Are you taking advantage of YouTube?
Stop and think about this for a second: You’re a brand which sells energy drinks, and you see that video content is becoming a hot trend online. What are you going to do?
Create videos of people drinking cans of your beverage and …getting energized? That’s not the choice that Red Bull made at all. In fact, their YouTube channel has pretty much nothing to do with their drink.
The story of how Red Bull became the most subscribed brand on YouTube is interesting.
They have focused on creating a brand identity which goes beyond drinking a highly-caffeinated beverage and instead focuses on a lifestyle. Nearly any brand, from any industry, can learn from them and get more YouTube subscribers for their own channels.
The most subscribed brand on YouTube: Red Bull
They established a brand identity
The most important aspect of Red Bull’s Youtube channel was their firm establishment of what their brand is all about. Their main channel is about one thing, and one thing only: Extreme sports. You won’t see any of their goofy TV advertisements.
Some of this is from their sponsored events, some of this is just filming their sponsored athletes doing what they do, and every now and then they create something truly spectacular (more on that later).
The bottom line is that their subscribers on YouTube know what they’re going to get. Red Bull have further established this by creating separate channels for their other content.
This gives them the freedom to create other content while maintaining the purity of the branding on the main channel. Everything they do is all about maintaining the high standards on the main channel.
All smart YouTube marketers know how important branding is. A channel without a focus is less likely to grow an audience, or gain significant numbers of subscribers.
They post content on a consistent schedule
If there’s one thing that will kill a channel quickly, it’s being inconsistent.
You can build and build your momentum, and really start to get somewhere, and then blow it by not posting for a few weeks. You need to maintain a consistent posting schedule that you stick to.
Red Bull post content on a daily basis, rarely missing a single day. What’s more, sometimes they post two or even three videos in a day.
Their viewers know that there’s always going to be something new to watch, pushing them to become subscribers who interact with the brand for the long term.
While your brand may not be able to afford to create new content every single day, it will need to figure out what it can manage.
There are many options, but I believe that every other week is the longest you should go between uploads to really establish an audience. Be sure to advertise your regular publishing schedule so that your subscribers actually show up to watch.
They have seriously improved their video outro
There was a time not too long ago that Red Bull had the worst possible video outros: None. When a video stops playing on YouTube you are given related videos to watch. These videos frequently go to other YouTube channels’ content. Here’s a typical one from three years ago:
The red bar along the bottom is a clickable link leading to other videos. That’s all they gave their fans back then, and I’m sure it resulted in many, many missed opportunities to get more YouTube subscribers, and more views.
Here’s the outro for a recent video:
You have to see the difference this makes. They are previewing a related video, they have a big SUBSCRIBE TO RED BULL button in the middle, and they push their specialist channel on the right.
This may be your most important strategy for capturing YouTube subscribers as often as possible.
Both of the frames are videos previewing what you can expect to see. You have to give your viewers their next click, and make it to your content, or they’ll leave. Period. If you’re not doing this, you’re not doing YouTube marketing right at all.
Red Bull carefully plan for viral videos to happen
Viral videos are an important touchstone in your brand’s story. If you take a look at Red Bull’s most watched videos, you’ll see that they’re masters of viral video marketing.
That’s five videos with over fifteen million views each! And there are plenty of other videos in the multi-million views category.
This doesn’t happen by accident. Each of their most popular videos is something really special, and they put the time and money into making them everything they can be.
If you want to have a viral video of your own, you can’t coast by. You need a GREAT idea, a proper script, professional services, real video editing skills, and a fanbase to push it. Or, if you’re lucky beyond words, you just need a REALLY GREAT idea…
To talk more about the fanbase, Red Bull’s success as YouTube marketers and viral video creators isn’t all about what they do on YouTube. It’s also about what they do across social media. They have:
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Two million+ Twitter followers
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Forty-five million Facebook Likes
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Four million Instagram followers
These huge audiences can be thought of as extensions of their Youtube subscribers as you can be sure that Red Bull push their videos out over these platforms.
Not only are more of their followers and fans seeing the videos, but they also have an enormous potential for shares and more people seeing their content for the first time because of those shares.
All marketing tasks are connected. You need to take your video marketing plans into account with your social media marketing, website marketing, and even email marketing to get the best performance from all of them.
Red Bull are the most subscribed brand for a reason
Red Bull have built their Youtube marketing up thanks to their wise decision to use the opportunity to create a brand identity. They do extreme sports on their main channel, and that’s it. Their next steps were to:
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Post focused content consistently.
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Keep people watching their content with a great video outro strategy.
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Create high-value content that gives them the greatest chance to go viral.
Your brand can learn from and apply these lessons, and scale them to fit your marketing budget. You may not be able to film a guy jumping from the stratosphere, but you can send your YouTube subscriber, and viewer, numbers soaring!
Have you ever wanted to be a video marketing expert? See how Red Bull became the most subscribed brand on YouTube and apply it to your channel.