By Brandon Monceaux
As marketers, our job is to integrate strategy and creative together. There are countless methods to reach customers, and the marketing environment continues to be ever-changing.
But let’s talk about YouTube.
According to HubSpot, 55% of marketers use YouTube as part of their marketing strategy. Marketing expert and blogger, Neil Patel found that 28% of marketers he surveyed were planning to increase their YouTube ad spend in 2023.
No matter the spend on YouTube, ensuring you get the best results on your spend is in the best interest of your business or your client. As experts in both the B2B and B2C digital spaces, we will walk you through strategies to help you make the most of your return on investment (ROI) on your YouTube advertising budget.
- Define Clear Objectives
What are you trying to achieve? Are you hoping to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, generate leads, or boost video views? Outline your goals and objectives. This is the guide to your advertising strategy.
- Set a Realistic Budget
Determine how much you are willing to spend on YouTube advertising. If you’re wondering, “How much should I budget for a YouTube ad campaign?”, YouTube shares that beginners should try a $10-$50/per day budget to see how new campaigns are performing. It’s essential to set a budget that aligns with your goals and financial capabilities.
- Target the Right Audience
YouTube offers robust targeting capabilities for users to reach the right audience. You can target users based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and even remarket to previous website visitors or video viewers. Once you identify the right audience, your ads will be seen by the appropriate people who are more likely to engage with your content.
- Create Compelling Content
Invest in high-quality video! Analytics Partners tells us that video’s lasting impact is twice as long as non-video. The content should be engaging, informative, and align with your brand’s messaging. This will resonate with your audience and leave your viewers with the desire to take action.
- Optimize for Mobile
A significant portion of YouTube viewers access the platform on mobile devices. Ensure that your ads and landing pages are mobile-friendly to maximize engagement and conversions.
- A/B Testing
Conduct A/B tests to optimize your ad campaigns. You can experiment with different ad creative, headlines, descriptions, and call-to-actions to identify what resonates best with your audience. YouTube’s ad platform allows you to run multiple variations simultaneously.
- Monitor Performance
Monitoring the performance of your YouTube ads is just as important as the execution. YouTube provides detailed analytics and insights that can help users track metrics, such as view-through, click-through, and conversion rates. This data can help marketers stay informed and make adjustments as needed.
- Adjust Bidding Strategies
Many times, goals change during a campaign. This is when you would adjust your bidding strategy. You may decide that you want more views, so you’d change to a cost-per-view (CPV) bidding model. Or if you want more clicks, a cost-per-click (CPC) model would be the way to go.
- Ad Placement
Be purposeful of where your ads appear on YouTube. You can opt for skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable ads, display ads, or video discovery ads. This is a great opportunity to experiment with different ad placements, to see which ones work best for your campaign objectives.We want to note that while it’s important to be purposeful about where your ads appear, you’ll also want to pay close attention to what is appearing. The same creative does not perform well across formats. IPSOS has published case studies that demonstrate that ads created for television do not translate well to YouTube and vice versa. Bottom line: Create content specifically for each format, platform, and channel.
By tailoring content exclusively for YouTube and utilizing YouTube’s best practices, marketers can take advantage of its algorithm, which promotes videos that encourage longer viewing sessions and interaction. These best practices include:
- Attention: Hook viewers and sustain their attention with an immersive story.
- Branding: Brand early, often, and richly.
- Connection: Help your audience think or feel something with your videos (ads).
- Direction: Ask them to take action.
Kantar reports that utilizing these four practices will increase long-term brand contribution by 17%.
- Ad Scheduling
Consider the timing of your ads. Use YouTube’s ad scheduling feature to display your ads at times when your target audience is most active. This can help improve the efficiency of your ad spend.
- Test, Repeat, Test, Repeat…
YouTube advertising is an ongoing process. The data and insights you collect will allow you to continually test and iterate on your campaigns. It’s important to make adjustments to optimize your spend and achieve better results.
- Consider Remarketing
Remarketing is a type of marketing that engages with audiences who have already interacted with your brand online (but didn’t convert). When you implement remarketing campaigns, this will re-engage those users with the goal of converting them (i.e., encouraging them to buy what they previously left in their cart). These campaigns can be highly effective in maximizing ROI.
Effectively maximizing your YouTube spend requires a thoughtful approach that combines strategic investments and creative content. By following the tips and techniques discussed in this blog, you can make the most of your budget while achieving your marketing goals.
As YouTube continues to be a powerhouse in the digital marketing world, staying adaptable and innovative is key to securing a strong return on your investment. With dedication and a well-planned budget, your YouTube campaigns can flourish and deliver impressive results for your brand or business.
Miller Brooks is a marketing and advertising agency located in Indianapolis, IN. We fuse strategy with creative and bring clarity to chaos.
To check out our work and learn about our services, visit our website at millerbrooks.com.
