How to Boost Your YouTube Views with a Giveaway

YouTube has a massive collection of 1.3 billion videos stored on its platform. These videos range from the fuzzy, homemade clips like the one you took of your dog trying to eat jello off the kitchen floor, to the high-end productions for ultra mega pop stars like Taylor Swift. Her video ‘Shake it Off’ currently has 2.74 billion views, by the way.In the 10 years YouTube has been around, it has become the go-to video sharing site for homemade video clips, professional video productions and everything in between, including video content for marketers. In fact, as a marketing medium, video boasts a 92% share rate from consumers while on their mobile device. If that weren’t exciting enough, 72% of customers claim they rather learn about a product or service by way of video. To summarize, if you’re not already producing video content for your business, it’s time to grab your video camera, megaphone, and clapboard and get to work!

Whether you’re just starting to dabble in producing video content, or your YouTube channel is rockin’ and rollin’, you may already realize that it’s not enough just to create the content - you have to find ways to get viewers in front of it. In this article, I’ve shared three simple strategies to not only boost your views, but also your audience engagement and overall brand awareness. After all, video production can be a hefty investment of both money and manpower, so make sure you’re getting the most out of what you spend.These three strategies combine your marketing videos with the power of a giveaway in three different formats. Each are simple to set up and implement using the giveaway-building platform, ShortStack.

Gate a Giveaway’s Entry Form with Your Video

This strategy will help you:

• get your video in front of a wider audience,
• boost views,
• increase view times, and
• build your email list.

Your videos don’t have to be sequestered to your YouTube channel. By embedding them in other forms of online media - such as a blog, website, or even just a landing page - you can circulate them to a larger audience than those who might only stumble across your YouTube channel.Here’s a way you can really boost those views: combine your embedded video with an enticing giveaway, but only display the giveaway’s entry form after the video has ended. You’ll not only boost your video’s views, you’ll increase the overall watch time as well.Here’s how to set something like this up:For this example, we’re using ShortStack to build a simple landing page.

1. In the Campaign Builder, make sure to add a Video Widget and a Form Widget to your campaign. The Video Widget can display any video hosted by YouTube or Vimeo. Simply copy and paste the video’s URL into the URL field in the Widget. You can also edit the form to collect any data you like.

1. Set the visibility of the Form Widget to Starts Hidden - we don’t want it to show up before the video has ended.

1. Add an Action Widget to the campaign. This is how you’ll display the entry form after the video is finished playing.

That’s all there is to it! Here’s how the landing page will look when viewers arrive at it.

This is what they’ll see when the video has finished playing.

Build a Quiz Giveaway Based on Your Video’s Content

This strategy will help you:

• engage viewers,
• boost views,
• increase view times, and
• build your email list.

Any type of giveaway announcement, or contest alert is a great attention grabber. Build on this by turning a giveaway into a quiz - offering the chance at winning a prize to those who answer the quiz questions correctly. The kicker is that the correct answers will be found within your YouTube video. You’ll not only get loads of views, you’ll increase your video’s watch time as well.Here’s how to set something like this up:

Drive traffic to wherever your video lives and link to the quiz giveaway from the video’s description on YouTube.

Build your own Knoweldge QuizOffering a quiz or any type of giveaway is a great strategy for not only boosting views on your video, but also for collecting info that you can use for future marketing. If you include an entry form in your quiz giveaway, you’ll capture names and email addresses you can use to send newsletters, discounts, event announcements and so much more.

Offer Prize Options from Multiple Videos

This strategy will help you:

• boost views on multiple videos,
• increase view times,
• collect targeted marketing data, and
• build your email list.

As with any giveaway that includes prize options, you can learn a lot about what your audience is interested in from their prize selection. Data like this is super handy for further marketing. For example, if you allow your giveaway participants to select from three different prizes, you’ll be able to see which prize is the most popular. You’ll also be able to target your future marketing to segments based on what they chose.In this giveaway, three different videos were used - each featuring different types of products. The first video features products from a makeup line, the second, from a line of skin care products, and the third, products for your hair.

Pick Your Prize ExampleIf 85% of the participants entered to win the makeup, you’ll have a key piece of data about the types of products your audience (as a whole) is interested in, and can confidently promote makeup products down the road.If your prize selections are distributed more evenly, you can segment email lists and send hair product promotions to those who opted to win the hair products, skin care product promotions to those who wanted the skin care products, and so on.But personalized marketing data isn’t the only perk this type of giveaway has to offer. Let’s not forget about all the views you’ll be getting! To make an informed decision about what prize they’d like to win, participants will most likely be watching all of the videos displayed in your campaign, boosting views on more than just one of your videos.---Although your videos may never reach Taylor Swift status, expending even a modest amount of effort to incentivize views can really help you drive more traffic to your video content, boost your views, and ultimately attract more customers.

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