YouTube Promoted Video Campaign – How to Make it Work
A few months ago, Room 214 worked with one of our clients (I’m not naming the company for competitive reasons but they are in the real estate industry) to create a series of promotional videos to be used on their website, blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Since we also manage a Google advertising campaign for this client, a logical place to utilize a small advertising surplus was with a one-month YouTube advertising “test” campaign. I call it a test because no one at Room 214 had ever tried a Promoted Video campaign on YouTube and, while we were optimistic that the campaign would work well given the visual nature of real estate, had no real benchmark in mind for what the results would be. It went well – we decided to allocate 20% of the monthly advertising budget moving forward to YouTube – and I walked away with a few learnings that may help you get your YouTube promoted video ad up-and-running.
First of all, I recommend that you consider a YouTube promoted video campaign if your company fits this description:
1) You already have a Google ad campaign (if you don’t have one, I recommend you make that your entree and consider YouTube as a supplement down the road)
2) Visual appeal has a direct impact on sales for your industry
3) You currently have or have plans to create a library of existing appealing video content (You probably don’t want to advertise the first video you put up on your YouTube channel – more on that in a sec)
If your company fits that description, keep reading. If not, you may want to look more closely at social media and search marketing.
· A YouTube ad will, obviously, drive more views back to your YouTube channel so you’ll want to make sure that your channel’s up to par and that you have plenty of content/information available (re point 3 above). Create several videos and put them on your YouTube channel. Promote them via social networks, your website, blog, etc. Use audience feedback and YouTube insights to make an educated decision about which video resonates best with viewers and drives the most traffic back to your website and use that video for your ad.
· The video you use should be entertaining and engaging. Don’t get too caught up with trying to make your video professional quality or overly marketed. You don’t need every line of the video to contain a keyword or marketing message – you need the video to be engaging and interesting so viewers will watch it and want to learn more. This is YouTube – some of the most successful viral videos have been amateur videos – this doesn’t need to be overly produced, shot on an expensive camera or cost a ton of money to show some ROI. If you’re not sure what I mean, check out Mashable’s list of the Top 20 YouTube and Video Memes of All Time.
· When you create the ad, make a killer headline. The format of the ad is a still of your video, a 25 character headline and two 35 character lines of copy – so you need to make every word count.
· Use keywords and linking in your video description, utilize tags and add annotations to point out what you want viewers to see/know during the video.
· Create a Call to Action Overlay (they’re free with a promoted video campaign) so that, once you’ve driven potential customers to your video, they know what to do next and can become a customer.
· Engage with viewers on your YouTube channel. You’ll see an increase in comments (ours increased about 300%), messages and ratings as well as views to the video – so be sure to interact with individuals who reach out to you.
· Do a test run. I initially limited our campaign to one month and $3,000. Before you commit a large sum of your advertising budget to anything (in this economy?!) it’s a good idea to gauge if/how well promoted videos will work for you. During this limited-budget timeframe you can prioritize keywords, adjust bids and determine whether you want to allocate budget for it moving forward.
· If you DO decide to move forward with a YouTube ad beyond the test-run phase – keep checking back with YouTube. This is a new ad platform for them so they’re making tweaks and updates that could potentially improve your campaign. Stay in the know and give it a shot!
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