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Video Ad Management: Tactics to Boost Your YouTube Video Ads

© by Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Video marketing overview

  • As many as 87% of marketers say that video gives them a good ROI
  • The number of businesses using video as a marketing tool has increased by 41% since 2016. 93% of marketers who use video say that it’s an integral part of their marketing strategy.
  • Almost one-third of Internet users (1 billion people!) visit YouTube daily.
  • For the seventh consecutive year, YouTube remains the most widely used platform for video marketers.  
  • YouTube is the most popular social media platform for the youth.

“Today, more than 100 hours of video are uploaded on YouTube every minute,” said YouTube in a blog post. That means each minute, more than four days’ worth of video is uploaded! More than one billion people visit Youtube each month to get news, answer questions, and have fun. That’sThat’s almost one out of every two internet users.

It’s a very crowded place. As of January 2021, out of the most popular social networks worldwide ranked by the number of active users, YouTube ranks second. 

 

Given that YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine, if you’re not using this popular video site to advertise your product or service to potential customers, you’re certainly missing out.

When it comes to long-term video commitment, YouTube has the upper hand. If you post a video on Facebook, most of your views will come on its first day, but when you post on YouTube, just 20% of your total views will come on day one. 

As a result, YouTube has a lot of potential for evergreen content and utilizing it will help marketers move more prospects down the marketing funnel more effectively.

This is how your marketing funnel would look:

YouTube Marketing tactics

  • Leverage YouTube SEO

Keep in mind; Google owns YouTube. It resembles how you can optimize your content. Using the target keywords in your video titles and descriptions, you can ensure that your content is identified by those looking for it.

YouTube is the world’s second most popular search engine, with over 30 million daily users.

Since 72 percent of customers use Google to do their research at the top of the funnel, there’s a lot of space for businesses to use YouTube SEO to rank in Google and YouTube.

Let’s go through some of the most relevant ranking criteria that YouTube uses before we get into how you can use them to optimize your videos for YouTube. 

This infographic by Tag SEO sums them up quite nicely:

Finding the right keywords is the first step in creating a video that ranks well in your niche. 

The following keywords tend to rank high in Google for videos:

  • How-to keywords (i.e. “How to make better sales calls”)
  • Reviews (i.e. “review of HubSpot”)
  • Tutorials (i.e. “Salesforce tutorial”)
  • Fitness related keywords (i.e. “exercises you can do at your desk”)
  • Funny videos that often get shared virally (i.e. “cute animals”)

One way to discover keywords in your niche is by looking for keywords for which there are relevant videos already displayed. Remember that your keyword should receive at least 300 Google searches every month. If it does, you can be sure that it gets a lot of attention on YouTube as well.

  • Pay attention to the quality of your video content

The quality of your production also has a massive impact on your YouTube ranking. Although YouTube does not explicitly evaluate production quality, it does affect user interaction, which in turn has an impact on YouTube rankings. 

YouTube users prefer to watch videos with sound, and since they come to YouTube primarily to watch videos, production quality becomes even more essential. As a result, filming yourself with a smartphone for this website would not achieve the same level of reach and popularity as it would on Facebook.

According to Convince and Convert, you need five skills to succeed in YouTube video marketing:

  • Storytelling/writing
  • Editing
  • Composition
  • Networking
  • SEO

Part of what makes your videos rise in YouTube and Google search rankings is optimizing the video’s description since that’s what YouTube uses to gauge what the video is about.

Another way to boost your SEO after your video is published is by uploading a video transcript. Google and YouTube will be able to search the transcript for a clearer understanding of your video’s quality, increasing the likelihood of being rated highly for your unique keywords.

  • Include a solid thumbnail to increase clickthroughs

The majority of YouTube views come from being linked to other videos (i.e., appearing in the “suggested videos” section). A high-quality thumbnail is one way to get a higher clickthrough rate from people browsing through their “suggested videos” portion.

According to ReelSEO, VidPow’sVidPow’s Jeremy Vest and Frederator Networks’ Matt Gielen conducted A/B tests to determine the best thumbnails on YouTube. They discovered that thumbnails with close-ups of expressive faces looking directly into the camera are the most effective.

You can also consider adding a vertical “stripe” to the side of your thumbnail to make it stand out even further and to give audiences a look at your brand right away.

  • Use built-in analytics to track your engagement

How do you find out if the right people are watching your videos? Are they completing your CTAs? Are they moving through your funnel?

As a marketer, if you’re investing a lot of time into crafting a high-quality video, and creating content compliant with the video, then you’re interested in finding out what your ROI is.

If you’ve established the company objectives, you can use YouTube analytics to monitor your progress towards them. You will find out who is watching your ads, how long they are watching them for, and where they are watching them in your analytics.

  • Setup a Google Adwords campaign 

Did you know that you can use Google AdWords to advertise your videos to YouTube’s one billion monthly active users?

Google AdWords has various options for promoting your YouTube videos and driving traffic to achieve your upper-funnel goals. With AdWords, you can promote your YouTube videos to people who are searching and watching on YouTube by surfacing your videos:

  • On the search results page
  • Alongside other videos
  • Before and after other videos
  • Within videos as sponsored card

Now let’s take a look at the five powerful means to promote your videos using Google Adwords:

  1. Using Demographic and location targeting
  2. Promote on other channels with placement targeting
  3. Use In-Market audiences to high-interest shoppers
  4. Promoting to similar audiences using remarketing lists 
  5. Building custom intent audiences to target different interest groups

With YouTube video marketing, you will accumulate many prospects — and eventually convert them into clients — by using a few core SEO tactics, paying attention to your performance efficiency, and keeping an eye on your metrics.

With the amount of time you took to read through the blog, your competitors would have gained a lead by YouTube marketing. Can you afford not to be in this race? 

Hire PPC Experts to strategize your YouTube marketing efforts more coherently. 

Kickstart your next YouTube marketing campaign today!