Multi-Brand YouTube Case Study

Posted on January 28, 2021 in Case Studies

Oneupweb helps diverse brands make YouTube a more powerful tool for business growth. This YouTube marketing case study covers the stories and combined performance of our clients in the Neighborly family of franchises who embarked on a YouTube retainer agreement with us in 2020.

The study provides an overall view of the success that’s possible in this channel after a few months of hard work. If you like what you see and want to learn more, head over to our YouTube services page or contact us today.

Scope of Work

Every YouTube project is different. But the skeletons of effective YouTube channels look similar across the board. To date, the scope of Oneupweb’s YouTube retainer projects has included the following:

Channel cleanup: We optimize retainer clients’ About tab content to incorporate service-based keywords and specific calls to action. We add UTM parameters to links to get accurate performance data. Additionally, we add related brands or sister brands to the Featured Channels tab to cross-promote and send relevance signals to the YouTube algorithm. Finally, we structure each channel homepage to showcase optimized playlists and new content.
Video optimization: For each existing video on a client’s channel, our team conducts YouTube-specific keyword research and optimizes the video (including meta tags) for that keyword group. In addition, our designers create new custom thumbnails for each video. Finally, we implement a backlinking strategy, utilizing end screens and cards to keep users engaged on the channel.
New video content: Any YouTube project will benefit from new video content to complement video and channel optimizations and boost organic search performance. We upload each new video in accordance with YouTube best practices, which increases clickthrough rates from existing subscribers. YouTube prioritizes channels that exhibit consistency, both in new-video uploads and in new-playlist creation.
Channel maintenance: A YouTube channel is like a living organism. Two always-changing components of a channel are the homepage structure and the playlist structure. We maintain both areas to showcase new work, promote popular content and entice viewers to keep watching.

Channel Transformation Example

before and after shot of a youtube channel showing improvement in appearance with oneupweb youtube marketing services — This before-and-after shot of our client’s YouTube channel highlights a significant transformation.

Notice the following improvements:

Custom thumbnails make the YouTube videos enticing and help them instantly communicate what each video is about.
Optimized playlists with data-driven titles and descriptions are now featured on the channel homepage.
Featured Channels are included. This part of a backlinking strategy is crucial for increasing brand legitimacy for both enterprises and smaller businesses.

Results: YouTube Marketing Success Story

On YouTube, getting your content in front of the right audience – not just people in general – is the key to growing your channel. As you’ll see, our retainer clients’ channels are getting in front of the right people.

The following YouTube case study details focus on in-platform views and impressions.

Definitions of these metrics:

Impressions occur every time a viewer sees one of your video thumbnails anywhere on the YouTube platform. An impression is counted only if the thumbnail is shown for more than one second and at least 50% of the thumbnail is visible on the screen.
YouTube defines a view with two conditions: A user intentionally hits Play to watch your video. Then the user watches your video for a total of 30 seconds (doesn’t have to be consecutive).

Views and Impressions – Single Client Spotlight

Here’s a peek at one client’s performance since the beginning of their relationship with our agency.

Impressions are increasing, and views are increasing even more dramatically. That means videos are communicating relevancy and attracting qualified viewers through descriptive thumbnails and titles.

Line graph showing that YouTube views by video increased significantly year-over-year after five months of Oneupweb YouTube services — This graph shows views by video. The purple (bottom) line is January 1, 2019 – May 25, 2019. The blue (top) line is January 1, 2020 – May 25, 2020. Our YouTube retainer began January 1, 2020.

Getting videos in front of viewers is the first step toward creating a successful YouTube channel.

Views and Impressions – Combined Client Performance

YouTube impressions for our retainer clients increased 49.4% year-over-year after only 5 months of optimization.

Once we implemented video tags throughout our clients’ channels and began optimizing videos, views started to take off too. Performance was amplified by new content being consistently uploaded.

Video views for our retainer clients increased 49% year-over-year in the same period.

The bottom line: We’ll make sure your YouTube videos show up in relevant search results and entice people to click. Our YouTube optimization process works.

Watch Time

Now we’ve covered the basics. But how do increased channel views and impressions translate to building a qualified audience? We find indicators in “watch time” performance and subscriber growth.

Watch time is considered the most important metric on YouTube. YouTube wants channels to accumulate as much watch time – on individual videos and channel-wide – as possible. The reasoning behind this is simple: The higher the watch time, the more opportunity there is for YouTube to make money from ads. Even if your content is not monetized, YouTube will prioritize videos with higher watch time in search results.

Here’s how watch time improved for one of our clients after they partnered with our YouTube team:

Line graph showing that YouTube watch time in hours by video increased significantly year-over-year after five months of Oneupweb YouTube services — This graph shows watch time in hours by video. The purple (bottom) line represents January 1, 2019 – May 25, 2019. The blue (top) line is January 1, 2020 – May 25, 2020.

What did combined client performance look like?

YouTube watch time (hours) for our retainer clients increased 36% year-over-year after just 5 months of optimization.

Watch time is also known as audience retention. It’s encouraging to see such an increase in watch time since kicking off our optimization project. It means that our clients’ videos are meaningful to their respective audiences. The optimizations we’ve made are helping the videos show up for more relevant queries.

Smash that Subscribe Button!

Not only are viewers watching our clients’ videos for longer; more are choosing to be a part of the channels’ communities by subscribing.

Subscribers are important for three reasons:

YouTube uses subscriber view data to determine if a video is worth ranking highly. After all, if your subscribers aren’t interested in your video, why would anyone else be? If a video is popular with your audience, YouTube will push it to more people.
YouTube prioritizes videos that gain subscribers. YouTube uses this data to determine if your channel publishes valuable content that is helpful and answers search queries.
Subscribers are a big component of YouTube channel authority. Like domain authority for websites, the higher the channel’s authority, the easier it is for that channel’s video to go viral.

This graph shows how subscribers grew for one of our clients.

Line graph showing that YouTube subscriber growth by videowatch time in increased significantly year-over-year after five months of Oneupweb YouTube services — This graph shows subscriber growth by video. The purple (bottom) line represents January 1, 2019 – May 25, 2019. The blue (top) line is January 1, 2020 – May 25, 2020.

While subscriber growth isn’t a perfect upward trendline here, the data shows promise. Viewers are choosing to subscribe to the channel right after watching a video, suggesting that this content adds value to viewers’ lives.

And as our retainer client channels continue to publish quality videos, our team expects the subscriber growth trendline to spike in the coming months.

So far so good – our retainer clients’ YouTube subscribers are up 93% year-over-year in the five-month period measured.

Focus on YouTube, and Success Will Follow

YouTube marketing success stories are often tied to success in Google search. Such is the case with this YouTube case study! We optimized this video on April 15, 2020, for a YouTube retainer client.

Just one month after we implemented optimizations, this video caused a 141% increase in views channel wide. The video even started ranking higher than the client’s blog post that targeted similar keywords.

a line graph shows a dramatic increase in video views with Oneupweb YouTube services — The optimization was implemented on April 15, 2020. From there, views steadily increased until the video began to rank well in Google search results, accounting for the spike in views around May 15.

This is just one example of how a YouTube channel can affect a brand’s standing in organic Google search results. Google prioritizes YouTube videos in search results over all other video platforms, so it’s always a good idea to put your videos on YouTube and optimize them for the platform.

Connect with Our YouTube Masters

Are you ready to optimize your YouTube channel and get better results from video content marketing? Let Oneupweb support your team. Our SEO experts and YouTube strategists would love to meet you and share ideas. Give us a call at (231) 922-9977, or fill out our form to get started today.