Home to over 51 million channels, YouTube offers multiple benefits to its content creators. Starting a YouTube channel can help you boost website traffic, build a strong community, voice your opinions, document your journey, and capture profitable partnerships with reputable brands. But paying attention to YouTube demographics is crucial if you are serious about realizing your dream of becoming a popular YouTube creator.
Understanding your target audience’s age, gender, and interests will help you produce relevant YouTube videos that spark interest. Knowing YouTube demographics will also help you add attention-driving elements to your videos. All your content creation efforts are futile without audience insights.
Continue reading this blog if you want to master the art of targeting the right demographics on YouTube in 2022.
How To Target The Right Demographics On YouTube
YouTube Audience Analytics
Figure 1: Audience analytics dashboard on YouTube. Source
Most social media platforms provide influencers with analytics to measure their reach and understand their target audience’s behaviors. YouTube is no exception. YouTube Analytics is the gold-mine of audience information, ranging from YouTube demographics by channel to traffic sources and more. You can refine your content strategy using this data to create engaging videos for your audience.
Here’s how to access your channel’s analytics:
- Log into your YouTube account.
- Click on the profile icon in the upper right corner
- Select YouTube Studio
- You will see a summary of your channel’s performance on the dashboard
- Click on “Analytics” on the left-hand menu and go to the “Audience” tab to get in-depth information
YouTube’s audience analytics will inform you who finds your content most appealing. The two key elements to focus on are gender and age. These stats are vital because different age groups and genders exhibit varied behaviors on YouTube.
For example, 80% of Gen Zs leverage YouTube to improve their skill set, and 45% of Millennials watch YouTube for entertainment and inspiration. Likewise, the male and female split on YouTube is noteworthy. Reports reveal that women often watch entrepreneurship, empowerment, and educational content. On the other hand, men usually follow gaming and sporting channels.
Creating content relevant to your audience will automatically drive interest, and channel growth will follow.
Understanding and researching trends
Using the ongoing trends helps maintain relevance in the ever-shifting YouTube world and significantly boosts content views. That said, only follow trends that appeal to your target audience. This means you don’t need to create animated videos just because they consistently make it to YouTube’s trending page. Only upload these types of content if your subscribers demand it.
Understanding your audience’s hobbies and interests is essential to foresee the trends they may like. To keep on track of this information, do the following:
- Analyze the videos your audience watch the most
- Watch the time they are most active on YouTube
- Examine the content creators and channels they follow
These behaviors will give away the secret to winning your viewers’ hearts! Creating videos around these trends will automatically place you on your audience’s screen.
Competitor analysis
Never underestimate the importance of competitor analysis! Scouting your competitors’ channels is an efficient yet underrated way to reach the right demographics on YouTube. Competitor analysis will expose the shortcomings in your videos, titles, descriptions, thumbnails, and other essential components. In addition, it will also highlight your competitor’s mistakes, which you can steer clear of.
For efficient competitor analysis, select three key competitors in your niche. Your primary rivals are influencers who produce similar content to you and have a target audience that resembles your own. Examine the way they have presented and optimized their videos, and monitor the frequency at which they upload videos and host giveaways, Q&A sessions, or product reviews. Remember, you do not have to copy them but instead, take inspiration.
Collaborate within the same niche
Ever heard the saying, “Two heads are better than one?” This stands true for content creators trying to reach the right demographics. Collaborating with an influencer with a similar target audience exposes you to new users and can help you get more subscribers. But remember, these partnerships are beneficial only when they target the same demographics.
For a friction-free collaboration, have a clear goal in mind and track the results to analyze if the endeavor was profitable. Search for leading content creators in your industry and see if they have a robust content strategy and consistently post engaging videos.
Refrain from pitching to your potential partner in the first interaction. Focus on creating a rapport first. Propose to them your collaboration idea only once you are convinced this influencer is the right fit. The cross-promotion among each others’ followers that happens due to shoutouts is also massive.
Participate in the discussions going on other channels
YouTube offers numerous paid and unpaid ways to expand your outreach. Most of these ways require creators to actively participate on the platform instead of being passive content creators. This is why you have to engage with other channels and influencers to reach your target demographics.
Participation boosts visibility and attracts lucrative brand partnerships — start interacting because you never know where you might bag your highest-paying brand collaboration!
One of the most common ways to engage is by commenting on relevant channels related to your niche. However, comments like “nice video,” “good job,” or “subscribe to my channel” will take you nowhere because they do not capture attention. You need to go the extra mile and write valuable comments, but avoid spamming and writing lengthy comments.
If you encounter an unanswered question in the comment section, create a video answering it — believe us, comment sections are the best sources of inspiration. In the end, the idea is to offer help, and the right subscribers will follow.
YouTube channel optimization
There are countless videos on YouTube, and reaching your target audience can be challenging. You have to work harder to get among the chosen few videos that appear on your viewers’ screen. Thankfully, even minor tweaks can be impactful. Here are some easy yet powerful ways you can optimize your channel for a better reach:
- Create keyword-rich titles: Keywords are terms your viewers type in the YouTube search bar. Using these words in your video titles gently nudges search engines to give you a higher rank. So, perform keyword research and strategically incorporate keywords to reach your target audience.
- Add relevant tags: Search engines also use tags to offer relevant search results to their users. Tags are helpful as they associate your videos with other similar ones. Adding keywords in your tags also improves visibility.
- Write video descriptions: The video description box is a space where you can compel your audience to watch the video. Explain the problem your video will solve and give good reasons to watch it — including a unique value proposition. You can even use specific keywords in these boxes for improved visibility.
- Include a CTA (call-to-action): Viewing your video may not be the final step you want your audience to take. Every influencer is on a quest to create a loyal community for consistent channel growth. Therefore, always include a CTA at the end, whether it’s “subscribe to my channel”, “click the link below to buy XYZ product” or something else.
BONUS! Find Your Audience’s Favorite Video Format In 2022
Here are just a few entertaining video formats that can get you more subscribers:
- Humorous videos: Our jam-packed schedules barely give us time to laugh our hearts out and live our lives to the fullest. Therefore, we seek a dose of relief whenever on YouTube — and humorous videos offer precisely what we long for. Keep your witty comebacks handy if you are a YouTube content creator and people will hit “like.”
- Behind-the-scenes (BTS) videos: Humans are curious beings. They are interested in all the goings-on of your life, which is why BTS videos do well on YouTube. These videos bridge the gap between the content creators’ and followers’ lives, strengthening the personal connection.
- How-to videos: We always find ourselves on YouTube when trying to learn a new skill — no wonder how-to videos are popular here! Try teaching your viewers a new skill and get likes, comments, and more subscribers in return.
- Animation videos: Internet users have a short attention span; therefore, they don’t often spend hours on a video. If you want to scale your channel, try leveraging digestible animations that break more complex concepts into absorbable bits.
Now that you know the most popular video formats on YouTube, analyze which one resonates with your target audience the most. Try out all forms and measure content performance. Stick to the format that your audience finds the most interesting.
Once you know how to create a reliable community that loves binging on your videos, you’re ready for brand partnerships. Brands often collaborate with influencers with a strong follower-base for higher sales and revenue.
However, the biggest challenge of these partnerships is finding an ideal brand with a similar target audience. But worry no more! With Atisfyre, you can sign up and partner with top-notch brands looking to promote their products and services.
Atisfyre is an AI-based platform for influencers that matches them with high-paying brands in their niches. Do what you’re best at while we search for the right job for you — sign-up at Atisfyre today for FREE.
