YouTube is an amazing social media site that puts user-created content in front of other users. It’s one of the most personal ways for one user to connect with another, and for that reason, can be an extremely effective marketing platform. YouTube can also be used to put brands and products in front of highly-targeted audiences who will be interested. This can be in the form of product placement, which is a kind of influencer marketing. These new marketing tactics are a new form of influencer marketing; It’s essentially the same as your favorite actor doing a commercial for McDonald’s, but with millions of different influencers sending messages for millions of different brands, for billions of different viewers.
What is Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is very similar to social proof, the phenomenon that people do as others. In fact, it could be considered proof of social proof. People tend to make certain decisions based on what others are doing, whether they know it or not. This is true with our family and friends, but is even more so with celebrities and other people that we follow on the Internet. Although some refuse to admit it, we allow promotions and endorsement by these people to influence our purchases. It’s not necessarily a bad thing or a malicious marketing tactic, but rather a way of life and how our minds work.
Unboxing Videos, Reviews, and Product Placement
Here are two great examples of influencer marketing at work on YouTube. Sure, not every single one of these was designed as a marketing video, but they certainly work well for that purpose. The whole idea of an unboxing video is to get a look at what’s inside, so that when people see that happening on screen, they imagine themselves as the ones opening the box. Ultimately, this can result in a sale of the product that may not have occurred without the unboxing video.
The same can be said for product reviews, which are sometimes genuine and sometimes very biased. Either way, people go in search of an opinion about a product, so they can decide if they want to buy it or not. With YouTube, there are so many people doing these types of videos, that people often stick to a certain user that they enjoy and trust. Because of this, certain users often become even more popular because of the steady audience for their unboxing videos and reviews. This can lead to getting contacted by big name brands and products, asking the user to give them a good review for a share of the profits.
There’s still plenty of influencer marketing going on outside of the aforementioned video types. It doesn’t matter if it’s a vlog, prank video, sketch, tutorial, or anything else – product placement is huge.
You may not always realize it, but there’s a reason your favorite online persona is drinking that energy drink you’ve never heard of before. Product placement is just yet another way that influencer marketing plays a role on YouTube.
The more you know
Now that you’ve got an idea of what influencer marketing is and how it works on YouTube, there are a few things you can do with this information. If you’ve got a successful YouTube channel of your own, perhaps you can look into promoting some brands or products for a little extra income. Alternatively, those with brands and products now have a new marketing technique to go play around with. Whatever you end up doing with influencer marketing, remember to stick to a targeted audience to see the best results.