As you already know, the most widely used search engine in the world is Google. Do you know what the second most widely used search engine in the world is? YouTube!
If you want to use YouTube as a marketing channel to grow your online business, you'll need to arm yourself with the right video marketing tools built around this powerful platform.
This article will showcase the best video marketing tools that are available for online solopreneurs to take full advantage of YouTube to market effectively to an audience (bonus tip: some tools will also help you market videos via Facebook and Twitter).
Disclosure: Although I receive affiliate compensation at no additional cost to you to support this site that compensation in no way influences my recommendations, which are strictly informed by my 10+ years of online business experience consulting for clients large and small. My aim is to always recommend tools that offer the best return for your investment (for more details, read my Affiliate Disclosure).
What Are the Best Video Marketing Tools?
Best Overall: TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy is by far the most popular and feature-rich YouTube marketing-assist tools out there. With TubeBuddy you’ll be able to monitor, manage and scale your YouTube channel to new heights.
This tool has been smartly designed as a browser extension that overlays on top of YouTube itself, so it feels like it’s seamlessly integrated inside your YouTube account dashboard.
TubeBuddy is highly data-driven and has excellent video analytics to help you understand those areas where your videos are under performing so you can tweak your metadata to make improvements.
TubeBuddy has many useful features that can even assist your marketing efforts outside of YouTube.
For instance, you can automatically publish videos natively in Facebook (instead of just linking back to YouTube) which will help you with your Facebook outreach.
TubeBuddy Features that Stand Out
- Advanced embedding options, allowing you to customize the appearance of embedded videos, disable play controls, force closed-captioning, loop videos automatically, etc.
- Figures out algorithmically what's the best time to publish your videos.
- Offers several canned responses to choose from for your YouTube comment replies
- Has many templates for on-screen calls to action (e.g. cards) that can be reused across multiple videos
- Comment filter tool
- Thumbnail and GIF generators
- Channel backup feature, which allows you to backup all video metadata outside YouTube
- Health report tool
- Social media monitor that checks if people are talking about your videos in different social media channels
Now the Cons...
- You’ll have to go through a bit of a learning curve to master this tool
- It only works for a single YouTube channel, so if you have multiple channels you’ll need multiple paid accounts
Find Out More About TubeBuddy Here.
Best Budget Option: VidIQ
This is the main competition for TubeBuddy, and it certainly has its share of dedicated followers. VidIQ is not as feature-rich as TubeBuddy, but it still packs a lot of power.
Like its main competitor, VidIQ is designed to help you develop a YouTube audience and grow your subscriber list.
To do so, it provides you with YouTube optimization tools that improve your ranking in user searches and offers you information on YouTube search trends.
VidIQ has a powerful analytics dashboard where you can see at a glance the performance of your videos not just across YouTube but also Twitter and Facebook.
More impressively, it includes a feature that reveals you content gaps that you can then exploit (i.e. those phrases that have a lot of searches but few videos in the search results.)
All in all, VidIQ is a great second option for your YouTube marketing arsenal.
VidIQ Features that Stand Out
- Find the best time to upload your videos
- Monitor viewer and engagement analytics across YouTube, Facebook and Twitter
- Edit video descriptions in bulk
- Advanced comment moderation—identify your channel's biggest fans on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter
- Manage multiple YouTube channels from a single account, define roles and give members role-based (i.e. limited) access to your account
- Track your competitors
Now the Cons...
- Fewer overall features than TubeBuddy
Find Out More About VidIQ Here.
Best Free Option: YouTube Creator Studio
This is YouTube’s free tool for content creators to gives you much more control over your channel.
Although it doesn't come even close to the wealth of features offered by its competitors above, it's bound to improve over time.
YouTube Creator Studio Features that Stand Out for Online Earners
- Creator dashboard that includes total number of views, average view duration and watch time
- Access to video analytics directly from the dashboard
- List of recent subscribers over last 28 days
- News section with valuable industry news
- Creator update section that keeps you up-to-date with bug fixes and software updates
- Channel analytics with an overview of subscribers, channel watch time, overall views, top videos, etc.
- Section with valuable tips on how to make your next video a hit
Now the Cons...
- Very poor feature set compared to its paid competitors
- No integration with Facebook or Twitter to monitor your video analytics on those platforms (see VidIQ above)
Find Out More About YouTube Creator Studio Here.
How Can You Measure the Success of Your Video Marketing Campaign?
There are a few different ways to measure the success of your video marketing campaign. Here's a sample of the most basic metrics to track:
Number of Views: This is the most common way to measure the success of a video marketing campaign. You can use social media platforms like YouTube or Facebook to see how many views your videos have received.
Conversion Rate: This measures how many people who watched your video ended up taking action, whether that's signing up for your newsletter, buying your product, or some other call to action. You can use video marketing tools to track conversion rates.
Engagement Rate: This measures how engaged viewers are with your content. You can also take advantage of video marketing tools to see how long people are watching your videos, what kind of comments they're leaving, and how often they're sharing your videos.
What to Do Next?
You can begin by using YouTube's free native tool above and then move up to paid tools once you feel comfortable in the video optimization space.
Having said that, if you truly want to up your video marketing game, you'll need to use TubeBuddy (if you're focused strictly on YouTube videos) or VidIQ (if you want to monitor videos on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter) in order to have access to the data and tools required to succeed in the video posting world.