EP34 – YouTube Ads Revisited: Everything Else You Need to Know

Coders' Startup - Business and Marketing Advice for Programmers

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Tragedy Strikes!

Welcome to another installment of the Coders’ Startup. This week I am doing a solo show because Carter unfortunately injured his knee and has gone to the hospital!

Although he is currently awaiting the results of an X-ray, his doctor believes he has a severe sprain. We will wish him all the best and hope for a quick recovery, but in the meantime the show must go on without him.

In this vein, I would like to return to the topic of YouTube ads, which Carter and I discussed previously in Episode 30. Since then, I have begun working with YouTube ads and have seen very positive results.

I also managed to get my YouTube ad campaign up and running much faster than I did when I published my first Facebook ads. This is due in large part to the SAS (Statistical Analysis System) application that I used.

Veeroll: Making It Easy

Veeroll is a paid service that makes the creation of video ads incredibly quick and easy. It gives you a variety of pre-made templates to choose from that are made for websites such as YouTube and Facebook, and all you do is insert your text into the template.

The YouTube templates allow you to create up to five headlines, with a maximum of 40 characters in each headline. Veeroll takes this template and turns it into a short video ad into which you can insert a link to your landing page. And that’s all you do! You don’t have to worry about finding images, creating an animation, recording yourself, or writing a script.

Of course, there is the matter of payment. The starter plan is $47 per month, and with this you can create 4 videos per month. However, the videos retain a watermark in the upper left corner. If you purchase a pro account, you pay $97/month and get 10 videos without a watermark. There is also an agency plan for consultants who make ads for their clients, which gives you 40 videos per month and permission to create ads for clients.

You can join for free without using a credit card. What I did is let the free trial period expire, and then I waited until the people at Veeroll sent me an email asking me to sign up–with double the ad credits! So I am paying $47/month for 8 videos! I would highly suggest trying this little trick if you decide you want to use the app.

Annotation and Easy Click

Veeroll gives you two choices when making a YouTube ad: “Annotation” and “Easy Click.” I used annotation to create my first two ads. With this style, the app gives you hints about what you should type for each headline.

For example, the app suggests for the first headline to “Grab their attention.” For the second headline, the suggestion is to “Create intrigue,” and for the third headline, you are advised to “Present your simple solution.” And so on.

I tried out the Easy Click option for my third ad, and I have had a lot of success with this one. Easy Click produces a nearly identical ad as you get if you use annotation, with one crucial difference: when the ad reaches the final panel, the bottom left corner of the screen is circled and indicated very prominently as the place where you should click.

Remember that this is precisely where you will add your overlay including the link to your landing page. So, Easy Click directs the viewer’s attention to your link and increases the likelihood they will click it before they get far enough into the ad that you must pay for a view!

I have about 1,500 views on my ad that uses Easy Click, and only 200 between the other two. The click-through-rate on my third ad is also significantly higher than the CTR of the other two. This leads me to the conclusion that Easy Click is the better option.

Putting on the Finishing Touches

Once you’ve created an ad and Veeroll has finished processing it, you should go to the campaign builder within the app. Here you can give your ad campaign a name for your own use, enter the URL to which your ad links, and set up the display URL viewers will see listed in the ad.

In order to upload the ads you make in Veeroll onto YouTube, you must be signed up for Google’s AdWords system (since Google owns YouTube). From inside AdWords, you can see a list of videos you have created. If you click on the link for your video, you will be redirected to a screen where you can add a “call to action overlay.”

This is a very important step, because this is how you add the link to your landing page. The Easy Click feature highlights the corner of the ad where the overlay will appear, but your viewers won’t be able to click it if you don’t set up the overlay!

Veeroll also allows you to set targets for keywords that you think potential customers will search for. For each keyword you enter, Veeroll will find up to 240 videos related to the keyword. You can then create a targeted list based on that keyword. Veeroll allows you to target up to 10 keywords, which means you can target 2,400 videos on YouTube!

When you are finished making your ad, export the campaign onto your hard drive as a .csv file ,and then upload it to AdWords. Your campaign will be uploaded onto YouTube ready to go, pending YouTube’s approval.

Some Interesting Results

My foray into YouTube advertising has had an interesting result that I did not expect. You see, I recently decided that I wanted to invest some spare money I had saved up. Initially I considered investing my money through a private firm, but I eventually decided that I would invest it in my paid advertising instead.

I started pumping cash into my Facebook ads, but I discovered that as I put more money into my Facebook campaign budget, my cost per conversion rose. I was averaging a cost of $4-6 per lead, but I typically only make $6 per email subscriber!

Then I decided to try investing more money in my YouTube ads, and the results were drastically different: when I put more money into my YouTube campaign, my cost per conversion did not increase. Right now I am spending $80 per day on YouTube ads, and my cost per conversion is only $1.15-1.30!

This means that YouTube ads are more scalable than Facebook ads, and scalability is what I want. Imagine making more money just by clicking a few buttons, typing in a few numbers, and clicking “save.” If I can invest more money and my cost per lead remains the same, then my return on investment will grow.

You can use this knowledge to grow your own business just as I am. Since YouTube ads work on a bidding system, I am actually doing myself a disservice by helping my competition compete with me, so it’s a good thing I am not the unsporting type! I really love talking about business and helping other entrepreneurs improve their businesses.

On that note, I want to remind everyone that I offer business coaching. Just click the “Business Coaching with Trevor” tab at the top of your screen, or click here. If you purchase my services, you’ll get four weekly phone calls each month as well as unlimited personal email access.

Your first call is free, and there is no obligation. I’ll go through your business with you and help you set up a plan to improve it. I’m especially knowledgeable about infoproducts and would love to give you some advice!

LINKS

Veeroll

Google AdWords

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