Marketing your YouTube channel is key to building a loyal audience. A larger, more engaged community provides more value to sponsors and partners, which puts more money in your pocket at the end of the day.
One important step in this process is to build a brand by shining the right light on your YouTube channel.
With that in mind, let’s review how you can brand your YouTube channel to represent you well and resonate with your audience.
Why use YouTube for influencer marketing?
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of branding your YouTube channel, let’s talk about why it’s the perfect place to dive into influencer marketing. When brands look for influencers to partner with, they don’t just want huge audiences. They want engagement – and YouTubers have it.
YouTube creators have a whopping 49.5% engagement rate. Compare that to other platforms like Instagram, where nano-influencers have the highest engagement rate at just 2.19%.
Also, the fact that 94% of brands plan to increase their video marketing budget over the next year. Why not get a piece of that pie?
Tips and tools to help build your YouTube brand
With all those stats screaming, “Let’s do this!” how could you pass on the opportunity of influencer marketing on YouTube? But before jumping in with both feet, ensure you’re going about it the right way.
After all, 34% of brands still have difficulty finding influencers that fit well with their products and messages. To overcome the hurdles and present your brand as the best fit for the right partner, try these tips and tools.
Prioritize design
Aesthetics matter when you’re using a medium like video, and they start the moment a user sets eyes on your channel. From your avatar to your thumbnails, everything needs to be cohesive and recognizable as your brand.
Tools like a YouTube Thumbnail Maker or predesign YouTube Thumbnail Templates can help streamline your workflow when you’re creating content and keep your videos consistent. Ensure you meet and exceed your users’ expectations with intuitive design and by keeping ease of use top of mind.
Create engaging (and optimized) content
As you begin creating content for your channel, keep in mind the most popular types of video on YouTube:
- Tutorials
- AMAs (Ask Me Anything)
- Product reviews
- Challenge videos
- Unboxing videos
- Behind-the-scenes (BTS) videos
- Explainer videos
- Reaction videos
Cover your bases with content your audience will enjoy, and don’t forget to test, collect data, and optimize your content continuously. What does that mean?
Test: Keep track of the engagement rates of your content and double down on the content that creates the most engagement. If a certain type of content flops, don’t invest additional resources on it.
Optimize: This is multi-faceted. Optimizing content means to improve it. You do this by not only creating better content that your target audience engages with more but also by optimizing your video content better for SEO (search engine optimization) so more people find it.
To optimize your video content for SEO, you’ll want to optimize your title, video description, schema markup, metadata, and more. It sounds like something you need a degree in, but it’s not that difficult once you know how to do it. Just make sure it gets done. Tools like Semrush and Ahrefs come in handy for this part.
7 Steps to Branding Your Channel
Once you’ve created some content and you know how to optimize it, it’s time to build your brand on YouTube. Follow these seven steps to establish a strong YouTube brand and attract eager influencer marketing partners.
1. Consider your industry
As you build your brand as a YouTube influencer, it’s important to consider your industry and what your peers are doing. You want to stand out with unique ideas and content as an online persona. However, studying how other successful creators in your industry present themselves can give you a baseline for what viewers might respond to well.
Some industries, such as technology, have massive YouTube audiences, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only ones that can benefit from influencer partnerships. It all comes down to finding the right fit.
For example, the healthcare industry isn’t among the top ten industries on YouTube. You can identify gaps like this and leverage them. If you are already in the healthcare industry, you can kickstart your first video about CRNA and talk about what process is needed to become a CRNA, how much a CRNA’s salary is, and so forth.
On the other hand, if you’re targeting a more general audience, consider creating content that resonates with everyday experiences. For instance, a simple concept like a lemonade stand can be an excellent way to engage viewers with relatable, nostalgic, and educational content. You can create videos on how to set up a profitable lemonade stand, the basics of entrepreneurship, and even marketing tips for young entrepreneurs.
2. Define your audience
Next, you should define your audience. Ask yourself, who is your ideal customer.
You probably have a decent idea of who you’re trying to target. Still, it’s essential to clearly define your target audience because every type of campaign or strategy relies on strong relationships with engaged potential customers.
Think about who your content is for and why it’s valuable to them. This information will drive your brand’s content strategy, the types of content you create, engagement rates, conversion rates, and more.
Some specific things to note as you define your audience include:
- Target demographics (age, gender, race, etc.)
- Location
- Average income
- Lifestyles
- Likes and dislikes
- Pain points and struggles
- Preferred social media channels (in addition to YouTube)
Determining your target audience helps with branding and provides the information you need to create brand partnerships. When investing in YouTube influencer marketing, businesses want to know that the creator can provide value by promoting them to the right audience.
One way to enhance your understanding is by using an Instagram story viewer to research competitors. This tool allows you to see how competitors engage their audience, helping you identify successful strategies and content gaps you can exploit.
3. Create brand guidelines
Growing your brand as a YouTube influencer requires adopting some business best practices. One of these is creating brand guidelines, which should include an overview of visual and non-visual elements.
Determining the style of your content is very important in the branding process, as it is exactly how your audience will remember you. Try to create an outline for your YouTube content that you’ll never deviate from, with rare exceptions. This is much the same as having a content brief for a blog.
Some things to outline in your brand guidelines include:
- General messaging guidelines
- Notable stylistic elements
- Your brand’s dos and don’ts
- Target video length
- Title and description templates
- Your core values
This documentation can be as formal or informal as you’d like. Informal notes will suffice if you’re running a one-person show, but it’s important to formalize these guidelines if you’re working with a team.
4. Create branded imagery
Part of branding your YouTube channel as an influencer is creating branded graphics to curate a cohesive look across the board. This includes a branded banner, profile image, video intros, video outros, etc. Additionally, incorporating professional headshots can enhance your channel’s professionalism and help build a strong personal connection with your audience.
Your imagery should include your brand’s logo, colors, and fonts to keep things consistent. This will allow your viewers and subscribers to immediately recognize content that belongs to your brand regardless of where they see it.
Having this level of consistency allows you to run influencer campaigns on any social media platform, rely on brand recognition, and drive brand awareness.
Many new influencers have limited resources for their branding, but nowadays, you can find tons of free resources to help you create a professional-looking YouTube channel.
There’s everything out there, from free templates to fonts and design tools. You can even pre-select the images you want to use on your channel and convert them into vector graphics for easy use.
5. Market your channel
Part of building a brand is reaching the right audience, and the right marketing strategy allows you to do just that.
Create an influencer marketing campaign that supercharges your social media marketing and digital PR. It also becomes easier to run programs that cut through the digital noise.
We recommend leveraging tools to automate and streamline your marketing efforts. Using automation software, your team can work more efficiently and have a higher-quality workflow. Using workflow or integration software helps minimize the need for manual labor and puts your company ahead in a fast-paced industry.
Now, reaching your potential audience is not just about creating high-quality videos but also about protecting your online assets and ensuring their security.
Suppose you are marketing an online product through YouTube. If that’s the case, getting a web application firewall makes sense since it can help protect your audience and your platform from potential security threats.
Review what online resources you offer your audience outside your channel and ensure they’re secure.
6. Create a channel trailer
YouTube allows creators to create a channel trailer displayed at the top of the channel. This piece of digital real estate is very valuable because it’ll enable you to capture new viewers’ attention and motivate them to subscribe.
This trailer should quickly describe who you are and what you do so that people can get a feel for whether your content is for them.
7. Optimize your copy
There are several places on your YouTube channel where you can add writing to provide context to your brand as an influencer. You can create descriptions for your channel and each of your videos.
Create descriptions that are informative yet concise to showcase what your content is all about. Since YouTube is a search engine, don’t forget to optimize your copy with keywords your target audience is searching for. You can use AI content generators or an AI writer to help you create the best copy for your YouTube channel.
For example, if you follow a strict keto diet, add these keywords to your video titles and descriptions. This way, new viewers and brands can find your channel when searching for these specific terms.
Final thoughts
Every YouTube influencer marketing strategy is unique.
But by following the steps we’ve discussed above, you can brand your channel in a way that represents you as a creator and connects with your audience.
Are you ready to score some brand deals? The world is your oyster.
