How to use YouTube to build and grow a business

1. Introduction - YouTube for Business: Hello and welcome to this Skillshare class about how to use YouTube to build and grow a business. My name is Marissa marrow and I will be teaching this class today all about YouTube for business. And if it's your first time seeing me, hello, nice to virtually meet you. Again. My name is Marissa and I am a business owner, a YouTuber, content creator. And when I first got started with my business, my YouTube channel also allowed me to be a digital nomad and the freedom to travel around the world while operating my business with just the laptop and Internet connection, all while leveraging the power of YouTube, I'm really excited for you to dive into today's class because we're going to go over a ton of things that I have learned in the past three to four years about YouTube marketing. Youtube for business and leveraging this amazing platform to grow your business, whether it's an online business or whatever type of business you are trying to market. Some of the things that we'll be going over in this class include the key factors to consider in the beginning, the do nots of YouTube, the different ways to add income to your business by leveraging YouTube, some key factors for YouTube success and the best sales funnels to grow your business with your YouTube channel. So if you're ready, then I'm ready and let's get started. 2. Why YouTube Traffic is the most Powerful: Now let's talk about the YouTube traffic and why it is so powerful. So YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google, the second largest search engine in the world. And it has more than 4 billion hours of user watch time every single month and an estimated 500 hours of YouTube video content are uploaded onto the platform every single minute. Now what's impressive, that is, there are a lot of people on there, there are a lot of liable and there are billions of users out there looking to help you grow your brand and your business online. But I think my favorite part about YouTube traffic is that it's what we call Evergreen. So when you upload a video onto the platform, it is evergreen, meaning it'll be there forever. And anybody could look up a video that was produced four years ago or last year or whenever. And that's the power of SEO or search based optimization, which is what YouTube is. And that's why producing a piece of video content on the YouTube platform is so powerful because it never goes dead and it only keeps growing bigger and bigger over time. The other reason why if you haven't already started your marketing efforts with YouTube first is because of the quality of traffic on there. So we talked about the billions of users and tons of watch time and video content that are being produced and upload it onto the platform. But we didn't talk about the quality of the people on there. This statistic says that 68% of users that are on YouTube right now looking up things are looking to make a purchasing decision. Now that's powerful because this is different from any other type of user on another social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, where they're more there for short-term entertainment and they most likely are not there to actively solve a problem and eventually buy something to help them solve their problem. And this is what makes YouTube so much fun is because with a YouTube channel, you don't need it to be big in order to get very visible quickly and to get paid from the traffic that is going to your channel. I've seen several creators go full-time, meaning they make a full-time living with this YouTube platform with less than a thousand subscribers. Now That's incredible to me how anyone could get started on this platform for free, start uploading content and start to create an audience right away. The other thing I'd love to mention about YouTube traffic is it's not just one traffic source within YouTube. And that may sound kind of weird, but let me explain what I mean with YouTube. There are over ten different traffic sources on the platform. So you have YouTube search, browse features suggested traffic, channel pages direct, unknown, other external. Now you have the shorts shelf, so YouTube shorts is fairly new to the platform, but the cool thing is you can get different views and subscribers from these traffic sources. So it's almost like stacking different traffic sources on top of one another. Like, Oh, I have 5% coming from YouTube search, 10% coming from browse feature is 60% coming from suggested. It is so much fun. 3. Key Factors For Getting Started: All right, so now let's talk about some key factors in the beginning that are crucial when starting your YouTube channel. In the first one is creating your Gmail account. So all you need to do when getting started in to get up and running with a channel is to have a Gmail account, but it has to be a Gmail account. If you don't have a Gmail account, you can easily go to Google and type in create new Gmail account and you'll be up and running within just thirty-seconds of creating that account. And then the next thing that is also very important after that is to convert your YouTube channel into a branded channel. So why this is important and a big step that people miss sometimes is because with a branded channel, it is officially kind of like a business channel so you're able to change your name. So if your YouTube channel is your first and last name with a branded account, you're able to change it to a business name if you would like, and you're able to change the name also in the future. Not only that, a branded channel is very important to the security of your channel because you're able to safely do things like transfer ownership. You're able to safely and most importantly, add team members to the channel. If you want to add a team member to help you upload thumbnails or optimize the video. You can do that. You can give them different permissions and levels of access with each member. So overall, it's great to have a branded channel because it helps you to stay more private and to protect your channel. The other thing is that you really want to niche down a lot of creators in the beginning make the mistake where they believe that getting the most subscribers and views upfront is just to post a bunch of videos and a bunch of different categories and see what sticks. This is not the case with the algorithm. We really need to niche down. And when you think you have a niche, niche down even more. And what I mean by that is if, let's say you are in the nutrition niche, where you're not really in the nutrition niche, it's new. The nutrition itself is this huge field. It says huge industry and market. What makes it a niche is when you niche it down to vk in nutrition and when you niche it down even more to a vegan channel that talks about muscle building and that talks about quick recipes into help you stick to the vegan diet with ease. And so that leads me to my next point about channel pillars is I recommend choosing channel pillars are channeled topics of your niche. So for example, with the vegan nutrition, one channel pillar could be tips for vegan muscle buildings. And so you can have a whole series on your channel just about vegan muscle building. So it's a pillar is something that allows you to still be within your niche, but allows you to go deep into one topic and have a variety of options to talk about within that channel pillar. The next thing is I highly recommend having your branding in place. And now this doesn't mean you have to hire someone and pay a huge fee to have a branding identity and a brand book. But it does help to select a color palette or know which colors you are going to be using on your channel. Because in the beginning I made the mistake where I had all the colors. I was using. Yellow and purple and also blue and green. And it was just, it looked very messy. So when you decide on your colored palette, this will be what goes on your channel banner and also your channel thumbnails, which are very, very important because when you're branding is coherent and it's concise throughout the channel, your channel is going to grow faster. It's going to have a certain look and recognizable feel for those people getting to know your channel. And when they see that thumbnail, they're like, Oh, that's so and so's thumbnail. New videos out. Let me click. 4. The Do Not's - YouTuber Mistakes: Now let's go over some key do nuts or some YouTuber mistakes that a lot of new creators are making and they don't even really realize it. And so one of the biggest things is not having a plan. So a lot of creators will get really excited about creating a channel which is great. But then once they dive into producing the videos, coming up with keywords and titles and content and editing and all this stuff. The video creation system, once they get into it, they think, oh my God, I can't handle it. It's overwhelming. It's a lot of work and they don't have a plan in system in place that is solid from the start. And I'll talk a little bit more about this later on in the class, but you have to have a plan when launching your channel. You have to have things mapped out where you're going to film the videos. It's all really important. The next thing is the fancy studio syndrome. And this just means like you feel like you can't become a YouTuber because you don't have a fancy for k camera and you don't have the Hollywood studio lighting. And this is what keeps you from getting started. Well, let me tell you. I did not have any of this getting started and really I still don't. I mean, I have a camera now. Yes. But my lighting is still very cheap. It's still lighting that costs under 70 bucks as opposed to those big lights that costs 300 bucks. And I don't have a room that's an official studio. Know, as I mentioned, I was a digital nomad and I had to travel a lot in 2019 alone, for example. My now husband and I traveled to six different countries. We traveled to 12 different cities, and so we had to keep the YouTube studio equipment very, very minimal. You can, and I encourage you to just get started with your phone. That brings me to the next topic is lighting and audio. Lighting and audio is very, very important and you don't need even to buy an external light source. To make this happen, I highly recommend going to a place within your house where you can just stay or be close to a window? Window lighting is great. Yes. You do have a timeline where you probably have to film between a certain timeframe throughout the day. However, window lighting is absolutely great and it is what I used for the first 67 months before I actually bought a ring light. And don't forget about the audio. There's tons of cheap lapel mic or level or mix, which is the one I'm using right here. It is a small mic that attaches to your shirt or your color so that it's close in position to your voice. And so the audio when you speak into the microphone is crispy, it's solid and it sounds good. Audio is more important than lighting. If you have bad audio, your video will not get watched. So this is one thing I highly recommend to have. Don't make the mistake of having really bad audio where there's a bunch of wind or you're very far away from the camera and you can barely hear yourself. Solid audio is essential. And the other two things, as I alluded to before, is that new tubers, as I like to call them, don't properly plan good titles and good thumbnail. So a lot of times thumbnails aren't even used. That's the image you see before you click on the actual video. Thumbnail is very, very important to getting more views and increasing your click-through rate. And also for the branding of your channel is, as I mentioned before. But it's really important to use a keyword research tool and to make sure you don't have a title like Ramiro family vacation, which is never going to be searched on the YouTube platform. Or you don't select too broad of a topic like weight loss. Weight loss is a short tail keyword that will never get discovered if you are a brand new channel, make, making sure that your titles and your thumbnails are solid from the beginning. 5. Best Ways To Add Income To Your Channel: All right, so now let's talk about ways to add income to your business by leveraging YouTube. So let's first talk about Google AdSense. This is also called the YouTube partnership program. You have to get approved for the YouTube partnership program first in order to qualify for Google ad sets or to have advertisements play on your videos and get paid for it. So what this means is you need a minimum of 1000 subscribers and 4 thousand watch hours within a 12-month period of time. A lot of people ask, well, how long does it take? It really just depends on how focused you are when you launch your channel and how consistent you are after you launch your channels. So minimum posting once per week. We'll get you to this milestone faster. But once you do, the idea is YouTube. So all the Google ads that Google is making from the buyers who are paying for these campaigns on your videos, they are making 45% of that ad revenue and you as a creator or making 55%. So it's a really, really nice recurring income that you can get once you are monetized for Google AdSense the next way. And the thing that I say is required is just the most is to build your email list from day one. This is a way that you can start building your own traffic source in your business. And the most important thing you're going to have in your business is your email list. So how are you going to get those people that are watching from subscribers, viewers to leads and have them go on your list. Because with this list, you are able to sell to this list when it is on your e-mail marketing platform and you own this traffic because at the end of the day we don't own YouTube. Sorry. You could get YouTube could do whatever they want with your audience. One day it could be there, it cannot. This is why it's so important from day one to start collecting leads on your list. Another great income stream that a lot of creators do is coaching and consulting. So this means that this is this type of service that you offer. So maybe you offer our long or 30 minute consultations and you're able to advertise it in the description of your YouTube videos. You can say like throughout your YouTube videos like Hey, if you'd like to learn more about this, I do offer consultation calls, check out the link in the description and find out more ways to work with me, something like that. It's really cool once you hit certain milestones on YouTube. Youtube allows you and opens up different options to make money right there on the platform. So when you cross a 1000 subscribers, Not only can you potentially qualify for Google AdSense, but you can also activate the membership part of the YouTube platform, which allows you to charge your subscribers, a monthly subscription to get access to you behind the scenes, whatever it is. But a membership is something special you can offer to your subscribers and viewers on the platform who wanted to connect with you more. The other one is when you cross 10 thousand subscribers on YouTube, you are able to then connect to your T spring store and sell your merchandise. So if you wanted to sell shirts, hoodies, cups, pillows, whatever type of physical product they have on T spring. You can connect your T spring store to YouTube at that point in cell things right below your video. Another popular one is a brand deal or sponsorship. And this is where a company will reach out to you and pay you to do a campaign of their product and service. So you as a creator would come up with a video campaign or make a YouTube video to promote their service or products. This is another big way that YouTubers are monetizing the platform and expanding their income streams. 6. Best Sales Funnels For YouTube: All right, so now let's talk about the best types of sales funnels for YouTube. In the first one is a lead magnet funnels. So this is a simple two-step funnel where you have an opt-in page slash landing page that collects a name and an email from a viewer and turns and once they opt in, they become a lead. There are several ways to capture names and e-mails. You can create a freebie e-book slash pdf type lead magnet. You can have a quiz, you can have downloadable calendars, macro calculators, whatever you want to give away. That's high-value and also for free, so that it'll entice people to join you on your email list. And in exchange, you offer this really valuable freebie. So there's tons and tons and tons of ways and different types of lead magnets that you can give away. But I do recommend you just start with the e-book slash PDFs style format there it's really easy. You can use tools like Canva and you can use a one. What I use to create presentations and e-books and stuff. I use Google Slides to create these for free. Once you do that, the funnel looks like the opt-in page. When they go when they opt in and they go to a thank you page. And then with your email marketing, you have the e-book or whatever it is delivered to them via email right away. The next one is a webinar funnel. So a webinar funnel is when you're selling a product or service that's more higher ticket, meaning the price point is around $1000 or more. So anywhere between $700 to $2 thousand if you offer something like that. So it goes like you have a registration page for people to watch your masterclass, to watch your webinar, to watch your free training. And then you create a webinar that gives tons of value and also pitches your service or your product at the end of the webinar. And then it automatically goes to a checkout where people can purchase that item with you. So it's automatic and everything is evergreen, meaning you just set everything up once. And then the funnel does the selling for you. Webinar funnels convert very well on YouTube because before people into your webinar, they are watching you and getting to know you in establishing that no interest factor with you on your YouTube videos first and the third type of funnel is very simple. It is a coaching strategy call funnel where you could either have a strategy call where you talk to a potential client for free. And you can set something like this up on a calendar tool where they book a strategy call with you and you get on the phone with them and talk to them about what they're going through, what they need, what, what you offer. And if you guys are a good match, you can convert them on the sale into your coaching program or one-on-one coaching, whatever it is in this funnel is very simple, so they would opt into a calendar page which they would enter their name, phone number, email, and there will be more details and you would ask more questions on this opt-in page. And then it would just once they do that, they get automatically put onto your calendar and then you can follow up with them on a strategy call or a coaching call. This is cool because if you offer straight-up one-on-one consultations, you could even charge for this. So let's say you charge $75 for a 30 minute consultation. You can put this link in the description of your YouTube channel and you don't have to wait until you reach a certain amount of subscribers or views or whatever node you can start monetizing with any of these funnels from day one. 7. Key Factors For a Successful Channel: Okay, So here are some of the key factors for creating success on YouTube. And that first one is creating a routine. It is super important for you to create a routine, develop habits of creating content in order for this all to work. Because a lot of people have asked me in the past MRSA, how do you stay motivated? How does it work for you? And then how do you create these videos? And my response to them is, you know what, I am not always motivated. I'm not always in the mood to create content. It is just a habit. It is a routine that I have established. I've created a system around every single thing. I have a productivity tool where I've established a YouTube workflow where I could work with the people on my team, the editors on my team who were able to help me with the different video projects that I have going on. So I know exactly which videos are in the planning phase and the scripting phase. I know which videos have been filmed and are already being edited, and I know all of the videos that have been posted. So it's all about establishing your routine and your system when wanting to be successful with your video creation. The next thing is developing that know like and trust factor with your audience. Now this isn't very hard at all to establish, but this is a very important and a key to your success on YouTube. So being real with where you are in your dream, being vulnerable and just giving people genuine advice or education or entertainment or whatever style of videos you are making. People connect with you when you are you, That's why it's called YouTube. You are the EU and YouTube. And the more people get to know who you are is really special because people become fans and they subscribe to you, they defend you. When you get your first hater comments. They'll argue back with your hater and be like, hey, what are you talking about? It's really fun. And the number one thing I recommend to establish that know like and trust factor is to just be yourself. Don't try to be another YouTuber that you admire and just try to mimic how they act in their humor note because it'll never work and it will show and come off as a little bit fake on your video. In the next thing is always strive to be better. Youtube is an enormous platform. It's competitive. And I don't say this to discourage you from creating your first video because your first video is going to be not good compared to your 100th video, compared to your 200th video, but always strive to be better. What elements in the editing could you add? What B-roll is? Could you add maybe you can take B-roll of you driving around the city doing things that you always talk about. Maybe you always talk about bookkeeping and taxes in your videos, you can do get B-roll of yourself or video of yourself writing in a notebook, typing on a computer to add a better element to the video. How could you make your introduction stronger, right? So here's the intros of videos are very, very important. The first minutes of a video can make or break the video so you want to hold people's attention right away. And this is something to always evaluate, is how could I make my introduction stronger, more entertaining? And that'll keep people on the video longer so that they watch half the video or even all of the video. And another thing is I cannot emphasize this enough. Please do your research on titles and also create great thumbnails. Again, you can use a tool like Canva to create these. You can create an account for free and they have tons of templates on there and already made thumbnail templates where you can just edit the colors, the images, and make good-looking thumbnails that people will want to click on. 8. Class Project: They are right now. This leads us to the class project and I have something really cool for you guys. I have a business brainstorm worksheet which will help you collect your thoughts and really map out what your business could look like on the YouTube platform and it'll give you some direction and a place to start. So I recommend you download this PDF in the resources section and get started right away. Take action with filling out this worksheet because it'll give you momentum into starting your YouTube channel. 9. Conclusion: Alright, thanks so much and congratulations for completing this class. This is a great first step to understanding what it takes to implement YouTube marketing for your business. If you would like to support my journey as an entrepreneur and a creator, I would really appreciate it if you would subscribe to my YouTube channel. This helps support my content creation journey and producing more classes for you on Skillshare. Also, if you'd like to take a look at our website, Marissa Romero.com, there's plenty of fun resources and articles on there for you. And of course it would be a huge help if you followed me here on Skillshare, go ahead and follow me so that you can get the notifications whenever I release a new class because I have so many future classes coming up. Please comment below on this class, your key takeaway. I'd love to know the biggest thing you got from this video and also any questions you have that I can answer for you. Happy you tubing and I'll see you in the next class.