Why Hosting Your Business Video on YouTube is a Bad Idea

Video content is one of the best ways to capture potential customers’ attention in hopes of getting them to convert, whether it’s to buy your product, sign up for your mailing list, or create an account with your business. You want to establish a clear, direct path from your video to taking the next step – whether it’s visiting your website, contacting your business for more information, or purchasing your product. Any deviation from this path and you can lose all hopes of your video viewers converting. So what could lead them to straying away and you losing a customer? The answer: Youtube.

Think about this. What happens when you upload a video to Youtube and then link to it or feature it on your website? If your visitors click on that video, here comes the Youtube branding and the Youtube competition. Now your video has to compete with the hundreds of videos like it that Youtube serves up to keep viewers inside Youtube’s world. And anyone who has ever watched a Youtube video knows just how easy it is to get sucked in and immediately forget what you were searching for or doing there in the first place.

So what’s the disadvantage to the “YouTube branding” that comes along with uploading your video to the site? First, unless you uncheck the “show suggested videos” box, your viewers will receive “recommended videos” at the end of your video that you will have no control over. This is a big concern if your videos have even the least bit of potential to be related to something inappropriate for your company’s audience or a high level of competition. By using a dedicated video hosting service, such as Wistia, you will have complete control over the branding of the player (goodbye red and black), the logo, customized thumbnail, and mostly importantly, no related videos or advertisements popping up to distract your audience.

Need more reasons why hosting your video on YouTube is bad for business? Think about what you need to do in order to convert your video viewers and if you can implement these tactics within YouTube. Most of the time, the answer is no. YouTube is not meant for business; it is meant for entertainment. On the other hand, other video platforms allow you to integrate some custom features right into your videos. For example, including an email capture before or after a video, or even placing a call to action in the video with text or custom html is impossible with YouTube hosting. But with other video hosts, you can even choose how your video can be shared and if someone clicks back to the original video – they head over to your website, not to YouTube.

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If you are just out to get traffic and exposure for your business or a specific topic, YouTube is great for that. But if you want to put a video on your sales page, it is crucial to find another video hosting service for this. Why? Because one of the most important things to remember about your sales page is that you don’t want to give your visitors too many options. It should be clear what they need to do – such as buy or signup. By embedding a YouTube video, you are giving your visitors the choice to leave your page via the video. Don’t give them this choice! Find another video hosting service that will allow you to keep your visitors on your site where they belong.

We could go on and on about other things you should consider before hosting your business videos on YouTube, for example an embedded YouTube video on your landing page can look outdated and unprofessional, but the key takeaway here is that YouTube knows what it is doing. They know how to suck people in and keep them there. We’re not saying you should avoid YouTube completely, but just avoid using it as a barrier down your path to conversions.