13 Jan 2017: The Year YouTube Leads the Influencer Marketing Pack
As we kick off 2017, it’s apparent that influencer marketing is no longer on the “wish list,” it has become a prominent piece of the marketing budget for marketing professionals and larger companies. A study in eMarketer said that 85% of companies plan to do one influencer campaign this year.
There will be many articles written about each of the social platforms and why they’re great, but I’m going to start with why YouTube is a must for this year.
YouTube is the video platform and video is right at the top of most effective forms of digital marketing.
Influencers are people we follow who have earned our trust and attention. Subscribers are notified when influencers’ videos go live and Influencers also are able to provide insights to their channel, ie the average time videos are watched, engagement, etc.
A quick comparison with other forms of online advertising:
Display banners on average are visible 1.2 seconds. Not much time to tell a story.
Pre-roll video can often be skipped at :05 (for a :30 ad) or watched for :-15. Not much time for most to create an emotional connection, except the likes of a few savvy and deep pocketed advertisers who have high production costs (think Geico).
Videos influencers on YouTube create content that runs on average a few minutes to over 10 minutes. That’s a lot of attention, which means it is a great way to create a meaningful connection between your brand and customer around an authentic video. And, if it’s just a :30 plug with b-roll, the influencer reads it in their voice which resonates much more than a traditional ad.
YouTube is the second largest search engine online, after only Google itself, therefore videos also can reach new prospective customers in addition to their loyal audience.
And lastly, video views continue to accrue in perpetuity.
That’s very important.
Sure, most of the traction is seen in the initial three to five days a video goes live, but what other campaign goes on in perpetuity in a meaningful way?
Display banner campaigns run on a CPM, CPC or CPA are cut off as soon as the campaign goal is met. The same goes for Google Adwords. Sponsored blog posts can earn views overtime but that total is unlikely to be material; why? Searches volume is decreasing as more and more content is discovered on mobile.
But that’s not a problem for YouTube, which is what makes it such a valuable channel for influencer marketing.
So, if you have the resources, try as many marketing channels as you can, but if you only have budget for one, your best bet is YouTube.
No Comments