How to Offer YouTube Marketing Services That Stand Out from the Competition

Most social media practitioners and agencies focus on “traditional” platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter when they’re putting together their service offerings. Some will branch out and offer Pinterest, which is a different type of social platform, but only a few will actually offer YouTube marketing services.YouTube marketing can be a great niche to cut out for yourself, because it’s one that many marketing agencies don’t specialise in or are unable to help clients with. This is typically because YouTube is a social beast all of its own, with its own unique strategies needed to excel, and different types of content that must be made. It’s a lot quicker to compile weekly social media posts for an entire month than it is to pump out daily videos for a client’s YouTube channel.That being said, there’s a definitely need for YouTube marketing services, and therefore it’s something to consider offering as a practitioner or within your agency. In this post, we’re going to take a look at different goals your clients might have on YouTube and how to offer distinct services to help them tackle each one.

Why YouTube?

YouTube marketing is sometimes overlooked, with increasing numbers of brands prioritising native video on other platforms. While native videos do often have benefits of being more prominent in each site’s algorithm and can expand your video campaigns’ reach, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be posting them on YouTube, too.YouTube is-- and has been-- a marketing powerhouse all of its own. YouTube actually reaches more 18-34 year olds than TV networks currently do, and it’s currently the world’s second largest search engine. This is exceptional reach, and it’s reach with a highly-engaged and very loyal audience-- which consists of more than 1 billion users.

YouTube is also content-driven more than other social platforms. People are coming here to sit down in front of the app and watch content, whether they’re looking for something specific or not. This means that they’re ready to watch long-form content if you can give them what they want, which is a huge advantage compared to trying to capture someone’s attention while they scroll quickly by on a feed.YouTube marketing can therefore be incredibly effective for your clients, giving them new ways to establish brand awareness and connect with their target audience.

Understand the Different Uses of YouTube Marketing

YouTube marketing can be used to accomplish very different tasks and goals.Some people will aspire to be YouTube Celebrities, and legitimately make their entire (and very siseable) incomes off their channel; these users may want help getting more traffic to their channel.In many cases, clients needing YouTube services may be looking for video creation or strategy development in order to better connect with their audience and establish brand awareness.When deciding what YouTube marketing services you’d like to offer, it’ll be good to consider the different goals your clients might have.Let’s take a look six different types of marketing services your YouTube clients may need.

Content Marketing YouTube Services

YouTube has strong content marketing ties, and often works a little more like traditional content marketing than social media marketing. The emphasis on this channel is for users to discover content and consume it, as opposed to having the major focus of engaging or discussing even though it’s still an option. This is directly opposed to social media, which just has long feeds of short posts other people are sharing.Because of this, YouTube is a tremendous channel when brands want to seise the opportunity to offer informational, engaging, valuable content that their audiences are looking for. Many brands, however, struggle to know how to do this well.If you offer content marketing services for YouTube, you can help brands build brand awareness and connect with their target audience.Specific service offerings may include:

Strategy development and consultation
Topic development and research
Script writing or preliminary development
Audience and competitor research

These services may be purchased a-la-carte as needed or offered on a continual or retainer basis, depending on how your business model operates and what your clients need.

YouTube Video Creation Services

Love the process of actually getting into video creation in and of itself? While many agencies will only look at optimising the video and its channel for success, some do offer some level of video creation service, too. If that’s your jam, this is a great niche to get into.Video creation services can include any and all of the following:

Video strategy development
Video planning
Script writing or editing
Creating a storyboard for the video
Shooting or creating the content outright
Editing the raw footage and assembling it into something great

If you’re a solo practitioner who wants to offer video creation, it may be best to focus on the technical aspects, but if you’re willing to partner up with someone else or expand, it can be a great part of a larger package that you offer.If you do decide to offer filming services, keep in mind that these will only be available to customers at a convenient geographic location. This is one reason why many agencies don’t offer actual video filming, and may outsource that part of the process to a local crew.

YouTube Video Optimisation Services

YouTube isn’t just about creating videos; it’s about ensuring that those videos are well-primed to perform well in search and increase visibility and brand awareness significantly.Video optimisation services, therefore, are incredibly valuable to brands looking to expand their reach on the platform outside of their current followers. These services typically involve:

Keyword research specific to YouTube
Optimising video titles, tags, and descriptions with keywords
Tweaking scripts and creating SRT files to incorporate target keywords for full search visibility
Optimising your channel in addition to individual videos T

Examples of YouTube video optimization plans

These are typically ongoing services that clients need, though you can have a per/video or per/ten video price point in addition to offering retainers.It’s important to remember that keyword research for YouTube should be conducted exclusively for YouTube; you don’t automatically want to use the same keywords for your videos that you use on your blog, because YouTube is its own search engine and people are using it differently than Google. The aptly-named Keyword Tool is a good option for software that will help you do research specifically for YouTube.

YouTube Channel Management Services

These services are going to be more in line with traditional social media marketing, focusing on channel optimisation and potential engagement management like you might offer for Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.They may include some or all of the following services:

Creating or developing a client’s channel, including optimising it for keywords and audience appeal; this may or may not include banner design or alterations
Uploading ready-made videos that the client sends to you, and possibly optimising them in the process if that’s part of your package
Tackling engagement on the client’s channel and videos, including moderation of and replying to comments as needed. You can use YouTube’s native tools or a third-party tool like Agorapulse for this.

Fortunately, there are a few moderation tools that may make your job easier. You can choose to block trouble users, or always approve their comments if you have them restricted on your channel.

You can also block certain words or link sharing from your comments to keep out hate speech, the names or links of your competitors, or spam in general.

YouTube Channel Promotion Services

Some brands have their content up and running and really just need your help getting more traffic to their channel. This might include video and channel optimisation, but it can also include other promotion strategies to drive users to them.These services might include any of the following, depending on what you specialise in and decide to offer:

Creating, consulting on, and/or executing distribution strategies that may include social media marketing for the video, working it into a content strategy, running ad campaigns, promoting it through a newsletter, and/or influencer campaigns
Running campaigns like on-channel contests designed to attract followers to your content

Channel promotion services are typically going to be hands-on and will almost always involve you running the campaigns you set up for your clients.

YouTube Ad Services

This is perhaps one of the most popular types of YouTube marketing services out there, since so many brands want to take advantage of YouTube Ads’ wide reach and high effectiveness.YouTube mobile ads are actually 84% more likely to hold a viewer’s attention than TV ads, partially because you have a more captive audience and a shorter ad break before the content they’re waiting it out to see.YouTube Ad services will typically involve research, campaign strategy development and execution (though typically not actually filming the ads unless you want to offer it), and then split testing, managing, and providing analytics on the ad campaigns.YouTube Ads are a part of Google Ads, so if you want to focus on PPC services but love social, this is a good way to merge your passions.

You can offer YouTube Ad services in combination with any of the other marketing services detailed above, but PPC and organic content are often managed separately, so don’t stress if you only want to offer one or the other; your clients may be expecting this.

YouTube Ads are often offered alongside other PPC services

Should I Offer YouTube As a Standalone Service or As Part of a Package?

If you look at a lot of general social media marketing packages, most won’t include YouTube; they’re focusing exclusively on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and possibly Pinterest and/or Reddit. This is really because YouTube content relies so heavily on video creation, which isn’t something that the social media marketer can really control or wants to deal with.If you want to offer YouTube as a part of your social media marketing services, you have the option to do this; it will certainly set you apart from your competition. Unless you’re just including engagement management, we’d recommend including YouTube marketing into top-tier packages in order to incentivise higher paying clients to come your way.You also have the option to offer YouTube marketing as a standalone, a-la-carte option that people can add on to other social packages. This gives them the option to source all of their social marketing from one source, but ensures that you’re paid for the intensive work you’ll be doing on this channel.Other agencies and practitioners choose to offer YouTube marketing services exclusively, and not really handle other social channels outside of how it impacts the YouTube campaigns (or at all). This is also an option; YouTube is such a powerful force, but it’s also a specialised one, and the fact that most agencies don’t tackle it means that many clients will be willing to hire you for only this service if that’s all you want to offer.

Conclusion

YouTube marketing services can offer enormous value to your clients, and there are so many different types of services that you can offer. You can dive deep into different parts of video creation and optimisation, focus more on the strategy, or look at video and channel promotion.You’ve got the choice to offer hyper-niched services and only specialise in one or two specific areas, but you can also go big and offer them all. And if you want to go really big or partner up with an agency, you can offer YouTube services in addition to other social services, too.When choosing what services you want to offer, consider the type of companies and brands that you’d like to work with. This will help you shape exactly what you offer and how you promote your agency to that target audience. It’s your agency and your business, after all; you get to make the calls so that you can do the love that you love most (or that pays best!) so you can do great work for your clients every time.Want to gain all the skills you need to execute cutting-edge strategies and get your clients results? Check out our Diploma of Social Media Marketing!

Ana Gotter

Social Media Marketing Specialist

Ana is a strategic content marketer specialising in business, finance, and marketing writing, though she's worked across a range of industries. She works from her home in Orlando with her three dogs.