How do businesses use YouTube for marketing?

The common models are teaching the problem the product solves, demonstrating the product doing something difficult, publishing proprietary data, running event content as an evergreen library, and operating as a media brand. Most B2B companies should start with teaching, because it uses expertise they already have.

What kind of YouTube content works best for brands?

Content about the customer's problem rather than about the company. Product launches, culture videos and conference recaps are interesting internally and invisible externally, and they are what most brand channels are made of.

Do we need a big production budget to use YouTube for marketing?

No. The two cheapest models — teaching the problem and publishing your own data — need expertise and a camera rather than a crew. Expensive production is a choice that some models require and most do not.

Should a business build a media brand on YouTube?

Only with a long horizon and real budget. The media brand model works for Red Bull because content is effectively the product. For most companies it is the most expensive answer to a question that teaching would have answered.

How many videos should a business publish per month?

Two a month held for a year beats eight a month for a quarter. Pick the cadence you can sustain in your busiest quarter, because inconsistency costs more than low volume.

How Businesses Use YouTube for Marketing

There are not a hundred ways to use YouTube as a business. There are about ten, and most brands pick the wrong one — usually the most visible one rather than the one that fits what they have.

The examples below are companies whose approach is publicly observable. Channels change, so treat these as models rather than a leaderboard, and note what each one actually demands before copying it.

How businesses use YouTube for marketing

The underlying choice is what you are willing to spend: expertise, access, data, or money. Each model draws down a different one.

1. Teach the problem your product solves — Ahrefs

Ahrefs sells SEO software and its channel is largely tutorials about SEO, much of which you can act on without buying anything. The product appears where it is genuinely the tool for the job.

Why it works: people searching how to do the thing are people who will eventually buy the tool for the thing. What it costs: an expert and a camera. This is the cheapest serious model and the right starting point for most B2B companies.

2. Build an educational library at scale — HubSpot

HubSpot treats education as infrastructure, publishing across marketing, sales and service in volume, much of it aimed at people years away from buying.

Why it works: breadth captures demand across an entire category rather than one product. What it costs: sustained headcount. This is a five-year commitment, not a campaign.

3. Publish your own data — Gong

Gong analyses sales calls, so it publishes findings from that data: what phrasing correlates with closed deals, how long the best discovery calls run.

Why it works: nobody else can publish it. Proprietary data is the most defensible content a company can make and the most cited. What it costs: almost nothing to produce and a real decision about what you are willing to share. Most companies sit on data like this and never look at it.

4. Show the product doing something hard — Blendtec

“Will It Blend?” put an iPhone in a blender. It is fifteen years old and still the clearest example of the model: demonstrate capability in a way that is genuinely interesting to watch.

Why it works: the demo is the entertainment, so there is no tension between the two. What it costs: little, if your product does something visually dramatic. Nothing will save it if the product is a dashboard.

5. Operate as a media brand — Red Bull

Red Bull produces content that would be commissioned by a broadcaster, and the drink is barely present in it.

Why it works: it is not really marketing a drink; it is building an audience that associates a feeling with a logo. What it costs: more than almost any company reading this should spend. It is the most copied model and the least copyable.

6. Lead with entertainment — Liquid Death

Comedy sketches and deliberately absurd advertising for canned water, made to be watched voluntarily rather than tolerated.

Why it works: in a commodity category, being funny is a genuine differentiator when the product cannot be. What it costs: creative risk more than money. The failure mode is expensive and public: unfunny brand comedy is worse than no brand comedy.

7. Make documentaries about what you believe — Patagonia

Films about conservation and the outdoors, where the product is incidental.

Why it works: it demonstrates a position rather than claiming one, and customers buy the position. What it costs: real production budget, and genuine conviction. Audiences detect the manufactured version immediately.

8. Turn your event into an evergreen library — Figma

Conference talks from Config are published and keep being watched long after the event, by people who were never going to attend.

Why it works: you already paid to produce the content. Publishing it costs a fraction of making it. What it costs: almost nothing incremental. This is the most underused model in B2B — most companies film their conference and then leave it on a private server.

9. Let the community make it — Notion

A large share of Notion’s YouTube presence is made by other people: templates, workflows, tutorials from users and creators.

Why it works: volume and credibility you could not buy, in formats you would never have thought of. What it costs: the ability to let go. You do not control the output, and trying to will kill it.

10. Commission original series — Mailchimp

Mailchimp has funded original programming that looks like a streaming service’s output rather than a software company’s.

Why it works: it buys attention from people who would never watch a software video. What it costs: the largest budget on this list and the hardest attribution. Defensible at scale, hard to justify below it.

How to use YouTube for marketing: picking your model

Most companies should answer three questions in this order.

What do we know that others do not? If the answer is substantial, start at model 1 or 3. They are the cheapest and the most defensible.
What do we have access to that others do not? Customers, facilities, data, events. Access is content nobody can copy.
Only then: what can we afford to produce? Budget decides how the content looks, not what it is about, and brands that begin here end up with expensive videos about nothing.

The honest pattern across every company doing this well is that YouTube content for brands works when it is about the customer’s problem and fails when it is about the company. Product launches, culture videos and conference recaps are what most brand channels are made of, and they are the reason most brand channels do not grow.

What these examples have in common

A format that repeats. Every one of them is recognizable. You know what a Gong video or an Ahrefs video is before you click.
A promise kept every time. You learn something, or you are entertained. Never a coin flip.
Years of consistency. Not one of these channels was judged at month five.
Someone who owns it. In every case there is a person or team whose job this is, not a line on somebody’s list.

If you are choosing between these models for your own company, that decision is most of what a YouTube growth strategy engagement produces. If you already picked one and it is not working, a channel audit will tell you whether the model or the execution is at fault.