Paylocity YouTube Channel Revamp

Before we get into the nitty, gritty details of this project. Check out this short video featuring a testimonial from our CMO about the YouTube Channel project that I was a part of.

YouTube Revamp:

Original Channel, Before Revamp:

About Paylocity:

Paylocity is a software company that specializes in HR & Payroll with many features within it’s app to make the employee lifecycle smooth from hire to retire.

Their Business Needs and Goals:

Paylocity has been sitting on a YouTube channel for over a decade and hasn’t been utilizing it in a strategic way. This was an opportunity to rework the channel and make it a targeted marketing resource. They wanted to shift the channel to be a main resource for focusing on prospects, clients, and job hunters. They needed a way to showcase their content to create credibility, brand recognition, and release product updates within the company.

The Solution to Their Needs:

The Creative team and Social Media collaborated to assess the current state of the channel, create a strategy to improve what was living there currently, how we would maintain new videos in the future, and executed a plan to launch the channel changes. We also collaborated with Talent Acquisition to make sure that their needs were met since they heavily use the channel for their promotional efforts.

Results:

Updating the YouTube channel increased utilization across the entire Marketing team at Paylocity. Paid is utilizing it as an asset and driving conversions there, with paid ads increasing channel views by 757% in 30 days after the YouTube channel revamp. The channel is now used as a true marketing asset driving views, brand awareness, and improved watch time. A true display that the content was great and people wanted to watch it, but previously no one could find what they were looking for and would lose interest on the channel. This is not longer the case. Our strategy to organize the channel showed an overall improvement of channel utilization, there was an increase of:

Channel views by 757%
Watch time by 230%
Subscribers by 90%

YouTube Channel

Before we revamped the YouTube channel there were many videos that didn’t have a thumbnail and the channel had many outdated videos that showed the old branding. There wasn’t a clear idea of which videos should stay and which ones should go. I took initiative by watching all 80 videos that were published on the channel at the time and created a spreadsheet indicating the video name, video link, proposed playlist categories to organize the videos in, and notes on whether or not the video showcased old branding, as well as if there were duplicate videos that we could remove. In the list I also included if the video had a thumbnail or if one needed to be created.

Research, Data, & Strategy

Once I shared the spreadsheet and data, with my supervisor and the social media manager, we decided that the top 30 most viewed videos and anything published in the current year should stay. That left us with 40 videos to keep and 40 to archive on our channel. Out of those 40 videos 13 needed thumbnails.

Playlists

I proposed 7 categories for the YouTube channel playlists based on what I saw while reviewing all of the videos. The social media manager presented this to the Talent Acquisition team for approval and to let them know that these are the categories that we need to stay within when creating future videos. During this process I found there were multiple playlists that could be combined and create a more streamlined viewing experience for people visiting the channel. There were also many videos that didn’t seem to fit into any category and were not serving a purpose for the company.

Before

After

Video Thumbnails

The thumbnails were a bit of a challenge since they had to fit the new branding and the videos themselves were often not great quality. So utilizing our brand colors and fonts to make the thumbnail pop while cleaning up the still from the video was a bit of work. After a few rounds of revisions the thumbnails were approved and I uploaded them to each video on the channel.

Before

After

Header Banner

I also created the channel banner to align with the current campaign instead of a generic Paylocity banner. This banner was designed specifically to be visually appealing on all screen views, the previous one only took desktop format into consideration.

Before

After

Closing Thoughts

This project was a great piece because it allowed me to collaborate with multiple departments within marketing, strategize, design, and execute a goal from beginning to end with my co-worker. This was spear-headed by my social media manager and myself with supervision from leadership as we progressed through the stages. We got a special shout out during our monthly Marketing meeting for the progress that we made and completion of the project. It felt really good to help the team and the results were great too!

Increased:
Channel views by 757%
Watch time by 230%
Subscribers by 90%