YouTube Promo Guide
YouTube is a powerful platform for creators to promote their products and connect with fans. Spring offers a powerful YouTube integration that enables you to sell your products directly below your videos, on end cards, in your YouTube shop, and more. If you haven’t unlocked the merch shelf yet don’t worry, there are tons of other ways you can promote your products.
Add brand elements
As with all social platforms, it’s important to create a seamless branded consistency between your store and your social platforms. YouTube gives you the option to personalize your profile icon and banner image, allowing fans to quickly recognize you. Your banner and profile icon are the first things they’ll see on your channel, so utilize this space to create a lasting impression.
Activate Merch Shelf
Activate the Spring x Youtube Merch Shelf integration to sell your products directly below your YouTube videos. You’ll need at least 1,000 subscribers to be eligible for this feature, learn more here. You can visit the Integrations section of your Spring account to complete the setup.
Your newest products are displayed on your merch shelf by default (they normally appear within 3 days of launch), but you can also choose specific products to display on your video by pinning them, especially if you’re launching a new product and are discussing it via Livestream. Visit your YouTube Studio, click on Earn, and follow the prompts through to Shopping.
Control your product’s visibility settings too; If you change a listing from private to public it can take up to 24 – 48 hours for the product to appear on your YouTube merch shelf. Also, when you make a listing private it can take up to 10 hours for the product to be removed from YouTube.
Customize your store
Once you’ve activated your merch shelf, you can create a channel store. Go to YouTube Studio, and select ‘Earn’ from the left side menu. Open the Shopping tab, and within the Manage Products section, click ‘Create Own Selection’. From there you can choose the products featured in your store and the order they’re displayed in.
These same products will appear under all of your videos unless you customize the merchandise displayed on the video level.
Promotional tips for YouTube
When you wear your products, it can help increase your sales by 50%. If you feature it in your video content, even better. The top 3 ways creators promote their products on video include:
- Wearing or using your products while filming video content
- Mentioning your products within your video content
- Publishing a dedicated promo video
Use your video description
Add links to your products in your video description. You can direct your community to the ‘link below’ to find your store.
If your channel is using the merch shelf, link to your store in your video descriptions—this way fans who click the store link will get a preview of your products on YouTube without having to leave your channel.
Add end screens
Adding an end screen to the last 15-20 seconds of your YouTube videos is a great way to promote other videos, and playlists, and increase channel subscribers. With the merch shelf integration, you’re also able to use end screens to feature a direct link to your store and products.
Promoting on Livestream
Livestreaming is one of the most popular ways for creators to promote their products to their entire community. With the merch shelf, you’ll also have access to live merch alerts during your live streams. This means a real-time alert will automatically appear in chat when one of your products is purchased. This pop-up will display an image of the design and links to the listing.
Also, you can ‘pin’ merch to the top of the chat while live streaming. See more on selling merch during a live stream here!
More tips for promoting during your live stream:
- Wear products on stream: Order samples of your products ahead of time and show them off while streaming to get your community excited.
- Offer limited-time promo codes: Another great way to drive sales and engagement while streaming is to offer promo codes that expire in a short amount of time (like after the stream ends).
- Announce limited edition products: Make your new listings only available for a limited amount of time; creating urgency, hype, and exclusivity. If you’re planning a launch, update the listing’s visibility setting to ‘public’ ahead of time so your products will be added to your Merch Shelf product catalog.
Utilize your community tab
YouTube’s community tab creates more opportunities for creators to engage with fans. It’s a great space to announce sales, get people to vote on products or design ideas, and share new product releases. You’ll need to acquire 500 subscribers to unlock this feature on YouTube.