Are you taking full advantage of YouTube to promote your biotech business? If not, you could be missing out on opportunities to connect with an entirely new audience. Just like diversifying your financial investments, you should diversify your social media presence to capture leads from multiple platforms.

YouTube is the second most visited website in the world, with over 2.5 billion users across the globe. Marketers rank it as a top platform for building an online community. With video consumption at an all-time high, YouTube is the ideal channel for increasing biotech customer engagement, brand awareness, lead generation, and conversions.

YouTube in a nutshell

YouTube is a free video sharing and social networking platform with a simple interface, making it easy to watch user-generated video content, and—most importantly—easy to discover and share it. Its features include hosting videos and advertising through video ads.

YouTube is a powerful biotech marketing channel because it focuses on longer content than other popular video hosting services. YouTube users self-select for attention span and tend to stay engaged for longer periods. This makes it perfect for sharing in-depth, educational videos. Videos on YouTube also have a long lifespan, with freshness not favored by the algorithm as on most other social media, where older posts are pushed down by newer content.

Why biotech companies need YouTube

YouTube can help biotech companies build brand awareness and audience engagement. You can build a community with potential customers, establish credibility, and encourage engagement such as comments, likes, and shares. YouTube may also serve as a lead generation and conversion tool, by driving traffic through links to your website or showing paid ads in relevant videos. In these ways, YouTube can be used to enhance your marketing efforts at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

How to get clicks on YouTube

The key to gaining views on YouTube is to feature unique, engaging content that resonates with your audience’s interests and educational needs. When choosing a topic for YouTube videos, start with research on trending topics, customer-relevant solutions, and industry developments.

Note, however, that there’s no need for every video to have custom content. Your existing content can be repurposed as videos. The easiest to convert are webinars and event presentations, but other content, such as blogs and case studies, can also be used as a starting point for videos.

Here are some ideas for great YouTube content, with examples:

• Webinars and case studies
• Thought leader interviews
• Product launches and demos
• In-depth technology explainers
• Customer testimonials and tutorials
• Team introductions
• YouTube Shorts

Getting the best ROI out of YouTube

Optimizing video titles and descriptions with relevant keywords can boost their SEO, making your content easier to discover through Google and YouTube searches. A click-worthy thumbnail image is also essential for maximizing view counts. Although the most traditional attributes of eye-grabbing YouTube thumbnails—brightly colored circles, swooping arrows, and extreme facial expressions—are usually not appropriate for biotech marketing, the logic behind them is still applicable. That is, the ideal thumbnail features high contrasts to draw the eye, clear imagery, and large font sizes that can be understood on mobile devices, and a human face to give a sense of personality.

To maximize the impact of your videos, craft content that addresses customer pain points and ends with a clear call-to-action. Content that is funny or relatable is often the most memorable.

Paid ads on YouTube

You can also run targeted advertising campaigns on YouTube to promote your products, services, events, and publications based on a viewer’s interests, demographics, and online behavior. YouTube ads can be set up through the Google Ads interface, using any video you’ve uploaded to YouTube. You can target these ads based on demographics, interests, locations, or even place them on specific YouTube channels that you believe your customers are watching.

Most ads should be short, but don’t rule out the possibility of running long-form videos as ads, in the hope of intriguing viewers of relevant channels. The key to keeping viewers watching a long-form video ad is to capture their attention very quickly—preferably before they notice the ad length and hit the skip button. However, since YouTube advertisers only pay when a viewer has watched 30 seconds of their ad, watched to the end of a shorter ad, or when they interact with the ad, the cost of failing to catch viewer attention is lower than it would be for traditional long-form advertising.

So don’t wait! Get started generating new biotech leads and growing your brand’s presence on YouTube today. If you need help producing engaging video content or running effective ad campaigns, let’s talk!