Working with small business owners and entrepreneurs and being on YouTube myself I get the question a lot: is YouTube marketing, right for me? And the truth is it depends. Video marketing can be an amazing tool, or it can be a total flop all depending on you and your business. So what I want to do with this video is walk you through five clues that YouTube marketing might be a good strategy for you and might be a place where you want to invest your precious time and energy.

I’m Tara Wagner breakthrough coach and lifelong entrepreneur. I help other entrepreneurs use a holistic approach to business so they can create profits they can depend on without burning themselves out. If that sounds like your jam, be sure to check out my free training on how you can do the same.

Clue #1: Your Audience

Clue number one is your audience. You really need to understand your ideal client or customer avatar called your ICA. You need to assess them to really know whether or not this is going to be the right fit for you. The first thing to look at is what’s their learning style. Do they like video? Do they like to read something or do they just like to listen to it? Maybe they don’t like any of that and they need to really talk it out with somebody instead. This is going to help you to decide your marketing strategy.

Should you be doing videos? Should you be doing blog? Should you be doing something like podcasts, or maybe you need to get out and actually talk to people instead. Next, are they on YouTube? And if they are, how do they use it? Maybe they don’t use it for what you have to offer and so they might have a hard time finding you on the platform or maybe they don’t use the platform at all.

The only way you’re going to know this is by talking to some of your ideal clients, literally look through your client roster or your customer roster, reach out to them and ask them, do you use YouTube? Have you used YouTube for the topics that I would talk about? Would this be of interest to you and really, really be careful with the feedback that you get? Because a lot of people just want to be supportive and say, yes, absolutely, I’d so love that. But what you want to know is what have they used up till now? Do they use it already? Because if you’re trying to convince people to go over to support you, that’s going to be a lot harder than going to where they’re already at. So that’s clue number one, your audience, and you have to ask them to know whether or not YouTube marketing is right for you.

Clue #2: Your Topics

Clue number two is your topics, the things that you would actually talk about on video, I’m assuming you have some idea of what that would be already. If you don’t make sure to watch this video to help you figure out what that might be by mapping out a year’s worth of content. But if you do just look at that content and ask yourself some questions. Number one, are your topics more visual in nature? Meaning it would make more sense to show versus tell, or in order to teach somebody something, you really have to walk them through it and show them what to do. Do your topics tend to be more practical and actionable. People usually come to YouTube when they want to learn how to do something. So if yours are more inspirational or encouraging, that might not be something they want to sit down to consume. They might want to consume that type of content on the go. So maybe something like a podcast would be a better fit, if that’s the case. The same goes for search engines.

Actually, if your content is more encouragement, inspirational, it’s probably going to be found more through word of mouth, and you don’t have a lot of really good keywords. It might be tricky to use YouTube marketing since YouTube marketing does rely a lot on keywords. Lastly, ask yourself, are your topics engaging or would they be boring to watch on video? You really have to understand whether or not what you’re talking about lends itself to this format. Now you may be sure. And if that’s the case, what I would then do is look to see are your competitors on YouTube and what are their videos looking like? Are they getting any traction? Are they getting views and comments? Are people talking about how it’s helping them or they’re enjoying it? The way you find your competition on YouTube is to search the platform for keywords that you think clients or customers are likely to search. If you do that, you’re going to find other channels talking about those things and you can scope out those channels to see whether or not it seems like your clients are actually on this platform.

And one last thing on this, because about 90% of communication is nonverbal. If you have a more tender or sensitive topic, something that is better conveyed with emotion, with facial expressions and body language, to get the message across appropriately video might be a good clue for you. If you’re not sure if that’s necessary, again, look to see what your competition is doing, look to see is there an audience out there on the platform already or ask your audience and go back to that clue number one and just ask them what they would prefer. In fact, I would love your feedback on that one comment with amen below if you agree that 90% of communication is nonverbal and that seeing body language and facial expressions is crucial, especially in this day and age.

Clue #3: Your Personality

Clue number three is your personality. This is where you get to look at who you are, what you like, and what’s going to be the best fit for you. Notice that I do this after our audience, a lot of people will put your needs first, I don’t actually believe that that’s a very conducive way to run a business. I think you have to put your audience’s needs first to make sure that you’re not just creating a passion project, creating something that’s actually going to work for somebody, but if it’s going to work for somebody, then you get to decide, okay, but is it going to also work for me? You want that sweet spot. The overlap between works for them and works for me. Here are some questions you can ask yourself.

Number one, do you prefer to write, or do you prefer to talk? Which one is your natural go in terms of how you best communicate your ideas or your concepts. Also, consider how do you best come across? I talk about some really tender topics. And when I write, I tend to write more seriously. My very serious and focused side comes out and I can seem much more formal than I actually am in real life. I can do that in video too, but I know that I come across better in video when I’m talking, when you can see me moving with all of my hands and facial expression. And so that’s part of the reason that I chose video for myself. But along this line, you also have to ask yourself, can you over animate what you’re doing on video? It’s not enough to just be comfortable talking when you’re on video, the energy is going to be missing because a person’s not actually there physically in front of you with you in person. And so you have to over animate, you have to put more facial expression on your face to get the appropriate amount across in video. You have to move more with your body to get the actual energy that you want to convey.

So are you comfortable doing that or are you going to feel really silly? And it’s going to hold you back from doing that. And let me just say side note, you’re probably going to feel really silly talking to the camera in the beginning anyway. It helps to imagine that you actually talking to a real life person, but you will get over that either way. So don’t let the initial silliness stop you. Just ask yourself, am I willing or am I able to over animate myself so that I can really get my emotion and the vibe across? Another way to look at this is can you engage your audience or do you feel confident in your ability to learn how to engage your audience? Some of this is going to be through what you say, how you say it, or the ways that you even outline your video. Some of it is just going to be through practice. And some of it’s going to be through that over animation. A lot of these things are skills that you can learn, but do you feel confident in your ability to learn them? Oh, and I will say some of it is also in editing. You just want to make sure that you are confident in your ability to learn how to make engaging videos that are going to keep people’s interest, not everybody’s interest, cause it is a distracting platform, but at least the interest of the people that you most want to show up to serve.

The last question I want you to ask yourself here, and this is a tough one. Is, are you the best representative of your brand? Are you the best face to put on your brand? This is tough because nobody wants to say no to this, especially if it is your company, and if you’re a small business, you might be the only face you can put on your brand, but you really want to acknowledge that for yourself. And I’m not talking about how you look, I’m really just talking about your personality, how you’re gonna come across. What’s going to actually fit with the message that you’re trying to convey. For example, I have a client who does men’s clothing, but she’s a female. She might not be the best person to represent her brand simply because the people she’s talking to might want to see people like them. This doesn’t mean that she couldn’t do it. It just might mean that somebody else could do it even better and that’s something that you would want to take into account to make sure that the strategy you’re choosing, isn’t going to burn you out.

I also want to say you can be calm, quiet, and collected and still do great on video and in YouTube marketing, if that matches your brand. If you have a brand that’s really chill though, and you have really high energy or you’re talking to people who have gone through trauma, but you’re actually in a fun, motivated place in life. Those two things might not match up very well. So again, just consider who you are, what works for you, who your people are, what works for them and is there a sweet spot in the middle where those two things can meet?

Clue #4: Your Bandwidth

Clue number four is your bandwidth. And by bandwidth, I mean your time and your energy. If you’re short on either of those YouTube marketing might be really tough for you. This is time-intensive platform, especially at first. It’s great because the time you invest can continue to work for you for years to come. Unlike other platforms that are going to prioritize most recent content like Instagram, however, it does take quite a bit of time to get that ball rolling and get that content working for you. So you have to make sure that you have it to invest. Do you have the time to learn? You need to learn the platform. You need to learn SEO. You need to learn video production, video editing. There’s a lot of learning curve to this platform. Do you have the time for that, especially right now? Do you have the patience for it? The patience to master all of those skills as well as the patients to allow it to grow, sometimes you can strike it lucky in the beginning and your channel can blow up really early. Sometimes that’s not the case.

If you need fast results, YouTube is probably not the place to go, but if you need lasting results to continue to work for you in the long run, YouTube marketing could definitely be it. Do you have time every week to engage on the platform? This platform does require engagement, both replying to your own comments, but also engaging on other people’s videos as well to build a sense of community. And then do you have weekly or monthly time to create the content and how much time it takes to create the content varies quite a bit based on the type of content you’re creating. It could be anywhere from an hour of planning, an hour of recording, and an hour of editing sometimes a little bit less all the way up to way more. The average that I’ve seen most people require per video is at least two to three hours. And that’s if they have some help on their team to be able to help with editing or getting the video uploaded or that sort of thing. That’s definitely what I do.

It generally takes me about 15 to 20 minutes, maybe 30, if it’s a longer video to record it, maybe about 20 minutes to plan it out. And then I outsource the rest of it. So I could do a video in an hour. I have the time for that now, but in the beginning, I was investing a lot more time until I had the team to help me. I’ve known people on YouTube who have spent literally 10, 20, 30, 40 hours to create one video. So it’s really going to come down to the topics that you’re talking about and the type or the quality of video that you want to make.

And then lastly, do you have the mental capacity for all of this, for all the moving parts and pieces with the learning curve, for just everything that you’re gonna be juggling with this, I don’t wanna turn people off from YouTube marketing. It’s great. You just need to make sure you’re honest yourself because it might be great for you, but maybe it’s great for you in two month’s time or three month’s time, or maybe you need to ease yourself into it or be really careful with your planning without asking yourself these questions you’re not going to know what it’s going to take for you to be successful. And that’s what I want you to be clear about. Not just what you need to do, but you need to do it so that you can create the outcome that you want to create and not just rob yourself of time and energy. Comment below with time if you already know that this is a time-intensive platform and comment below with patience, if you’re willing to have some.

Clue #5: Your Team Bandwidth

So this ties into Clue number five, your team bandwidth. Now you might be a solopreneur right now, in which case your team bandwidth is zero, or you might have an assistant or you might be able to hire a contractor to help you with some things, really look at their time and energy and assess do they have the ability to take this on with me to help me move this forward, take some things off my plate or do things better? This could be things in terms of search engine optimization or keyword research. This could be planning out the content, helping you record it, helping you edit it. This could be scheduling the content, doing the promotion for the content. Do you have the team bandwidth to help you out?

Now, there are a lot of ways that you can make this easier either with or without a team by using templates, I have one up here that you can grab. By using different organizational tools, I use ClickUp to organize all of my content and all of the tasks associated with each individual video. You can see this video up here for that. You can also do things like repurposing a video into a blog post so that you’re kind of killing two birds with one stone, even taking the transcript from that video and including it in the blog post so that you have something there for people who prefer to read versus watch.

But even to get those things set up, take some time and then to run those things every week or every other week, or however often you decide to do video, maybe you’re doing it more than once a week. You have to make sure that this is not going to burn you out. Will YouTube marketing burn you or your team out in the short term or in the long term?

Now, if you’ve taken this as an honest assessment and all the clues were pointing to, yes, this would be a good fit, I can take this on and I’m ready to do this now, be sure to look for my next video on how to start a YouTube channel. I’m going to show you the things that I did and some of the things I wish that I had done that can help you set your channel up for success from day one, including equipment, search engine optimization, all the little things that are going to help you make this as successful as possible.