They say content is king, but in a world where video content dominates all other formats, you must change the phrase to “video content is king”. Talking about video, there is no bigger and better platform for this format of content than YouTube which you can utilise to make a big impact with Youtube ads.
YouTube has been around since 2005 and it is only recently that businesses have started to use this platform to their advantage. When you think of marketing on YouTube, you have to think in terms of video. Here are some of the top tips to help you make a big impact with YouTube ads.
Tips to Make a Big Impact with YouTube Ads
Create Connecting Ads
Before you get into anything technical, the first step you should take is to create your ads with your audience in mind. People like ads with emotions, and so you have to give them something special. Say goodbye to traditional advertising. Your ads should not look like ads but more like stories. You might want to take a look at the recent trends to know what type of content is popular. People like pranks, celebrities surprising their fans, etc. type of videos.
Place Ads Based on Channels
One of the biggest challenges for marketers is to know the target audience well. You can’t produce appealing ads unless you what your audience likes or dislikes. Rather than doing the surveys and going the long route, it is best that you go for channel-based ad placement. You pick a YouTube channel that posts content that’s most relevant to your industry and add this channel to your ad placement list.
Base Content on Context
If someone is searching for a particular smartphone on YouTube, it does not always mean that they are looking to buy that phone. They might have the phone already but the purpose of their search could be to know the solution to a particular problem related to that phone. Keep those things in mind when you create your content. If someone searches for the translation of an English word in Spanish, don’t just offer them that. Offer them a course to learn Spanish instead.
Select the Advertisement Format Intelligently
The best thing about YouTube ads is that they are available in many different formats. You might have noticed these ads while browsing on YouTube yourself. YouTube ads can appear before the video plays, during the video as a transparent panel occupying some part of the screen or on the side in the form of suggested videos. You will have to create your content based on the type of format you have chosen.
Take Advantage of the Bumper Ads
Recently, YouTube has introduced bumper ad as a strategy to reinforce its existing ad formats. While long ads are not a bad idea, when a viewer has the option to skip the ad, they will skip it immediately. The best way to deal with this problem is to go with YouTube’s new bumper ads. Bumper ads cannot be more than six seconds. The best thing about them is that the viewer does not have the option to skip them. Six-second bumper ads have become the perfect tool for marketers to leverage brand recall.
Create the Awkward 8-second Pause
One of the things about YouTube ads is that you have to pay the service only when the viewer has watched the ad to its very end or for at least 30 seconds. If a viewer clicks away on a different page or skips the ads before 30 seconds, you don’t have to pay anything to YouTube. You can use that time to your advantage. Create an ad that is only 22 seconds and leave the eight seconds blank. Let the visitor skip the ad or click on the call-to-action. In both cases, it is a win for you.
Make the Best of Targeting on YouTube
It is quite surprising to hear only Facebook’s name whenever it comes to target advertising. YouTube gives you a lot of power in your hands to control your ads and present them to only the most qualifying audience. You can start by targeting your audience based on its demographics. You can also view their interests to make your marketing even more effective. All these tabs are available on YouTube for you to know your audience better for target advertising.
Use DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion)
Dynamic Keyword insertion is usually considered a technique suitable for text-based ads but the same technique can be quite useful for YouTube video ads too. You can design the content of your video based on the frequent search queries of the viewers. If a frequently searched query from viewers is “how to clean laptop keyboard”, you want your video to start with this keyword. In addition to that, you also want your thumbnail to display these same words.
In the end, you have to realize that creating advertisements is not enough. You have to do your research, understand your audience and constantly improve your ads to make them appealing for potential customers.
