If you're involved in comprehensive online business promotion, sooner or later you'll encounter the task of developing and promoting a YouTube channel.
So, why YouTube, and why should you promote videos on YouTube?
- YouTube is the new television, available on every smartphone.
- The platform has an audience of over 2.5 billion users in the world.
- Almost every second buyer checks out product reviews or the information on YouTube.
- Video presentations offer a more detailed way to showcase product benefits and convince potential buyers.
The goals of promoting a YouTube channel often depend on the specificity of the business:
- Some users are bloggers, popular personalities, or artists who want to grow their audience and publish content on YouTube.
- Others are looking to earn money through Google Adsense ad monetization.
- Some simply need to keep their current clients engaged by showing them videos that keep them loyal.
There are many different combinations of objectives, and we regularly encounter all of them in our work.
Let’s start from the beginning, from creating to building a successful YouTube channel.
➊ Creating and setting up your YouTube channel
👉 You can create a YouTube channel only if you have a Google account, and you can have only one channel per account. However, you can invite other users to manage the channel, and you can also manage multiple channels.
👉 Basic channel settings: In these settings, you specify general parameters such as keywords, currency for monetization, age restrictions, channel management rights, and more.
👉 Channel appearance and design: By clicking the "customize channel" button, you'll be taken to the YouTube Studio, where you can manage your channel's look and feel.
Here, you have the opportunity to manage of channel:
- The content of the channel's homepage;
- The channel logo and banner;
- A welcome video for new visitors;
- Channel descriptions and additional links displayed in the banner;
- Playlists and much more.
Once you've filled in all the fields, it’s time to move on to creating your channel’s content strategy, specifically planning out video uploads and strategy.
➋ Filling your YouTube channel with content
If you don’t yet have a video upload strategy, the simplest advice is: don’t rush. The way you start, the trends you set for your audience, will largely determine the effectiveness of your channel's promotion.
Let’s take a look at the main principles of filling your channel with content:
👉 Strategy
You should have a clear content plan for the next three months, understanding how frequently you'll post videos and the ultimate goal of each post.
👉 Posting frequency
Once you start your channel, your audience will subconsciously expect regular updates. If you only upload videos every six months, it’s unlikely that users will subscribe or return when you post new content. Subscribers join channels to receive consistent, relevant content.
👉 Engagement
Encourage viewers to subscribe, foster anticipation for your next video, and motivate viewers to share your content, so every viewer becomes a potential asset for your channel.
👉 Audience communication
Engage with your audience through polls, monitor current trends and preferences, publish the desired content, and enjoy the benefits of meeting audience expectations.
➌ YouTube Studio and YouTube channel analytics
As mentioned earlier, YouTube Studio is a specialized tool for managing the appearance, content, and analytics of your YouTube channel.
Let's focus on one key element: analytics. This is the main indicator of your channel’s growth and success. Opening the analytics page provides you with the following information:
It’s all laid out clearly, thanks to Google’s detailed approach. But which metrics should you pay special attention to?
- Tracking performance trends over time;
- Average watch time per video and for the channel as a whole;
- Subscriber growth;
- Video-specific statistics;
- Impressions from various sources;
- Audience demographics: region, gender, age;
- Video thumbnail click-through rate (CTR).
After analyzing these metrics, your attention will shift to growing your views and subscribers. Like any platform, to achieve results, it’s essential to understand how the system works. Let’s move on to the next point.
➍ Optimizing your videos and channel for search, YouTube ranking factors
The simplest SEO trick to understand how to reach the top is to analyze the current top-ranking videos for specific keywords. Here’s what to focus on:
👉 Title and inclusion of keywords;
👉 The quality of the description;
👉 Number of views;
👉 Recency of the video and its relevance;
👉 Number of subscribers.
These are the surface-level factors. However, some YouTube ranking factors are less obvious and known only to successful channel owners:
👉 Audience engagement within the first 24 hours of publishing;
👉 Watch time;
👉 Likes and dislikes;
👉 Comments on the video;
👉 Embedding the video on external websites;
👉 Traffic from other videos;
👉 CTR in search results.
To give each video a push in views and engagement, you’ll need a strategic boost for its initial performance.
➎ Paid promotion and advertising on YouTube
Once you've created and designed your channel and published your first videos, it’s time to give your content that much-needed boost.
You can promote videos through Google Ads, which offers two main video ad formats:
👉 Instream: Ads play before, during, or after videos on YouTube’s active player.
👉 Discovery: Ads appear in the video suggestion feed, search results, or as recommended content.
Google Ads is constantly expanding options for these formats, offering features such as skippable or non-skippable ads, bumper ads, autoplay, and more. However, Instream and Discovery remain the primary formats.
* Additionally, you can also use different video layouts, namely horizontal and vertical Shorts, which is rapidly developing.
Your choice of format will depend on your video promotion strategy.
Targeting options include:
- YouTube search history (keywords);
- Video topics and genres;
- Potential viewer demographics (custom audiences);
- Website or channel visitors;
- YouTube devices;
- User location.
For more details on YouTube advertising, check out our agency’s services page, as the possibilities are constantly evolving.
By creating a promotional impulse, your video will gain views and improve its ranking on YouTube. Afterward, you can assess whether to increase your ad spend or produce new content with even more engaging material.
➏ Monetization and earning revenue
Earning on YouTube is called monetization. It’s a special program that you can enable in the channel settings. Here are the current requirements for monetization:
👉 1,000 subscribers;
👉 4,000 hours of watch time in the last 12 months.
These requirements may change, so always check the channel settings. Once monetization is enabled, you’ll gain control over the ads displayed on your channel. Be careful not to overdo it, or your channel may lose its appeal 😉.
Based on these monetization requirements, it’s clear that you need both views and subscribers. From our experience, if your channel hits 4,000 watch hours in a year, you’ll likely reach 1,000 subscribers as well.
We hope you found this material helpful. We look forward to seeing you on our channel or as one of our agency’s clients.
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