I've been working with food and drink brands for over eight years now, and one thing I know for sure is that YouTube marketing is often overlooked when planning influencer marketing strategies. The industry still seems to be Instagram-by-default. 

But there are an abundance of marketing opportunities available to food and drink brands on YouTube. And with so few brands utilising the platform, it's safe to say that the brands that do get stuck in will be a step ahead of their competitors on day one. 

Let’s have a look at some stats:

YouTube offers a totally unique opportunity for food and drink brands, allowing them to strengthen the connections they have with consumers through long-form storytelling, education, and collaborative partnerships with established food influencers (and content creators of many other kinds too).

Build trust and authenticity with millions of die-hard fans

YouTube influencers are noteworthy for their massive followings of dedicated, passionate, and loyal fans. Their subscribers get regular glimpses into their everyday lives via creative content around various niche topics, making for a genuinely close sense of relationship. So deep are the connections between influencers and audiences that when a YouTube influencer recommends a product, it can be widely adopted by their viewers and yield great dividends for the brand involved. 

Creating brand connections between influencers and their audiences is about trust and authenticity. The more the audience trusts the influencer, and the more authentically the brand or product fits into their lives, the more personally its appearance in influencer content will resonate with them. 

YouTube favours long-form storytelling

Because of the power of long-form storytelling, YouTube influencers have unique advantages over influencers on other platforms. Being able to subtly but creatively talk about a product for a proportion of a 15-minute video feels less invasive and sales-focused than a whole Instagram post that exists solely for the purpose of product placement, making YouTube partnerships an extremely effective marketing tool for brands, via their sheer palatability for audiences. 

Natural, in-depth product promotions

See this campaign we built between Mr Lee’s Noodles and Sailing La Vagabond. The video is classic, engaging human storytelling, with a clean, clear product integration that gels with the content creators’ everyday lives… and it worked! 

If you watched the video then you’ll have noticed that the influencers really explained the key benefits and differentiators of the products (fresh veg and real meat etc). This is another great strength that YouTubers have. With channels often built around real passion subjects, and plenty of running time to work with, they can deep-dive into a product or service, unpack it, build it, eat it, cook with it, etc. and really explain how and why it works in their own tone, to their own audiences. 

Capture valuable data to inform future marketing activities 

Capturing success data with YouTube influencers is also much easier than with any other social platform. Influencers can include a direct, trackable URL in their video descriptions that will allow you to provide functionality and gather valuable data for the benefit of consumer, brand and influencer alike. The link can direct the consumer straight to the product to make a purchase, the brand can measure the click-through success of the campaign and use that to inform future influencer spend, and the influencer can use those success metrics as the foundation for building and refining future brand partnerships. 

YouTube influencer marketing is a super-effective way to reach millions of valuable new customers, generate conversions, reach your sales goals and turn established audiences into loyal customers. We specialise in working with brands to create high-impact influencer marketing campaigns on YouTube. We help you to get under the skin of your audiences, understand who and where they are, and collaborate with respected YouTube influencers to get your message to them. If you’d like to chat about working together, get in touch.