Are you looking for ways to drive traffic, leads, and customers with Video Advertising? That is what we help companies do every day. We have generated a simple guide that will help.
Do you know the biggest mistake marketers and advertisers make when launching a video marketing campaign?
We are about to give you hint: it’s not what you thing it is. It not about the style. It’s not about the company who creates your video. It’s not about how much you spend. The biggest mistake is so easy to make it can actually be seen on your TV every single day.
Have you guessed yet?
It’s not standing out.
The absolute worst video ad is one that does not stand out. It’s the ad that everyone skips so they can move onto their YouTube watching.
In Video Marketing you have 5 seconds to grab their attention and another 30 to make sure they keep watching. We want to help you get the absolute best ROI and we’ve created this short guide to give you 5 proven video techniques to make sure your video ads are getting noticed.
Why is this year any different from any other year?
It’s not. This year has been lovingly dubbed “The Year of Video Marketing!” It’s also been called the “Year of the Pixel” and about a million other things. But let’s be real, every year should be the “Year of Video Marketing.” It’s just that people are finally figuring out that even if they don’t think their product or service can really be shown in a video, they really need to put it into one.
And it’s obvious why. YouTube is the second largest search engine, and if you create and upload your video properly, you can get that video to pop up on page one of Google for your keyword. It’s pretty amazing, so why isn’t everyone doing it? Who knows.
Videos stand out on social media, and they are easily shareable. People are always more inclined to click on a short video than they are to click on an article that could be who knows how long. I mean, are you even reading this now? Probably not. Wouldn’t it be better if I was explaining this all in a video and then had a transcript underneath it, giving you both options? The answer is a definitive yes.
Videos can give your audience a quick overview of your product or service without overwhelming them, and most people are visual learners anyway.
People often worry about giving away too much information online. They think if they tell people what they are doing and how they are doing it, then no one is going to need their service. This is just wrong, wrong, wrong. In fact, when you put up lots of information about how your product or service works, you give off the impression that you are an expert in that field, and therefore people want your help.
Video Marketing is fantastic because it opens the door for so many options. You can have simple short videos explaining who your company is, videos introducing each member of the team, tutorial videos, explanation videos, and all of these leave the door open to turning them into series, which your audience will begin to expect and come back to learn more information from you.
So what are some awesome ways to use video marketing to capture leads?
Well, the goal of any video should be to capture a lead and get people onto your site.
Redirect Your Audience
Instead of embedding the video on social media and within emails, we recommend creating an awesome image from the video and place a play button over it. When they click the button it will actually drive them to your website. Now if you have the proper pixels in place you’ve just captured an audience member. Plus once they are there, they might click through some of your other pages and posts.
Explainer Videos
People have a lot of questions before they buy anything. An explainer video is the fastest, easiest, and well…best way to let them know who you are, what you do, and why they need your company to make their lives better. Remember, the whole point of any product or service should be to fulfill a need. And we think explainer videos are some of the best video marketing videos that you can have. Definitely look into getting one.
Explainer videos should be fun and interesting, while informative. That’s why we love Ydraw whiteboard videos. They are interesting and engaging and fun while still giving you important information.
Set a Schedule
Create videos on a set schedule. Better yet, come up with a plan for a series, and your audience will check in on those days to find the next bit of information that you have for them. Even if you don’t have a series, let you audience know that you will be posting videos once, twice, or thrice a week. Yeah I used thrice, deal with it. You want your audience to know that you are active and around. That you have new ideas and information for them all the time, and also that you’re actually there! This allows your audience to feel like they know you a little bit better and that they are able to get ahold of you if needed.
Call to Action
Everything you do should have a call to action. Even if it’s a simple blog post. You should always be telling your audience what they should do next. To find out more information about we are the bees knees, read this article. Get in contact with us and find out why we are the greatest office to work with. Buy our service because you’ll be making it rain with all the extra income we get you. Ya know stuff like that. Always have a call to action, but make sure it’s not salesy. If there’s one thing I always talk about it’s that you have to be smart with how you word your call to action in certain areas. No one wants to be sold to; it’s awful. So be clever with your CTA.
A couple of weeks ago I explain the different options you have with YouTube marketing. If you didn’t read it, you might want to head on over to the blog and check it out. Here is the link…
As many of you know Google is tracking everything you do. Which, opens up the door for us advertisers. A couple of weeks ago they launched the In-market Audiences. These are people who are looking for your product or service. It’s not perfect, but the results have exceeded my expectations.
This is over a 7 day period and I made sure to very very strict on the audiences I selected. We achieved a view rate of 24.53% which is awesome. and we got 87 clicks. That is a 12.70% click-through-rate.
You can’t find these types of numbers on any other platform.
It first started with annotations, spotlights, labels, quotes, fundraising and now we have the all new YouTube Cards.
This is a new feature that just came out this week. It might have been this morning March 17th 2015. I’m not really sure. All I know is that I am excited to get it implemented on all my videos.
Here’s how they work.
When you enable cards you are allowed to add a new layer of interactivity to your YouTube Videos. A card can be applied to each video individually and work on Mobile Device.
Did you get that?
Now there is a way to drive traffic with mobile devices. You see…Annotations did not work with mobile, now you can use a card and it works great on mobile devices. This is big!
Make sure to provide a destination URL from a list of eligible sites. When I say eligible sites I mean a site that is linked to your Youtube Channel.
Remember that a YouTube channel should be an extension of your website.
You can see what a YouTube card looks like by watching the YouTube video below. There is a little i in the upper right corner. That is a YouTube Card
How YouTube Cards Work
A simple little teaser or i is shown at the designated time that you select. It will only show for a couple of seconds before it shrinks back into a little i image. If a viewer click on the icon, your card or cards will pop up. Like this…
YouTube cards are created to help drive traffic to your designated website or you can send them to a different video. I’m telling you, that YouTube is getting better and that every company needs to focus on their YouTube channel.
Over time the system is going to evolve and YouTube is going to get better and better. The more traffic they can generate the higher the ad spend. It’s a win win for business owners and YouTube
Types of YouTube Cards
When setting up your YouTube Cards you will notice there are a couple of options.
1. Associated Website Card – This is my favorite because I am all about driving traffic to a landing page. One that is set up to capture a lead. If you do not know how to link your website to your YouTube channel I will direct you to this link https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2887282
2. Fundraising Card – Create a YouTube card that will send your viewers to your Fundraising campaign. This is a great way to send traffic and raise money for your fundraising campaign. There are certain whitelisted fundraising sites that google will allow you to drive traffic to. You can check out the list here. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6083754
3. Video or Playlist Card – If you want to drive your traffic to another video, you can use the video card. You can also link to a Playlist if you would like.
4. Fan Funding Card – I do not care much about this one.
5. Merchandise Card – A Merchandise card is a lot like the Merch Annotation. It give you a way to promote or sell your Merchandise directly from the Video.
How To Set Up Your YouTube Card
1. Visit your Video Manager
2. Click on the pencil to edit or video
3. Click on Card and enter a valid URL.
4. Create a custom picture or use one that YouTube suggests
5. Add the Card
So there you have it. Now get out there and start using your YouTube Cards. Note…that YouTube card performance does show up in your YouTube Analytics.
If you have any questions about YouTube Cards, please contact us.
There’s a trick to creating videos for advertising, and that’s to not create video ads…create movie shorts.
Reel SEO posted about why videos that weren’t made as advertisements can work so well as advertisements. I watched their examples and thought ‘Hey, that’s pretty good…Ima write a blog about it.’ So here ya go.
We’re a pretty cynical crowd nowadays. It doesn’t matter if you are the older generation who “used to walk 8 miles in the snow to and from school each day,” or if you are the new generation who has grown up with a cell phone in their hand, we all know when we are being “sold” to.
And we hate it.
It’s the reason we can fast forward television, the reason we don’t stress about being late to the movies–we know the first 15 minutes are going to be local advertisements–the reason we get so angry when YouTube displays an ad that we aren’t able to skip.
You know what ads I skip the least on YouTube? Movie trailers. Why is that? Because they tell stories, because it’s something new–a new movie, a new story–that I haven’t heard or seen yet. And if the trailer is cut correctly, I will sit and watch it because it doesn’t feel like an advertisement to us. It doesn’t feel like we are being sold to, rather, that we are hearing part of a story that we want to hear more of.
This is what we should keep in mind when we create video marketing content. Don’t create marketing content. Create stories. Have good audio. Play on the wide range of emotions we have as humans. Don’t over brand.
#1. Dumb Ways to Die
The most shared video in the world is a video titled Dumb Ways to Die. It’s a simple song with simple animations of some of the dumbest ways people have died. You don’t know who even created it until the very end, and it was Melbourne Metro. While I’m sure Melbourne Metro has a large number of people who know what it is, I’m sure it wasn’t relevant to the majority of the people who shared and watched the video. But that’s because it wasn’t viewed as an advertisement or a PSA message, it was just a funny video with a funny tune that caught people’s attention. And in fact, accidents and deaths were decreased the following year by 21%. The video came with a game and public ads that led to it being the most shared public service announcement in history.
#2. LG Meteor Prank
Have you seen the LG Meteor prank? If you haven’t it’s worth watching. Basically a room is set up filled with hidden cameras, and a television is hung behind a desk. However, it’s framed to look like a window and the cityscape is displayed on it. They bring in new people to interview for a “job” and as they are interviewing a meteor cuts into frame and hits the city. After the lights cut out and I can only imagine the individuals are thanking the high heavens they are still alive, the pranksters reveal themselves and the fact that the “window” was just an amazing LG television. Some handled it well, others…did not.
#3. The Red Button (TNT)
Have you seen the red button? Some nice, quiet, little town in Belgium became the scene of an action movie with the click of a little red button that said “push to add drama.” An ambulance shows up, drops the patient, then loses him out the back of the vehicle. A biker runs into the ambulance and starts a fight, there’s a shootout, and at the end an American football team shows up to carry a body back inside a building. At the very end a banner drops that promotes “your daily dose of drama” from the network TNT. Genius.
#4. Chipotle Scarecrow
Everyone has seen the Scarecrow video for Chipotle, right? It’s beautifully animated and set to Grammy Winning artist Fiona Apple’s “Pure Imagination” a cover of the famous song from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. It didn’t hurt that the video was created by Moonbot Studios, an Academy Award winning studio. This video does everything right. It pulls you in with amazing graphics and an actual story that we all can understand. We all know the horror of our food industry. The way this video plays to our emotions is perfect. It’s not until the very end that you even know that you watched a Chipotle ad. They did everything right.
#5. GoPro
Firemen and kittens. Is there more of a cliché? Maybe not, but GoPro did it perfect. A camera attached to a fireman inside a burned house, finds a kitten on the floor, unresponsive. He takes the kitten outside and puts an oxygen mask on it and cleans it off with a bottle of water. The whole time we are glued to our computers rooting for that little kitten. And then the cat starts moving and mewing. I’m not crying, you’re crying. It tugs on our emotions. And it shows the great thing about a GoPro, you can stick it anywhere and capture amazing moments. At the end of the video the link to two other GoPro videos along with a subscribe. This is a great call to action that the other videos were missing.
All in all, these 5 videos are amazing advertisements because they weren’t created like normal advertisements. You sit and watch them and you don’t feel like you are being sold to. Keep that in mind when you are creating your next video advertisement, don’t create it as an advertisement, create it like a short video.
![[Surprising] How Long Is The Average Length Of YouTube Top 10 Ads](https://marketinghy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/YouTube-Viewing-Stats.jpg)
