YouTube is more than just a video platform. It’s a global community of over 2 billion people who watch, share, and create content every month. YouTube is also a powerful marketing channel for businesses to connect and communicate with their potential customers, increase their brand awareness, and boost their sales.
But how can you leverage YouTube ads to drive awareness for your brand and contribute to your top-of-funnel activities? What are the best practices and strategies to make your video campaigns effective and memorable? In this blog post, we will answer these questions and show you how YouTube ads can help you increase awareness of your brand.
Why YouTube Ads?
YouTube ads are video ads that run before, during, or after other videos on YouTube. They can also appear on other Google properties, such as Google Display Network and Google TV. YouTube ads offer several benefits for businesses that want to increase their brand awareness, such as:
- Reach: YouTube has a massive and diverse audience that spans age groups, interests, and geographies. You can reach as many people as possible on your budget with YouTube ads, and target them based on detailed demographics, affinity, or custom audiences.
- Engagement: YouTube users are highly engaged with the content they watch, and they often interact with the creators and brands they follow. You can use YouTube ads to showcase your brand personality, tell your story, and inspire action from your viewers.
- Measurement: YouTube offers free and robust measurement tools that help you understand how your video campaigns are performing, what’s working, and what can be improved. You can track metrics such as impressions, views, view rate, watch time, cost per view, and more.
How do YouTube ads work?
When you create a YouTube ad, you'll choose your target audience. You can target your ads by demographics, interests, and even keywords. You can also set a budget for your ad campaign.
Once your ad is created and your campaign is launched, your ad will start showing up in the feeds of people who match your target audience. When someone watches your ad, they'll have the option to skip it after a few seconds. However, if they're interested in what you have to say, they can choose to watch the entire ad.
The different types of YouTube ads
There are several different types of YouTube ads. The most common types of YouTube ads include:
- Bumper ads: These are short, non-skippable ads that play before or after other videos. They're only 6 seconds long, so they're a great way to raise brand awareness.
- Display ads: These are static or animated images that appear alongside other videos. They can be used to promote your brand or products.
- TrueView for Action ads: These are skippable ads that give viewers the option to take action, such as visiting your website or signing up for your email list.
- TrueView for Reach ads: These are non-skippable ads that are designed to reach a large audience. They're a good option for businesses that are just starting out and need to raise brand awareness.
How to choose the right type of YouTube ad for your goals
The best type of YouTube ad for your business will depend on your goals. If you're looking to raise brand awareness, a bumper ad or TrueView for Reach ad might be a good option. If you're looking to drive traffic to your website, a TrueView for Action ad might be a better choice.
How to create effective YouTube ads
There are a few things you can do to create effective YouTube ads:
- Make sure your ad is relevant to your target audience.
- Keep your ad short and to the point.
- Use eye-catching visuals and engaging copy.
- Call to action at the end of your ad.
How to track the results of your YouTube ad campaigns
YouTube offers a variety of tools that you can use to track the results of your ad campaigns. These tools can help you measure things like impressions, clicks, and conversions.
Measuring success in a brand campaign is not as straightforward as it is in performance campaigns. Brand KPIs can be tricky to measure and communicate effectively. These campaigns are more of a long-term game, and the data doesn't necessarily pour in overnight. However, their impact can have lasting effects on all our marketing channels for months to come.
When we look at the daily and weekly data, we keep an eye on some pretty standard volume metrics. We rely on this data to optimize our copy, creative elements, and target audiences. For instance, if one of our creatives has a much cheaper CPM, it's a clear sign that we should shift our budget and give that video ad more priority. Sometimes, we notice that certain audiences are more likely to click on YouTube Ads. In those cases, we focus our efforts on reaching out to those users more. These are the key metrics we consider:
- Impressions
- Clicks
- CPC (Cost per Click)
- CPA (Cost per acquisition/action/lead)
- CTR (Click-through Rate)
- CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions)
- CPV (Cost per View)
- View Rate
But when it comes to measuring the long-term, true impact of a YouTube brand campaign, we go a step further. Let me give you an example with one of our financial planning clients.
Our search campaigns are performing exceptionally well, generating leads at a CPL (Cost per Lead) of just $20. It's efficient and we get plenty of leads. However, our YouTube brand campaign might bring in leads at a higher CPL of $200. At first glance, it may seem like the campaign isn't delivering the results we want when we look at metrics like ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) or CPL.
But here's the thing: these campaigns shouldn't be compared directly. Those numbers don't take into account the thousands, or even millions, of people who get exposed to our brand through the YouTube brand campaign. The average cost per view can be as low as $0.05, which means even with a small budget, we can reach a massive number of new users.
This kind of exposure has a ripple effect on our organic, direct, and other sources of traffic over time. It's crucial for us to measure the lift we get in these other channels to truly evaluate the success of our brand campaign. We keep a close eye on metrics like an increase in branded search, a rise in direct traffic, or a higher percentage of new users visiting our site since the launch of the YouTube campaign. Answering these questions helps us determine our success. And one of the most effective ways we do this is through isolated testing.
How Yugo Media Can Help
If you want to grow your brand with YouTube ads, but don’t know where to start or how to do it effectively, Yugo Media can partner to enable your campaigns for success. We are a digital marketing partner that specializes in video marketing and YouTube advertising. We can help you create video ads that drive awareness for your brand, generate leads, and increase revenue opportunities.
We have the experience, expertise, and tools to help you reach your goals with YouTube ads. We can help you with:
- Strategy: We will work with you to understand your business objectives, target audience, budget, and timeline. We will then design a customized video marketing strategy that aligns with your goals and maximizes your return on investment.
- Production: We will handle the entire video production process, from scriptwriting, filming, and editing, to uploading. We will create high-quality video ads that showcase your brand, products, or services in the best light possible.
- Management: We will manage your YouTube ad campaigns, from setting up, and launching, to optimizing. We will monitor your campaign performance, track your results, and make adjustments as needed. We will also provide you with regular reports and insights on how your video ads are driving awareness for your brand.
If you are ready to supercharge your brand with YouTube ads, contact us today for a free consultation. We would love to hear from you and help you grow your business with video marketing.
Also, don’t forget to check out our other blogs for more tips and tricks on video marketing and YouTube advertising. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more videos on how to grow your brand awareness with YouTube Ads.
