We are all familiar with the old trend advertising on Facebook. First, it was banner ads on the right-hand sidebar, then the new trend was F.B. news-feed advertising – which is great for promotional video. Although this method can still be effective, the ROI from it will never be as good as it used to be before it became mainstream. Those who generally did the best with it were the pioneers.
What is still relatively new and very affordable is Youtube advertising. If you have any experience with Google’s AdWords ‘pay-per-click’ contextual or banner ads, you will know that certain keywords – or search terms are priced on competition for those phrases. An example of this would be a civil injury lawyer could pay up to $100+ a click – this is because of the money a lawyer can make from a single client, thus there are a lot of lawyers driving up the price by fighting for those coveted clicks. On the flip side, someone with a promotional video advertising coffee machines may only pay a cent a click.
Because there are a smaller amount of marketers in the Youtube advertising game, there is less competition for keywords/search phrases, meaning cheaper clicks and a higher return on investment (ROI).
There are many benefits to advertising on Youtube.
We have all seen these ads by now – Unless we are interested in the ad, we have the option to skip it before it finishes. As an advertiser, you do not pay for any skipped views or partial views (unless an annotation is clicked). This is great for both the viewer and the marketer – If the viewer isn’t interested, they are not forced to watch – like they are on television. However, if the viewer watches until the end, it means they have decided to halt what they were originally looking to view in order to pay attention to what your company is pitching. Meaning a potential sale, or some great brand awareness. It’s a win-win for both parties.
Your Youtube ad comes with clickable annotations, giving you different options to lead your prospect towards your preferred lead funnels. You may use some sort of click bait like a free report or digital ebook in order to secure them into your mailing list for further promotion, or something more simple such as building your Facebook page likes, Youtube channel subscribers or maybe just going straight for the kill and sending prospects to your sales page.
Whatever your strategy may be, this wonderful form of advertising has the same capabilities to reach the masses just like television advertising, only more interactive. And weighing up the costs against TV ads is like comparing a pebble to a mountain.
A green screen style sales media clip can be either homemade with great results if you have the technical acumen or reasonably priced to be produced by a professional.
From there your daily budget can be as low as $10-$20 to test the waters for A/B split testing.
Of course, you can shortcut the test process and hire a professional coach to help you with the subtle nuances that can turn a failure into a success using clever tricks to make the viewer stopwatch, and click.
Although you may get lucky with your first campaign, you have a better chance of getting it right 1st time with coaching from a pro that has outstanding success and experience. An industry leader worth checking out who is a master of conversions is Jake Larson from videopower.org
But if you are on a shoestring budget, go out and buy some green material for your green screen or simply paint your backdrop green using some cheap household interior paint. From there you can easily add your background using an entry-level editing platform like windows movie maker (search a Youtube a tutorial).
Stay tuned with my next post on a basic campaign setup with adwords to get you started.