There’s no doubt that YouTube has evolved from just an ordinary video sharing website. Since it’s already part of Google, it has become the second largest search engine around the world. YouTube transforms the way we search for information by providing results in video presentations.
According to a research, YouTube has a total of 1.57 billion monthly active users with about 30 million average on a daily basis. Because of that large number of active users, about 300 hours of videos are uploaded per minute and about 1 billion hours (or an average of 5 billion videos) are watched per day. It was, actually, predicted that 50% of viewers under 32 will no longer subscribe to paid TV by 2025 because of You Tube.
Now, on a marketer’s perspective, YouTube’s user statistics are really astounding – and you wouldn’t think of anything else but the desire to penetrate such a huge, and promising, market. With YouTube, you are already reaching to attentive viewers who has the capability to take action from your ads where you’ll have all the opportunities to persuade to buy. The secret? Be creative.
We are not going to discuss the basic steps and guidelines of YouTube Advertising; you can get all that information on Google. But what we are going to tackle are the techniques on how to be creatively effective on YouTube. As we always say, there’s a science to everything. There are ways to create an enticing material that viewers will be engaged to and they will be too hooked to click on the Skip button.
There are three major factors about the viewers that you should consider, and can be used as a leverage, when creating ads for YouTube: they are most likely already searching for you or your services, their devices have audio capabilities, they have the option to take action from your ad right away. With these in mind, how can you come up with a creative strategy that will drive the people’s interest about your product and possibly convert your leads into sales?
Follow the ABCD of creative and effective YouTube Advertising.
A – Attract
Grab the viewer’s attention. Take their behavior into consideration while creating your ads. How to do that? Start with a story that will trigger their curiosity. After that, make sure to use familiar and friendly faces so it will be easier to relate on the story. You can also consider using humor and animation to make it more appealing. And last, be creative in choosing the music or sound effects. There has to be a correlation between the video and audio to keep the audience engaged.
B – Brand
Do not force the integration of your brand to the story. Your brand should be introduced naturally and meaningfully. It cannot be forced to the audience. You can consider some marketing principles to determine when and where is the best part to place your brand. If you will naturally display your brand or product an ad, it is likely to have a positive impact on brand recall and viewership.
If possible, you can also create original music or jingle that can be easily remembered. Even an instrumental beat, if original, can create a high sense of promoting your brand.
C – Connect
Use your market’s behavior and create stories that can trigger their emotional engagement. Tell stories that connects your brand to the audience. Use talents or endorsers as a tool to communicate with them. Consider quick cuts to keep the energy up. Initial studies show that increased pacing helps keep people watching longer, especially on mobile. Feature humor, suspense, and emotion as these are known to spark the interest of viewers – and in turn helps your brand awareness.
D – Direct
Nothing makes an ad more effective and creative than being direct. Using clear Call to Actions lifts the popularity of your brand and services. After capturing the attention of your audience, it’s now time provide clear instructions on what they need to do. You can use info cards, end screens, and huge CTAs to further persuade them in purchasing your products or services.
Come to think of it, they already stayed long enough until the end your ad (which many users do not really do), so maximise that opportunity to convert them to sales. Make the last few seconds of your ad memorable through key messages, powerful copy, or simply a strong and direct CTA.
So, the questions is how are you going to execute these creative techniques? Here is a three-point context that you can use in every YouTube Ad that you will create:
1. Start with the basics
Display a clear call-to-action (CTA) or offer before you highlight the value of your product or services. You can use recognizable phrases such as ‘Learn more’, ‘Sign-up’, ‘Buy Now,’ or ‘Download.’ You can also maximise the first 5 to 10 seconds to showcase the problem statement and how you can resolve it. In that way, the user doesn’t need to wait longer. Remember, they may already be watching your ad but it’s not the reason that they’re there.
So, what you can do instead is to make the first few seconds as catchy as possible then continue laying out the value of your product on the succeeding parts. And, make sure to repeat the CTA to make it more noticeable. You can incorporate it in the voiceover or you can superimposed it on the graphics.
2. Use a smart video template
Creating advertisements for YouTube gives you three times the advantage: sight, sound, motion. It gives you the power to connect to your potential customers in a more dynamic way, which gives you the opportunity to explain or demonstrate your products and services.
Because of these advantages, there are different techniques or approach every marketer can consider in creating their advertisements. Let’s take a look at it one by one:
The Explainer: These ads usually feature authentic on-screen talent or animation with voiceover to introduce a problem statement and how the product or service uniquely solves it.
The Demo: Sometimes showing your product in action is most powerful. Use sight, sound, and motion to demonstrate what you’re offering, pique interest, and prove why it’s valuable.
The Straight Pitch: For easy-to-buy, low-consideration categories with compelling offers, you may not need to explain the product/service. Respect viewer’s time by getting right to offer.
The Story Pitch: Reaching a broader audience? You may not want to frontload your offer. Instead, hook viewers with a story that doesn’t feel like an ad at first, but then lands on your product.
3. Prominent Call to Action
After showcasing the features and benefits of your products, you also have to clear as to what actions would you like your consumers to do. To drive more clicks and online conversions, it’s very important to be specific. Make sure that you will use words that goes with the action that they need to take such as “Learn more”, “Buy now”, “Sign up”, “Get info”, “Download”, “Get coupon”, “See deal”, and “Order now”.
For high-consideration products with low online conversion rate, use a more lightweight proxy conversion to drive leads or micro-conversions. But most importantly, repeat you CTA in the voiceover and graphics to grab the attention of the user.
In A Nutshell…
YouTube is actually not a tough market to penetrate. They may offer an abundant opportunity for marketing but they also provide numerous possibilities to make it happen. Just remember the basics and you should be fine: start with a bang, promote naturally with a purpose, connect through emotion and storytelling, and direct the viewer on what they need to do next. Don’t let them skip, make them watch.
