Social media are now the most accessed and viewed platforms on the internet and digital marketing world. Among them, YouTube has been reigning in the arena with over 5 billion videos being watched by people every day. More and more people are opting to leverage YouTube videos for promoting their small size businesses or even their hobbies and interests. With growing competition, YouTube account owners need to focus on increasing the views, likes, and comments. Increasing the number of subscribers and focusing on subscribers to click on the notification bell button is also a need for the YouTube account holders.
A common question is, “How to promote YouTube channels and gain visibility?” and more importantly, “How to spend wisely for YouTube advertising?”
First and foremost you need to understand how to utilize your budget for YouTube advertising and gain more and more audience. Here are some of the easy tips for you to follow for more profitable YouTube advertising.
Selection of YouTube Advertising formats
YouTube advertising provides many formats for you to choose from. You need to select the format depending on your goals and the purpose of your channel. It’s better to scan through the YouTube help page to understand each of the formats.
The following ad formats are available for YouTube advertising:
- Display Ads that appear to the right of the feature video and above the video suggestion list
- Overlay Ads that appear on the lower 20% portion of your video
- Skippable video ads allow viewers to skip ads after 5 seconds
- Non-skippable video ads where viewers need to watch the ads mandatorily before viewing the video
- Bumper ads where viewers need to watch the ads for 6 seconds before viewing the video
- Sponsored cards that display content relevant to the video
The recommendation is to select the relevant ads and experiment on the performance achieved through the ads usage. If found satisfactory, then continue leveraging the ads. You can conduct some study, analysis, and market research to find out which ad formats are helping you to earn more traffic, views, engagement, and subscribers. The objective must be to reach the target goals. So both quality and ad dimensions need to be matched.
Target proper audience
In any social media platform, it is very important to analyze your audience. YouTube is also not an exception. The suggestion is to target an audience who are likely to engage more in your content and share comments and likes and even subscribe to your YouTube channel.
So, how can you check the audience and engagement on your YouTube channel?
The analytics feature of YouTube is very strong, more prominently YouTube studio. It provides the demographic details of the audience including gender, age, location, etc. interested in your YouTube channel and videos. It also provides the peak hours or time in a day when the videos are viewed or accessed mostly. You can select the time for posting your content as per the analytical study. Also, you can prepare your content as per the interest of your target audience.
Other than YouTube Studio, there are other online website tools for checking the performance of YouTube videos like Semrush. Quintly, Channel Meter, TubeBuddy, etc. You can access their website and sign up for viewing the detailed analytics of your YouTube videos.
If you observe any particular genre of videos gaining popularity and more views compared to others, then you can focus your effort on creating content of that genre. This will help to gain more engagements and subscribers.
Run advertising campaigns
Running advertising campaigns is a vital part of YouTube advertising. You can shoot promotional videos on your smartphone and use them for campaigns. Simple, crisp, and creative videos are better for promotions and campaigns. You do not need to contact any creative agency for the videos.
The advantage of these campaigns and promotional videos is that you pay only when someone clicks on the ads. That’s the pay per click (PPC) concept which is applicable in such cases. Hence you can plan your budget accordingly after you analyze the count of people clicking on the ads. The concept is affordable and relatively cheap than any other search ad. Furthermore, the campaigns are helpful for sustained views and engagement not for short-term likes and comments.
Create high-quality video content
Creating video content that is interactive and of high quality is very important. You need to constantly engage with the viewers and your target audience for regular engagements. It is always better to check for trending topics for the particular genre of your YouTube channel. Check whether those topics are gaining more interactions and engagements. Accordingly, prepare your content.
It is good to search through videos of YouTubers whose videos go viral or gain millions of views. Follow the quality of the content, information being conveyed through the content, the techniques, and the strategy used for gaining more views. Leverage those learnings in your videos for better performance and engagement. Since promotional videos are short ones, it is important to impart the message in a crisp form yet convey the rightful data and information to the viewers.
You need to invest in some creative thoughts and methods for faster interaction. Your aim must be that, the viewers and target audience do not skip the video and exit out of it. If you are able to keep your viewers engaged from beginning till the end, then consider that as your success.
The important fact is to spend some good time deciding the content before publishing it to the viewers. You can perform some early checks to verify the performance of the videos. A few trials, errors, and checks will help in finalizing the appropriate promotional YouTube video content.
Inclusion of Actionable Features in Ads
If you want to increase clicks on ads, then an effective recommendation is to include actionable features in ads. The actionable features can be call-to-action, sign-up prompts for downloading products, tools or software, etc. The viewers feel interested in checking your video content by clicking on those prompts or actions. This eventually increases the views on your channel. You gain more viewers and audiences who may eventually turn out to be your potential customers.
Actionable features may turn out to be substantially beneficial. You may gain new customers for your business. This will lead to better revenue, better visibility, and better market presence for your company’s products or services.
Hence if you want your video ads to earn effective and faster results, then introduce relevant actionable features. Check which one of them turns out to be useful providing good performance. Utilize and leverage them more for greater traction and engagement to your video ads. The expectation on the end result must be to increase the pay per click and views.
Video re-marketing
Video re-marketing is one more good option for more profitable YouTube advertising. The concept is to complete video ads of YouTube visitors so that they in turn engage with your content or video ads. Though you can not expect a 100% guarantee of reciprocation, yet you can try out this method. It is a mechanism to re-engage with customers for gaining more views and engagements.
The benefit of the process is the visitors or subscribers who frequently view your channel or ads, are likely to engage more than others who are not very familiar with your channel. You can earn potential customers willing to purchase your company’s products and services. These viewers will look for new content in your channel for information on new launches or upgraded information. So it’s good to bank on the existing YouTube visitors or subscribers for video re-marketing. It acts as a reminder to them to engage with your content, be aware of the new products and services and go for a purchase.
Focus on immediate attention
The normal tendency of YouTube audience and viewers is to skip an ad while watching a YouTube video content. So in the first few seconds, you need to grab the attention of the viewers so that they watch the full video ad. Create some catchy titles and snippets at the beginning. Some interesting questions may also help to keep the viewer’s minds focused.
Especially for a skippable ad, you need to be extra cautious. The best options are to start with rhythmic music, an interesting question, or interactive animation. Once the attention is initiated, then there are fair chances of the video ad being watched. You can also check from your analytics which video ads are being viewed maximum times. This gives an insight into whether an interactive question, animation, or music is preferred by the audience or attracts the viewers.
Some YouTubers leverage the expertise of professional artists for promoting their products and services or known personalities too. You may need to invest a certain amount of money for it, but in the end, the benefits will be large. People tend to trust prominent personalities and the message imparted by them. Thus there is a huge tendency to attract viewers and potential customers to view and engage with the ads.
Define and Track YouTube Metrics
To find out the efficiency of YouTube advertising, you need to check out the metrics you want to define. The metrics need to be selected in such a way so that they aid in judging the performance of the video ads. Some of the metrics which you can consider for tracking and analysis are:
- Watch Time
- Retention of audience
- Duration of the views
- Number of views
- Conversions
These metrics will help to gauge the performance of the video ads. You can understand which video ads are able to gain traction and more views. Also how many conversions have been achieved, transforming audience to potential customers. Besides which video ads are able to retain audiences more than others. These insights and analytical results from the metrics help in deciding the content of YouTube video ads. You can predict the time when the video ads need to be posted and even the target audience.
YouTube Ad Specifications
It is very important to decide the YouTube Ad specifications. The specifications and the length of the YouTube video are crucial as they may vary for different types of ad formats.
The non-skippable and skippable video ads must have the same specifications as that of the normal YouTube video content. The minimum length of a skippable video ad must be 12 seconds and the maximum length can be 3 minutes as per YouTube guidelines. The maximum length of non-skippable ads is 15 seconds which can extend up to 20 seconds for EMEA, Mexico, Singapore, India, and Malaysia. The maximum length for bumper ads must be 6 seconds.
The ad specifications for Discovery ads are:
- File format must be AVI, ASF, Quicktime, Windows Media, MP4, or MPEG
- Video Codec must be H.264, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4
- Audio Codec must be AAC-LC or MP3
- The aspect ratio must be 16:9 or 4:3 as recommended
- Frame rate must be 30 FPS
- The maximum file size must be 1 GB
Curate a story or harp on emotions
A recommended way to lure the audience to watch your video ads is to create an interesting or interactive story. Maybe portray a common family scene or create a familiar professional environment. This will help the audience to relate your ads to their regular personal and work life. You can sustain the views and even for a longer duration. They will not skip the videos and will want to check till the end. Thus there is a positive impact on the video ads analytics and greater chances of conversion from a regular audience to potential customers.
Since you can relate to a real-life incident, you can gain the trust and confidence of the viewers. It scintillates the emotions and feelings of the audience who tend to connect easily with the video ads.
Checkout, Youtube Marketing Tools
On the Final Thoughts…
YouTube Advertising needs focus, attention, and time for promoting your channel as well as gaining viewers. The tips mentioned above are being leveraged by the majority of Youtubers and hence are proven and effective ways to accelerate YouTube advertising and earn profits or revenue from them in the long run.
