YouTube is one of the most versatile and exciting marketing platforms available today. This book is your guide to putting YouTube to work for you so that you can grow your business, tell the world about your brand, generate leads to sell more products or services, and reach new audiences who want to hear from you.

Chances are, you’ve already tried traditional marketing approaches, such as print, radio, TV advertising, or digital marketing. Maybe you’ve run some ads on Facebook or even set up a paid search campaign with Google. YouTube is often one of the last digital channels that marketers tackle. Why? Well, making video seems hard, and YouTube is pretty vast, so where do you start?

With this book, of course! This book demystifies the idea that YouTube is more challenging as a marketing platform and provides you with all the answers to your questions.

One thing is certain: YouTube is an indispensable part of the marketing mix. It’s the world’s largest video platform, has 400 hours of content uploaded every minute, and more than 1 billion visitors every month. You’re a marketer, and the people you want to reach are on YouTube.

About This Book

Even though YouTube offers one of the most sophisticated advertising platforms in the world, this book is a simple explanation of the key concepts, principles, and approaches to using YouTube to your advantage. This book isn’t meant to be read from cover to cover (although you can if you want!) but instead used as a reference that you can dip in and out of, depending on what you need to achieve.

I’ve written this book for all types of marketers, from the marketer who works in the marketing department at a Fortune 500 company, to the independent business owner who wears every hat, to the student of marketing just getting familiar with the landscape.

To help you navigate this book and absorb the key concepts, I did follow a few conventions:

• If I provide an example of how to say something, I use italics to indicate a placeholder, as in your company name, which means that you need to replace the italics with your own information.
• I also use italics for terms that are being defined.
• I also use italics for phrases you need to search for on Google.
• Web addresses appear in monofont. If you’re reading a digital version of this book on a device connected to the Internet, you can click the live link to visit a website, like this: www.youtube.com

YouTube is improving the platform every day, and so things may change, but don’t worry: The principles stay the same, even if a button has moved. This book is as much about the theory and practical principles behind how to use YouTube successfully as it is about providing a step-by-step guide to navigate YouTube’s tools and features.

Foolish Assumptions

I’ve made a few assumptions about you as I’ve written this book:

• You’re a marketer who has specific goals you need to achieve. Perhaps you need to sell more of your products, encourage more signups to a service you offer, to get more people to visit your bricks and mortar store, or want to let more people know about your brand.
• You’ve tried other marketing techniques. Some of these techniques have worked well, while others haven’t performed how you’d hoped. You’re now considering YouTube to see what it can do for your marketing needs.
• You like a plain speaker. While the industry excels at creating overly complicated terms for simple concepts, you’re interested in delivering results. You know that plainly spoken, practical advice with guiding steps is the easiest way to get from A to B. I call out jargon when it’s useful to know but keep things as straightforward as possible.
• You’re willing to give YouTube a go. This last one is the most important assumption I’ve made. Even though I firmly believe YouTube is a crucial part of the marketing mix and that it offers simple solutions to get started, you can easily feel overwhelmed by all the options YouTube offers. My advice is to start somewhere simple. You don’t have to do everything all at once.

Icons Used in This Book

Icons in this book are used to mark important things along the way:

The Tip icon calls out my top tips and shortcuts for success,.

The Remember icon identifies key concepts and foundational principles that you’ll want to keep in mind.

The Warning icon appears to warn you about common mistakes — and the threat of certain doom.

The Technical Stuff icon marks high-level information that you don’t have to know to understand the concept at hand (but you may be interested in it!). Feel free to skip any text marked with this icon.

Beyond the Book

In addition to what you’re reading right now, this product also comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet that gives you pointers on responding to comments on your videos, optimizing your SEO, using thumbnails and titles to get more clicks, using YouTube as a marketing channel, and creating viral videos. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “YouTube Marketing For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.

Where to Go from Here

You don’t need to read this book from start to finish, although you can. Instead, you can scan the table of contents and pick where it makes sense to start. Here are a few more suggestions:

• If you’re completely new to the idea that YouTube is a marketing tool, check out Part 1.
• To find out more about YouTube’s advertising platform, see Part 2.
• For help developing a content strategy, go to Part 3 .
• Check out Part 4 when you’re ready to make a video.
• Make sure you measure the success of your marketing efforts by going to Part 5.