As Google is undoubtedly the pioneer of search engines for websites, it wouldn’t be wrong to call YouTube the undisputed search engine for videos. A person can find every type of video on YouTube, music, audiobooks, shows, movies, yoga poses, recipes, in short, everything that you can think of!
Advertising on this platform is the best way to capture your audience’s attention and target them successfully. Videos should be a pivotal part of your digital marketing strategies
However, the bitter reality is that your rival companies are aware of the importance of the videos. To supersede them and reach your goals, allocating a budget for YouTube ads should be a must for your company. Your brand will be exposed to millions of audiences, and it will also enable you to retarget your prospective buyers.
If the world of YouTube advertising appears a little complicated or overwhelming to you, don’t worry!
In today’s article, we have curated eight easy steps for running effective YouTube ads for beginners.
8 Easy Tips For More Profitable YouTube Advertising
1. Determine What Type Of Campaign You Want To Run
The first step to launching a successful YouTube advertising campaign is determining what sort of campaign you want to run for your company and what results in you expect from it.
Investing your resources in designing and launching the ad campaign without a clear goal will not generate the desired result and lead to its failure.
Before you jumpstart to design the ad, list down the goals you want to achieve by running ads; for instance, a startup business would plan to introduce itself to the audience and tell about its products or services. Similarly, a company can run ads to increase sign-ups, notify people about sales, or generate more leads.
Designing and launching our ad campaign becomes more effective when you are laser-focused on your goals. It will also help you to select a suitable format for running your ads and targeting your audience.
2. Understand Type Of YouTube Ads
After defining your goals, it’s now time to YouTube offers five different formats to a company to run its ads.
i) Skippable In-Stream Ads
As the name suggests, these videos can be skipped by the viewers. These ads run before and during the video is being played. The viewers can skip the ad by pressing the skip ad button that appears on their screens after 5 seconds.
So, if a person skips your ad, you don’t have to pay a single dollar. You will only pay when a person views your complete ad, or for 30 seconds, or if he clicks on the ad.
Ads that run on this format must be longer than 11 seconds.
ii) Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads
Your ads can appear at any point while the viewer is watching the video. The viewer has to watch the complete ad, and he cannot skip it. The ads that run on these formats are short and no longer than 15 seconds.
A company will be charged for non-skippable ads if it receives 1000 views on its ad.
iii) Bumper Ads
These ads are also non-skippable and appear before a video. These ads are the shortest and last for 6 seconds only.
The payment procedure is similar to the non-skippable in-stream ads. A business will pay for an ad if it gets 1000 views.
iv) Video Discovery Ad
These ads are placed in places where a viewer searches for the videos, such as the homepage, search results, or the right side of the screen where other related videos are listed.
The headline of the ad cannot exceed 25 characters. This ad format also allows displaying two lines as descriptions. The characters in each line should be limited to 35.
These ads do not run a video; instead, they need a thumbnail image. The business will only pay when a viewer clicks it.
v) Overlay Ads
These ads appear as an overlay to the video that is running. It only takes 20% space for the lower portion of the video.
These ads only appear on desktop devices and do not display on mobile devices.
3. Use A Variety Of Ad Types
Do not rely on just one ad format to reap the desired results. Instead, use various forms to test what works the best for your business.
Run your ads on different formats to experiment and conclude which formats are the most suitable for your business and generate the best results.
For instance, a company may find that overlay ad are the best to increase their brand awareness. On the contrary, another brand may see more effective results by running bumper ads to increase the store’s traffic.
Testing various formats is to finalize the correct format for the ads in the long run. For example, a company might see positive results generated from video discovery ads if its goal was to introduce itself to the customers; however, the same format may not produce the desired results if it aims to boost its sales.
Select different formats to achieve the goals of YouTube advertising.
4. Understand Your Prospective Customers
Every marketing campaign will fail miserably if the marketer fails to understand its targeted audience. If a company wants to make its advertisements effective and generate successful results, it must understand the audience it wants to target.
Understand your audience’s typical characteristics, such as their age, gender, profession, interests, and buying habits, to design a compelling ad that generates positive business results.
5. Grab Your Viewer’s Attention
Why do people come to YouTube? To watch videos, right? It isn’t enjoyable for the viewers when an ad pops up.
The only way to stop the viewer from pressing the skip ad button is to make your YouTube ads engaging from the start. Companies have 5 seconds to attract the viewers and compel them to view the complete ad or press the CTA.
You have to give a good reason to your viewers for not skipping the ad. Therefore, think out of the box and create a unique, valuable, or funny ad.
6. Evoke Emotions
People are not interested to hear you raving about the remarkability of your product or services. The users instantly skip an ad that raves about its products or services, and they forget about it after a few minutes.
To make your ad memorable, you have to arouse your viewers’ emotions with your ad. For instance, people feel sad when an ad shows underprivileged children or people battling cancer. Similarly, an ad that depicts a family having dinner or spending time together evokes happy feelings.
Appeal to the viewers’ emotions, and they will stay hooked to your complete video.
7. Clear And Compelling CTAs
Congratulations, the viewers watched your video; what do you want them to do next? Visit your site, shop from your website, or simply sign-up for your newsletter?
Provide a clear and persuasive CTA on every ad, irrespective of its format.
The purpose of providing a CTA is to direct your audience about their next step. In the absence of a CTA, or giving an unclear CTA will render your advertisement camping a total failure.
For instance, a company runs a campaign to invite people to shop from its store; if it fails to provide the CTA of Shop Now or Visit Site, viewers will not take an instant action to reach the website.
By adding the correct and compelling CTAs, a business can gather more clicks on its YouTube ads.
8. Define The Metrics
Designing and launching an ad is not enough. A marketer must monitor the ad to check if it’s working well and producing the desired results. It is crucial to track and monitor the ad’s performance to determine its success or failure.
A company can use the following metrics to determine the effectiveness of its ad:
Total watch time
Number of views it received
Audience conversion
Duration of views
Retention of audience
The above-mentioned metrics can help a marketer understand and get an insight into how the audience engages with ads. If the ad is generating the desired results, it will continue to run. However, if an ad fails to capture the attention and target the prospective audience, it can be improvised and then relaunched to improve its performance.
Pulling The Plug
To create engaging and persuasive YouTube ads, a company must have a concrete YouTube advertising strategy. By developing an effective YouTube advertising strategy, a company can generate more leads and conversions for itself.
We hope that this guide for YouTube ads for beginners is helpful for you to market your brand to a mass audience and convert them into your customers.
