Background
Youtube has 2.2 billion users around the world, according to the latest report from Hootsuite, and is the world’s second largest search engine and comes in second place as the world’s most visited website. The platform is also the second most used social channel after Facebook. There are different ways to use Youtube, and no matter what your goal is, you can use the channel – for example, to show your product or service through storytelling, and drive traffic to your website. The internet user in the age 18+ spends an average of 41.9 minutes on the platform every day.
Paid marketing
Youtube’s search engine has made it possible for the target group to search for the videos that´s of interest and accessed by your organic content. But the advantage of working with paid marketing is that you can collect data from your target group and make retargeting audience of existing customers, but above all so you can expand the reach and prospect new potential customers. You choose which budget you want to spend on your target group and by being able to specify your target group via demographics, age, gender, geographical area, interests and behavior, you can reach the target groups that have an actual effect on your business objectives.
Opportunities with advertising on Youtube
On youtube you reach a large audience and through Youtube’s advertising platform you can effectively get even greater reach through your video advertising. Through Youtube’s search engine, the user can search for products or services, which means that the advertiser can effectively reach those who are interested in your product or service. Ads in moving format drive more engagement than still image. Cisco predicts that by 2022, 82% of all content will be mobile.
What you need to advertise on Youtube.
To get started with your advertising, you need to create a Google Ads account. You also need to start a youtube channel to be able to advertise and upload your video on your channel.
In the next step, you choose the text that conveys who you are and what you offer. The idea is that in this step you should choose a headline that should capture the interest of your target group and then you choose a text that describes your service or product. You also need to select a thumbnail image for your video ad that will be the starting image before they click on your ad. Then you can choose where your visitors will end up when they click on your ad and which target groups you want to reach, a so-called “call to action”.
You can also choose keywords where you want your ad to appear, and then campaign objectives, depending on whether you want to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website or influence the consideration of your product / service. Then you define your budget that you have for the campaign, either you choose the budget per day or the total budget that you want to spend throughout the period. Then choose where you want to be seen and then get started.
We will go into more detail what to think about in each step further down in this post.
Strategy – Advertising
Objective
To set a strategy for your campaign, you first need an objective with your campaign. You can choose from the following six options:
- New viewers
- More subscribers
- Expand the global reach.
- Market your product or service launch
- Conversions
- Reach new target groups / Cross-selling
Target groups
Review your current audience and review who you want to reach with your advertising. Ask yourself the main questions – Who, What, Where and When? To then be able to specify which target group you want to target.
Content
Once you have decided which target group you want to target, you also need to review where they are in the buying price in order to reach out in the best way. In the first phase in the classic marketing funnel, it is about attracting attention, in the next phase it is about getting those who interacted with your ad to want to know more and in the last phase you want them to take action – to convert. The right message is important. 70% of all youtube videos are shown on mobile phones, according to the latest report from Hootsuite – so think mobile first in your marketing strategy.
Campaign period
To have in your mind while choosing the campaign period for your advertising are, for example, holidays. As there is often a lot of competition among advertisers and thus more expensive.
Budget
The cost of your advertising depends on two things: What you choose for the bidding strategy and which payment model you choose.
Max CPV: The maximum amount you would like to pay per impression
Max CPM: The maximum amount you choose to pay for each thousand impressions
Visibility CPM: The maximum amount you want to pay for every thousand visible exposures.
Target CPM: The average amount you choose to pay for each thousand impressions on your ad.
Target CPA: Here, Google Ads automatically selects bids to get as many conversions as possible at your chosen target cost.
CPD: Available for top ads and means you choose a fixed cost per day.
Step by step – Advertising on Youtube
Step 1: Choose your objectives for your campaign
Potential customers – When you want to reach out and engage potential customers to interact with your brand
Sales – When you want to increase sales online, in apps, by phone or in store. For example, buy a product or also provide their contact information.
Website Traffic – When you want to get the right kind of people to visit your website.
Product and Brand Consideration – When you want to encourage your target audience to explore your products or services.
Brand Awareness & Reach – When you want to reach a broad target group and gain increased knowledge about your brand
Step 2: Decide your budget
Bidding strategy
As previously mentioned, you choose a bidding strategy and this is optimized towards your campaign goal.
If your goal is to get impressions on your ads, the cost is measured via CPV, and if you want to get increased exposures, it is measured via CPM.
Total Campaign Budget – Google Ads helps you distribute the amount you have selected for your campaign period.
Daily budget – You can also choose the maximum amount you want to spend per day in your advertising.
Step 3: Target group
Once you have identified your audience’s behavior, interests, and habits, you can choose to create an ad group. You can also choose to create an ad group, a combinated ad group, or predefined ad group in Google Ads. You can choose between these options:
Target groups within interest groups – Reach target groups that have shown previous interest in a particular topic.
Life Event – Reach your target audience through important life events such as; degree
Interested target groups – Reach target groups according to what they are passionate about and their habits and interests.
Custom Audiences – Depending on your previously chosen campaign goal, you can reach users according to their habits and interests based on their most recent purchase intent.
Custom audiences (with purchase intent) – Reach users based on their most recent purchase intent
Remarketing – Reach those who previously interacted with your company.
Detailed demographics – Reach users based on long-term facts.
Customer Matching – Reach existing customers based on your CRM data.
Similar target groups – Reach new target groups with similar interests as your existing customers
Step 4: Select format
Once you have chosen the goal and target group, it is time to choose the format. Where do you want to be seen? The standard format for videos is 16:9 and you can choose these placements on Youtube:
Instream ads – This format allows you to choose whether it should be an ad that can be skipped or not. The ad plays before, during or after another youtube video. If the ad can be skipped, this can be done 5 seconds after the ad has started.
Video Discovery Ads – Video Discovery ads consist of a thumbnail of your video and less text. The exact size and appearance of the ad may vary depending on where it appears, but always includes a prompt to click to watch the video. The video is then played on the watch page or channel homepage on the YouTube homepage.
Bumper ads – Bumper ads are six seconds, but can also be shorter. They are played before, during or after another video. This ad cannot be skipped by the user.
Outstream ads – Outstream ads start playing with the sound muted. The user can tap the ad to turn on the sound. Outstream ads are designed to increase the reach of your video ads at an attractive price.
Top ads – A video used in a top ad plays automatically without sound for up to on the YouTube homepage of your computer, in your app or on your TV screen.
Step 5 – Measure advertising
Based on what you have set as a goal for your campaign, there are different KPIs that you should look at during your campaign period. The KPIs are also similar to other channels. If you have Brand Awareness as a goal, you should focus on measuring impressions, while if your goal is to increase the number of purchases, you should focus on Conversion Rate etc.
These are some of the most common KPIs on Youtube:
Impressions – How many people have seen and interacted with your ad?
Completion rate – How many people have seen your entire video?
Display Time – The number of seconds your ad has been shown to your audience.
CTR – Number of clicks divided by the number of impressions of your ad.
Reach – Unique users, showing the total number of users who saw your ad.
Conversion Rate – How many people have converted through your ad?
A / B test
To see what your audience is interacting and engaging with, you can create two ads that are similar to each other, but you change small details that can be color, copy, language, etc. Then you can evaluate what attracts your audience and optimize your ads.
Summary.
An advantage of Youtube is that Google owns the platform, which can optimize your search results on your website as well, and provides conditions for you as an advertiser to be seen during related searches both under Youtube and Google.
Video format is what arouses the most engagement in social media, and it is predicted that over 80% of all content on the web will be in mobile format by the year 2022. In a competitive climate among all advertisers, you can personalize your mobile content to your brand and through storytelling stand out in the crowd. You can also build trust with your target audience and this increases the ability to convert.
There are a lot of opportunities to advertise on social media, and you need to try to ensure that content that works today, because it may not work tomorrow.
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