If you use your YouTube channel to inform potential customers or engage them with your brand, you know how important it is to increase YouTube views and CTR. Unique visitors who are viewing your content ultimately boost your valuable Click-Through Rate (CTR), where a subsection of viewers click on a link to move to your brand’s website and potentially purchase your products and services. CTR matters because it also increases your quality score! Once you’ve committed to a video marketing strategy, how do you make sure that the CTR is high and grows over time? Here are some of the most valuable ways that an expert video marketer will use to increase engagement on your YouTube content:

Begin By Understanding Your YouTube Niche

Starting with market research, the goal here is to increase YouTube views and CTR. You want to understand what kinds of viewers find your content appealing and what kinds of potential customers could be drawn in with great YouTube content. This research involves figuring out ‘pain points’ for your current customers and prospects, noticing the kinds of videos that are getting lots of views now, and beginning to track how your content is doing. Another important factor is to start monitoring current click through rates and views so that you have a baseline for evaluating the success of your optimization efforts.

Use Tools to Research the Ideal YouTube Titles and Keywords

Search Engine Optimization tools are available that can help you see what keywords are being typed into search bars most often. Structuring your title and your video’s tags and description around the exact kind of queries you want to answer is an excellent choice. By optimizing the few text fields associated with your video, you increase YouTube views and CTR. Also, the probability that your video will show up organically when your target customer is searching for videos on YouTube will increase as well!

Create Eye-Catching Thumbnails for Your Video

YouTube is a deeply visual medium; by choosing the most engaging screenshot for your thumbnail, as opposed to something boring like a blank background or a simple shot of a person’s face, you will instantly draw people in further and boost YouTube views. Make your thumbnail the calling-card of your entire video, so that viewers who are scrolling through a list of search results cannot help but pause and check your video out.

Draw Viewers Into the Narrative of Your Videos

It’s not enough to get people onto your YouTube video’s page; many viewers are impatient and will navigate away within a few seconds of starting a YouTube video if they feel disengaged. It is important to start the video with a punchy beginning but leave some excitement for the middle and end. This helps to ensure that you will increase YouTube views and CTR The strong narrative and helpful content is what will keep people viewing your work through till the end, where you may be rewarded with a click through to your site. If you need help creating the right video and narrative for your product, look into SocialSEO’s Video Production Services and we may help you today!

Include Subscriber CTAs to Build a Loyal Brand Following

While the primary goal is to get your viewers to head over to your website to shop, a full-fledged YouTube campaign will also encourage people to click ‘subscribe’ to your channel, and increase YouTube views and CTR. This choice is much like a newsletter sign up, since YouTube will share all future videos that you publish to this user. A large subscriber base means you will be able to boost YouTube views. videos become influential among others as well, and more comments and views will follow. Including a call to action to visit your site and to subscribe to your channel can keep leads engaged when they aren’t quite ready to make a purchase. This results in a long-term higher CTR. Launching a video marketing strategy is not easy, but once you get started, you’ll see how valuable and rewarding the results can be. Work with Social SEO today to get started on the best strategy for you; our experts in video marketing can give you the tools you need to increase YouTube views and CTR.   About the author: SocialSEO is headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, near the base of Pikes Peak – “America’s Mountain”, (14,115 ft.). SocialSEO has grown from a “One-Man Band” to a National Brand with nearly 100 full time employees. SocialSEO has achieved over 1,000% growth in the past 5 years, investing in a business model that focuses on Customer and Employee retention/happiness.