website using video aggregator tool. By embedding YouTube videos on your website, you can provide your visitors with valuable information about your products or services, and help them make a more informed decision about whether or not to purchase from you:

• Every time someone watches that product video on your website, it will count as a view on your YouTube channel, growing it. And on YouTube, more views equals more visibility as it will let the website algorithms know that people find your content valuable, which can help you with your YouTube SEO efforts.
• The YouTube player is well-optimized to work on different websites. The loading time is short, which is key in the case of online retail as 40% of customers will leave the website if it doesn’t load in 3 seconds.
• At the end of your video, YouTube suggestions pop up that show other clips on your channel. They can grab the attention of the customers and get them interested in other products in your store, thus driving more sales. Therefore, it’s important that you spend time creating quality videos and eye-catchy YouTube thumbnails.

Product videos are essential for Internet businesses. They inform the customers about the product, how it functions, answer potential questions, and increase their trust towards your brand.

5. Use YouTube Metrics to Inform Your Strategy

As on any other platform, the performance of your content is crucial for the success of your campaign, and YouTube is not an exception. Therefore, it’s crucial that you always keep an eye on the key YouTube metrics.

When thinking of YouTube metrics, many people think only of the number of views. While having many views is, of course, important, it is far from being the only metric brands should consider. The ratio of Likes and Dislikes, follower number, average watch time and view duration, audience retention rate, CTR: these and others can give you important information about how your channel is performing.

You can then use this information to alter and adjust your content. For example, if you start losing viewers after the 8th minute, this may be a signal that your videos might be shorter. Or if a specific type of video has a higher average view time, this may be the content type your viewers are interested in.

YouTube analytics gives you a powerful range of tools for performance management and analysis. They can be accessed from the setting of your channel.

Then, from the “Analytics” section you can choose the dates for which you want to see the performance of your channel and dive into understanding the performance results.

Take your time to understand how YouTube analytics works. Regular performance analysis can give you valuable insights into how you can improve not only your channel performance but drive more traffic to your ecommerce website and ultimately boost sales.

Conclusion

More and more brands are actively using YouTube for promotional purposes, and there is a reason for that.

If used correctly, this platform offers a lot of potential for ecommerce brands to promote themselves. Take your time to understand the platform, as well as the desires of the users better. Learn how you can leverage this information to the benefit of your business, and the results won't make you wait for long.