Colonial Airstream Surpasses 100K YouTube Subscribers – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
In the noisy world of internet video giant YouTube, it can be hard to get your message noticed amid all the posters complaining about Disney Star Wars or goofy guys clearing out supposed beaver blockages in culverts out in the middle of nowhere.
But Colonial Airstream of Millstone Township, N.J., has found a quality following with its channel providing not only vehicle descriptions and reviews for Airstream RVs but also handy tips for operating Airstreams and getting the most out of the RVing lifestyle.
Colonial’s practical but fun presentation has paid off recently by passing 100,000 subscribers. As of Thursday afternoon, the channel had 122,000.
“The largest growing lead source for us is social media,” Alex Rivera, Colonial’s creative marketing director told RVBusiness. “It’s not third-party RV inventory sites like RVTrader – although we get great leads from those – we’re reaching people globally. We’re getting calls from people in California and Texas and Canada. It’s an incredible asset to us now.”
The achievement was commemorated by YouTube with the prestigious Silver Creator Award, a testament to Colonial’s commitment to quality content and its community’s engagement.
Rivera said he is proud of the fact the channel’s content has been created by Colonial’s own team in an effort to truly meet the needs of RVers.
If viewers are looking for content from users or influencers, they probably should go elsewhere. But if they want meaningful content meant to enhance the use of Airstream products and is more about educating than selling, Colonial Airstream’s channel is the place.
Colonial is putting similar efforts into its Colonial RV YouTube channel with information about other products the dealership carries, but the Airstream channel struck a chord with its audience and the numbers bear out the popularity.
“There’s always that aspect of wanting to be SEO friendly and using good keywords, but for us it’s been very simple,” Rivera said. “We listen to our customers and we create content we think is going to help them. We have long walk-through videos that people use to see every inch of an RV. We have how-to videos for those who have already purchased. YouTube also has vertical shorts and we’ve used that for exposures to showcase things, but you only have a minute to do it.”
Instead of dancing or being cheesy, some of Colonial’s most successful videos don’t even feature talking but give in-depth looks at features and operations of an Airstream.
Often the dealership hears back from customers who watched a how-to video to refresh them on operations they had forgotten about and the customers comment that the video saved them from making a huge mistake.
“You’re probably not going to sell a vehicle over a YouTube video, but you can sell the lifestyle,” Rivera said. “Then you can basically show them Colonial is really knowledgeable and we want nothing more than to help you prior to purchase, during purchase and post purchase.”
Click here to check out the Colonial Airstream YouTube channel.
