Win CTR through Intriguing Video Titles

Video titles are the ultimate deal-maker when it comes to YouTube marketing. And most YouTubers witness a surge in their video click-throughs and views owing to killer titles.

However, you must draw bold black boundaries between intriguing titles and clickbait headlines.

While the clickbait headlines may draw significant click-throughs, they might cost you an increased bounce rate and faded trust.

So, some key components to a good YouTube title include:

• Relevance with the video content (your audience will appreciate it the most)

• Punch words to generate curiosity

• Focus keywords to grow search relevance

Let's drill down to understand the art of title-making with the help of some good examples:

A popular YouTube channel, WATOP, uses quirky titles for its videos to arouse curiosity. And the video content justifies these titles.

These title topics revolve around "unbelievable" or "crazy" facts that make the audience want to quench their curiosity.



Another channel named "123 GO!" engages its audience with DIY Tips, Hacks, and Fun-related keywords in its video titles.



The recommended character length for YouTube headlines is limited to 55 characters.

Meanwhile, you can use tools like Sharethrough Headline Analyzer, CoSchedule, and Answer the Public. These help you analyze your titles and provide relevant headline suggestions for your videos.

Analyze and Implement YouTube SEO

While YouTube is the 2nd most popular search engine, following the mighty Google, it also attracts significant traffic from Google searches.

What's delightful to learn is that YouTube videos appear for 70% of the top most searched terms on Google.

Whether product reviews, "how-to" queries, hacks, or DIYs, YouTube videos are most likely to appear.

Here is a glimpse of the search result page for a common iPhone comparison query:



So, when you plan your YouTube SEO strategy, reassess it for Google Searches too.

Some crucial YouTube SEO practices that you must include:

• Optimize Video Title and Description: As you optimize your video titles for CTR, add relevant focus keywords. Tools like TubeBuddy and vidIQ help you with YouTube-specific keyword research. These keywords must also go in your description.

• Use Keywords in Your Video: Mentioning your keywords and adding them to your video transcript pushes your video's search visibility.

• Build Engagement: Akin to Google, which uses authority as a crucial ranking factor, YouTube considers engagement metrics to determine rankings. So, encourage views, likes, comments, sharing, etc.

• Employ Relevant Tags: It is good to represent the context of your videos using tags. YouTube allows you to add many tags that align with your video category

• Define Categories: Add your video categories and tell YouTube your preferred target audience.

Steal Attention and CTR with Engaging Thumbnails

YouTube is inevitably the most competitive video-browsing platform. And you cannot expect the viewers to settle down for half-baked efforts.

Your video title and thumbnail image must be a perfect hook for your users.

By default, YouTube uses a screenshot from your video clip to display as the thumbnail. However, this image might fail to represent the context of your video.

And so, you must craft a custom thumbnail that hints at your video's context.

Moreover, with a long list of image editing tools, it is easier to make custom thumbnails than ever.

Some tools that come in handy are Canva, Stencil, BeFunky, etc. Customized thumbnails represent professionalism and your creativity too.

Heck, see how these YouTube channels encourage you to click through their videos with custom thumbnails:

Re-promote and Interlink Your Videos

YouTube is a great platform for promoting niche-specific video content. So, if you create videos around a particular niche, you might witness an inter-relation between some videos.

Here you have the opportunity to cross-promote your old videos through new videos. You can directly place the link of your old videos using the 'i' icon into the new content.

Moreover, your video description offers you sufficient space to showcase the link to various old videos.

Ensure whenever you link or cross-promote any other videos within your new videos, define CTAs around them.

For example, you can ask your viewers to check an old linked video for more information on a sub-topic.

Moreover, add the video's title alongside its link whenever you add an old video in the description.

Here is an example of how Ahrefs YouTube channel makes learning easy for its viewers through cross-promoted links:

Encourage Engagement across Your YouTube Community

YouTube considers the engagement metrics on your videos as important ranking signals.

What's more, to understand is that YouTube is no less than other social media communities.

And the community scrutinizes the likes, views, watch time, comments, etc., on your videos and channel.

You can enhance your community presence by engaging with your audience and subscribers. This includes:

• Responding to the user comments

• Liking the user comments

• Pinning your favorite comments to the top

• Thanking your subscribers and users for the love and support

Many successful YouTubers are quick to engage with their community in the comments. And this practice is strongly appreciated by their supporters and subscribers.

Here is an example - Here, a popular YouTuber Nathan Gotch interacts with his audience and appreciates his support in the comments:

Don't Shy Away from Introducing Contests and Giveaways

Users love to earn rewards and giveaways from their favorite YouTubers. Moreover, rolling out giveaway contests helps you attract a significant number of new subscribers.

The screenshot below shows a hotel contest to increase awareness and customer attraction through YouTube on mother’s day eve.



Make it easy for the users to take part in your giveaway contests. They could simply like your contest update, comment with "I want to participate," and subscribe to your channel. And now, they could officially submit their entries for the contest.

Also, make your contests engaging, fun, and rewarding.

For example, attracting user-generated content is a good way to make your contests a hit. You can choose among the most liked user-generated content and plan giveaways and rewards.

Also, ensure:

• You do not violate YouTube's policies

• You are not investing too much money in contests without any substantial gains.

A thoughtful way to attract engaged users is to offer giveaways and prizes that reflect your brand. This would curtail a significant amount of traffic just for freebies.

What's more, you should consider whether - Are you reaping good growth out our your giveaway investments?

So, giveaway contests might grow your subscriber list. But, if these new subscribers do not engage with your content, they might be here just for the giveaways. And so you can plan your marketing ROIs smartly.

Draw Traffic to Your Channel from Other Digital Channels

While you try to grow the exposure for your YouTube videos, you must also look for newer avenues. These can be your blog platforms, website, forums, etc.

You can embed your YouTube videos in your web pages to gain viewers from these pages. Just hit the share button in the below video to get the embed code. Add it to the backend where you want it to appear on the blog.



Moreover, adding videos to your pages helps you improve the engagement metrics of a page. These pages generally have a lower bounce rate, and search engines like well-drafted rich media content.

Further, akin to your link-building activities, you can align off-page activities for your YouTube videos.

Pitch your YouTube video links as rich media opportunities for relevant external blogs.

You can share your YouTube links across forums and micro-blogging platforms. This allows you to win referral traffic from these sites.

Create Engaging Series and Leverage YouTube Playlists

Give your subscribers and viewers a reason to keep returning to your channel by creating a series. A video series around a specific theme or topic helps you attract recurring traffic.

For instance, Ahrefs uses the YouTube series approach to create an "SEO Tutorial" series. The YouTube channel breaks down its SEO lessons in videos that attract a loyal following. Here is a glimpse:



With the YouTube series videos, you no longer have to rack your brain for ideas for every new video.

Your audience is more likely to subscribe to your channel for updates about the latest additions to your series.

Creating playlists is another crucial approach to getting viewers hooked on your YouTube channel.

These playlists keep your channel organized if you have an extensive list of videos on your channel. You can simply group related videos under specific playlists.

Playlists also encourage viewers to binge-watch through the list of videos rather than just watching a single video.

Also, users can easily find their favorite videos without a tiring search process. Here is how Peter McKinnon arranges his playlists to showcase his photography skills and tutorials:

Grow Your Audience through Creator and Brand Collaborations

A smart strategy that you witness with many successful YouTubers in common is creator and brand collaborations.

Popular YouTubers from different or inter-related niches come together every once in a while to produce amazing content. And these collaborations are often welcomed and appreciated by their fans.

This approach is nothing less than a symbiotic relationship. Here each YouTuber gets exposure to a new audience.

Moreover, the new audience already loves and trusts the content creator with whom you work. Hence, it becomes easier for you to gain new subscribers through creator collaborations.

The first step to your collaboration journey is finding the right partner. Look for partners with similar interests and an audience that resembles your target audience.

Here is one successful creator collaboration story:

Becca Hodgekins collaborated with Alfie Deyes to create a delightful experience for their fans. The video was all about fun and laughter and gained popularity for both YouTubers.

Brand Collaborations
Successful brand collaborations work amazing for both the YouTuber and the brand.

A brand is likely to gain advertisement benefits and leads from this collaboration. Meanwhile, a YouTuber can quote his advertising charges and gain new subscribers from the brand's list of followers.

Also, ensure that your choice of brand also resonates with your subscribers.

Promote Your Channel through Paid YouTube Ads

A sweat-inspiring competition marks YouTube. So while you want to win on YouTube, you must combine organic promotions with paid marketing.

So, you can plan paid YouTube ads based on several ad formats like:

• Overlay Ads: These are a type of display ads that are visible as semi-transparent ads at the bottom layer of YouTube videos. These types of ads only work on the desktop platform.

• Display Ads: You can see these on the right-hand sidebar of YouTube videos. These ads are visible only on the desktop platform.

• Bumper Ads: These are non-skippable, 6-seconds ads that appear at the beginning, end, or during the video.

• Skippable In-stream Ads: These ads may appear at the starting, at the end, or during the video. The viewers can skip these ads after 5 seconds.

• Non-skippable In-stream Ads: You can place these video ads at the starting, end, or during a video. The viewer cannot skip these 15 seconds ads. And he can continue watching the video after viewing the ad.

• In-feed Video Ads: These ads show up on the YouTube search results page, alongside YouTube's 'Related Videos' or YouTube mobile homepage, etc. These ads display a video thumbnail along with the ad text. A viewer can click on this thumbnail to watch the promoted video.

• Outstream Ads: These mobile-only video ads start playing without sound. You get the functionality to unmute the sound. And these ads show up on Google video partner sites.

Earn Referral Traffic and Popularity through Other Social Channels

Video content is the most preferably consumed content on social media nowadays. This type of content drives you huge engagement and conversions.

Other social platforms are the next best place to promote your YouTube content.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter have a high video consumption rate. So, whenever you post a video on YouTube, you can then share the link of your video on these platforms.

The below screenshot shows how you can embed a YouTube video URL in the stories.



Consider creating your social media profiles on all the popular social media platforms. And then, you can smartly place your video links and clips in feed posts and stories on other social platforms.

You must use relevant keywords and hashtags while sharing your YouTube links to gain better visibility.

Also, use mini clips and a link to the main video to gain better engagement.

Take YouTube Live Streaming and YouTube Shorts Into Account

Live videos have been gaining huge engagement on many social media platforms. Some of these platforms include Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

While the feature has already been on YouTube for a long time, it has recently started attracting creators.

More and more brands and creators are representing their creative side using YouTube Live Videos.

Live videos allow brands to showcase the human side of their business. And the viewers do not expect you to display next-to-perfect professionalism with your live videos.

Instead, these videos are more organic and raw. And these aspects make them all the more intriguing.

Take a look at the below screenshot showing a live video live-streamed by thousands of audiences who are also actively engaging through comments on the right.



Here are the most popular type of live video categories on YouTube:

• Live Product Demonstrations
• Live Announcements (New product launches, event information, new posts, etc.)
• Live Webinars
• Q&A Sessions
• Video Tutorials

Here is Google's introduction to live stream.

YouTube Shorts

The short-form video content has been the show stopper for most social media platforms. And YouTube follows the trend with its individual YouTube Shorts feature.

YouTube Shorts help you gain huge engagement and views to your channel. You can hint at your video in YouTube Shorts and drive traffic to the main video.

Lack of Branding Consistency on YouTube Channel

A common mistake we regularly encounter while assessing YouTube marketing is faded brand consistency.

The below screenshot shows a firm entering YouTube back in the 2010s but has failed to leverage the platform.



Brands must understand that users view your YouTube channel as a comprehensive entity. And they must feel the familiarity of engaging with a brand.

That said, you must ensure to promote brand consistency for your YouTube channel. This can be in the form of a branding-inspired channel art that compliments your profile.

Moreover, the channel should convey your brand's ideology. You must create a brand-oriented video that showcases your offerings (products & services). And it must reflect the uniqueness of your brand.

You can further embed the same video on your website to grow engagement. Your video thumbnails, video ads, and ad imagery must also reflect your brand identity.

Failing to Employ Comment Moderation on YouTube

A mistake often ignored by many brands and YouTubers is neglecting content moderation.

You may think that a good video will work irrespective of the comments. However, when a user engages with a video, he is likely to check the comments too.

And if any comments defame your brand or trash-talk about your video, you can flash them for review.

Look at the screenshot below, a well-known brand ignoring the customer sentiments in the comments section.



These comments have the potential to trigger a negative sentiment in your viewers. And so, you must bring comment moderation into practice.

Moreover, you must engage with the comments to respond to queries or confusion. Also, show your appreciation by liking or responding to positive comments.

Though these comment reviews and engagement practices will demand some effort, they are worth it. YouTube considers increased engagement and positive sentiment a valuable factor for your rankings.

Not Conveying the Value of Your Video in the First 5 Seconds

Akin to any other social media platform, the attention span of a visitor on YouTube is short.

And so, users won't care to figure out the value they can draw from your video by themselves.

That said, you cannot keep your viewers guessing about what's in for them. And you have to engage your viewers by introducing the value you offer within the first 5 seconds.

Unless you fail to define the purpose of your video, viewers are most likely to abandon the video midway.

For instance, In a video from Wired, a former FBI Agent explains "How to Read Body Language." The value you can draw from the video is conveyed in the first 10 seconds of the video. And it is convincing enough to keep users hooked throughout the entire video.

Failing to Optimize Your YouTube Videos for Search

It is important to think of YouTube as a search engine cum social media platform. The way users browse through YouTube is different from other social channels.

Users on Facebook and Instagram usually engage with the accounts they follow and their friends. Moreover, they do not actively search for queries or brands on these platforms.

Meanwhile, consumers use YouTube as a search engine to find the content of their choice. And therefore, it is important to optimize your channel for search.

Some YouTube SEO Best Practices Include:

• Include keywords in your YouTube video title and descriptions.

• Also, use long-tail keywords and keyword synonyms in the description. These reflect natural user queries and get you better visibility on YouTube and Google Search.

Take a look at the below screenshot of Neil Patel having the most relevant keywords in the description.

• Define the category of your video to reach the right target audience.

• Add plentiful relevant tags to your YouTube video while posting.

• Another good practice is to add SRT or subtitles file to your video. This creates a readable transcript for YouTube search bots. And it grows the search value of your videos owing to the keywords used in your video.

Making Videos that Fail to Convey Your Marketing Pitch

While some brands dive deep into the engagement potential of their YouTube videos, they fail to weave its marketing aspect.

So, your videos must not only entertain and engage your target audience but encourage them to take action.

And here is where your marketing pitch comes into the appearance. Your YouTube marketing pitch must take up valuable space in your video scripts.

And your videos must have a storytelling approach and a clear call to action.

Some of the common brand marketing video categories include:

• Testimonial videos where users share their experience with the brand.

• Product review videos where influencers share their genuine experience with a CTA.

• Brands talk about a specific pain area and pitch their offering as a solution.

• Brand story and trust-building videos

• Influencer collaborations and video commercials

Below is a motivating video from HRX, a clothing brand dedicated to gym and sports apparel. The video motivates you to turn your defeats into success. And it incorporates its brand offerings subtly in the video. Thus, instigating an aspiration for the brand's products.

Fading Your Growth Owing to Inconsistency

While most brands wish to leverage the perks of organic marketing on YouTube, they fail to do so. And one of the most common mistakes they make is failing to follow consistency.

Consistent posts weave the right experience for your subscribers. They keep coming back for new posts and are more likely to subscribe to your channel.

The below screenshot shows a business channel uploading consistent content to engage with the audience.




Consistency also reinforces a significant familiarity with your brand in the users' minds. So, you must plan your posts daily or same time each week.

YouTube also considers this consistency as a part of its ranking algorithm. And being inconsistent would result in a loss of subscribers and a collapse in YouTube search rankings.

Here are some best practices that help you grow on YouTube:

• Follow a consistent post schedule
• Space out your posts for daily or weekly posts
• Plan the right length of your videos
• Add your post schedule to the About part of the channel and the channel's trailer
• Plan the post timings to coincide with the time zone of your target audience

Failing to Analyze & Optimize YouTube Performance Metric

You might be consistently posting on YouTube and still fail to witness significant growth. Here many brands are too focused on the content they produce. However, they fail to analyze what content brings them the maximum reach and value.

So, you must think of YouTube marketing as a data-backed strategy than a mere marketing channel. You can track engagement, measure clicks, encourage conversions, etc.

Some of the important metrics that can help you plan your YouTube strategy include:

• The source of the traffic to your YouTube videos

• The best-performing keywords for your YouTube channel

• The top-performing videos on your channel as shown in the below screenshot

• The engagement metrics (the likes, subscribers, comments, and shares)

• The average watch time on your videos

• The content category that performs the best

Inadequate Marketing Strategies for YouTube Videos

YouTube is inevitably one of the most popular business promotion platforms. However, many businesses restrict their YouTube marketing efforts to creating and posting videos on the platform.

This approach limits the reach of your videos, and you might witness little to no traction. That said, you need to have a comprehensive YouTube marketing strategy.

Here are some marketing tips to bring into play:

• Optimize your videos for SEO best practices to grow searchability and visibility

• Embed YouTube videos on your website pages and blogs

• Pitch YouTube videos as rich media content for relevant external blogs

• Share your YouTube videos on other social platforms to gain popularity and traffic, as shown in the below screenshot

• Utilize the description and "i" button feature to cross-promote other videos on your channel

TubeBuddy

Pricing

About

TubeBuddy comes as a browser extension and an iOS/Android app to assist you with your YouTube SEO. Whether it is YouTube-specific keyword research, setting YouTube Cards, or A/B testing, TubeBuddy is your go-to buddy. It helps you accelerate the video posting method and helps you with growing subscribers.

Key Features

• Advanced Keyword Research: The tool helps you find the best-performing keywords for your YouTube video.

• Video Title & Tags Optimization: You can search for the best performing video topics in your category and create optimized titles and tags.

• Bulk Processing: TubeBuddy assists you with making bulk actions over multiple videos. These include Bulk Copy Cards, Bulk Copy End Screen, Bulk Delete Cards, Bulk Thumbnail Overlays, etc.

• Video A/B Testing: The tool helps you A/B test titles, thumbnails, descriptions, keywords, etc.

• Data & Report: Assess your YouTube video metrics, check channel health, monitor comments, do competitor analysis, etc.

VidIQ

Pricing

About

VidIQ is an AI-powered YouTube marketing tool that guides you through your channel growth journey. The tool assists you with topic research, daily ideas, keyword research, and SEO. Moreover, it brings detailed video performance and channel metrics. You can do competitor analysis, take bulk actions, and even create custom thumbnails.

Key Features

• Scorecard: This feature helps you get end-to-end YouTube channel metrics. This includes views per hour, top devices, countries, social traffic, SEO score, etc.

• Keyword Tools: You can perform advanced keyword research for your YouTube videos. The tool offers you main keywords, related keywords, tags used by your competitors, etc.

• Bulk ProcessingDaily Ideas: This AI-powered feature offers daily video ideas relevant to your channel. Moreover, it showcases the performance potential of each idea (high, medium, low).

• Competitor Analysis: The tool allows you to compare your channel with your competitors and draw insights.

• Productivity Tools: Produce bulk actions like copy/edit cards and end screens, reply to comments, meta export, etc.

Canva

Pricing

About

Canva is a feature-rich design tool that helps you create custom thumbnails, images, slideshows, etc. Moreover, the tool has a huge library of templates for images, social media sharing templates, etc. You must also check out its royalty-free video templates to assist your YouTube video.

Key Features

• Thumbnail Templates: You can design custom YouTube video thumbnails from the huge template library.

• YouTube Video Templates: Canva offers a huge repository of video templates to make your YouTube videos professional. These include the Welcome Screen, Ending Screen, B-roll Shots, Vlog-inspired Templates, News Video Templates, etc.

• Image Beautification Tools: You can use Canva to create and beautify your channel art and even produce slideshows.

Unbox Social

Pricing

Unbox Social offers custom pricing based on your choice of products and business size.

About

Unbox Social empowers your business to make data-backed decisions with rich YouTube analytics. Moreover, it offers three types of products – influencer marketing, competition tracking, and social media analytics. The tool also assists you with other social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Key Features

• Influencer Marketing: You can search for your brand's most valuable YouTube influencers. Moreover, you can track influencer campaign metrics and reports through Unbox Social.

• Competition Tracking: This tool keeps you updated with the latest competitor's posts and analytics. You can compare your YouTube campaigns with your competitors and the industry benchmarks.

• YouTube Analytics: Unbox Social produces deeper YouTube analytics for you. This includes engagement metrics, audience demographics, video performance, etc. You can generate custom reports using this tool.

Vyond

Pricing

About

Vyond is a smartly-designed online animation software that helps businesses build professional animated videos. The software has templates, characters, and designs for several industry types. Moreover, these animation or explainer videos help you with sales, marketing, training, etc.

Key Features

• Marketing Videos: You can use 2D characters, templates, etc., to create videos for YouTube marketing campaigns.

• Training and e-Learning: You can use video-based storytelling to create training and e-learning videos.

• Sales enablement Videos: You can build animated videos to showcase your brand's value proposition. The Vyond team offers live chat and support with their offering.

Animoto

Pricing

About

Animoto is a feature-rich online video editor that allows you to create and edit videos for YouTube. You can use several templates and access the photo & video stock library to create professional-looking videos. Moreover, Animoto simplifies the video-making process with its drag & drop functionality.

Key Features

• Stock Library: Animoto makes video-making resourceful with its meticulous stock library of photos and video clips. These resources are sourced from Getty Images.

• Upload Media Seamlessly: You can easily drag and drop your photo and video files and arrange sequences in the project.

• Anywhere Anytime Access: This cloud-based video editor allows you to resume your work from anywhere.

• Music Library: Animoto's music library bestows you with 3000+ licensed music tracks. Add these to your videos with confidence.

Tubics

Pricing

About

Tubics is an intelligent YouTube SEO software that helps you with topic research and video optimization. The tool offers expert insights on your YouTube videos' keywords, length, title, and script. Moreover, it offers deep insights into channel metrics, video performance, etc.

Key Features

• Video Ideation: Tubics runs AI algorithms to suggest your category's best YouTube video ideas. These include topics with high search volume and low competition.

• Video Creation Assistance: The smart tool provides insights on the best keywords, tags, video length, etc.

• Video Optimization: Tubics analyzes your existing videos for data-driven SEO recommendations. It includes suggestions for title, description, tags, etc.

• Reporting: You get a 360-degree look at the individual video performance and channel metrics.