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YouTube isn’t just any video platform, it is the second most visited site after Google. Well, some marketers might say that it has been in the social media appearance for over 15 years now, but the platform gained over 60% on its online views in just a year of its launch.
In the arenas of social media marketing services, YouTube is considered to be the most effective platform for video marketing, by 78.8% of marketers. And all this popularity is because it is an excellent, engaging, and creative platform for videos. But, creating videos or ads for YouTube isn’t like the ones you do for any other social media platform. You need to be a bit more technical and specific when employing YouTube marketing strategies.
Before you dive into how YouTube can help in social media marketing and expanding your business, you need to understand its importance in the market. This will give you some insights about its potential and how can you reach your target audience.
Source: Mediakix
Such statistics prove the importance of YouTube in marketing and why it should be an integral part of social media marketing campaigns.
Video content is the most consumed form of information for any person. A platform like YouTube provides businesses and consumers with a common channel to interact. It is, therefore, a highly vital tool for businesses as well.
Why?
In paid social media marketing services, YouTube is the third most popular platform amongst the marketers. Even the skippable video ads on YouTube have some effect on video advertising.
Owing to the popularity of YouTube ads, the platform earned 4.96 billion in the US alone, in advertising revenues. The number is likely to cross 5.47 billion in 2020.
So, what are the advantages of YouTube for marketing that makes it a critical tool for marketers in the first place and how can it benefit any industry or business? Let’s look at the top reasons why you should start advertising on YouTube.
With over 2 billion unique users on a platform, YouTube provides you with an infinitely large audience pool. Therefore, if an ad campaign is launched on YouTube, you have a billion users that you can target. In the long run, a platform with such a massive audience helps brands to connect with the users, target different geographical locations, and advertise services effectively.
YouTube allows you to create targeted ad campaigns based on a specific keyword or topic. This means if people look for videos on such keywords, your ads will be displayed to them. This improves the chances of reaching people who will show interest in your services and are searching for the same.
Suppose, you placed an ad that can be skipped. This doesn’t mean that you will have to pay for ads that are skipped by the users instantly. For some ad formats, you will only have to pay when someone engages with your ad or views for a certain time duration. Such type of ads is called True View ads.
It is said, that videos speak better than text. It’s completely true. Through visuals, you can capture your audience’s attention easily as compared to text. A running YouTube ad provides you an opportunity to engage with your audiences visually. Also, since you know that those users watching your ads are interested in similar support, you can convert them into customers as well.
Through advanced analytics on YouTube, you can see how your ads are performing in the market. Information like how long are people watching your ads, who disengages with your ads, what is the best time for ad reception, etc., can be attained through YouTube advanced analytics.
Before you start running a YouTube for marketing ad campaign, you need to shoot the right video that concerns your target audience. No matter if you make an ad for six seconds or six minutes, you need to capture the attention of the viewers. Different ad formats can help your brand accomplish their goals. Let’s look at the different types of YouTube ads.
These are non-skippable ads. When a user chooses a video, it plays right along with it. However, these videos are of the shortest time duration, a maximum of six seconds. This is, obviously, not the right time duration for small and medium businesses, but works great for bigger brands opting for product awareness.
The following example shows a bumper ad for Google Pixel 2 lasting only for six minutes.
These ads pop up right before you a video that you browsed for plays. These ads are also called TrueView ads since the advertisers only have to pay when the viewer engages with the ad. These are of two types, TrueView in-stream ads and TrueView Discovery ads.
In True-View in-stream ads, the ad plays before a user’s chosen video and will give them an option to skip the ad after five seconds. The advertisers will only pay if the ad is viewed for more than 30 seconds. The following shows an example of the TrueView in-stream ads from Shutterstock. The video can be skipped after five seconds.
In TrueView video discovery ads, the appears alongside other videos. These ads are also very common and when someone searches for a video.
When you searched for any topic, you might find a similar type of ads as shown in the image below. The top is called the TrueView discovery ad
Coincidently, some discovery ads come up at the side panel as well, with Ad favicon.
If it wasn’t for Google algorithm to decide the placement of similar ads on the top, video marketing would have been a little difficult. In other words, the ads that appear on the top as shown below, are decided by Google, along with the site link button.
Such discovery ads are useful when you want to promote a video that is longer than 15-60 seconds. Even if you make a video for 5 minutes with convincing content, viewers are not going to waste time watching your video when they were looking for some other content.
These ads are different than the TrueView in-stream ads since these ads can play before, during, or after the chosen video. They run for 15-20 seconds and cannot be skipped. This gives you more time access than the bumper ads, to get your message across the audience. The following is an example of a non-skippable in-stream ad from MasterCard showing that the viewer’s chosen video will play after the ad.
When you pick YouTube for your ad campaigns, you must smartly spend your ad budget. Below are some tips that will help you to gain the attention of your audience and make the most of your budget as well.
YouTube advertising can become complicated if you do not know about the different ad formats and don’t pick the right one. Therefore, you need to start by reading about every ad format and then devise your main goal.
The following showing the different ad formats available on YouTube along with their specifications. The list includes both content and video-specific ad formats followed on YouTube.
Much like separating the search content vs display content, you need to separate discovery ads and in-stream ads and place them in two different campaigns.
Why?
Because both of them are very different. While in-stream ads can play before, during, or after the videos, discovery ads appear when a user searches for a related video, appearing alongside other YouTube videos. Both of them should be incorporated into different social media marketing strategies so that it can easier to control and analyze them.
Like any other social media platform, when you get to know the user base that responds to your videos, it is easier to convert them into customers. Pay close attention to who is consuming your content and how. YouTube analytics allows marketers to take control over who sees your ads. Options like demographic targeting, affinity audiences, custom affinity audiences, and in-market audiences allow you to control several aspects when using YouTube for marketing.
An effective method, video remarketing allows your website visitors to view ads on other platforms as well, like social media portals, YouTube, display network, etc. You might have experienced it several times that when you look for a dress on a website, its ads start appearing everywhere, on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Although this might feel like stalking, it is highly effective for the sales and revenue margins of a brand.
Suppose you created a high-quality video, with amazing graphics, voice-over, and other elements. Now, it might be possible that you are not able to create content that is well understood by the users. Until your video can connect with the audiences, no campaign can work. Create a natural experience for your users so that they stay attached to your video even after the designated seconds. Instead of focusing on high-quality videos, work on high-quality and human-like content creation.
No matter if your goal is B2B social media marketing, the right video can connect with thousands of people in a population of billions of users. Don’t just focus on creating a great ad. Instead, work on achieving tangible results with your YouTube marketing strategy.
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