Influencer marketing is increasingly gaining popularity and has become the marketing tactic of choice for many brands (and marketers). 

YouTube is one of the most popular social media platforms and had over 2 billion logged-in monthly users in May 2019. And, videos are the most engaging content format…

…combine these with the power of influencer marketing and you have got a winning combination.

But how do you stand out from the numerous others who are trying to win the same audience using influencers?

The answer is by leveraging data and research to fuel your YouTube influencer marketing strategy.

Use Research to Understand Your Audience

Before you start any marketing campaign, the first thing you need to do is understand your audience. What do they like? What demographic segments do they belong to? What type of content resonates well with them?

There are a lot of ways to get these insights.

You can start by using YouTube’s built-in analytics tool to analyse your current audience. You can get data like audience demographics, including age, gender, location, etc. of your current viewers. 

You also get information on your top-performing videos to help you understand what kind of content resonates with your audience.

This kind of historical data on past performance can help you formulate your current strategy and precisely target your audience.

Leverage Data to Select the Right Influencers

One of the cornerstones of a successful influencer marketing strategy is the ability to find and select the right influencers to work with.

There are numerous influencer search tools and platforms that you can use to find influencers in your niche. And, you can look at the key social media performance metrics for each, to choose the ones with better reach, engagement, etc.

Influence.co, for example, is one such tool that can help you find influencers in your industry. It provides detailed information about each influencer, including previous brand promotions, to help you make your decision. 

And, you can also see each influencer’s audience demographics and match them with your own to select the influencers most relevant for your brand.

This is a brilliant example of how you can use data to fuel your influencer marketing strategy and take it to the next level. 

Create the Type of Videos That Perform Well

Research and data can also help you determine what type of videos get more views on YouTube.

You can use platforms like Think with Google to gain insights into what kind of YouTube videos people prefer to watch the most.

From product discovery to simply entertainment, viewers use YouTube for a variety of reasons. Understanding the type of videos that people like to watch will help you plan your YouTube video strategy better. 

Why experiment with different types of videos when you can focus on a few types of video that is guaranteed to bring you the desired views because data suggests so?

You can leverage this trend and make such videos for your YouTube channel. And using influencers to create content for you can further boost your reach and engagement.

So, gather as much data and insights as you can to understand what kind of videos people prefer to watch on YouTube. Then, narrow down your list and select a few video types that are more relevant for your brand and are known to do well on YouTube. 

You can collaborate with popular YouTube influencers to create these types of videos for your brand and see the results for yourself.

Data does not just help you determine what type of videos to create, but also the optimum length to get the maximum engagement. 

According to a recent study, the level of engagement drops in direct relation to the length of a video.

Shorter videos tend to get higher engagement, with videos that are less than 2 minutes getting the highest engagement rate.

Use Analytics to Track and Measure Performance

No influencer marketing strategy is complete without some means of tracking and measuring performance.

In the case of YouTube, it is especially easy to measure the performance of each influencer as the performance of their video will say it all. 

However, this will only provide you with metrics like views, likes, and shares, but not the actual sales impact of your influencer campaign and of each influencer.

For that, you can provide influencers with unique discount codes that they can disclose to their audience in the video.

By tracking the number of people who used a particular discount code, you will know which influencer is driving the highest conversion.

Similarly, if your aim is to track the exact traffic that each influencer is driving, you can use unique tracking links for each. You can use a tool like Google URL Builder to create such unique tracking links.

Influencers can place these links in their video descriptions and ask their viewers to visit your website by clicking on that link. This will help you identify the influencers that are driving the maximum traffic to your website.

This will help your YouTube influencer strategy by identifying your top-performing influencers.

So, the next time you want to collaborate with a YouTube influencer, you will already have knowledge and data from your previous campaigns.

Conclusion

No matter how well you plan your YouTube influencer strategy, it can never be fail-proof if it is not backed by data.

Backing your strategy with useful data can help you plan things in a way that has a higher probability of success.

You can leverage data to optimise all aspects of your YouTube influencer marketing strategy:

• Audience research can help you create precisely targeted influencer campaigns
• Influencer performance metrics can help you find the best influencers to collaborate with
• Analytics can help you filter out non-performing influencers and further fine-tune your strategy

So, the next time you plan your YouTube influencer campaign, don’t forget to leverage data to fuel your strategy and set it up for success.

Want more? Check out:

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• About the Author...

Gaurav Sharma

https://attrock.com/

Gaurav Sharma is the Founder of Attrock, a digital marketing company. He works closely with top marketing influencers and has helped numerous brands, ecommerce firms, and SaaS companies grow. He is also a certified Google Analytics and Google Adwords specialist and regularly contributes to reputable publications like HuffPost, TechCrunch, and many more.