YouTube is more than cat videos and weird children's media. It's an excellent resource to educate and influence users!
In a recent interview with Joe Martinez, Co-Founder of the Paid Media Pros, we got a taste of his upcoming Experience Inbound session Driving Action with YouTube Ads as well as some insights on how to make sure you're getting the most out of your business' YouTube content. Watch or read the interview below!
Please introduce yourself and tell us a little about how you serve your market!
I've been in the paid media space for a little over a decade now, which is weird to hit the double-digit number. It's just my colleague and me. We also have our YouTube channel, Paid Media Pros.
Besides running campaigns for clients, we also love to educate. Our YouTube channel pretty much tackles a lot of what we do in our everyday lives, managing accounts in various channels like Google, Facebook, Cora, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Hulu, and Roku. I mean anything. And especially YouTube, which is my favorite channel to work in.
So your Experience Inbound topic is called Driving Action With YouTube Ads. I think people will get a ton of value out of that. Without giving away everything in the presentation, what's one takeaway that that audience can expect to get?
The targeting options that YouTube offers are extremely unique and could be very impactful for any type of business. And one thing I will stress, in any of my sessions that I do here or anywhere else, your audience lives on more channels than just Google and Facebook.
YouTube is a good channel to test out with any sort of budget for any kind of industry.
I'll show you the targeting options that can be effective to really hone in on that target audience, whether you've been doing YouTube ads for several years or it's something that's brand new to you.
Is video still king? Is that something that businesses just absolutely need to be making sure that they're working into their sales and marketing programs?
Yeah. And there are a few examples I will give in my presentation. When buying car seats for my kids, I always heard car seats are a pain in the butt. So I went to YouTube, and I wanted to find out what was the easiest to install. So this company Britax had videos on how to install their car seats and how easy it was. They won my business.
This is something else I'll mention in my presentation; just because people don't buy it off of YouTube doesn't mean it's not affecting the sale. I didn't buy my car seat off of YouTube, but man, did it influence me to spend hundreds of dollars and then, you know, buy car seat upgrades from the same company as my kids got older. So one video resulted in me buying 6+ car seats. So that's a way we can show how video is used to influence users even when they aren't there to buy at that moment.
It sounds like it's important to establish your goals and understand why your business is advertising on YouTube. Is it for brand recognition? To influence? Build trust? Having that clear expectation going into it is crucial, don't you agree?
Yeah, and we'll definitely walk through that. As well as how to find the right users to reach your goal, and how do you hold that user's hand and guide them through the process and eventual purchase or lead gen or whatever conversion action is important to your company.
If a company is considering YouTube advertising and they're thinking "Okay, this is something we want to do, but we just don't know where to get started." Do you have any recommendations?
The best place to get started is in your pocket; your phone.
Everyone's like, "Oh, video creative. It's so expensive." It doesn't have to be. We have some of the best cameras in our pockets and sitting on our desks right now.
And we've worked with companies that have bigger budgets, but still have lower-quality videos than others that seem more personal, seem more realistic, seem more like they have better third-party validation.
There are less expensive video editing tools as well. So you don't need to have the Coca-Cola budget and spend that on a commercial-type video.
We'll also talk about the ways YouTube is better than Facebook and Instagram. There are so many distractions on Facebook and Instagram; people go to YouTube to watch a video. So this is a chance for you to use those 16-minute, half-hour demo-type videos that you're using.
If someone's looking for a video on that particular topic, this is where you can really stretch out the dollar and have what people may consider boring non-commercial type videos. If someone has a question on that particular topic, and your video satisfies their question. It's YouTube all the way.
Yeah, it's about solving problems. It's not about creating this Hollywood-style video for video's sake. You've probably seen it where the more transparent raw videos could in some cases be the most effective, because it doesn't look like you're trying to sell me anything. It doesn't feel like a marketing video.
Yeah. And we have to remember, as of right now, YouTube is still the second largest search engine in the world after Google. So people do go there and type in a vast amount of search queries every single day. Whether you're running ads, and we'll show you how to do that on the search results, or you're there organically, it's such an extremely valuable medium that is so affordable, even from the ad platform. And that's something we'll talk about in our discussion in June.
You mentioned the word "affordable." I know, for example, LinkedIn can be more expensive than Facebook. Where do you feel like YouTube fits into that whole scheme? What should companies be thinking in terms of budget?
I have a client right now who spends 100K on YouTube, and another who spends maybe $5 a day (that one was a local radius). So you can keep it as low as you want. It depends on how much you want to learn. Now, if you're a bigger company, and you want to test a bunch of different video creative on $5 a day, that will be pretty tough. You know, you need time and data to understand what's resonating with users, especially if you've never done it before.
One thing I'm definitely going to talk about in the presentation a lot is how you can really stretch the dollar. How you can get in front of users once and then have free actions and other campaign types to get back in front of the user to show how YouTube can be so affordable, especially if you want to promote yourself from a branding standpoint.
It definitely is one of those, "it depends" scenarios. I can set up a campaign and test it out and see what engagements they get, but you have to read the fine print. Sometimes what you think you're targeting isn't what you're actually targeting. So really understanding the setting to make sure that you're not wasting the ad spend, especially if you do have a lower budget.
Can you share an example with us?
I'll go through one very specific example during the presentation of this campaign we created without any conversions in mind. I'll walk through a step-by-step approach on how we targeted an audience, how we built awareness, and what our goal was. Then afterward, how we used that initial campaign to create other next step campaigns to really make it even more valuable to the company.
Another example that comes to mind is the demo-style videos. Right now we are testing one that's an in-feed type video that we're only placing in the YouTube search. So we are promoting 15-minute guides, and we are getting a good amount of users to watch the entire thing when we're only paying pennies for it because it is a very specific topic. And we have a video that gets a lot of watch time. So we get the benefit of the doubt, and we get a cheaper cost per view. So it's been a fantastic brand awareness play for them. So we're building their channel using ads and it's boosting their organic performance and gaining them subscribers.
And then from there, once you get to a certain subscriber count and watch time. That's when you can start making ad revenue.
How robust are the analytics and the metrics on the backside of the YouTube ad platform?
It's pretty good. Google owns YouTube. So if you want to create a video campaign, you have to do it within Google ads. So if you're familiar with Google ads, there are many metrics that you can get there. Plus there's some custom column options that are just for video campaigns. So you'll be able to see your impressions for any of the in-stream ads. You'll be able to see things like:
- watch times
- views
- cost per views
- conversions
- earned actions
- etc
But if you really want to nerd out from both the ad and the organic video part, you have your YouTube studio, formerly YouTube analytics.
You can get so much information. Anything from your subscriber accounts to where referral traffic is coming from. And sometimes, that gives us good ideas for where to target users with ads if you're organically sharing your videos very well. There's just so much information within YouTube studio. We recommend it be more for organic performance, but it can also help your paid ads.
Where do you get your inspiration? Are there any resources you'd recommend for people to go and learn more about this other than coming and seeing you speak at Experience Inbound?
Yeah, the beauty of the paid media community is that we're so open to sharing. So there is a Twitter community called #PPCchat and they meet every Tuesday, I believe, at 11 central. And there's a topic and people answer questions and share their knowledge. And that's just a set chat every week. And that's where I learned when I was a newbie in the industry. And I know it's still helpful for so many.
Other than that, I have bookmarks that I keep on all the official paid media channel blogs. So I can keep up to date on all the new features, and then there are websites out there like search engine land and search engine journal, that really keep us up-to-date and give us new ideas because this industry changes weekly, arguably daily.
For those viewing this and want to learn more about you or want to reach out to you with specific questions. What's the best way to connect with you?
I'm on Twitter frequently, @MilwaukeePPC. I think probably one of the best ways to get a hold of me and get a response right away would be on LinkedIn. You can always shoot me a message. Or leave a comment on our YouTube channel.
Interested in learning more? Register for Experience Inbound today to attend Joe's session!
Key takeaways from Driving Action with YouTube Ads will include:
- How your video creative will drive which ad format you should use on YouTube
- What actions users can take during or after they are watching your video ad
- Some of the best targeting options YouTube has to offer
- Some of the ways to prove the value of YouTube ads after your campaigns launch
