SUCCESSFUL BRAND VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE

With over half a billion views combined, Vat19, Home Depot, and Nike are three of the most successful brands that have utilized YouTube to grow brand recognition. Though each has a vastly unique YouTube strategy, they’ve all used the same platform for incredible success. Regardless of your industry, staying true to your brand’s personality is a key to video marketing success. So what’s made these brands so successful on YouTube?

CREATIVITY

While “creativity” may seem like a cliché buzzword for video marketing, these three brands certainly took things to the next level. Have you seen this incredibly funny marketing video from Vat19?

When it comes to YouTube, plain old creativity won’t cut it. To achieve viral success repeatedly requires creativity so outside the box that you can’t even see the edges. Because the online audience is so different from the television audience, you can experiment more with your brand’s personality and its own unique flair that separates it from its competitors. Vat19’s style of making a somewhat normal product sound totally awesome is unique to its brand and is what gives them staying power as a YouTube presence.

RELEVANCE

Unless you create innovative ads like the folks at Vat19, it’s unlikely that YouTube viewers will be flocking to watch your promotions. If this is the case, then it’s important to create videos that provide relevant value to customers. For instance, take a look at this Home Depot video.

While this video isn’t overly promotional for Home Depot itself, the how-to/educational nature of the videos that relate to home improvement add incredible value for Home Depot’s customers. Furthermore, they always promote the products and tools that they use to fix a problem instead of using a commercial-style pitch. While Home Depot would otherwise be a “faceless” corporation, these videos give the company a chance to relate to customers while providing useful information.

PERSONALITY

While you might not be able to get an endorsement from a major celebrity whenever you want, Nike’s video marketing campaign on YouTube provides many lessons for marketers everywhere.

By staying true to their brand and having athletes appear in their video, Nike is truly striking a chord with its target audience. While athletics is a broad industry, consistently reaching out to athletes in every sport gives Nike the opportunity to reach the largest audience possible.

One of the key elements of success that all of these brands have in common is the fact that they upload content on a regular basis. Remember, a viral video on YouTube is difficult to predict or plan, which is why it’s important to have a content strategy for video just like you would for an editorial calendar. Furthermore, by encouraging viewers to subscribe to your YouTube channel, you continue to build upon your video marketing success by ensuring that a built-in audience already exists for your next video!

Are there any video marketing campaigns that you’ve seen succeed? What can you learn from them?