11 Effective Ways to Promote a YouTube Video (2024)

Some may argue that marketing a YouTube channel is akin to conceding that your videos will not gain views legitimately.

If it had been the year 2008, this would have been a valid point.

But since 30 years of its inception, the Internet has become far more democratic than it used to be.

This means that the odds of succeeding for a YouTube content creator are proportional not to their wealth, but their marketing merit.

Nearly 500 hours of video content is posted to YouTube daily, increasing competition and necessitating the best tactic to market your YouTube videos and channel overall.

Fret not, for this is what we are here for!

Read this article until the very end to learn how to promote a YouTube video.

Paid Vs. Unpaid Promotion on YouTube: An Overview

Video marketing has proven to be more successful than its text-based counterpart. And this has led brands to diversify the promotion of their YouTube videos via paid and unpaid channels.

Given below is a quick rundown of the benefits of paid and unpaid YouTube promotion:

Benefits of Paid Promotion

Paid YouTube video promotion refers to the usage of videos by YouTube influencers and personalities to market a particular product or brand.

Paid product placement on YouTube may be extremely profitable for a YouTuber who understands their target audience’s tastes and has a huge viewership.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of paid YouTube video promotion below:

1. Enhanced Traffic

Collaborating with a well-known business may help you grow your fan following and bring in traffic that you would not have had otherwise. This is particularly true if the business wants you to recommend their product within your group.

2. Improved Engagement

If you pay to promote Youtube videos that are popular amongst your viewers or might prove to be beneficial for them, it will lead to improved engagement.

3. Increased Earnings

Several YouTubers that engage in product placement campaigns are compensated in some manner, whether monetarily or in the form of freebies. Paid product placement, on the other hand, boosts channel traffic, which may lead to additional passive revenue.

Benefits of Unpaid Promotion

Organic YouTube video promotion is today’s digital version of word-of-mouth marketing. In the digital age, attracting more eyeballs and convincing them to pay more attention to your content is a tall order. Millions of channels fight for the highest possible exposure, engagement, and reach on YouTube every day.

But despite all the aforementioned difficulties, here are some reasons why organic YouTube promotion still rules the roost:

1. It’s Free!

The best part about organic YouTube Promotion is that it provides a 100% ROI since you benefit without investing any money in paid sponsorships and ads.

This is one of the most important benefits for small-time YouTubers that do not have a lavish budget to dispense. They simply need to play by the algorithm’s rules to emerge victorious in the content landscape.

2. Seems More Authentic

Being devoid of any apparent commercial gains to reap from your content, your YouTube videos may come across as more genuine and hence more trustworthy to your audience. They’d know that your videos were created solely for the innocent pursuit of expression and not to pander to underlying commercial interests.

3. More Long-lasting

Paid promotion on YouTube is constrained by the availability of a budget and the duration of the ad, while sponsorships have their own attached terms and conditions. This reduces the scope for creators to indulge in unbridled content creation. Organic promotion, on the other hand, rewards creators for the long term.

One of the most effective ways to ensure organic reach is by keeping a consistent channel. When your viewers subscribe to your channel, they expect more content from you periodically. Loyalty is built by keeping your subscribers engaged.

How to Promote a Youtube Video: 11 Simple and Effective Ways

Now that we’re through with discussing the different paths available for YouTube promotion, let’s get down to business. Your mind might be plagued by questions like how to boost Youtube videos or how to navigate around the Youtube search algorithms.

Here are some effective tips to achieve effective Youtube video promotion on your own:

1. Formulate Keyword-Centered Video Titles

Optimizing your video content with the correct keywords will enable you to obtain more organic views. Relevant keywords help educate your viewers and the Youtube algorithms about the topic of your video.

Keyword optimization becomes more important when you know that Youtube videos show up in Google search results as well.

Most of the queries on Google search will share Youtube results with you. And some queries, especially the “How-to” ones, will appear even before the blogs from different websites. See for yourself.

This is why you need to think of Youtube videos just like any other form of content while naming them. Besides this, there are many other ways to power up your YouTube SEO game, but creating keyword-centered video titles tops the list.

To see how prevalent a keyword is on YouTube, go to keyword planner and then pick YouTube search on the extreme right.

Note: Remember, just stuffing your title with keywords isn’t the way to go. With keywords, your title should be a natural, human-readable sentence that accurately represents your content. After all, you’re making videos for people, not for algorithms.

2. Use Relevant Tags

After your Youtube video title, next in line are your video tags.

These, together with your title and description, should capture the essence of your video. Consider short-tail SEO for devising your video tags. Tags have a huge part to play when we talk about how to boost Youtube videos.

Tagging your video with trending keywords/phrases will help it appear in relevant search queries. You should focus on tagging the keywords that are trendy and relevant to your content and tell viewers what your video is about before clicking on it.

3. Work on Your Videos’ Content

The SEO magic will only do the trick in promoting your content when your content is engaging and valuable for your audience.

There are multiple video content options you can utilize to provide value to your audience on YouTube. Primarily, you need to remember that the key is to create content that resonates with your specific audience and aligns with your brand. Here are a few types of YouTube videos that tend to offer value:

YouTube videos that tend to offer value:

• How-to Videos/Tutorials
• Product Reviews and Demos
• Webinars or Q&A Sessions
• Behind-the-Scenes Tours

The bottom line is that, when you decide to invest in promoting a YouTube video, ensure the content is worth every penny.

If viewers find your videos worthwhile, they will come back for more and share them with others, increasing the number of views on your future subscriber and view count.

4. Craft the Best Thumbnail Image Possible

Your YouTube video’s thumbnail picture can do marvels for raising your YouTube views, whether it’s on the suggested videos section, the organic results page, or other social media platforms.

If your video includes facial closeups, use high-quality pictures with legible and appealing typography to garner maximum attention.

To further increase video views, make your thumbnail image a visual counterpart to your description and title. You can pick your cues from the thumbnail images provided below:

5. Use Video Cards

Cards are a massively popular YouTube optimization option that you can use to promote your channel’s other videos within your currently playing video. You can make cards that may be used to do the following:

• Boost additional video content
• Increase the number of channel subscribers
• Contribute to a non-profit organization
• Drive traffic and engagement by encouraging people to vote in a poll

Here’s a step-by-step guide to include cards in your Youtube videos.

To increase your video views, employ these cards to urge people to explore your less-viewed content and subscribe to your channel.

Leverage YouTube’s analytics to determine the timestamp at which people quit watching your video. Then, strategically deploy your card ahead of time to ensure that the card gets viewed by more viewers.

YouTube behavioral analytics gives you a wealth of practical information and metrics to guide every move you make to improve the number of views on your videos.

6. Curate End-Screens for Your Videos

End screens are an opportunity to provide all essential information about your channel at the end of your video. You can include link cards to additional playlists, recommended videos, and your verified website to your viewers.

Whether you’re acquiring additional subscribers or connecting your video to other videos, optimization tools can help you increase your YouTube views directly or indirectly.

Go to your Video Manager, click Edit on the video you wish to add end-screens to, and then select End Screens & Annotations. You will then be able to attach the other features as well.

End screens are an excellent method to promote your YouTube videos before YouTube’s algorithm can get working to recommend other similarly themed videos.

7. Run a Paid YouTube Campaign

For those with a budget, marketing on YouTube has become increasingly pay-to-play. You can always use the option to pay to promote YouTube videos if you have enough money to do so. YouTube has numerous ad types to select from:

• Display ads: These advertisem*nts appear in the right-hand sidebar of videos and are only available on desktop
• Overlay ads: These are semi-transparent advertisem*nts that appear at the bottom of a video. They are only available on desktop computers.
• Skippable and non-skippable video advertisem*nts: These advertisem*nts appear before, during, or after a video. Such ads may be skipped after five seconds, while non-skippable ads must be viewed until the very end after which the viewer can watch their video. An example of a non-skippable ad is shown below:

• Bumper ads: These are non-skippable advertisem*nts that must be shown before the viewer can watch their video. They can last up to six seconds.
• Sponsored cards: These are cards that appear within related videos. They may be used to market your other content or other products.

You may use an existing video for your ad creatives or develop something fresh for a particular campaign. The benefit of utilizing an existing video is that you may select a clip that has already been shown to be effective.

If a video has already had a lot of engagement and views naturally, placing sponsored advertisem*nts can help you get even more views and engagement.

8. Curate Playlists

Playlists are an excellent method to persuade consumers to view more of your channel’s work in a single sitting. This is because these compilations are a bit addictive. The next video starts automatically as soon as the previous one finishes.

Playlists are also useful for increasing visibility. Playlist videos are more likely to feature in YouTube’s Suggested Videos section. Furthermore, playlist titles are an excellent location to include keywords.

There are two approaches to curating successful playlists:

• Group existing videos on your channel page with a shared subject. This retains viewers on your channel rather than on a competitor’s.
• Gather videos from additional relevant partners or influencers. This lets your audience know that you are “in the know” and motivates them to promote your playlists.

9. Establish and Lead Your Niche

It’s one thing to promote yourself as an authority in your own videos, but it’s quite another to be an integral part of your specific community. Post comments on other videos to share guidance or criticism.

If there is video content that lacks any essential information, connect it to your content to provide further information. Try being as supportive as possible, and you will be compensated with additional users, which will lead to an increase in subscriptions and, eventually, video views.

10. Host Guests in Your YouTube Videos

Guest YouTubers, industry influencers, or people of importance with their own following, may work miracles for increasing your overall YouTube views.

Guest YouTubing, like influencer marketing, may attract your viewers with renowned industry names and give a fresh and new viewpoint to your brand’s domain.

By including a link to one of their videos or websites in your description, you may establish a mutually beneficial connection.

11. Embed Video Subscription Plugins in Your Blog

While integrating your video into your written blog increases your views, in the long term, it is better to include a subscribe button to your channel.

Subscribers account for almost half of all video views; thus, expanding your subscriber base will offer you a significant increase in video views.

Follow these instructions from YouTube to install the subscription widget and deploy it on pages with your embedded video.

Creating great content is just as important as making sure that it loads quickly for your site visitors. Back all your hosted content with built-in CDN.

Wrapping Up

It takes time to get a lot of views on YouTube. The website has its own regulations in place to guarantee that high-quality video content is always and often available to its viewers. Develop an active subscriber count, and they will account for the majority of your viewership.

If you have a huge following on YouTube already, then you must follow more organic promotion strategies. If you do not currently have a huge following but want to expand your exposure, then you could explore paid promotion tactics within a reasonable budget.

Now that you are ready to start promoting your YouTube video content, sign up to SocialPilot. You can automate your video publishing tasks for all your YouTube channels from a single dashboard. The best part is that SocialPilot magically recognizes if your video is best suited for Shorts or Feed.