Today’s world is often called a video-dominant world. This name speaks for itself. Just give it a thought. It is common for us to consume video content in massive amounts every day for various purposes.
Furthermore, with the development and high accessibility of video streaming tools, boosted by the COVID-19 pandemics, lifestreaming has become common. As YouTube is the world’s second-largest website, its live streams are now an efficient tool for businesses to reach their audience.
As 2 billion people use YouTube monthly, the opportunities are immense. However, attracting thousands of viewers right from your very first stream and holding this high standard for a while is an unrealistic dream.
We understand your natural desire to attract as many viewers as possible to your streams. Moreover, we know for sure it will require a bit of strategy and effort. Therefore, we`ve compiled a guide to amplify your brand’s message on YouTube and increase the number of lifestream viewers in a few simple steps.
Invite your viewers with an email
Live streams are an excellent way to go under circumstances of social distancing. But they can bring total value if you market them correctly. While email marketing is a powerful marketing tool, why not use email marketing tricks to fit your live streaming event?
When it comes to promoting your live stream event, even your email signature software can make a difference apart from sending promotional emails.
Promote with the help of an email signature
Sometimes sending a single promotional email is not enough to reach the target audience. At the same time, a gentle indirect reminder about the upcoming live stream in each of your business emails is much more efficient.
Here several simple ways to promote your live stream event using the space of an email signature elegantly and gently:
- Include a link to your YouTube in your contact details
- Add YouTube icon link to your channel
- Draw signature and accompany it with social media icon links
- Include a subtle call-to-action in the email signature footer.
While organic social media posts don`t allow direct control over the audience your outreach, email lists are always under your total control. Thus, you can make sure people who already know you will be informed.
Create a post on all your social media with the link and time when it goes live
Many YouTube streamers tend to hold live-streaming sessions spontaneously, relying primarily on the participation of their faithful subscribers. However, random live video can hardly help to achieve your business growth and attract new viewers.
Instead, promoting your live streams in advance is far more efficient. Here is when social media come to the rescue as a reliable, accessible, and relatively low-cost advertisement tool.
Apart from posting short video teasers on Facebook, you can take advantage of the digital ads manager and run a whole promotion campaign.
Make Facebook ads
To run a Facebook promotion campaign for your live stream may sound rather complicated. No worries. Everything is much easier than it seems.
While you are well determined to hold a YouTube live stream and you are sure about the exact date, the only significant decision that remains is to set your advertising budget. Right after that, follow these easy steps to make everything work right:
- Choose the campaign objective.
Facebook ads managers presuppose three basic options in this respect: awareness, consideration, and conversion.
- Select your targeted audience
You can choose to target those belonging to your existing audience, a lookalike audience, or audiences by interests.
- Decide the placement of your ads.
You can either choose an automatic placement option across several platforms or the possibility of manual placement on specific platforms.
- Set up your ad.
Creating a Facebook ad allows broadening the audience and reach using the existing advertising materials or creating new ones at any convenient time.
Create archive with past live-streams
According to a recent survey, over 80% of people say they prefer to watch a live video than read social media posts. Live streams attract people as they provide real-time insights. Besides, the social distancing situation played a dramatic role here, as daily YouTube live streams increased by 45% in the first half-year of 2020.
However, as soon as a broadcast ends, what comes next? The value of the video content is predetermined solely by live or not live format. Your further efforts and repurposing of the video after the streaming are more meaningful for the valuable assets of the video.
Therefore, as soon as the live stream stops, make sure a high-quality recording is available for a replay. Undoubtedly, immediate success is so sweet, yet to maximize your video performance, create an archive with all the relevant video streams.
Use retargeting after the stream
Another critical action to make after a live stream is the retargeting of the video viewers. Let`s put this statement into simple words. You can retarget the people who have just finished watching your YouTube live to create a custom audience of quality views.
The most significant advantage of this retargeting technique is that you can target people based on any video view on your channel. Thus, if you manage to provide several educational or entertaining live streams related to the products you want to promote, you`ll be able to cherry-pick the viewer afterward and retarget them with ads promoting the most relevant products.
The most crucial detail to keep in mind is the retargeting frequency. Otherwise, it can up costing too much. The frequency usually depends on the type of product you are selling. However, the optima scheme for beginning is three views per day for the first 30 days period, and then slowly reduce if necessary.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, live streaming will help to increase your exposure and brand awareness. However, live streaming itself requires promotion to work well. Therefore, start the promotion campaign ahead of time.
Furthermore, don`t spare any effort to use the live streaming views for your benefit after the broadcast. With a bit of strategic thinking and action, you will increase the number of your YouTube viewers and hit your streaming goals in due time. Be patient and good luck with your live streaming.
