Advertise on YouTube to Build Brand Awareness and Sales

A great alternative to TV because it’s performance you can actually measure.

Busting The TV Measurement Paradigm

For years, companies have been placing ads on television with the hope that they would drive awareness and sales. Unfortunately, you never know what TV is actually doing for your brand. Good luck trying to match up spending or GRP’s with sales data to measure TV’s effectiveness. This is the 21st century. Advertising doesn’t have to be a hope-and-pray game anymore. YouTube pre-roll ads that run directly before YouTube video content are a measurable alternative to TV advertising. With the right YouTube campaign, you can actually see the connection between spending and conversions. It’s clear that YouTube can drive a ton of sales for the right brand.

YouTube Does Best with High Ticket Items or Services

What we’ve found is that for brands with a low average revenue per transaction, as with many online advertising programs, the cost to acquire customers is simply higher than the lifetime value of future sales we would anticipate, so it doesn’t pay out. On the other hand, if your brand has a high average revenue per transaction, meaning you’re selling high ticket items, then absolutely YouTube advertising will pay out.

For example, in the 9 months since we launched a YouTube campaign for a client, we’ve driven almost $180,000 in revenue on a spend of just $12,000. This means an ROI of over 1,350%.

Here’s the actual data for the client:

Impressions                               967,914

Views                                          122,741

View rate                                   12.68%

Cost/View                                 $0.10

Clicks                                          7,022

YouTube Spend                        $12,370

Clicks/Impressions                  0.73%

Clicks/Views                             5.72%

Cost per click                             $1.76

Video played to 25%                22.89%

Video played to 50%                16.00%

Video played to 75%                12.22%

Video played to 100%              9.56%

Avg. Visit Duration                  26

Cost/Lead                                 $89.63

Conversion Rate                       1.97%

Leads                                          138

Conversion Rate on Leads      5%

Converted Sales                        7

Lifetime Value Per Lead          $26,000

Revenue                                     $179,400

ROI                                              1,350%

 

Here’s How We Set Up YouTube Campaigns

A typical SmartClick setup for a client through the AdWords Youtube interface includes 3 types of campaigns:

– Similar Audiences

This campaign type is targeting “who the user is” rather than “what the user is watching” to find a relevant audience. We typically setup remarketing audiences through AdWords where we cookie each user who visits a client’s website and Google automatically creates similar audiences, which are users who are similar in their online behavior to the people who visit your website. Generally the size of the similar audience is about 3X the size of the remarketing list, which gives us a large audience of people who are usually unaware of the brand but fit the target audience profile.

– Managed Placements

This campaign type targets “what the user is watching”. We handpick relevant YouTube videos to the brand and its goals. This can be very effective and we’ve driven leads at a relatively inexpensive rate, often approaching the cost per lead of our best non-branded search campaigns.

– Retargeting

This campaign type consists of showing ads to people who have been to your site, or have previously viewed one of your YouTube videos. Depending on the client, this can be effective if staying top-of-mind and nurturing a user through multiple touch points is necessary for making a purchase or becoming a lead.

At SmartClick we often see a particular type of campaign or ad work better for one client than for another client. However, we do have some best practices that we follow. For YouTube ads we usually recommend using videos of at least 30 seconds in length. This is because YouTube only charges for what it defines as a view. A view is when someone watches at least 30 seconds of your ad without skipping it or the whole thing (whichever comes first). So if your ad is only 10 seconds, someone may not even have a chance to skip it before it’s over and you get charged for a view. In addition, the user typically has the chance to skip the ad after the first 5 seconds, which makes those 5 seconds critical to getting the user interested with some sort of hook so that they watch the whole ad.

The great part about advertising on YouTube is that everything gets tracked. You know exactly how many times your ad was served, how much of your ad was viewed, how many people clicked on your ad, and what those people did once they clicked on your ad and went to your website. In today’s world traditional television advertising is being marginalized because of the ability to skip commercials. Most people watch television with another screen (tablet, phone or laptop) in their hands at the same time, which divides their attention. It’s a wonder that more advertisers aren’t pulling their money out of TV and putting it into the more measurable and effective platform that Google provides with YouTube.

If you think YouTube could be an effective way to build your brand, please reach out to SmartClick and we will be happy to walk you through a plan.