YouTube is a little different from other popular social video platforms, explains Nick Nimmin. You can’t compare views of longform video content to those of short 30-second Instagram Reels, for example.
Instagram Reels and TikTok are referred to as vertical content, and whether you get to see that content depends largely on what the algorithm wants to show you. YouTube, on the other hand, is highly targeted: People have more of an opportunity to choose to click on your videos.
Echoing Ian Anderson Gray, Nick insists that your content and tech setup don’t need to be fancy, as long as your content has value. Focus on creating a good viewer experience instead.
And be patient about it. “Give yourself the time to learn how to make content that people respond to and that they’ll watch,” he says.
Also:
- Don’t get too caught up in view numbers.
- Think about sets of content rather than single videos.
- Grow your audience like you’re nurturing a plant.
- Make real humans your priority above all else.
And get this: Subscriber count doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think it does! Video playlists that viewers can binge-watch are much more significant than individual video views. If you intentionally chain your content together, YouTube will find more viewers for you.
Discover much more useful YouTube info in the full episode:
Make sure you don’t miss any future episodes: Subscribe to the MarketingProfs Live Show on YouTube. And to catch up on all previous episodes, check out the full playlist on YouTube.
Episode Details, Guest Information, and Referenced Links
Episode No. 4
Guest’s social media profiles:
MarketingProfs resources referenced in the show:
“In B2B News” article referenced in the show:
Full Transcript | Marketing Smarts Live Show Episode 4 | A Marketer’s Guide to YouTube for Business
This rough transcript is machine-generated. It’s been only minimally edited by humans.
George B. Thomas: All right. Are we live yet, guys and gals? Yeah, we are. We’re live. Actually went live a couple seconds early to allow some people to get in here, and I am excited: a B2B marketer’s guide to YouTube for business. We’re gonna have some clips with excited Nick Nimmin. So that’s gonna be amazing.
If you’re watching this right now, let me know in the chat pane, what are you excited about? And maybe if you’ve historically used video in your B2B marketing or marketing efforts. So where are you at? What are you excited about? And have you historically used video for your B2B marketing or marketing strategy.
It is one o’clock. Let’s go ahead and get started as people roll in here. So welcome to the Marketing Smarts Live Show by MarketingProfs and Marketing Smarts podcast, where we dive into B2B news resources, valuable guest content, and much, much more each and every week.
Hey, if you’re a B2B marketer looking for a place to learn, keep up to date, and have some fun along the way. You know I’m your guy. Grab a beverage and a notepad, and welcome to the show. Hello to all the Marketing Smarts Live viewers today I’m super excited to bring you episode four of The Marketing Smarts Live Show.
And to be honest, a topic. That I personally am super-duper, how many supers can I add before I would annoy people? Super-duper passionate about this topic. That’s right. I’m your boy, George B. Thomas, a speaker, trainer, catalyst, and host of this here the Marketing Smarts YouTube live show, as well as the Marketing Smarts podcast, which can be found on your favorite podcast app.
Jennifer, glad you’re joining in from Louisville, Kentucky. Well, today’s topic is a B2B marketer’s guide. Yep. That’s you, by the way, guide to YouTube for business, and of course, whatever tips, tricks, strategies, best practices that hit this brain, my brain. Along the way for our fantastic journey.
I almost said fantastic voyage, but that would be coolio and I don’t know if everybody’s down with that, but our guest clips today are brought to you by none other than Nick Nimmin.
Nick Nimmin teaches creators and professionals how to maximize YouTube by sharing the tools, resources, information needed to thrive on the YouTube platform.
Listen, in all honesty, I’ve been watching Nick for over three years, maybe longer, and he is one of my go-to resources pertaining to leveraging YouTube for marketing, for communication, for a lot of things. Now, remember, the clips of Nick today are pulled from the full Marketing Smarts podcast episode, and if you wanna listen to the full interview with Nick and myself, make sure to tune in to the Marketing Smarts podcast. The link to that full show will be in the description below after this live show ends. That’s right, all the links in all the right places, but only after the show ends.
Now, when you think about YouTube, do you immediately think about business video? Do you inherently think best B2B marketing channel ever?
Well, to be honest, maybe not, but I think at least some of you will, or might, change your mind. You see, you have to ask yourself, Are your marketing efforts pointing to sales? Ugh. Do you want great organic reach? Mm-hmm. Do you wanna have evergreen resources? By all that is holy, I hope that somebody out there is shouting Amen and Yes to all of these. But if you answered yes to all or any of these, then YouTube might—your B2B marketing Nirvana… say it’s not true.
Let’s see what Nick had to say when I asked him why B2B marketers should be thinking about YouTube for business.
Nick Nimmin: You can really leverage YouTube in major ways to bring attention to your business, which then ultimately ends up as leads, which then ultimately will end up sales for some of those as well.
And people that are not currently using YouTube asm you know, at least one tool to bring attention to their business, they are essentially being left behind by other people that are, because the organic reach that you can get on YouTube without any ad spend at all, without spending a dime, is substantial.
And in order to reach that, though, of course you have to be able to make content that people respond to in a positive way. But as soon as you get that part down, it doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be anything like that. It just has to add value to the people that you’re trying to reach.
But once you do that, then YouTube does all the heavy lifting. So then at that point in time, like you don’t have to have like a big ad budget or anything like that because a lot of, or in some cases even all of our majority of your traffic, will end up coming from your social media efforts.
And in a lot of cases, that will be dominated by the traffic that you’re getting on YouTube.
George B. Thomas: They are essentially getting left behind. Oh my, did you hear that? Without spending a dime on ad spend… I was like, heck yeah, brother, let’s go. But it got even better because Nick turned his thoughts to the Power of Evergreen videos on YouTube.
He talked about the long-term benefits. Now I have to ask you, what efforts are you making in your marketing that are giving you long-term benefits? I’ll give you a minute, jot down a note. Hopefully you got that notepad. But seriously, let’s look at what Nick had to say, talking about evergreen content, long-term benefits, as B2B marketers with YouTube video.
[00:06:26] Nick Nimmin: Because one long-form video on YouTube… you can upload that video, and as long as it’s a good video in terms of people respond to it in a positive way, in terms of choosing to click on it and then watching it, enjoying that content, then then what’s gonna happen is YouTube is gonna continue to show that content to people until people stop responding to it.
And with traffic on YouTube, what can happen is you’ll get spikes and you’ll get valleys and things like that. However, it stays long term. I have videos that I uploaded in 2014 that still generate income for me on a regular basis. There’re search based videos and people will come into those videos and they’ll find out about an affiliate offer, something like that, that I have, and they’ll end up converting through that.
So the long term benefit of uploading long form content is huge.
George B. Thomas: Think about that. Having videos that generate leads in your case as a B2B marketer for years to come, or maybe even revenue depending on what you’re doing, but that evergreen content that years and years of lead generation in place working for your business.
Such good stuff. Hey, listen, we’ll get back to Nick and his thoughts on YouTube, but I have to ask, are you part of the MarketingProfs community? If not, become part of the MarketingProfs community by heading over to mprofs.com/mp today. That’s right, mprofs.com/mp today. Now it’s time for In the B2B News.
I really gotta get some sound effects. Anybody. Like sound effects. No people. That does sound effects. I gotta get some typewriters, something. For these sections, but In the B2B News where we talk about breaking B2B news or really important tips that we find on the Google News tab related to you and your B2B marketing or B2B business.
Now, today’s In the News section: What is digital marketing attribution and why it’s important to your B2B business? I think this one stuck out to me this week because of the conversation that I had with Nick in our interview about reporting success with your YouTube efforts. But this article is also over 2000 words of attribution reporting value, 2000-plus words of attribution reporting value that you can dive into. It talks about what it is, as well as items like attribution, overview, assisted conversions, cross device activity, top paths, and so, so much more.
I love the section in this article that goes, the most crucial factor in digital marketing attribution is the accuracy of the insight from the reports. Get the most reliable insights using the right attribution software for your online and offline campaigns. You’ll need more than an analytics platform to provide exceptional campaign insights.
And when I read that and I was thinking about you, the Marketing Smarts Live show viewers, I was like, Hmm, well, they have to ask themselves, do they have a tool.
Now to read the full article, check out the link in the description below after this fantastic live broadcast: that’s all the right links in all the right places at exactly the right time, cuz I don’t want you to click on it now. Anyway, let’s get back to Nick in his Marketing Smarts podcast episode
I wanted to dig into how should B2B marketers get started? Where should their mind goals and other items be pointing towards? Because getting started right is a great way to get started because then you don’t have to go back and fix things. Pertaining to the goals and other items B2B marketers should be thinking, here’s what Nick had to say.
Nick Nimmin: Right out of the gate, you have to set yourself a solid foundation. If you’re doing it for business, it’s a totally different approach than if you’re like, Hey, I just want to share what it is that I’m creating with the world as a, as a content creator—totally different approach because when you’re uploading as a business, you are uploading for the purpose of generating awareness, leads, and sales.
So because of that, you have to make sure that when you’re first getting started, that you are very clear on who is it exactly that we’re gonna be reaching? What is it exactly that we’re gonna be tracking?
George B. Thomas: Did you hear that? Know thy audience. I’m, I might be preaching to the choir here. I fully get it. But in marketing terms, do you have those ideal client profiles and those buyer personas in place? And before you hit the record on your camera, before you bought the best mic ever, before you decided if it should be like live or just recorded video, were you like, How can we serve these folks moving forward? That’s what we have to ask ourselves. Yes, we do.
So let’s see actually what Nick had to say a little bit deeper, cuz I wanted to dig a little bit deeper there.
Nick Nimmin: A lot of companies, when they start YouTube channels, they focus everything on how many views are we getting, how many subscribers are we getting, when the reason that they started the YouTube channels to actually get leads in sales.
So because of that, instead of focusing on how many views you get, of course you know more views for the right audience will end up generating more leads in sales for you. However, the thing that you need to be focusing on first is Hey, how are we converting these people that are coming in?
Because if you focus on understanding who it is that you’re after, and you focus on understanding, you know how exactly you’re wanting them to convert and you’re tracking that, you’ll learn very quickly: When we upload videos about these types of things, they convert at a higher rate than when we upload videos about these types of things.
And that can help you fine-tune your content early. So getting crystal clear on who it is that you’re trying to reach with your content, and also the goals that you have that are not just based on subscriber counts and view counts.
George B. Thomas: All right. I have to ask you, what are your thoughts about getting started with YouTube or the potential pitfalls?
Keep the conversation going by using the hashtag #MPb2b and let me know now, we’ll get back to Nick in a few minutes where we dive into branding colors. The things that are most important to your future YouTube success. But first, it’s time for some dope B2B learnings from the vault of MarketingProfs articles.
That’s right. It’s time to dig into the treasure trove of valuable information and pull out two pieces of gold to help you be a better B2B marketer. Yep, that’s right. That’s how much we love you. Now since we’re talking about YouTube and therefore video, that’s kind of the direction that I went in today to help you in your B2B marketing efforts.
So Article One this week is Seven Tips for Building a Video Marketing Campaign by Andre Oentoro. I hope I said that right. Please, please. I hope I said that right. It starts out like this video is getting hotter by the date becoming the most popular of mediums for content marketing and marketing in general. If you’re considering using video, here are seven tips. To help you build a solid video marketing campaign. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, seven tips. And by the way, some valuable insights along the way to help you out.
Article Two, this week of this episode, how to use video to provide a better customer experience by Rachel Eisenhauer. I’m pretty sure 85, maybe 80, 79% I got her name right. Yeah. Let’s go. Anyway. I love, love, love this section here: Video marketing makes it personal. Most brands have a B2B video marketing strategy, but it’s often siloed from their CX strategy, and it often doesn’t resonate with viewers. Brands using platforms to push static stale content, fail to consider current and future customer needs. Those that have continued with that approach come off as out of touch. The one thing, if anything, you don’t want your company to be is out of touch or even feel like, smell like look like it’s out of touch.
You know, as I sit here and think about this, let’s call back to what Nick said, make content the people will resonate with. And then I think about things that I love to say, like, uh, think about the human or how to be the most human business. Oh man. Such good stuff. Now, to learn more after this broadcast, to read both articles, head to the link located in the description below.
And you know what I’m gonna say… Yes, after the live show is over, cuz it’s all the right links in all the right places in the right time. Okay, back to Nick here in a second. But first. Ask yourself, what makes your cash register ring? Let me repeat that for the people in the back. In the way, way back. What makes your cash register ring?
Whew, man. What is it? What do we B2B marketers think of, do we have the right priorities in place for the right return? Well, here’s what Nick had to say about that part of the conversation.
Nick Nimmin: What causes, leads and sales to happen? Like what causes the cash register to ring? Is it people? Yeah, so because of that, make sure that you’re always prioritizing the humans because you know, as a company, as a marketer especially, you understand the importance of branding.
You understand the importance of all of that, and when you come onto YouTube, your thinking as a marketer, likelihood is pretty high that you’re thinking as a marketer, okay, we gotta make sure everything’s branded. We gotta make sure that our thumbnails all look the same way. We gotta make sure we’re using all the same colors all these things.
The thing that’s most important is making sure that you’re adding value to the people that you’re trying to reach, that you’re making a great experience for them in the content, that you’re not constantly trying to, for lack of a better way to say it you’re not trying to shove things down their throat, so to speak, in terms of always trying to sell ’em.
When you prioritize the viewer experience and you prioritize how viewers are interacting with your content, you try to make awesome stuff for them, then the return that you get on that long term is substantial. And the reason for that is because there’s a lot of, marketers that will go onto all these social media platforms and everything. They post buy this, buy this, sell sell, sell, sell, buy, buy. And some people some people will do that. Like some people will buy into that for a little bit. When you come onto the platform, you’re like, Hey, we’re, we’re trying to legitimately help you solve these problems. We’re trying to legitimately lead you down the right path.
Then what’s going to happen is people are going to start legitimately following you, and they’re gonna start legitimately being on board. They’re gonna trust you, which as a marketer, you know how important that is. So making sure that you’re just prioritizing the viewers over everything else in terms of whatever goals we have… The only way we’re gonna accomplish that goal is if humans respond to what it is that we’re doing. So therefore, we gotta make sure that we’re prioritizing the viewers on YouTube over everything.
Because if we can learn how to make content that the viewers that we’re trying to reach respond to in a positive way, and it may or may not be an exact fit of what you think when you first come onto the platform.
Like just a quick sidebar for that one. Like as an example, all real estate agents are like, Hey, I’m gonna go onto YouTube and I’m gonna make videos about how to buy and sell houses. Right? But there’s very few that are thinking of it from the perspective of, you know what, I’m gonna become the person about town and I’m gonna be that person that has a live show every Friday, that lets people know, Hey, these are the things going on. This is the stuff to do around town this weekend. These are the markets that are going on—so that you become a resource for the community that also happens to sell real estate. Right? So just making sure that you’re thinking like, Hey, how can I add that value so that people can can get to know us and keep coming back to us?
And then they’ll keep getting exposed to the brand through hey, Whatever your name is from whatever your company is, they’ll keep getting exposed to it from there. But in terms of trying to force people to download stuff and do this and do this, it’s effective. But for long term, if you’re really wanting to milk YouTube for all it’s worth, so to speak, then in that case just prioritize the viewers over everything else and then you’ll get avalanche with business
George B. Thomas: I love it. I love it. And Craig, thanks for the kind words in the chat. Listen, here’s where my mind goes. They’re going to follow you. They are going to trust you. Might I say, dare I say, they will fall in love with you and your company, and then doing business becomes a no-brainer because business or selling wasn’t the first thing that you were coming with, out the gate.
Also, I love Nick’s story about real estate agents and thinking in a different way. And I have to ask, what is your different way? I’m gonna say that again because I think that it is powerful and I think it’s a focus point that B2B marketers need to learn and leverage. What is your different way?
If you’re like, I don’t know, trust me, you should tune into the two part series where we, uh, did an interview with Sally Hogshead about “different is better than better.” Listen, I’m not even plugging those episodes. They might be my all-time favorite. Like I love interviewing a lot of people, I love a lot of interviews, but that two-part series on different is better than better, and especially around this conversation, if you’re like, I don’t know what my different is… could be an absolute game changer.
Now, my last thought here, I love when Nick said You’ll be avalanche with business. I mean, who doesn’t want that? Especially if it’s the right business because you are focused on the right people at the start. Remember the ideal client profiles, the buyer personas, the first thing, the clip that I played where Nick was.
The right people and get them to love your content. So that means it’ll be the right people that are actually turning into sales. Now we’re gonna get back to some words of wisdom from Nick here in a few minutes, but right now it’s time to turn the spotlight on you. That’s right. The MarketingProfs community.
Yep. It’s time for From the #MPB2B Community. This is where we search far and wide in the #MPB2B universe to find amazing information and conversations to bring to the masses. So, first, make sure that you’re using that hashtag and second, make sure you have fun and add value to the community.
Then potentially we will spotlight you or your crew on the show. Now today’s spotlight is Jay a Bustle? Jay, I hope I said that right. You are awesome enough for me to understand how to say your name. It was on. And man, he said fantastic podcast in interview by at George B. Thomas with @SallyHogshead.
Sound familiar? I just talked about it, but his words here are so powerful. Be better. No thanks. #bedifferent. Hell yeah. You don’t have to be perfect at everything, but you have to be extraordinary at something. How about you? Question mark. Explanation Mark. Question mark. Explanation Mark. Thanks. At MarketingProfs, can’t wait to hear part two.
First of all, I’m humbled. Second of all, love it. And I love there was a cool custom graphic with the tweet as well. Literally, Jay took the time to put a dope graphic to some dope words to help us give some love to that dope episodes or episodes with Sally Hog’shead. It’s absolutely amazing. That is the spotlight for this week.
Are you gonna be next? I have to ask. Are you gonna get the spotlight? Remember, community, use the hashtag #MPB2B on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. That’s right. I’m looking at, well all, somewhat all the places. I’m sure that there are places you may use it that I’m not looking at cuz I may be not on those platforms.
But I digress cuz I’d like to shine the light on you and your awesomeness in the next episode or a future episode of The Marketing Smarts live show. This next section, it is one of my favorite. Maybe it is just my favorite section on the podcast and maybe even in the show, because I am a big advocate of words of wisdom learning from other human beings.
And so we’re gonna kick it back to Nick and some words of wisdom around this topic of YouTube for B2B marketers. But I have to be honest with you, like let’s we’re friends. Can I get real for a second? I mean, I gotta get real. Uh, before I play this clip. It took me by surprise, I mean literally by surprise.
It was not at all what I expected Nick to say, pertaining to the conversation at hand, but man, Did. I love it.
Nick Nimmin: Take care of yourself. And take care of yourself just, like, mentally. You know, we’re living in a crazy time right now. It’s really easy to get sucked down all these holes that will like, neg you out and make you feel like garbage at the end of the day.
So just take care of your mindstate because as entrepreneurs, as marketers, as people that are trying to do cool stuff and make things happen like our minds are the most important thing. And for every ounce of energy that we give to stuff that, that doesn’t really… or that takes us down some negative rabbit hole, you know, that’s, that’s energy that we can’t put into building our businesses and making an impact and a positive impact in the lives of the people that we’re trying to reach.
My words of wisdom, we’ll call it, is to prioritize your brain, and the health of your brain and you know, your own wellbeing so that you can shine your light out and impact others.
George B. Thomas: Nick is so right. It is so important. These words, take care of yourself. Make a positive impact. Prioritize your brain and your wellbeing so you can shine and impact others. Prioritize your brain and your wellbeing so that you can shine and impact others. Ladies and gentlemen, honestly, it doesn’t get better than that, so I guess it’s time for me to clock out for the day, to be honest with you.
Head to the description below. Click on the link to the Full Marketing Smarts podcast with Nick Nimmin and keep learning more. That was just a few gems out of the whole episode. If you get value out of today’s show, hit that like and better yet, share with a friend to keep learning more, hit the subscribe or watch Additional MarketingProfs videos.
Of course you could always go tune in to the Marketing Smarts Podcast on your favorite podcast app. Don’t forget to become part of the MarketingProfs community by heading over to mprofs.com/mp today.
And as always, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble B2B marketing human. And we’ll see you on the next episode of The Marketing Smarts Live show.
