Guide To Remarketing Lists For Search Ads and RLSA Best Practices

Guide To Remarketing Lists For Search Ads and RLSA Best Practices

Best Practices for RLSA Ads and How To Create RLSA In Adwords

I wasn’t really planning on creating a best practices guide for RLSA ads. It just kind of happened because I saw a huge need for it. There were a couple of nice articles out there, but nothing explaining the basics.

I wanted to educate myself and learn a little more about how RLSA ads work and why I should be using them for my business. I thought I was running them, but it turned out I was not. That hurts, because they provide a huge benefit.

The more I searched the more confused I became. Google’s own guide and YouTube tutorial videos were terrible and have zero value. Even after I created a couple of RLSA ads I blew $150 dollars in a matter of minutes. I set them up wrong and I assume it has happened to thousands of other people. I want to prevent you from making that same mistake and make you a genius in the process.

So let’s get started.

What are RLSA Ads and How Do They Work?

First let’s define what RLSA stands for and how the ads work.

I thought RLSA ads were just another term for remarketing on the Display network, but that’s not the case. RLSA stand for Remarketing Lists For Search Ads. There’s a big difference.

A Remarketing Display ad can show up all over the internet as an image, gif, or html graphic; an RLSA ad shows up as a text ad in Search.

RLSA Ad

RLSA ad in search

They are just a normal search ad that is created for your remarketing lists.

Watch the simple tutorial video where I explain the big difference between Search and Display remarketing ads.

Create Remarketing List

Step one of RLSA is to create remarketing lists. You can do this through Adwords or use your analytics account. These list are the foundation to your RLSA campaign.

If you do not know how to create a remarketing list you might want to jump over to YouTube and learn. It’s easy. Here is a link to learn how to build Adwords Remarketing lists.

Build all types of lists because it’s free.

Once you have your remarketing lists set up, it’s time to watch our 2nd RLSA video. We will actually show you how to set up a campaign.

Bid Only vs. Target & Bid. What RLSA settings should you use?

As you can see by the screen shots below you have 2 different bidding options. The Target & Bid option are more restrictive while the Bid Only option is loose and can cost you a lot of money quickly. I made this mistake and within 20 minutes I blew $150.

That is the price of a massage. ☹

RLSA Target and Bid settings

Target-and-bid-vs-bid-only-RLSA-ads

Basically, when you choose Target and Bid the ad will only show if the person types in your keyword and can be found on your remarketing list

Bid only will show your ads if the keyword or the remarketing list are used. It’s an “Either” option. A lot less restrictive and can cost you a lot.

Not that you understand how RLSA works and what to watch out for, it’s time that you test the waters.

RLSA Strategies

Pay per click ads can get extremely expensive, especially if you find yourself in a competitive industry.

Here are a couple of strategies you can use with RSLA ads. The idea is to cut down on your cost per lead by only running ads to people who have visited your website. Especially if you are in and industry where your cost per click is +$50. Wordstream analyzed the most expensive keyword categories for online advertising and found that keywords related to Insurance, Loans, Mortgage, Attorneys, and Credit were the most expensive with advertising costs ranging between $45-$55 per click.

That hurts! They could be spending $10,000 dollars to capture one customer. A way to lower the cost per customer is to drive huge amounts of traffic with social media and then run PPC ads with RLSA. I will test this in the coming weeks.

  1. Drive traffic to your site with social media
  2. Create a RLSA campaign to all visitors

 

the-problem-with-rlsa how to fix RLSA

 

The second strategy I like to use is the one I spoke about in the RLSA video tutorial. Why not run funny and engaging ads on your competitor’s keywords. That way if one of your website visitors decides to go elsewhere they will see a funny ad calling them out. This goes along with our brand, so it works great.

Examples:

“We caught you cheating”  “What are you thinking” “Come On Back”

Funny-RLSA-ads-you-can-run

Now it is your turn.

If you have comments or questions about RLSA best practices, please let us know. We like to hear from our visitors.

Here are the video transcripts

[Start of video RLSA Ad words. Remarketing Lists For Search Ads Explained. Part 1]
[Beginning of recorded material]

Jace Vernon: Okay, so real quickly I’m going to show you guys the difference between a standard display remarketing campaign and in RLSA remarketing, which RLSA stands for remarketing list for search ads. Okay, so as I kind of explained above is I got really confused with this, which I shouldn’t. I do a ton of Ad Words. Well, the other day I started to run these new RLSA ads. They are not that new, but to me they were kind of new, because I’ve been doing all normal display ads. Okay, so I’m going to show you the main difference between a standard RLSA ad and normal display ad. So first off, whenever you’re go into the search engines, let’s say you search for something- I put video marketing company right here. So, let’s assume that somebody comes to my website, down here where you type in video marketing company and they visit my website.

Now I’m at the website. Now, let’s say that this same person turns around and says, okay video marketing production. Got it? Now, we know that they’ve already been to my website. Now they type in video marketing production. Well, if I’m doing an RLSA ad I can run an ad right here to those who’ve already visited my site. So, this is a typical search ad. These guys are all doing search ads, but if I wanted to I can come back in here and say okay Google, I know that I already visited this site, or somebody already visited my site, I want you to bid higher on that keyword if they visited my site. That’s an RLSA ad. Okay. So, that’s not your typical search. Most of the time when somebody comes to your site you will cookie him, then you will run him a standard display ad. Let’s say you’re over on, this is a good one- KSL.com. So right here, this is a display ad right here up at the top. Okay, now that’s normal remarketing. The biggest difference between RLSA ads and standard display remarketing ad campaign is you are able to run these search ads that are up at the top. So, I hope that makes sense. Just remember, you can run them search ads and you can bid higher, because they already came and visited your site before. So, I hope you can see the power in that compared to your normal just standard display ads. You know they’re already searching for a second time or third time for that keyword, so they’re in the shopping cycle.

Okay, I hope that makes sense. If you have any other questions keep reading. Down below we’re going to actually do a video on how to set up RLSA campaign. So, stay tuned, or jump over to the other video and we’ll get started.

End RLSA ads video 1

[Start of video RLSA ads Part 2 Tutorial Video for RLSA ads]

[Beginning of recorded material]

Jace Vernon: Hey guys, it’s Jace over here at Yinc marketing and we are going to go into part two of the RLSA ads series. So, if you haven’t seen Part 1 yet, you might want to jump over there and take a look at the Part 1 video, where we discuss what is an RLSA ad and what is the difference between an RLSA ad and a standard remarketing display ad. Real quickly; if you’re not going to go watch that an RLSA ad is remarketing list for search ads. Okay. It’s a little different.

So, I’m going to show you how to actually set one up. So, jump over here to my dummy campaign and right now I am going after certain keywords. So, this is in your Ad Words account. If you don’t have an Ad Words account, you need to have one. If you don’t really know what a search campaign is, you better learn what one is so you can set this up. So, right now I’m going after YouTube agencies, YouTube for business YouTube business, so you can see my keywords. Well, if anyone goes to my website for these keywords, well I’m going to cookie them. Okay. Now, when I cookie them what happens is I can start running them display ads. But this is a little bit different. I’m not going to run them display ads. What I want to do is make sure that if they Google any of my other keywords that I’m going to bid higher; that I’m going to increase my bid on those keywords, because I want to be at the top. I know they’re interested, I know they’re shopping I know they’ve seen my website and they’ve been there and so if they search any of my keywords, I want to make sure I’m popping up on number one spot in the search campaign. Got it?
So, click over here on audiences. Okay, you’ll see I don’t have any. I’m just going after search. You can add your audience here. Let’s pick the YouTube marketing company. We’re going to go to Add Interest and Remarketing- Remarketing lists. There is a bunch of remarketing lists. We’re going to go Home Page Visitors. So, once I have those added in I’m just going to click save. Then, here is the thing; you want to increase your bid by 10-40%. Okay. If you’re just starting out, don’t get too crazy. Just say, “Hey, I’m going to increase my bid by 20%, 10%. I’m going to increase my bid here by 10%.” Now, that’s pretty simple to do. All you did was jump on one of your search campaigns. Then you went ahead and added these audiences up top. So, you click on audiences and you start adding your remarketing audiences. And there are so many different remarketing audiences that you can create. You should be collecting everything you can about your visitors.

Okay. Now, if you’re not getting any impressions then you can go back here and increase this up to 20%. So, you’re just saying Google if they come back and search any of these keywords; so if they’ve already visited my site and they search any of these keywords, I want to make sure I’m biding up to the top page or number one spot, because I want to be seen. Now, something else that you can do with this, which I screwed up the first time I did it is you can create a whole other campaign. With a whole other campaign you’re able to target like your competitors. You can target people; you can really get a dedicated message and let me show you what I mean. So let’s assume; let’s go back here into Add groups. I’m going to create a whole other campaign and I’m going to show you a big difference on this. So, let’s go Search Network. There’s a key, that’s going to save you a lot of money, because the first time I set up this RLSA ads I blew $100 in almost 5 minutes on nothing. They were actually junk sites and it was kind of a screw up, but at the same time Google does not explain nor they got out there and really said hey, you guys- like they’ve done no really good tutorials, I guess it’s what I’m trying to say. I could not find anything, hence the reason I’m doing this tutorial.

So, I’m going to call these RLSA video ads. I’m going to do all features. I don’t like to do anything off of the search network. United States is good. I’m actually just going to go United States. And just teasing, I like Canada. Okay, the manual CPC is fine. We’re going to change this in a second. I’m going to go my default bid $3, budget go $100 per day. Now you can do all your site link extensions, which you should do. Add in all your… So, add these in. Now, I’m going to come back and do all this so I don’t have; I do it here, so I don’t waste your guys’ time.

Okay, so basically what I’ve done is you have to go in here and create an ad. Now remember I am going after my competitors, so this is just a remarketing campaign that’s going to focus- a remarketing search campaign that’s going to focus on my competitor’s keywords. Okay. You can see, kind of the ad that I created here said “Shame On You. Wrong Company”, because I know that they just search for somebody else’s business, and they’ve been to my site. Okay. So, if I know they visited my site, well I’m willing to kind of go out on a limb and do a call out on the actual ad. So, it’s just a little different. It’s not just going to say Video marketing company. I’m talking to them directly like “hey, what are you doing searching for another company?” Got it?

So, you go down here, and now in this one you can be broader. Okay, once again we’re targeting people who have already been to our site. So, normally I would put quotes, I’d put brackets, just because I want nothing but phrase match or exact match. But I don’t have to do that here. I’m just going to put video marketing company; video marketing agency- now obviously I’m going to go all the way down through here. Normally, I never do this. I don’t just let them pick my keywords for me. I’m pretty strict with what I allow Google to do, but for the sake of time we’re just going to throw those in. Okay. Now, obviously after I increase my bid if I want to go after these, here is the key. This will cost you a lot of money, if you don’t do it, if you don’t do it quickly. Like right now, Google can turn around and just start throwing these ads up, because I haven’t added my audience. If you go in here to your audience and say, okay, I’m going to add now my RLSA ads. So, I’m going to go down here and say okay, I want all website visitors- you have to have 1000 or more. Like I said, this is kind of your dummy account be the way. I’m going to leave that red like that.

Now, here is- I jumped over. I’m going to go back so I can show you how to get there. Down here there’s something that says Bid only, or Target and Bid. If you create your campaign on its own, you have to select Target and Bid. If you hit Bid only, your budget is going to be blown on a bunch of junk keywords, because you know how we went broader on our keywords, we’re a lot more broader than we normally should. Well, if you don’t click Bid Only, Target and Bid Only, you’re going to show up for everything. So, you’re basically, when you click this you’re telling Google, hey Google, they have to search my keywords, but on top of that they have to be on my list. Okay. If they’re not on my list, you don’t show them the ad. So, it’s just a really good way to know that you’re target now.

Now, obviously my keyword that I chose was video marketing, bit on top of that this is for my competitors’ keywords. So, I’m going to go back in here and put all my competitors: pixability… Let me think. Well, first off what I’m going to do is grab all these guys’ video explainer. Copper fish media, Brand the global. So, I just go over here in- going everywhere. Copper fish media video explainers, Epipheo studios, Pixability… I just know some of these. I’ll go down and put a list of probably 50 of my competitors. Got it? And I save that. You need to go back and you see I underbid all of these keywords. I need to go back and actually adjust all the bids.

Okay. So, I hope that helps. That is a simple tutorial on RLSA ads. Remember you will waste a lot of money especially if you’re over here on your search. If you do not click, like on your standard search one, your audience right here you can adjust your bid to increase it. Now, you can see my targeting settings are Bid Only. That’s okay, because the keywords that I’m using are extremely restrictive. I’m not just going after YouTube. Like if I just put the word YouTube there, I would show up, I mean my budget would be blown in a matter of minutes. Okay.

So when you create your own search ad, you’re not going off of one you’ve already built. When you’re developing your own like this one over here on the left hand side, remember your target settings need to be Target and Bid. That means it has to match both your keywords and be in your audience. I hope that helps. Like I said, I wasted money on when I first did this.
So, if you have any questions, always reach out to us marketinghy.com. Send us an email jace@marketinghy.com. We’ll be happy to help me. In the meantime you can check out our other videos. We do a lot with video ads, and we especially focus on video marketing. So Gmail video ads in the in stream in display and display, all those things that can just help you get a higher ROI on your investment when it comes to video ads. Okay. Thanks for listening. Talk to you later.

[End of recorded material]

Guide To Remarketing Lists For Search Ads and RLSA Best Practices

RLSA ads Part 2 Tutorial Video for RLSA ads

RLSA Ad words. Remarketing Lists For Search Ads Explained. Part 1

Scaling A Business With Adwords, Facebook, and Instagram Video Ads. Part 1

Scaling A Business With Adwords, Facebook, and Instagram Video Ads. Part 1

I am excited to finally get this project going. Are you ready to start scaling your business? We are going to show you guys how to scale up your business using Facebook, Adwords, and Instagram Ads. Especially Video Ads.

When I say scale, I mean increase ad spend which will, in turn, increase your leads.

More leads equal more sales for you business.

This is part 1 of a 4 part series so keep an eye out for the other blog posts. This could turn into a 10 part series. I will keep going as long as you guys keep reading. Feel free to ask questions, make comments, and share this article. There are businesses that need it!

A lot of people have a problem with scaling. It can be really nerve racking and it takes a leap of faith: Faith that you have the right offer, faith that your product brings value, faith your funnel is set up correctly, and faith your message will bring conversion.

The reality is, you could bomb and lose money.

But…

That should not stop you from trying. You have to take a risk!  If you want to grow your business, scaling is a great way to get rapid growth. It may take testing and tweaking. So make sure you are ready mentally to do this.

We know this first hand. Case and point!

Many of you know, Yinc does marketing for all types of businesses. We like to focus on video marketing but many of our clients need a lot more then just video ads.

We are currently working with a business that is ripe for scaling. Our cost per lead is around $1 and our cost per customer is around $9.

Their average customer spends around $70 on their first order, which puts us at a $61 gross profit.

On the surface this looks amazing. The numbers above are definitely scalable, but the company is basically breaking even. They have a net profit margin that is so tight that we have not convinced them to scale yet. This is where the Lifetime Value of a customer comes into play. If their customers order more product, instant profit. But they have to be willing to break even on that first order.

Like I said…it’s not easy.

During this process, you will learn about your product and offer. Take what you learn and make adjustments. It’s also important that your adjustments are made quickly. If you have a web guy that takes weeks to make a correction, you have problems. If you can’t create a Facebook audience in a hour, you need help. If you have no idea how to create an Instagram ad, you better educate yourself or get someone who knows what they are doing.

This is not a game for beginners. You will lose money and quite before you become profitable. I see this all the time!

This is not to scare you. I just want to make sure you have the little things adjusted before you decide to scale.

The History Of Scaling Ydraw

We’ve come to the conclusion that we want to scale our Animation Company Ydraw.

Over the last couple of years we have been content with the growth and profits but we want to add another 100k a month in revenue.

One of the biggest limitations of Ydraw is that each video is customized. It takes a lot of creativity and human capital to create a Whiteboard Animation Video. It’s even worse with 2D and 3D animation videos. For us to scale perfectly, we would need to have a turnkey video in place or we have to find a lot of new talent.

We don’t know if we want to do this yet.

So once we increase our sales another 100K a month we will put a freeze on our ad spend and decide if we want to go on another hiring spree.

Where We Currently Stand

When I talk numbers, I will only cover Adwords, Facebook, and Instagram. The numbers do not include referrals, SEO, repeat business, referral partners, etc.

We’ll be discussing Ads and Video Ads only. All the leads are coming from Ad spend.

October 2015 Ad Spend (not a good month)

Adwords
Spend: $8,083
Leads: 81
Cost per lead $99.79
Click To Conversion Rate was 3% to 9%

Facebook and Instagram (Zero)

Last October we were running the following:

Keywords Search Ads (Adwords) : These are just simple keyword targeted ads.

Scaling-Your-Business-Search-Ads

Gmail Sponsored Ads (Adwords): These are Gmail ads that pop up on the Gmail promotion tab

Gmail-sponsored-ads
Video keywords Ads (Trueview adwords): These are YouTube display ads for specific keywords

YouTube In-Display ads

 

Video Placement Ads (Adwords): Hand picked YouTube videos that allow ads

YouTube In-Stream Ads

Retargeting (Adwords): Banner ads and video ads for visitors

Although we had great success with running Facebook ads, last October we had turned them off. We felt we needed to make some changes first.

Step 1: Scaling your online business. Online Marketing Assets

Do you have everything necessary to run an effective online marketing campaign?

You are going to need the following:

  • Website
  • Videos (30 second ad and a full length explainer video)
  • Banner Ads
  • Email Campaign
  • Website Forms
  • Adwords Account
  • Facebook Account
  • Instagram Account
  • YouTube Account
  • Conversion Pixels
  • Analytics Goals
  • Facebook Pixel

**you can click here for our full online marketing checklist**

Everything should be branded correctly and have links out to your landing pages. I have created plenty of video tutorials to help you. Just visit my YouTube Channel.

When scaling, everything works together. Traffic we get from Facebook becomes part of our Remarketing campaign in Adwords. Our Search traffic on Adwords becomes part of our Lookalike audiences on Facebook and Instagram. The likes and shares on Instagram become part of our Remarketing group on YouTube. The point it…It’s a full system.

The Assets above are the foundation. Do not go any further until you have everything in place.

For those who have everything, I would suggest revamping or double-checking your work or go down the full checklist which I provided above.

Ydraw’s Adjustments

After looking over our numbers I realized we needed to make some adjustments to the website. I knew this for some time, but I’m busy and I didn’t make time to for the necessary adjustments.

I know…STUPID!

This seems to happen a lot with business owners. We get caught up in so many different things that we neglect making necessary adjustments; especially if things are going great and you’re making good money. It’s human nature to keep the status quo when all is well.

Our number 1 goal for the website is to collect a lead. We want their email address or we want them to pick up the phone and call. Calls have a much higher closing rate, but a lot of people are in research mode and will only leave their email.

That is ok.

Once we collect an email address they enter our Email Campaign.

Our website was ok at the time, but was random and lacked a clear call to action.

Plus, there were a couple of issues on Mobile that needed to be fixed.

Over Thanksgiving break we went to work on the website. The updated version would have a clearer CTA and would eliminate a lot of the clutter.

Basically, we simplified.

Our website contains:

Below I will give you the results.

But first, I want to go over the numbers.

Numbers You Should Know:

-Cost Per Leads
-Cost Per Customer
-Closing Percentage
-Profit Per Sale
-Life Time Value Of A Customer

If you are losing money every month, one of the numbers above is messed up.

Cost Per Lead is different for everyone.

If your industry is highly competitive you could be spending $50 dollars a click which could turn into a $500 cost per lead. This is not uncommon (Attorneys are known to spend this type of money on leads).

At Ydraw we can afford to spend $150 to $300 per lead or $2500 a customer, and still come out on top. You may only be able to spend $3 a lead.

Just make sure know your numbers.

Obviously, the name of the game is to get the lowest cost per lead.

We will get into this later but if you can only spend a couple of dollars to generate a lead, Adwords might not be the best place start. I would look at Facebook or Instagram. You will have difficulty reaching your goals with Adwords unless you find a way to increase your prices and profits per customer.

Either way, you have to test it.

Dan Kennedy says, “He who can spend the most per lead wins.”

Russell Brunson is always preaching that it’s ok to break even to obtain a customer. He will even lose money because he knows profit’s are made further down the funnel.

The Lifetime Value of a customer is important.

Fast forward to Jan 2016

It was time to start scaling up. The new website was up, Instagram ads were working and our Facebook strategy was in place.

Adwords

Spend: $8,185.35
Number of Leads: 117
Cost Per Lead: $84.62
Click to Conversion: 5.69% to 10.53%

Facebook and Instagram

Spend: $4665
Number of Leads 446
Cost Per Leads: $10.45

As you can see, the website adjustments made a big impact on our conversions. We saw a 35% decrease in Cost Per Lead and close to 87% increase in Click to Conversion.

You will also notice that Facebook and Instagram campaigns really added to the number of leads.

Our Cost Per Lead is way lower on Facebook and Instagram, but those leads are not as high of quality as Adwords.

There is a difference between people who are actively searching and people you interrupt. Facebook and Instagram are interruption techniques. Meaning they are not actively searching for our product or service.

There is a longer sales cycle, but the ROI is still big.

What I love about Facebook and Instragram ads are the shares, likes, and comments. Here is the Instagram video ad we are running.

 

 

Take note of the comments and shares. This is powerful because we are getting free customers. When one person sees our ad and thinks their friend needs it, they share the ad.

This is like an instant endorsement.

These are factors that are extremely hard to measure. All I know is that things are working.

For example…

In one day Wes, our sales VP, had $18,000 in sales from Instagram Ads.

We spent around $150 on ads that day. The whole month of January we spent $4665 on ads for both Facebook and Instagram.

I do not have the exact amount of sales that came in from Facebook and Instagram, but it was a lot (still trying to track them more effectively).

These are exciting numbers.

The Plan Moving Forward:

Over the coming weeks I plan to increase ad spend by $3000 and make some more adjustments.

The goal is to lower or maintain the same Cost Per Lead.

Here are some key factors that contributed to our success in the month of January.

  • New Website Design
  • New Facebook and Instagram Video Ads
  • Lookalike Audience Created from Conversion
  • Increase Ad Spend

I will create a separate blog post about Lookalike Audiences because I think Facebook changed their algorithm a few weeks back. It was a good change because their effectiveness increased dramatically (more to come).

In the meantime, good luck scaling your ad spend. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me. I would be happy to discuss your business.

I am excited for what 2016 holds.

Happy Scaling…

Thanks for reading.

Scaling A Business With Adwords, Facebook, and Instagram Video Ads. Part 1

Interactive Video Advertising Plus Your Story Equals Amazing Results

Interactive Video Advertising Plus Your Story Equals Amazing Results

Have you checked out the latest and greatest interactive video ads created by Ydraw?

If not, you should…

I have been running some video marketing test on YouTube to see what type of engagement I get with interactive video compared to other styles. First you might want to watch the video to get an idea of what an interactive video is.

Many of you know that I am a big fan of YouTube ads (trueview ads). I think they provide an amazing opportunity for you to get in front of your target audience at an extremely low price. Plus if you create the right video you can increase your engagement 10 fold. So let’s look at some numbers.

On February 18th I started a simple test and here are the numbers.

Interactive Video Ads on YouTube

Those numbers are looking awesome. I kept the budget extremely tight because I wanted to show you guys that YouTube ads do not have to cost you a fortune plus I wanted to restrict Google. You do not see these types of numbers with YouTube ads, but I did a couple of things differently.

1. I created an Interactive Video that would get my audience engaged.
2. I targeted my Remarking Audiences.

Interactive Videos

Trueview ads continue to supply more and more features that will drive YouTube visitors away from YouTube to your landing pages. You can use annotations, Overlay Call Out, Logo, etc.

Here is an idea

Lets assume you are going to be selling Dish Network or DirecTV. We all know how the game is played among sellers. If you have Dish Network, they will try and get you over to Direct. If you have Direct, they will try and get you over to Dish. We can use this to segment our audience and run them ads.

Step 1: Create a video that gives your audience a choice. Below is a simple example of what you can do to give you audience a choice. This is not a video, it is a simple gif because I didn’t care to create a whole video to show you (sorry, next time).

Dish-Network-Vs-Direct-TV-Interactive

 

 

 

 

Why would you want to do an add like this?

Because you do not want to pay for viewers who are not really interested in your product or service. When they see your add you want them to either click it or move on before 30 seconds hits. That way you are not charged.

Now if they click on your add and they choose DirecTV then you send them to a landing page that talks about Dish and the benefits they can get by switching…plus you put a remarketing pixel on there computer to run them more ads throughout the internet. This could be much more cost effective compared to Google PPC ads.

Step 2: Select the right target audience. For the interactive video ad I used the Remarketing feature. I had a small list built up from earlier views plus I let Google create similar audiences.

Remarketing Audiences

Which brings me to my next point.

Last week I had the chance to attend the Traffic and Conversion summit in San Diego. One of the “Big Ideas” was that 2015 is going to be the year of the pixel. Meaning that you need to start building audiences. In other words you capture and pixel as many people as you can. If you are going to spend the money to drive people to you website, why not put a cookie on their computer so that you can run ads to them later on.

It can be done on YouTube also. Basically YouTube will cookie anyone who has watched your videos. This allows you to run video ads to them later on. It’s cheap and very effective.

So there you have it…I hope you can see the big benefit to running interactive videos. So far the numbers have been amazing and we are just getting started.

 

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Are you struggling to get the traffic or revenue necessary to grow your business? We have a limited number of spots open for future clients. If you can not implement this strategy, we would love to do it for you. Everything we do is based off of ROI and will help your business. Sign Up and we will get you started right away. We will manager your Video Ads Campaigns, Email Campaigns and Autocomplete Services. They Work and we use them. Sign Up and see if we are a good fit. We may not be…but it’s worth seeing. This could change your business.

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How To Create The Perfect YouTube Video Marketing Strategy.

Hey everyone I wanted to give you a couple of ideas on how you can turn your marketing video into a YouTube traffic-generating machine. YouTube and video are not going anywhere. So buckle up and jump in. This is your YouTube video marketing strategy.

Why am I doing this?

Because I am nice and I want you, yes you, to succeed when it comes to video marketing.

Lets get started.

“The real fact of the matter is that nobody watches ads. People watch what interests them, and sometimes it’s a video ad.”

You should have a YouTube Channel and a nice explainer video educating the consumer about your product or service. If not you can use ydraw.com.

Once you have those two things in place, you are good to proceed.

I do not really care to discuss the lucky viral video that comes every couple years. I am talking about a consistent Video Marketing plan that will pay you dividends well into the future.

We are going to discuss ways we can use and abuse the YouTube platform to get the biggest ROI.

YouTube, as many of you know, is the 2nd biggest search engine and it is basically the biggest cable company around.

Cable-networks-vs-YouTube

[xt_blockquote author=”NY Times, December 13 2012″]“Once again consumers demonstrated that they will gladly watch a commercial if it is their choice to do so.”[/xt_blockquote]

Specifically I want to show you how to get in front of the right person at the right time.

For example, if someone were looking for your product or service and they typed in your specific keywords, you want your video to be in front of them. Right?

They are a perfect buyer.

This can happen 2 ways.

  1. Organic Search (this take time, work and money)
  2. Paid Video Ads (this just takes money)

Business owners need traffic and can benefit from having your content found at the top of YouTube or from running targeted YouTube ads.

Organic Traffic: First How Does YouTube Rank Your Video? (organic)

Since we are playing on YouTube’s platform we need to look at 4 things.

  1.  Relevancy
  2.  Engagement
  3.  Clout
  4.  Competitors

Like Google, YouTube is search driven. They want to give the consumer the best possible choice for every keyword they type in.

If you have a lot of impressions yet nobody is clicking on your video, you have problems. If people are only watching 2 seconds of your video. You have problems. The material you are presenting might not be that relevant.

How can we make Google happy?

By creating a video that will fit the needs of a searching consumer. If you are a lawyer, you do not want your video popping up for a pool guy.

Unless deep down you have an uncontrollable desire to be a pool boy.

To be relevant you will want to:

  1. Optimize your file name
  2. Optimize your Title
  3. Optimize the description
  4. Optimize your tags (keywords)
  5. Optimize your transcript

This is not rocket science.

Next you will want to make sure you have good engagement.

  • Views
  • Subscribers
  • Posting
  • Backlinks and Embeds

About two years ago I made a huge pitch on why you do not want YouTube videos on your website, I have since adjusted my thinking. If you take a look at Ydraw.com you will see nothing but YouTube videos on the home page.

Why the change?

Because I want more views, more subscribers, more backlinks and embeds.

A word of caution…

The main reason I did not want YouTube videos on my home page was because I did not want my traffic going elsewhere. Most people will use the simple embed code that Google provides which will allow them to run ads or give you different video options at the end. We will want to block both.
And hope that your competitors do the opposite. That way we can advertise on their videos…

How fun!

Take a look at the image below. You will see there is a spot where you can uncheck:

  • Show suggested videos when the video finishes

Uncheck-Show-Suggested-Videos-At-The-End

Make sure that is unchecked

You can also block in-stream ads from running on your videos.

You can do this by disabling the monetization tab on your YouTube Channel.

YouTube-Marketing-Disable-Ads-Running-at-first

Now back to organic traffic.

There are a couple of tricks you can use when it comes to getting video views and subscribers.

  1. Go to Fiverr and purchase some views or some subscribers. That will at least get you started.
  2. Create a blog network and embed your videos on the blogs.
  3. Create a slide share that talks about your product or service and places the video in the slide share.

There are a lot of ways to get views and subscribers, but do not go overboard. Natural is always best, but it never hurts to give yourself a little push to get started.

Paid Traffic: How To Get Immediate Traffic With Video Ads

Now, let’s talk about my favorite way to immediately drive some qualified traffic to your videos which in turn should produce leads and new customers.

If your video sucks, sorry I can’t help. When you start purchasing ads on YouTube, the content and quality of your video will make a huge difference.

Yesterday I was on the phone with Google going through a couple of our video campaigns (I’m always trying to get one-on-one meeting with them).

He said there are three main problems that they run into all the time.

YouTube advertisers do not:

  1. Create a video specifically for YouTube Ads
  2. They do not target the right audience
  3. Companies do not have a strong Call To Action.

A simple way to structure you video is to follow the sequence below.

  • Headline (to grab attention)
  • Identify the Problem
  • Solution
  • Strong Call To Action (you need to ask them to do something)

The last step being the most important. I like to call these the “Marketing hy test.”

Nothing bothers me more when a big corporation wastes millions of dollars on bad YouTube Campaigns. Well, actually deep down I like it because it gives the observant a big advantage.

I have seen companies take a video that begins with 10 seconds of disclaimers. Who’s going to watch that?

Skip…

Once your video passes the “Marketing Hy common sense test,” you should be good to proceed.

Here is the other issue:

You can’t expect to get qualified traffic if you do not target the right viewer. I see companies blanket YouTube with their ads and then they wonder why they do not see any results.

You have to identify your target audience and identify your keywords.

For example, when I am running ads I will usually pick two or three demographics per campaign.

  • Age, Location, and Keyword
  • Age and Placement
  • Age and Remarketing
  • Age, Gender and Placement

I will also double up on the campaign and run one for in-stream ads and one for in-display ads. Here are some results we get for one of our clients. We have produced 65 leads in the last 14 days. You can also see the average cost per view, cost per conversion and our conversion rate. These are all great numbers to have.

Video-stats-for-YouTube-Ads

Not all target groups are equal, but once you have a long enough testing period you can make the necessary adjustment to maximize your ROI/Conversions.

Remember that everything needs to be tracked. Make sure you have your conversion pixels in place so you know what is working and what is not.

So there you have it, a simple guide/reason why you should be running video marketing ads.

Obviously, we can help and we would love to talk to you on the phone about your video marketing efforts.

We love seeing companies become successful through online video marketing.

We also have some amazing YouTube marketing guides if you like the DIY space.

We love internet marketing and have executed successful internet marketing campaigns for companies of all different sizes. We want to earn your business.

Thanks for reading the…

How To Create The Perfect YouTube Video Marketing Video Strategy.