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How to Increase Your Video Audience Retention on YouTube.

If you run a YouTube channel, audience retention is one important aspect of your business. High retention YouTube views are different from high number of views. While the latter refers to how many people find your videos, the former shows how many people watch to the end.

Of course, if you are going to pass your message, you want your audience to watch your videos to the end. In this post, we will show you how to increase audience retention on your YouTube videos.

Defining Audience Retention

Before talking about how to attain high retention YouTube views, let’s define audience retention. Different schools of thought have different definitions but they all boil down to the same idea.

Audience retention is an aspect of retention marketing. It refers to the capacity of videos on YouTube to keep the audience engaged. In simpler terms, it is how much of a video the target audience watches. This aspect of analytics is always measured in percentage.

The more engaged your audience is with your videos, the higher the retention score. This score is calculated as the mean or average of the retention figure of each viewer.

Why should you increase Audience Retention?

You must be wondering what the fuss is about audience retention. Well, it is a big deal if you want your videos to rank on YouTube. Just like Google, YouTube is a search engine and has a specific algorithm.

With high retention YouTube views, you get a better ranking. This means that videos with higher retention scores appear higher on search results. The reason for this is that YouTube’s algorithm focuses on customer satisfaction.

Do you now see why increasing audience retention is very important? If you want to attract more attention to your channel, you must increase audience retention. Let’s show you how.

Helpful tips to increase Audience Retention

To show you how important audience retention is, YouTube has provided a way to track your score. In this section, we will show you how to attain high retention YouTube views.

Keyword Research

Putting up videos on YouTube goes beyond making videos. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes. One very important task is researching keywords.

If you take a poll of the most-watched videos (not just for entertainment) on YouTube, they all have something in common. They are either solving a problem, adding value, or meeting a need.

When you research your keywords properly, you know what your target audience needs the most. This allows you to create videos that meet their needs. YouTube has an “auto-suggest” feature to help you do this.

Simply type in your niche and the feature presents you with keyword suggestions. You can create your video content around these keywords.

Another way to find keywords is to check the source code on the videos of your competitors. To do this, check the video that has the highest views.

Now, right-click and click on “view page source.” You can find all the keywords that the owner used. Pick these keywords and work around them for your videos.

Create content to meet the needs of your audience

One of the best ways to attain high retention YouTube views is by finding out your audience’s needs. You can get a clue from the keywords that you researched. Don’t forget that solving problems with your videos will keep your audience glued to the end.

Now that you know what problem you need to solve, it’s time to create content. It is one thing to create content to solve a problem, it is another for the content to be appealing. Find out the kind of content that your audience likes to watch. Use this as a template to create your content and watch your audience retention score rise.

Compare videos

Don’t do the exact same thing while expecting different results. Instead, compare your videos. There are two ways to do this and we suggest that you employ both to get the best results.

First, check all the videos you have put up to see the highest performers. Now, find out what you did to make those videos attain high audience retention. Replicate this on your new videos to achieve a similar or higher success rate.

Second, compare your videos with those of your competitors. Even though you can’t see their audience retention score, you can see their views. This should give a vague picture of what they have been doing.

Like we mentioned earlier, you can check for their keywords and use them for your videos as well. To find the best videos in your niche, you can make use of influencer marketing platforms.

Post visually engaging content

This is more difficult for some niches than others. For example, it is easier to post visually engaging content when you are in the design niche. However, if you are teaching a certain topic under SEO, you need to make more effort.

To understand this, we need to explain the idea of visually engaging content. Such content keeps the viewer engaged with the video because the slides aren’t monotonous. From the preview/graphic design viewers see on the search results.

Creating such content goes beyond having a good camera, lighting and props. Usually, videos that have changing scenes come up with higher audience retention scores.

Post shorter videos

This is one of the most widely used strategies today. This is because viewers like to see the result of what you are trying to show them.

However, it is always easier to keep viewers engaged through a one-minute video. If you will do this, make sure that your content will fit into this timeframe. The video doesn’t have to be a minute long, you can shoot videos that are three to five minutes long. It all depends on your niche and the message you want to pass across.

Whatever the case is, make sure that you are creating content that is worth the while of your viewers. Shorter content without quality or value will end up producing low retention scores.

Viewing Attention Retention Stats on YouTube

How do you know that you have high retention YouTube views? You need to check your attention retention statistics. Thankfully, there is a simple way to do this on YouTube.

This platform gives you two ways to check your audience retention report. They are:
⦁ Absolute retention.
⦁ Relative retention.

With absolute retention, you can see the percentage score for each moment in your video. Experts say that you should always watch out for the first 10 to 15 seconds. This is where most viewers stop watching or lose interest.

Relative retention compares your video to others having the same length. The problem here is that the comparison is general, not niche-specific. As such, the results are mostly skewed since your videos are compared to those in other niches.

Checking your retention report is pretty easy. Open your Creator Studio on YouTube, go to analytics, and click on audience retention.

Conclusion

It isn’t so difficult to get high retention YouTube views after all. We have explained several tips to help you do this. It is also important to always check your audience retention reports. In the final part of this post, we have explained how to do this.

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How Customer Service Can Be Used as an Efficient Marketing Strategy

Customer Service as a Marketing Strategy

When you’re writing down your marketing strategy objectives, you’re unlikely to prioritize customer service as a key player. We’re here to tell you not to underestimate this aspect of marketing.

Customer service and marketing have historically been viewed as separate entities. However, using them together has can produce better, more successful results — from beginning to end.

Your marketing team should be utilizing every aspect of your business when developing a marketing strategy. And customer service marketing is an essential element.

How Does Customer Service Benefit Your Marketing Strategy?

At first glance, customer service and marketing appear to be disparate efforts.

Customer ServiceMarketing
– Customer Retention
– Keeping the customers you already have
– Customer Acquisition
– Getting new customers to buy into your product, brand, or company

A more in-depth look into the foundations of both of these elements shows how well one flows into the other.

By combining the efforts of marketing and customer service teams, you can create a mutually beneficial relationship.

Your business can use customer service as a marketing strategy by learning from customers you already have. Look at buying trends, customer reviews, and social media interactions.

Your marketing team can then use this knowledge in future selling campaigns by developing new marketing initiatives tailored to current customers’ likes and interests.

Ultimately, this will help retain the interest of the customers you already have while bringing in like-minded potential customers.

Good Customer Service Begets Great Customer Reviews

Any prosperous business knows customer reviews can have a big impact on your success. In the age of social media, where customer experience has a global reach, it’s even more critical to ensure customer satisfaction and translate this into positive customer reviews.

One of the best ways to do this is by turning your customers into your biggest fans.

You should do everything you can to make sure your customers are satisfied. Your customer service should be as attentive and responsive as possible.

Deal with customer service issues quickly and effectively to reap the rewards of positive reviews.

We’ve listed a couple of the best ways to do this below.

Chatbots

Chatbots are one of the best new programs for customer service. Just take a look at some of the reviews for the popular “ChatBot” on Capterra.

Great for smaller businesses with less human resources, chatbots simulate human conversation and answer customer queries using AI software. Here are some of the helpful benefits a chatbot offers:

⦁ One of the top marketing trends for 2020, according to The Digital Marketing Podcast
⦁ Provides 24/7 customer service
⦁ Chatbots can answer simple questions posed by customers
⦁ Chatbots can transfer customers through to real people for more complex queries
⦁ Using a chatbot creates more simplicity for customers
⦁ Providing the option to speak to a real customer service adviser maintains the element of personalization and diligence

Social Media

Social media is possibly the best tool to interact with your customer base and provide a responsive service to gain positive reviews.

Over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide in 2020. This global reach is encouraging for digital marketing campaigns.

From a customer service perspective, global reach means more eyes on your business.

Ensuring you’re providing excellent customer service on social media is very important for brand recognition and a positive reputation. Here’s what you stand to gain by leveraging social media:

⦁ A more casual, friendlier approach to customer service
⦁ Provides 24/7 customer service
⦁ Customer queries can be answered almost instantly
⦁ Inquiries and issues are resolved publicly and broadcasted to a wider audience
⦁ Easily manage posts via a social media management tool such as ⦁ MarketPlan’s Live Analytics or an app such as Hootsuite

By becoming renowned for your customer service and providing an exceptional customer experience, you can use positive reviews as promotional material for a fantastic marketing strategy.

We’ll talk more about how exactly you can use positive reviews as sales material below.

Generate Buzz

Getting people talking about your conscientious customer service efforts is one of the most cost-effective strategies.

Creating a “buzz” for your customer service through “digitized word of mouth” (i.e., social media discussions and online reviews) is its own kind of marketing campaign.

The best part is, it’s completely free!

The Ideal Scenario

A happy customer leaves a good review.

A potential customer reads this review and is likely to see it as a trustworthy, authentic evaluation of your business and service.

This potential customer is encouraged by the positive experience of the original customer.

The potential customer makes an inquiry or purchase and is converted into a happy, paying customer.

Your business has generated a new sale, for free, through the great review left by the original customer.

The new customer leaves their own positive review after receiving their own personalized, excellent customer service from your customer service team.

Following the progression from review to the website, it’s easy to pinpoint where to focus your marketing and customer service efforts.

  1. Ensure that your business’s selling strategy takes on a customer-centric focus, providing an outstanding customer service experience.
  2. At the same time, focus on building and perfecting a professional and accessible website, which will further encourage the customer into making a final sale.

Maintain Communication Between Your Marketing and Customer Service Teams

When a customer has a query about a specific promotion, product, or service that your business offers — they call customer service.

If your customer service team has no idea what the customer is talking about, it doesn’t bode well for the interaction.

You need to make sure your business has a seamless communication channel between its customer service and marketing teams.

This is an essential piece for maintaining a professional and organized reputation.

It’s also convenient to track the target audience’s reception of a particular campaign or product.

Customer service representatives can report on customer experiences.

The customer service department needs to be aware of:The marketing department needs to be aware of:
– New campaigns
– New deals
– New Promotions
– New Products
– New Services
– Customer response to a campaign or product, both positive and negative
– Any misleading or ambiguous aspects of a campaign or product

The customer service department needs to be aware of: The marketing department needs to be aware of:

Creating a mutually beneficial relationship between the customer service and marketing departments ultimately results in a clear and coherent, customer-centric approach to your business campaign.

Using a business tool such as MarketPlan is a fantastic way to simplify communication within your business.

MarketPlan includes a connected Kanban. Your team can connect directly with each other on one shared platform, allowing everyone to see actual progress from individuals in real-time. You can assign, comment, and notify — all in one place!

Use Marketing to Map Buyer Personas

Customer service forms a direct line to your business’s current and potential customer demographic’s needs, wants, interests, and behaviors.

A focus on customer service as part of your wider strategy makes it easier to map user behavior and create your customer base’s buyer persona.

Note: A “buyer persona” is a fictional representation of your target customers. Creating a buyer persona is essential in the early stages of planning your marketing strategy.

To formulate the perfect marketing strategy, you need first to understand who you are targeting. You can know your customers by:

⦁ Age
⦁ Location
⦁ Gender
⦁ Interests
⦁ Needs
⦁ Employment details
⦁ Any other aspects specific to your business, brand, service, or product

Sure, you can get a lot of this information from the analytics of past campaigns. They’re important. But numbers can’t tell you everything.

Customer service talks to your business’s target demographic all the time. Arguably, they know more about your customers than any other department.

It is so important to utilize this resource. Integrate what your customer services team is learning about your current customers into your marketing strategy.

Your marketing team can match specific marketing campaign elements to appeal to the target customers’ distinct behaviors. In doing so, you can improve product development, introduce niche services, and create a more consistent brand voice.

Encourage Relatable Content Creation by the Marketing Team

Content creation is an integral part of your marketing strategy. It is important to have exciting and engaging information on your website, social media platforms, and other marketing materials. This helps safeguard customer attention and retention.

We now know how valuable using customer service as part of your business’s marketing strategy can be.

We can surmise that using the “buyer persona” devised through customer service will help marketing teams create content that is more accessible to the campaign’s target customer.

Businesses learn about the customer’s interests, needs, issues, and other buyer persona elements through speaking to current customers. Customer services can assist in this area by surveying customers over the phone, email, or SMS.

Similarly, customer services can help encourage customers to leave positive reviews of their experience with your business. These reviews provide the marketing team with real-life customer stories and experiences to use on the company website or adapt to content ideas.

A communicative relationship between marketing and customer service helps truly identify what content your customers want to see on your website and from your business as a whole.

A Key Piece to Campaign Success

Utilizing customer service as a marketing strategy is an often ignored yet profitable resource, well established to bring you a more significant ROI.

Your business’s customer service department communicates directly with your target audience. This integral team can assist your marketing department in identifying a strategy’s success — and its downfalls.

Communication is key. Ensuring you have seamless communication channels between all your business departments is an essential factor of your campaign’s success.

Customer service can help you improve and adapt to current and future marketing strategies. It delves even deeper than analytics; real employees talking to real customers about what makes them want to invest.

You can’t get more personal than that.

Always included in MarketPlan is our top quality support from our team of marketing professionals. You’ll also get full community access, allowing you to gain expert insights into working with customer service as a marketing strategy.

Sign up today and get full access to what MarketPlan has to offer.

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How to Use Inbound Marketing and Email to Increase the Sales Pipeline for 2021

After the challenging year that 2020 has been, businesses are looking towards the new year with more hope. For those in the B2B space, one of the key aims is to make the sales pipeline healthier.

One of the most effective ways to do that is to get more sales leads into the top of the funnel. More leads marketing brings in, the wider range of viable opportunities sales gets to pitch at. Healthy and strong marketing funnels are full of new leads coming in through a range of channels and activities.

Let’s look at two of the most effective and commonly used approaches: inbound and email marketing. If you need to increase the number of leads in the sales pipeline, then you’d benefit from deploying a more extensive range of inbound marketing activities, alongside email, to drive growth forward.

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a strategy that drives sales leads through a series of stages. From being aware of your company, to finding out more, to wanting to go ahead and purchase your product or service.

Inbound marketing is putting a strategy into practice. Using a series of processes, systems and creative assets to understand, reach and engage with your target audience. A target audience is, broadly speaking, everyone your company wants to become customers.

Reaching all of them might not be possible. This depends on the size of your company, how well-known you are, and resources that goes into sales and marketing efforts. Businesses can use the tools and resources they have to create and publish content, and adverts, as a way of pulling leads in and getting as many as possible into the sales funnel.

What should be included in a marketing funnel?

A marketing funnel is a combination of three stages, and each of them needs something with a range of different elements to attract and then convert sales prospects.

Awareness. If you think of the shape of a funnel, it’s broad at the top. A marketing funnel needs to be the same. Broad at the top, to pull leads in. At this stage, you simply need to make prospects aware of you, and reach as many as possible. Therefore it makes sense to use as many tactics as you can, such as social media, content marketing, trade shows and events (virtual for now), advertising and PR.

Consideration. At this stage, you’ve either got leads coming in who’ve found you through one of the above methods, or leads who are actively looking for what you are selling. In which case, they’ve still benefited from marketing activities, because otherwise, how would they find you?
At the consideration stage, it’s likely that a prospect is speaking with you directly. Conversations using video calling solutions are incredibly useful. That way, one of the sales teams can qualify them as a lead and move the viable ones into the sales funnel.

Decision. Don’t worry if not every lead is ready to go ahead straight away. That’s what email marketing is useful for. Only a percentage of leads that come in at the top of the funnel will be viable, interested and ready to go ahead. At the decision end of this funnel, you need marketing and sales assets that help them make choices, such as case studies and sales proposals.

Next, we look at how businesses can use email marketing to keep prospects interested.

How should you use email marketing?

Email marketing is one of the oldest, most reliable, and cost-effective marketing solutions, in the B2B and B2C space. It has a staggering return of $38 for every $1 spent, giving it a 3,800% ROI. Incredible! So when it comes to engaging with prospects, this is something you need to use, especially if they’ve come inbound but aren’t ready to buy.

And don’t worry if that is the case. Up to 90% of those that are interested aren’t ready to go ahead yet. Hence the value of email marketing.

With automated email marketing, you can keep prospects engaged. Sending them drip emails filled with engaging content and calls-to-action keeps you on their radar. Otherwise they may forget, then go in search of another provider when they are actually ready to buy. This way, you can even have check-in catchup calls every few months, depending on the length of your sales cycle.

Leverage email marketing as much as possible in the sale funnel. In order to do this, it helps to have interesting content being published on a regular basis to keep prospects engaged. This is how you nurture them and keep their attention.

Businesses can have articles produced, whether internally or through a trusted provider, and these can be included in sales lead nurturing emails. Alongside articles, you can also publish other interesting content in video or a visual format, such as infographics or even memes. Give your audience something to engage with, even laugh at, and want to stay in contact, or start working with you.

When should you speak with inbound sales prospects?

In the B2B space, when sales leads come in, one of the sales teams should speak to them as soon as possible.

A Harvard Business Review study found that salespeople that contacted inbound leads within an hour were 7x more likely to engage with a decision making. Speaking with a decision maker makes it far more likely you are going to get a positive outcome from sales conversations. This is based on a study of over 2,200 U.S. companies, of every size.
Given almost everyone has shifted to working from home, we have far fewer chances to interact face-to-face, making video calling for sales the next best approach. It seems to be working, with 64% of sales leaders hitting or exceeding target started using video platforms and technology for sales calls in 2020, according to HubSpot.

When it comes to sales meetings/calls, the most effective technology is video platforms, such as CrankWheel. 74% of sales leaders found that video, whether remote screen-sharing or Instant Demos, helped them hit their target. Video is known for being 34x more effective than phone or email, as a way of engaging with prospects.

Key Takeaways

Most marketing professionals are used to the concept of funnels. Inbound marketing, whether organic or advertising methods are used, or a mix of both, are designed to generate inbound leads.

Leads are prospects interested in your product or services. You’ve got to produce enough interesting and engaging content and adverts, across a wide range of channels, to bring marketing qualified leads into the funnel.

Once they’re in the funnel, then use a combination of email marketing and other lead nurturing solutions to keep them interested. For those that are ready for a conversation, you can use a solution such as CrankWheel to give a prospect an instant demo, to get them into the sales funnel and qualify them straight away.