6 billion hours.

That’s the total amount of time people spend watching videos on YouTube every month.

Add in that YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world, and you’ve got a great opportunity to reach in-market car & tire buyers.

Before viewing YouTube as a silver bullet, you must understand that you need to provide help and advice to be successful on YouTube. Your goal should be to help viewers (a/k/a car buyers) by offering them advice.

Hard sales tactics almost never work on YouTube.  Handing out generous portions of advice and entertainment does.

Ready to get started?  Here’s 3 steps to get you going:

Step 1: Create your videos

Step 2: Market your videos

Step 3: Get traffic to your site and sell some cars

Simple, right?  Not so fast.  There’s a little more to it.

Back to step 1 – creating your videos:  The type of videos you create for your dealership can vary between product overviews, explaining the car buying process and credit / finance issues.  Remember, you want to provide advice, not make a sales pitch.

YouTube is built on people asking “how do I  (fill in the blank)…”?

Think about answering the questions that your customers typically ask.  Make a list of these questions and answer them via video.

Ready to market your videos so viewers can watch them?  Here are a few pointers:

1): Make your videos based on keywords.

Just like your PPC ads that are triggered by keywords, videos are populated by the search terms users ask about.  Make sure
those terms are in your video.

2):Incorporate these keywords in your video title.

Remember, people on YouTube are asking questions.  Title your video in a way that answers that question.  For example, if your video is on getting the best financing, you could title your video “How to get the best financing for a new or used car”.

3): Don’t forget the descriptions. 

The description section below your video have a big impact on SEO. Google uses these descriptions to understand what your video is all about.  Make sure to add keyword-rich content describing the video in this section.

Finally (and the best part), getting traffic to your web site.   YouTube offers multiple methods to let users interact with your video content. Here are the most popular.

Video annotations.  Annotations are the bread and butter of YouTube marketing. Use them to place call-to-actions at different intervals in the video. Consider adding an annotation at the beginning, middle and end of the video, as well as the logo, all linking back to your website.

Interactive cards.  These are a newer addition that provide interactive elements to the video. While cards are fun and sophisticated,  I recommend reviewing Google’s help section   for more details.

Sponsored content campaigns.  Just like Google PPC ads, you can target your videos to certain audiences and jump-start your
organic campaign.  In-stream, discovery ads & even non-skippable bumper ads are all available allowing you to reach your audience.

Remember, YouTube is a place for entertainment and how-to advice.  Get creative, show your human side of the dealership and have fun.

Ronald A. Heider is the owner of HMA – Heider Marketing & Advertising; a Virginia Beach based agency servicing the automotive and auto-aftermarket industries.  He can be reached at by e-mail at rheider@hmaads.com.