Best Practices for CPG Brands that Use YouTube to Reach Consumers

CPG brands rank highly as an industry that needs to develop a YouTube marketing strategy. That's because consumers turn to YouTube for reviews and unboxing videos. CPG brands must factor YouTube marketing into their marketing strategies in order to remain relevant.

Many of these businesses are already doing this and are benefitting from YouTube in remarkable ways.

An elite group of CPG brands rule YouTube's 6-second ad leadership board. This shows the power that YouTube holds for this industry. Consider the possibilities of these mind-blowing facts:

• Around 500 hours of content gets uploaded each minute.
• 250 million hours of video is consumed on YouTube daily.

CPG brands that dominate YouTube know how to combine movement and sound that engages their audience to watch a video. These video stories resonate with consumers' emotions. The resonance helps the brand maximize its advertising budget via direct targeting. 

Even better, this resonance gets shared at a high rate.

Best Practices for YouTube Marketing Success

But, it's not as simple as uploading a video and waiting for the results to pour in. CPG brands that want to use YouTube to reach consumers need to follow some best practices.

Create a Posting Schedule

A CPG brand that wants to create great YouTube marketing needs to set-up a regular posting schedule. Consumer behavior prefers posting consistency. The posting schedule can be once a week or once or month as long as fans know when to tune in for new content.

Monitor Comments

Another important thing to do on YouTube is to pay attention to comments that the viewers leave. These comments reveal what works and what doesn't work in a video. They can also provide insights into what consumers want a brand to do. 

For instance, some of the consumers might want a brand to develop more sustainability or to develop a new flavor. Viewer comments offer invaluable marker research. Make sure to read these consumer insights regularly!

Have a Focus

It's also important to make sure that each video contains specific goals. Some videos might work better for gaining new customers. Some might focus exclusively on a new promotion. Some others might explain the brand narrative in a funny way that gets shared at a high rate.

Educational content provides another way to dominate YouTube and the CPG market.

CPG marketing that explains what a product does and why it's important can make huge gains. 73% of consumers say that watching an educational video about a product makes them more likely to buy it. A whopping 96% of consumers use video doing the actual buying process.

Follow the Rules

It is important to follow YouTube's advertiser content guidelines, too. These guidelines state YouTube's policy on everything from language to violence to sensitive subjects.

Best practices also apply to understanding how to make the best choices in ad size specifications.

Choices in Ad Size Specifications

YouTube offers seven ad sizes. They consist of various placements. 

For example, display ads work on a desktop, and they consist of the following specs:

• Image: 300×250
• File type: GIF, JPG, PNG
• File size: Maximum. 150KB
• Maximum animation length: 30 seconds

YouTube also offers these other ad types: 

• Overlay ads
• Skippable video ads
• Non-skippable video ads
• YouTube companion banner ad specs
• Bumpers ads
• Sponsored cards

Ad sizes are essential. Content matters, but how it's provided to the audience via ad size plays a massive role in whether or not it'll even get watched. Take millennials, for example.

Millennials prefer their content short and meaningful.  This means that the ads aimed at this target group will be much different than ads aimed at Baby Boomers. Keeping these differences in mind matters when developing YouTube marketing that matters.

Want to use video to market your CPG brand but don't know where to begin? Fill out the form below to download our YouTube for CPG Brands Roadmap for Growth to get started.