Video Ads Driving Traffic To Your Business

Have you thought about how many video ads you watch each week? Let’s forget about the ones on TV and just focus on the ones we see on the internet. If you don’t subscribe to YouTube and you watch at least 1-2 hours of YouTube content alone each week. Chances are you are watching at least 2-3 seconds of ads before each video. Here is a few stats you should know about YouTube first before going any further.

1. YouTube is on average got people watching 50% of each video posted on average.
2. Combined subscribed and non subscribed users will watch approximately 30 minutes of YouTube content each month.
3. The average video is under 8 minutes long.
4. 86% of marketing experts use video for marketing

What is with these stats?

Now that we have 3 basic stats in play, this is why these stats are important to know. Right now the amount of video content being consumed globally is increasing at a rate like no other medium in recent history. There is a unique opportunity for business and website owners as well. While it has existed for quite sometime globally, if you havent considered video ads, now is a great time to start. Creating video content is still expensive to a degree, however people are craving the content. The numbers show that video content is the way to go. Why not embrace this for your business.

The first thing we would like to point out is the fact that the stats of people watching LOTS of youtube videos per month. This translates to potentially a large number of people viewing any ad that is published. The only limit is the amount of people in the targetted areas you want to aim in. While some of this seems like quite logical and possibly a little “obvious” to some. There is a few things you should consider why we have raised this point.

1. If you were publishing ads on TV some will cost $2,000+ to have appear in different time slots throughout the month.
2. The amount of positions available to a TV Channel is limited by the frequencies of which they operate.
3. Publishing is at a premium but chances are you remember at least 1 ad you saw in the past week on tv.

How much should I budget?

This is the coolest part of YouTube Ads. You can do it for as little as you like, or as big as you like. Just be consistent, that is the key to the success. Being on the Sunshine Coast, the area is not large. In fact it is probably one of the best area’s to run tests in for video ads. Realistically though, you should budget at least $20 per day. Even on the Sunshine Coast it is possible to burn through the $20 a day budget.

In the ideal world you would budget more than $20 per day but to put this in to perspective for you, we recently did a test on $20 per day. We didn’t have any expectation of there being great results from the test due to length of the campaign. It did however yield results! While it was not a huge lead, it showed how powerful this marketing option is without a huge amount of effort or cost. From a budget standpoint it also showed that if the campaign is setup well enough, you will get results.

To answer the question though, you certainly wouldnt be able expect results from a budget less $600-$1,000 per month as a starting point. Having a budget that low will however get you a great amount of exposure.

Keep your goals of Video Ads real

Video as we mentioned before is used by 86% of marketing professionals. This is by itself a firm indicator that business and website owners should use video to market their business. It would be safe to say it is a no brainer. You do need to think about the results though. Creation of video content use to be expensive. Great thing is that our Phones can help make short work of creating videos at a reasonable high quality.

Putting these facts aside right now, the results you are going to expect have to be realistic. In today’s climate, most mediums used for advertising will yield a 2-3% engagement. On a great day, you will probably see 5%, 10% if you are really really lucky. So far, you are thinking why down play this so much. Fact of the matter is, no one can guarantee results but we can say that you will definitely get some brand exposure.

We don’t want to oversell this but we do know that even on the smallest of budgets you can get a few leads. To give you some perspective, on the small test we did, we got a lead after a week of running the ads. The first 3 days was spent going through the learning phase of the campaign. The next 2-3 were fairly average, a few people we know said “hey we saw an ad you posted on youtube” and finally day 7 we got a lead.

What did our test show?

The budget we had set was $20 per day and initially we had covered Sunshine Coast and Brisbane as the targetted viewing area. We got a lead from a business on the Sunshine Coast and it has converted. From that single lead it paid for itself and then some on the first sale from that customer. The total spend of that campaign was $140 + $300 for the creation of the video ads (2 were made).

Targeting and setting up the campaign properly takes effort and a bit of thinking. The quality of the video will always play a part in the results, however the we did want to test that as well. Our test was to see what would it take for someone to engage in the ad to visit our targetted landing page. Surprisingly the effort was very little. We made a very simple ad and as such it performed quite well.

Each ad has a result, this result can be a view, a click or just an impression. A view and a click will cost you, the rate will vary and the result of course depends on the person interacting. The interesting one is the impressions. Why is that you may be thinking. Well the answer is interesting, you don’t pay for impressions. You only pay for views or clicks/taps/interactions with the ad. The following graphic is from our results and it shows a 4 day period.

Results of the ad campaign explained

Remember the cost is from both views and clicks. The impressions is the amount of times the video is presented to a viewer but not necessarily watched in its entirity or has had no interaction from the user. While interpretation to this can cause confusion, and the likes of Google do not clearly state whats what, a view is deemed as an impression that had a final outcome (eg someone clicked on the video or ad or they watched the full ad) you will pay for.

Back to one point though, quality of the video being important. Typically a well scripted video with a firm call to action is what you need for an ad. Keeping the ad super simple though seemed to be VERY effective from an interaction standpoint. You will see in the link above that the ad is borderline, well lets face it…. BORING!!!! it tells people very little / nothing of REAL value. now this may seem very critical and harsh given the ad took time for us to build (I think from memory 15 minutes in total). Fact is, it performed better than the scripted and well thought about ad. Why? absolutely no clue. It did however prove a point from our standpoint, if you want to be a scrooge on video ads, they can still work well.

Which video got us the lead?

This may be a surprise for some, those same people may argue that its a numbers game. Is there merit for both arguements, you bet. While we would love to drag this article out further, the scripted ad was the one that got the conversion. For us it makes sense that the scripted, structured ad got the first conversion, it had more impressions, but the conversion did happen witha  lower number of views and clicks.

I would probably argue, and as a thought while typing this article, that the simple ad probably would have performed better with conversions if we had a consumable product or one that lead to a page filled with spontanious buys on it.

The final take

Video ads, as a b2b styled business, may seem like a bit of a “maybe we win, probably we wont” outcome seem unlikely, even on a super tight budget. We would have thought the same thing to a degree, especially with it being an ad for us. Fact is, and they talk for themselves, it is not about “whether it will work” it is more of a “give it a go, don’t expect the world, don’t spend the earth but keep an open mind.”

We do a lot of experimenting and alot of testing on different techniques internally and while we appreciate or understand that it may not work for us but definitely will for others. This is one of the few where we recognise that the ads work very well, even for us.

Keep a real budget in mind, give it a go if you haven’t considered it earlier. The worst case experience is you get a bit of brand exposure. The best case scenario is you are kicking yourself that you never tried this 5 years ago. Don’t forget in order to justify the cost you need an outcome. Keep it simple. It can either be a lead/enquiry or a sale of a product on your website. If you don’t get either but calls increase or other contact methods increase during the period you are testing, it can be a sign it worked as well.