While perfect content is bound to be found, it is also necessary to be proactive about gaining the attention of and educating prospects and those unfamiliar with your brand. Running a series of YouTube video adverts is a method to ensure more of your target audience finds the video content you have produced.
Launching a video advert campaign is a superb step, however, there are some things you need to set up prior to beginning to pay for views to profit from your budget and to see the highest return for your client.
1. Define your metrics and goals.
When analyzing the outcomes, there are 4 main types of metrics you could track for each video. These are located beneath the “column” drop-down in your campaigns interface.
Views
Below the “views” category, you could better know what percentage of the advert people viewed and understand how the Youtube video adverts drove earned views or views on your brand’s other videos.
Audience
This type could be utilized to track likes and shares for each Youtube video advert.
Branding
The view rate needs to sign if the artistic and message are fascinating or entertaining enough for people to look at the advert. By growing your view-through rate (VTR), you’ll lower your cost per view.
Conversions
Conversions will assist you to better know in case your Youtube video adverts are driving leads and returning a high ROI for your brand.
Relying on the objectives for the brand, you need to determine a few objectives based on these metrics and formalize a plan for optimizing creative and attempting different targeting criteria to enhance outcomes. Your objectives also need to determine the kind of content you’ll feature in the Youtube video adverts — some metrics are better for branding goals and others will drive leads and conversions.
2. Track low performing placements.
When you are running in-display adverts that will appear across the Google Display Network, you could review where the advert has appeared in by navigating to Video Targeting > Placements > Where Youtube video adverts were shown > Show network from your Google AdWords Campaigns dashboard. Review this list to see if any specific websites are contributing to poor performance for your desired metrics. Exclude these websites from your advert campaign moving forward to extend your average CPV.
3. Use a custom thumbnail image.
Design or use a high-quality still picture from the video to entice a viewer to click on your video. Keep in mind, this picture should be legible by users on different devices, including mobile. In case your picture contains a person, make sure that she or he is looking into the camera. If you’re featuring a product, make sure that the background is not distracting.
4. Drive people to buy with cards.
A YouTube card is teased with a small “i” symbol, which the viewer can click on to broaden. You could time this appearance so only users engaged with the video and content will see the notification.
With cards, you may feature a product associated with or featured in the video to drive product purchases. You could also use cards to drive fundraising donations, traffic to a URL, or traffic to other videos as shown in the example below from Refinery29. Each format will permit you to customize the card with text, photos, and other options.
5. Create calls-to-actions.
When promoting a Youtube video, you could add call-to-action overlays that link to a URL. You can link to a landing page, product page, info page, career page … whatever you want. You can also send people to a favorable report or interview that includes the brand.
Adobe highlights one of its live videos utilizing a call-to-action overlay:
6. Create a YouTube end slate.
Make an end screen to get more subscribers to your channel, promote your social platforms, or improve interest in your brand. If somebody has watched a video till the end, it is a good sign they enjoy your content and may be excited about subscribing to your channel for future updates. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon‘s end slate uses this screen to get more subscribers and social media followers while also highlighting other fascinating topics its host has featured. When you build the picture, you will be able to annotate the end screen in YouTube’s video editor.
7. Use negative remarketing.
If you’re running a marketing campaign for a longer period of time and want to only attract new customers to a brand, think about creating a list of people who your advert won’t be shown to. When viewing your AdWords Marketing campaign screen, choose “Shared library” on the lower left sidebar. Then choose “Video remarketing” and “+ Remarketing List”. You could stretch your marketing campaign budget and target only unique users by choosing to not show your Youtube video adverts to somebody who has previously viewed the particular video, who has visited your YouTube channel, or shared, liked, or commented on any of your videos on your channel.
8. Use closed captioning to cater to viewer’s needs and wants.
This tip applies to all YouTube videos — however, it’s a general greatest practice that isn’t followed by many brands. Embody a quality video transcription you have generated and approved. Only user-uploaded transcriptions are indexed by Google because YouTube’s automatic captioning could be less than reliable. Relying on your target audience, you might also want to include transcriptions in various other languages. You could also offer users the option to download or go to a website page with the full transcription in your video description.
9. Qualify viewers.
From time to time, your advert will be seen by people who have no interest in your product. Encourage them to skip the advert if the content is not related so you don’t have to pay for the view and they do not waste their time watching irrelevant advertising.
10. Consider making your advert longer.
In terms of TrueView ads, if the advert is under 30 seconds, you pay only if a viewer watches till the end. If the advert is longer than 30 seconds, you pay if the viewer watches it for at least 30 seconds. In both cases, you pay if the viewer interacts with your advert before it is over. Think about this when you’re coming up with ideas for content for the advert. You might want to put messaging at a certain point so uninterested viewers can skip the advert, otherwise, you may provide particular offers towards the end of the video.