Webinar: How Video Ads Drive Leads (Affordably)

This webinar is super important for businesses, so make sure to watch the replay! If you’ve been wondering how you can add video to your current paid ads strategy, it may be more affordable than you think! Watch the replay of this webinar for more context on why video is important to your ad strategy, where it fits into your current plans, and how video can drive leads.

Watch the Replay

Why Is Video Important?

This webinar primarily covers YouTube, but anything with video creation is applicable as well. But, before going into general strategy, here are a few statistics. YouTube 2 billion monthly logged in users.

That’s a lot of users. While Facebook has logged 2.8 billion users, people are going to YouTube directly to watch videos. And, of those users, Google has said users spend on average 1.7 hours per day on YouTube. That means there’s a lot of potential for a lot of reach to get your brand name out there, tell people who you are, what you do, and what you are about.

People are viewing video content everywhere, all the time, on a variety of devices. If you’re not taking advantage of that market, you need to be. In the past, video has been hard to get into. It’s often been reserved for businesses that have a lot of budget to spend on branding, but that’s not the case anymore.

YouTube Is a Social Media Platform

On YouTube, you can share and create videos, and people use YouTube in a more communal way. They look for certain subjects and topics, and whatever you can imagine on YouTube, it probably exists.

For example, if you look up lawn care, there are specific accounts dedicated to lawn care. There are other communities and niches, like dog training, or even squirrel feeders. And, creators have a network of similar creators as they get together to create videos through collaborations. That’s how YouTube is a social media community, not just a video-sharing platform.

Most importantly for businesses, people go to YouTube to discover new products. In fact, according to Google 90% of people say they discover new products on YouTube. For example, as a new parent, there are channels dedicated to baby gear, and the stroller David purchased was determined by a review of the product on YouTube.

Where Does YouTube Fit Into Your Strategy?

This is a roadmap that we’ve found works extremely well for our clients. It looks like a staircase, where you start at the left and “go up the steps” to the right.

Right off the bat, you should be doing branded and high-intent search campaigns for whatever your business is offering. That’s going to get you the best ROI moving forward. Assuming you’re already doing that, every step after includes YouTube.

If you’re retargeting people who have already visited your website, you can reach them on YouTube. If you’re looking for people who do know about your brand but are still in the consideration phase, you can find them on YouTube. If you’re trying to push brand awareness to the broadest audience, that can also be done through YouTube.

YouTube fits in your strategy basically everywhere except the first step. It’s a key element to have in your ad strategy.

What Do Video Ads Do?

You can boil down the results of YouTube ads into two categories:

• Drive future leads
• Generate leads in the short term

Drive Future Leads

This is talking about getting in front of people before they’ve searched for you. This is the advantage of YouTube over search ads, because you don’t have to wait for someone to type out the search, you can build demographics and audiences based on other things. You can find people who are in-market for you, and then target them first.

The goal of these ads aren’t to generate leads now, they are designed to nurture future leads. These types of ads are pretty general, as they talk about who you are, and what you do. With these ads, there will be buttons that allow users to click on the ad and convert if they want to, even if these ads aren’t designed to convert right away.

Generate Leads Now

This is primarily done through the audiences you use. If you think of a typical search campaign, someone might search for the keyword you’re bidding on, and you might not show up on the search result or the auction, that’s just kind of the way it is on Google.

If you do show up, a user might click on your ad or they might click on someone else’s. But, if they do click, they might not turn into a lead. There’s a huge portion of people who don’t convert when they click to your website.

That doesn’t mean they’re the wrong audience for you. If they clicked on your ad, that means they may still be interested and are still doing their research to decide which company or business is right for them. Even if they don’t convert, you can retarget them and provide another opportunity to get in front of your audience through video later.

Say you’re a beauty school and they’re researching the school they want to go to. They search “beauty school near me”, and your ad shows up. They click around to your site and potentially some competitors, but they don’t make a decision right away. And, maybe when they’re done with their search for the day, they pull up something else unrelated to their search. But, before their video plays, a video ad pops up, and your video shows up.

Now, they can see your video, and it’s relevant to them. This provides another opportunity for someone interested in your brand to click and take an action. Even if they don’t convert, that video acts as another touchpoint to get familiar with your brand.

We know people convert on brands they’re familiar with, and getting more opportunities to show up in front of your audience is always a good thing. When making a video ad, you can include testimonials, start dates, or whatever you want to drive people to take an action. It works well short-term to get leads to your business now.

Video Is More Affordable & Easier To Create

Over the last couple of years, people have craved more personal connection, and people prefer raw and real over perfect and polished video content. You don’t need high-end production all the time. In fact, according to Google in a recent webinar:

“People don’t want to hear from brands, they want to hear from people.”

You don’t have to hire talent, you don’t have to do anything like that. Video is so much more accessible now. Mobile devices have become powerful tools to create and watch content from. People are used to watching videos on their phone and watching videos made on a phone, too.

It’s allowing brands to create content with more readily accessible equipment, like a phone.

Pro tip: When filming, use your phone horizontally instead of vertically, as most platforms are better-equipped for a horizontal view. However, you may want to consider shooting a vertical video if you’re using a video that’s only designed for an Instagram or TikTok. 

Free Video Builders

Not only is equipment more accessible, but free video builders are available to create great video ads. Some examples are:

• YouTube’s Video Builder (May only be available through Google’s paid ads platform)
• Promo
• Canva

Many of these options have free or paid versions, but the advantage of builders like this is that they have templates you can use to create videos that match your brand and style in a short amount of time. With video templates in place, you can build a workflow, and create video ads efficiently and quickly while keeping the same type of feel.

It’s not difficult to use a template and build a video that can be effective in getting more ads.

Other Options To Create Video

Use an agency. We have options to send someone to your business and take footage of your business and send edited videos back to you over time that you can use.

You can also pay once and get a longer form video that you can reuse over and over again by cutting it into pieces and use those pieces for different ads, such as testimonials in a long-form video to send to one audience or cut out short, six-second clips to send for bumper ads for brand awareness.

How To Create Your Own Video Ad

When building your own video ad, Google has created the ABCDs of running a video ad. And these are:

• Attract. Get people’s attention right from the start. Use people or imagery, use something that people can connect with.
• Brand. Introduce your brand within the first 5 seconds.
• Connect. Connect with people through their emotions. Make people feel like your video applies to them.
• Direct. Direct the viewer to take some type of action. Use something that inspires a sense of urgency.

Make Sure To Optimize Your Video Ad for Mobile

You want to make the video fast, you want the pace quick, and you should potentially use a lot of shots in a short amount of time. You need it bright, in case people are outside or have low battery, so if your audience is viewing your video on a dim screen, make the visuals contrast.

The next is to keep it tight. If the subject in your video is far away, it’s going to be harder for the viewer to connect with them, especially if it’s on a small screen. Keep them big in the shot. Finally, use a large font, keep it big, and because the text is bigger, use less text on your ads. Keep things short and punchy.

Example of an Ad for a School

As an example, here’s an idea of what you can do with your school. For many schools, people got used to doing them virtually, so it’s possible to turn a virtual tour into a short video. You can use your phone, introduce yourself, show the school, show the teachers, and end with audio that asks potential leads to visit.

Most schools want people to come to the school, and this gives an extra peek as to why someone should come in for a tour. You could shoot it yourself selfie style, cut it down to 30 seconds, and use it as a YouTube ad. And, it won’t detract from the regular tour experience, as it may get your audience more excited to visit.

What Is a Good Starting Point for Budget?

Video ads used to be more for businesses that had money for their branding, but Google will recommend you spend a lot of money, but that’s because they want you to spend money.

A good rule of thumb is whatever you’re spending on search, take 20-30% of that. If you are working with really small budgets, work backwards. You can pay for 1,000 impressions around $5 on average. If you want 1,000 impressions per day, take $5 per day, and times that by the month, and that’s what your budget would be.

What Video Ads Should You Create First?

The first thing you’ll want to do is a video that is targeted to your remarketed audience.

Solving people’s concerns in your video that they might have about your business, addressing those in a short video, whether it’s 15 or 30 seconds, making it brand-specific, that would be the right place to go first. You’ve already had them show up once, so you’re capturing those potential leads first, those who have shown most recent interest and are still warm.

Key Takeaways

• Everyone is watching video everywhere
• Video can drive future leads, and generate more leads now
• Video doesn’t have to be expensive
• Don’t forget your ABCDs of video creation

Need Video Ads?

If you want to add video to your strategy next year, get in touch with Oozle Media! We have video solutions to help you create effective videos designed to help you grow your brand presence and ultimately help you attract new leads. Schedule a free consultation with our team now!