Research shows your customers are already watching online videos and many of them prefer to learn about products and services through video content. During 2020, the amount of time people spent watching online videos jumped by 43%. Furthermore, 31% of cannabis consumers prefer to learn about products on YouTube today. In fact, YouTube ranked as the second most preferred source to learn about products overall.
In other words, the data tells us that online video marketing must be a priority for cannabis and cannabis-related businesses for two simple reasons – people are spending more time watching digital video than ever and many of them want to learn about products and services through online videos.
How to Get Started with YouTube Marketing
Whether you’re a cannabis business selling products directly to consumers or you’re an ancillary business selling products and services to cannabis license holders, YouTube video content can help you achieve a number of strategic goals, including:
- Raising brand awareness
- Building brand trust
- Positioning your brand as a visible expert
- Educating consumers
- Increasing positive signals for improved social media marketing and search engine optimization results
- Providing proof that your business lives up to its brand promise
- Making your brand seem “human”
- Building emotional connections with your brand
- Integrating visual content into your omni-channel marketing strategy
- Leveraging content repurposing (either from your videos to your blog, email marketing, and so on or vice versa)
- And much more
The key to use YouTube for your online video marketing is to set up your branded channel and start publishing useful, interesting, educational, and meaningful content. Follow YouTube’s rules for creating content related to cannabis and be sure not to break the rules and have your channel taken down.
Remember, your goal shouldn’t be to promote or sell. It should be to educate, explain, entertain, and/or engage.
What to Publish on Your YouTube Channel
Very few people want to watch promotional videos. They see enough ads every day, so not only will avoiding publishing promotional videos keep you out of trouble with YouTube, but it will also make viewers happy.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you can never create and publish promotional videos. Just do so sparingly so people don’t perceive your channel as nothing more than a series of ads.
With every video you create, think about how you can use it to indirectly promote your business. For example, a video about cannabis culture or research could easily connect to the products and services offered by many different types of companies. Hire a great copywriter and let them do their magic to create a great script!
With that said, here are some popular YouTube video ideas to help you start brainstorming your own content plan:
- How-to videos
- Interviews
- Unboxing product videos
- Tutorials
- Behind the scenes at your business
- Customer testimonial videos
- Case study videos
- Product or service launch videos
- Cannabis culture videos
- Research and data videos
- News videos
- Event videos
- Webinars and presentations
- Demo videos
Don’t be afraid to get creative and brainstorm different video ideas that will help you indirectly promote your products and services by providing useful, engaging, educational, and relevant content in video format.
How to Promote and Share Your YouTube Videos
When you publish a new video on your YouTube channel, you need to promote it so people know it exists. The three most important ways to share your video and get more views is to promote it via your brand’s social media channels, your company blog, and your email marketing campaigns. Let’s take a closer look at each one.
Share Your YouTube Videos on Social Media
When you publish a new YouTube video, you can share it to your brand’s followers on all of the social media platforms where you have profiles and/or pages. This includes Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. Depending on the type of business you’re promoting, some social media channels will make more sense than others (e.g., LinkedIn is great for business-to-business sharing but less so for business-to-consumer).
Not only can you share the full video via social media, but you can also break the video up into smaller snippets to give you even more content to share. This shorter video content can perform particularly well on some social media platforms, such as Instagram.
Another opportunity is to create screenshot images of compelling frames within your video and share them separately across your social media channel.
Don’t share all of your assets at once! A single video could create multiple assets that you can use to promote and re-promote it over time.
Write about Your YouTube Video and Share It in a Blog Post
The content of every video you publish on YouTube should be the subject of a corresponding blog post.
Don’t write about the video. Instead, write about the topic covered in the video and offer the video as another way to consume the content. After all, not everyone likes to watch videos, so it’s important to offer the content in written form on your blog (this is also great for search engine optimization).
When you create the blog post, embed the video directly into the post so those visitors who want to view it can do so without leaving your website.
Promote Your YouTube Videos in Email Marketing Campaigns
Email marketing is a great way to ensure your target audience knows your video exists and why it’s relevant to them. Embedding a video in an email marketing campaign is a spam flag, so don’t include any kind of embed code in your messages that would make your videos playable from within a recipient’s email inbox.
Instead, take a screenshot of a great frame from the video and save it as a PNG or JPG image at the size you want it to appear in the final message. Create your campaign in your email marketing platform, and insert the image into the message along with a link for recipients to click and watch the full video.
Ideally, you should link back to your blog post that includes the embedded video if your goal is to get people to your site to look around, learn more about your business, and possibly make a purchase or contact you. On the other hand, if your goal is to increase YouTube subscribers, then the link in the email message should lead to the video on your YouTube channel.
Your Next Steps to Use YouTube Marketing for Your Cannabis Business
YouTube is an important part of the content marketing strategy for all cannabis and cannabis-related businesses. Get started by creating your brand’s YouTube channel, putting together some videos, and promoting them across social media, your business blog, and your email marketing campaigns.
Did You Know? Subscribers to the Cannabiz Media License Database can promote their YouTube videos and other content directly to cannabis and hemp license holders using the built-in email marketing tool. Schedule a demo and see how it can help you connect with verified cannabis and hemp license holder leads in the United States, Canada, and international markets.
