Simon Dutta

YouTube marketing can be quite successful if you know what you’re doing.  The sad fact of the matter is that most people and businesses just don’t know what they’re doing when they put a video on YouTube.  If you have ever felt disheartened by the fact that your video has only had 5 views, or if you’re afraid that your YouTube marketing video is going to be a complete flop, keep reading.  In no time you’ll find out just how you can create a YouTube marketing video that has the potential of going viral.

If you’ve never heard of a viral video before, the best way to explain it is to say that it is a video that almost everyone has heard about, talked about, and seen.  These viral videos have millions upon millions of views.  Take the “dancing baby” or the “Charlie bit my finger” videos.  These videos were uploaded to the internet and went viral in almost no time.

So how did they make this happen?  The first thing to bear in mind is that your YouTube marketing video should evoke some kind of emotion.  You want to make the viewer laugh or cry.  Make sure that your video also has universal appeal when doing this.  The humour that we have in the UK isn’t necessarily always the same as in the USA, and vice versa.  An example of something that has universal appeal would be someone slipping on a banana peel.

A YouTube marketing video should also be short, never going beyond two minutes.  People have very little patience, so it would be quite hard for you to keep anyone’s attention for much more than 2 minutes (think about movie trailers – they rarely go beyond the 1:30 mark).

Here’s a nice part to YouTube marketing videos: they shouldn’t cost you a whole lot of money.  As a matter of fact, you can make a YouTube marketing video for free!  You don’t want to spend a lot of money on a YouTube marketing video mostly because the amount of money that you invest in producing this video may not be worth the poor return on investment.

Then there are of course the typical things that you may want to include in your YouTube marketing video that could increase its chances of going viral.  Make sure that at least one of these elements is included in your YouTube marketing video:

-    A “candid camera”-type of prank
-    Attractive women
-    Children
-    Dancing
-    Music
-    Topical references (but keep it light and easy!)

ABOUT: Simon Dutta has 20+ years’ executive marketing and business development experience spanning 18 countries and 24 industry sectors within start-ups, SMEs and multi-£billion blue-chips. His particular expertise lies in driving revenue growth by: (1) developing products that the market actually wants; and (2) executing customer acquisition and retention strategies that actually work. Simon is a Certified Internet Marketer, Chartered Marketer, and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.  He also sits on the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Regional Board (West Midlands).