YouTube Video Marketing: Why Your Brand Videos Flop (3 Fixes for Organic Reach)

Why Isn’t Your YouTube Video Marketing Working ?

In the sweltering heat of mid-June,  we received an email from a brand marketer at a mainstream hair regrowth brand. A new client is always exciting, so I was giddy when I was assigned to take care of this one. We agreed to Zoom at the end of the week to discuss an upcoming video production project for their products. I work as a producer at a company that handles social media content production in New York for brands and agencies. The client came to the call with a detailed deck, and I was immediately impressed. A client who has a clear vision for the project ? Yes, please ! The brand marketer had an impressive resume of TV campaigns that were very beautiful, and it was clear that this YouTube video marketing campaign needed to meet visual standards of TV advertising.

Lit by the neon screens, we dug our way through the deck.

BRAND MARKETER : This campaign will run exclusively on YouTube.
ME : Fantastic.
BRAND MARKETER: We want to show that our products are scientifically formulated, and in the next page, you will see that the actor is dressed as a doctor, and we want to shoot in a giant laboratory that evokes our science background … think Star Wars.
ME : Will you be buying media for the ad, or are people going to find the content organically ?
BRAND MARKETER: Paid for a week, then later people should find the ad organically.
ME: Alright. What was the prompt for the script ?
BRAND MARKETER : What do you mean ?
ME: Does the script respond to what your customers are searching for on YouTube to find products in your category ?
BRAND MARKETER: I am not sure if I understand the question.
ME : If people are to find the content organically, they must be searching for it. Was the script informed by data showing what people were searching for so that it responds to those queries ?
BRAND MARKETER: Err … it was informed by our target audience : men in the 20s who were experiencing hair loss …
ME : And that is important. But does the script actually respond to the search queries from YouTube related to hair regrowth ? 

Long silence. It quickly became evident that this YouTube campaign was essentially a TV campaign intended to run on YouTube due to the brand’s lack of budget for a TV media buy. By the end of the review of the creative deck, I was shifting uneasily. This initial call is a make-or-break in winning a client over, and it will determine if there is ever going to be a second call. You want to impress your client with the company’s capabilities and portfolio, and usually, critiquing a client’s creative is just not done. I decided to err on the side of honesty and I decided to express my concerns.

The Problem with TV-Style Ads for Organic Reach On YouTube

The problem with TV-style ads for organic reach on YouTube is multifaceted. Firstly, and most importantly, the script read like a TV commercial as opposed to a YouTube content video campaign that is to gain views organically. In TV commercials, beautiful visuals and comedy gags win the day. I have produced many TV commercials in which we drive the point home using some visual trick or some slapstick comedy. The difference between TV commercials is that you have to watch them; they are forced on you. It is the ghastly contract between you and the TV station that to get to the end of your favorite episode you have to sit through a bear wipe his butt with super soft toilet paper and learn the latest gadgets of the latest version of Jeep.

Why High-Budget Video Productions Don’t Guarantee YouTube Success

YouTube content campaigns that are to gain views organically work in the opposite way from TV. The viewer goes to YouTube to search for answers for queries that they may have. YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine after Google. A YouTube campaign that is expected to garner eyeballs organically needs, amongst several requirements, to provide answers that explicitly answer the queries of the brand’s intended audience.

Secondly, I had concerns about assigning a major chunk of the budget to creating TV-quality visuals for a YouTube campaign. I love producing for high visual sheen, and I pride myself on delivering TV campaigns that are sleek and visually captivating. Several of my campaigns have earned Best Cinematography at prestigious events like the Telly Awards. But if you here’s the catch 22 : the video campaigns that do well organically are not the ones that look the most beautiful, they are the ones that offer precise answers and solutions to problems that their customers are facing. Even if your content looks lush and gorgeous, if it fails to answer customer questions and is not optimized for YouTube SEO, either of these three things will happen :

1. Customers won’t find it, as YouTube will not rank it on Page 1 of YouTube search results.

2. Customers may find it, but they likely won’t watch all of it and bounce off, sending signals to the YouTube algorithm that your video does not satisfy user’s queries, sending signals for YouTube to kick it even further down the search results.

3. A vicious cycle will start to occur with your video – the more people watch only a portion of it the lower its rankings on YouTube search results, which means the less people click on it to watch the more YouTube algorithm marks it as unsatisfactory the more it is pushed further and further out.

I had taken a huge risk at critiquing a client’s creative. The client listened intently, and then, “So what would you advise?” I am going to share here tips that may be particularly useful for marketing managers who may have mastered the art of producing for TV commercials, and have now found themselves tasked with producing branded content for digital platforms, particularly, YouTube.

1. Master YouTube SEO : Start With Comprehensive Keyword Research

A successful brand video on YouTube answers the questions from your target audience, providing useful tips on problems that your audience faces. This satisfies the user intent, but a masterful copywriter will also deftly and organically weave into the answer  how your product or service is the right solution to the problem, creating an educated and informed viewer primed to review your products further, and eventually, purchase.

I have extensively written on how to find trending topics for YouTube videos, and by using platforms like Google Keyword Planner, you will be able to find the phrases and keywords that your target audience is typing into Google and YouTube to find products and services in your category, and you can then create content that addresses these questions directly. The cardinal sin in creating content for YouTube is creating content that no one asked for.

Go to Google Keyword Planner and type in keywords relevant to your niche, and Google will give you other keywords and phrases that are related to your original keywords. It will also give you the monthly volume of the phrases and you can see how much traffic is available per month should you create content that responds to that query. You will also be able to see the keywords’ difficulty and competition level, that is, how easy (or difficult) it is to rank on position 1 page 1 of YouTube after you create the content.  For a new YouTube brand account, you want to pick keywords that have at least 1,000 searches monthly, and whose competition level is “low”. Difficulty and competition will let you know if it will be easy to rank on Google and YouTube for that keyword, and will usually appear as “low” “medium” or “high” level of competition. Keywords that have high volume and low competition are gold, avoid keywords that have low volume – they are not worth the investment, and ones that are high in competition, especially if your YouTube channel is new. Your video will likely not rank, and you’d have wasted your investment.

2.Craft Engaging Video Content Around Your Target YouTube SEO Target Keywords 

Only after performing your keyword research can you then start thinking creatively of content that responds to those searches. How will you creatively integrate the questions that people are searching for into a format that is entertaining is now the work of your copywriter, to create a story line that deftly and neatly answers the questions. If stumped – keep it simple : have a charming, engaging brand spokesperson speak directly to the camera, and keep it fresh with a fast edit, cool motion graphics, and a bouncy music track. This will especially work well in your initial videos, when you are building a community of subscribers. Whenever you have to pick big, bombastic visuals over authenticity – for YouTube, always choose authenticity.

3.Optimize Your Videos For YouTube Success : A Step-By-Step Guide

After finding the correct question phrases which your brand content on YouTube will answer, it is time to write your script, shoot, edit and upload. As one of the leading social media content production companies in NYC below are key important items we check off in the process of YouTube video marketing :

1. Prepare a concise script. This will prevent you or your actors from rambling. When you start rambling, viewers will click away, and that will lower the completion rate of your video. This may trigger the algorithm to “think” that your videos are not the best fit for the query, that is why your viewers are clicking away. That will then push your video lower in ranking, which starts the vicious cycle : lower rankings lead to lower clicks, which pushes the videos even lower and further from Page 1 of YouTube search results.

2. Organically mention the keyword your video is trying to rank for. If the query is “how to slow down balding in your 20s” then include that phrase, and other phrases that are semantically similar in your script. When you upload your su-titles or closed-caption files, the YouTube algorithm will see that your video clearly matches the question in the keyword, and will push it towards the top page of YouTube search.

3. Add subtitles or closed-caption files. An additional advantage of preparing a script is that it will make this part super easy, as you already have the text to use in your subtitle file.

4. Avoid unnatural “stuffing” of the key phrase in your script. You want to sound human and knowledgeable, not like someone stuck on a broken record, repeating the same phrase over and over. If you start sounding repetitive, people will shut the video, give your video thumbs down or leave negative remarks, all of which are signals to the YouTube algorithm that your video is not a good answer to the query in question. This will start the vicious cycle all over again, punishing your video with lower and lower rankings, and lower and lower views.

5. Include the major keyword or key phrase in the title of your video. This will help the YouTube algorithm identify it and match it as the correct answer to the query that your video is responding to. If the keyword you want to rank for in YouTube is “how to slow down balding in your 20s” the title of your video would ideally be something like “Learn How To Slow Down Balding In Your 20s (Plus 5 Really Easy Tips)

7. Include the keyword or key phrase in your video description. Do this in a way that is natural and grammatically correct.

8. When you upload, make sure you choose the correct category for the video. It will help the YouTube algorithm to understand and present it with other videos in your category to audiences that relate well to that type of content.

Bonus Pro Tip: Retool Your TV Ads Production To Include YouTube Video Marketing Versions

A lot of TV commercials incorporate only music, visuals and graphics – think heads of hair swinging, cut to shampoo, and some graphics. A good marketer will upload the TV commercial to the brand YouTube channel after it starts airing. A brilliant marketer will request the production company to shoot for a YouTube edit, which may include slight tweaks to the script. Whilst the same scene for the TV may not include any dialogue, the YouTube version may include some dialogue that is optimized for YouTube SEO. It may mean a few extra takes when filming on the film set, but it will be a good way to make sure your budget gives you creative ads that work for both TV and YouTube.

After your video goes live on YouTube, track your video metrics. Audience Retention will show the percentage of people watching and leaving the video at every single moment of the video. The parts with the highest retention are fertile ground for topics for future videos. By honing in on the parts that people are engaging with the most, you may improve the retention of future upcoming videos. This is especially so as YouTube algorithms will recommend your upcoming videos to people who have watched your past videos, so serving them more content that they have shown to engage with may yield higher Retention rates.

Sample Case : Nutrition Brand Selling Vegan Plant Protein

Let us put our YouTube video marketing work flow into a sample case study. Assuming that you are a nutrition brand, your target audience for your YouTube content may be people looking to lose weight who are looking for weight loss tips on YouTube. Intuitively,  you may “feel” that  YouTube videos should provide answers that explain why protein powder is good for weight loss, how the body digests protein differently from carbohydrates and how that results in weight loss. But you know better, so you do better … You go to Google Keyword Planner to see exactly what is being searched for in your particular category. Below are top searches for content related to protein and weight loss on Google Keyword Planner :

You can further plug these keywords into Google Trends, and select “YouTube” to see how the keywords have been trending over select periods of time. From the keywords above, you now know the best keyword to create your first YouTube video is “how much protein should I eat to lose weight.” It has low competition, but high volume, so your branded content video will have a much easier time ranking for it on the first page of YouTube search results. The title of your video will be exactly the same phrase, and you will include the same phrase in your video description. Your video may feature a brand-sponsored nutritionist, who will speak from a position of genuine  authority. Your script may include phrases such as “how much protein should I eat to lose weight as a man” and “as a woman, how much protein should I eat to lose weight.” These will be integrated organically into your script, and your brand-sponsored nutritionist will include short, personal anecdotes to keep it authentic. Your nutritionist will also regularly back up their claim with data sources, further cementing their professional experience. Additionally, you will do well to have beautiful, clean motion graphics that answer the question “how much.” Do make sure that the motion graphics are in your brand color. You will do even better by  also having an eye-catching thumbnail that attracts clicks, and you can try different thumbnails whilst monitoring the click-thru rate of each before settling into the most optimal one. Failing to do basic keyword research would have you create content for high-competition keywords, or for keywords that have no volume at all.

Not A One Fit All : YouTube Video Marketing vs Instagram, TikTok

I have detailed here tips to help brand managers that may not be as versed with YouTube SEO get quickly acclimated to how producing branded content for the platform is different from producing for TV commercials. This work flow will work for YouTube video marketing, but unfortunately, not other platforms, such as Instagram or TikTok, as their algorithms are different. Did the hair regrowth client award the contract ? The jury is out on that, we are waiting to see.