Your enterprise is global. These days, that almost definitely means that your YouTube marketing strategy is too. You’re managing multiple regional brand channels on unique URLs and uploading localized content to better serve diverse geographies. But your efforts feel spread thin. Meanwhile, your marketing team thinks that a single, global URL will be easier to promote and manage. Is it time to fold your regional channels into a single, tidy, on-brand URL?

First, your team should consider the following two issues with the frequently suggested approach of rolling regional “sub-channels” up to a single umbrella URL.

Implementing a single-URL channel structure erases regional channel subscriber and view count totals. If your regional channels have only minimal traffic and you want to rationalize your YouTube footprint, then this may be ok. However if you’ve gotten regional traction, then you sacrifice subscribers and metrics. Small view counts don’t look good, but losing hard-earned subs really hurts.

The second issue is thornier. Once you’ve migrated to a single-URL structure, new videos posted to any regional channels will appear in the activity feed of every subscriber to every related brand channel. For example, a subscriber to your brand’s Japanese channel will also see new video uploads to your brand’s Polish and Brazilian channels in their personalized feed and in their inbox via YouTube’s email notifications (if activated).

Not good. The subscribers that you are striving to serve relevant, engaging content will instead get spammed with irrelevant, possibly redundant content that they likely won’t understand. Not good, and there is no fix on YouTube’s roadmap in sight. What’s worse, often those spammed subscribers take to the YouTube streets (i.e. the comment threads) with pitchforks and torches demanding justice, or at the very least an honest explanation.

What’s the solution? We recommend using Thismoment’s digital brand marketing system to create a global brand channel with a navigation that links to regional channels with discrete URLs.

That may sound self-serving, but we aren’t aware of another solution that delivers the benefits of a global brand hub while preserving the ability to manage regional channels with targeted programming and communications. For today’s global brands, achieving both of those requirements is essential.