Do you want to cut your lead costs in half while maintaining volume and quality?
It’s entirely possible using the 4 P’s of YouTube advertising.
At Viewability, we have applied our ‘4P Formula’ to pretty much all client campaigns and see repeated success in…
- Lowering the cost per lead
- Increasing the volume of leads
- Maintaining the volume of leads
- Improving the quality of the leads
So what are these 4 magical P’s?
- Platform
- Person
- Pursuit
- Promotion
We’re ready to dig into this and, as we go, we’ll show you one of our client’s (public speaking expert Andy Harrington) campaigns, where our 4P formula more than halved his cost per lead!
These actionable tips can be implemented by you today for great results, so let’s get started.
#1: Platform
Connect on YouTube, Convert on Google.
When advertising your business, you’ll need to make some decisions about where to advertise: Facebook, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn and so on… Each platform will provide different opportunities to the way you advertise.
(You’ll see even better results from these opportunities if you know where your market is hanging out.)
Now, when advertising with YouTube, you’ll be using the AdWords platform, which means you’ll be able to tap into the power of Google Display advertising. If you use both platforms available in Adwords — YouTube and the Google Display Network — you can get some incredible results.
So in Andy Harrington’s case, when we first started scaling, we were spending around £4.77 ($7.18) per opt-in on cold traffic for his existing campaigns, which focused on “Improve Speaking Skills”.
Here’s the YouTube video…
Notice the call-to-action (CTA) in this video that drives them to the squeeze page…
Because we were building a remarketing list from all the people that viewed this video as an ad, we were able to follow up with everyone that had viewed the video but decided not to opt-in.
But instead of following up with the same video ad, we actually followed up with website visitors by using text ads…
and display ads…
Using these text and display ads gives us access to the whole of the Google Display Network (estimated to cover 92% of internet users and 65% of comScore’s top 200 websites!).
We saw great results by re-engaging with Andy Harrington’s website traffic that didn’t convert first time around.
We have seen this happen so many times. That extra exposure really helps because people often need to see you more than once to feel confident to opt-in.
Now, of course, this is just YouTube to Google cross-platform remarketing.
Go even further than this and retarget YouTube traffic on Facebook and other platforms (and vice versa!). Cross platform remarketing will open up new audiences and further improve results!
The Results
By remarketing YouTube search traffic using the Google Display Network, we reduced the cost per lead from £4.77 ($7.24) to £1.25 ($1.90)and in some cases £0.75 ($1.14).
#2: Person
Get back in front of your organic viewers!
Andy Harrington gets a considerable amount of non-paid, organic views on his YouTube videos and we wanted to get back in front of all those who had watched his videos, but had not yet opted in.
This pulls on a different method of remarketing, but still uses the AdWords platform. You need to link your YouTube channel with your Adwords account. Then build a remarketing list of your YouTube video viewers and then show them some video ads.
How do we do this for Andy?
We linked his YouTube account and AdWords account within the AdWords platform. By doing this you benefit from access to additional statistics, remarketing, and CTA features.
We then built video remarketing lists based on those who viewed Andy Harrington’s YouTube videos. We grouped together content specific videos to build segmented remarketing lists.
Based on this segmentation, we started showing content related video ads to the segmented remarketing lists.
(RELATED: The Remarketing Grid: The Science of Ad Retargeting Audience Segmentation)
For instance, if someone had watched a presentation skills video like this…
or this…
… they would be followed up with a video like this…
We re-engaged with those who had already viewed his video but not converted and encouraged them once more to opt-in. The results are below:
The Results
The cost per opt-in will vary but last month we generated 342 opt-ins for £1.25 ($1.90) per opt-in on average!
(Digital Marketer Lab Member Extra: Access The YouTube Retargeting System Execution Plan now! Set up 3 different types of funnels using YouTube ad retargeting! Not a Lab member? Click here to learn more about DM Lab.)
#3: Pursuit
Change the customer journey.
(Are you a DM Lab member? You can learn more about crafting your customer journey in this What’s Working Now call with Richard Lindner.)
Consider a Lead magnet change to improve results. This is a great way to convert prospective customers who love you, but didn’t opt in for your first lead magnet.
Customers respond to offers in different ways.
Some may favor a webinar, while others may favor a cheat sheet or masterclass. With Andy, we actually promote video trainings, 2 different masterclasses and his book launch.
Test different Lead magnets and remarket new offers to those who didn’t opt-in the first time round.
We achieved great success by changing Andy Harrington’s lead magnet from a video series to a masterclass.
You can view the original landing page here for the free video training here:
and the new landing page and offer here:
Not only could simply changing the lead magnet and landing page improve conversion rates, but it allows you to go one step further and send traffic that didn’t convert from one offer to the other offer, giving you “another bite of the cherry” so to speak.
We, in fact, have now been generating very high returns on investment by running all remarketing lists (minus the converters) to a new book launch for Andy:
The Results
By changing the lead magnet and the opt-in page, we reduced the cost per lead for Andy Harrington to £3.97 ($6.02) instead of £4.77 ($7.23), which is a 20.15% improvement for the ad campaign.
#4: Promotion
Improve the ad itself.
We’ve tested hundreds of different ads for our clients and we have a lot of information on how to create the perfect video ad.
2 techniques that have worked really well for Andy have been the use of techniques such as a pattern interrupt & dynamic keyword insertion to better grab the attention of your viewers and drive down the cost per lead.
Method 1 – The Pattern Interrupt
A pattern interrupt is anything that disrupts an expected pattern.
For example, we introduced into Andy Harrington’s in-stream ads to grab the viewer’s attention and to stop them from clicking the SKIP AD button.
As you can see in Andy Harrington’s video here, he starts by saying, “STOP! Don’t invest in a presentation skills course… here’s why…”.
Viewers do not expect you to tell them to “STOP!” at the beginning of a video, so it grabs their attention immediately. The viewer’s interest will be peaked for a few seconds and now you’ve got your moment to turn viewer attention into viewer action!
The key is to use the pattern interrupt within the first 5 seconds — before the SKIP AD button appears.
What could you do to create a pattern interrupt in the first few seconds of your video?
Method 2 – Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI)
DKI is commonly associated with Google AdWords text ads and other ad networks which allow you to customize your ad to a searcher’s search query.
It means that, as the searcher, you end up seeing ads that mimic the search terms you typed in:
So, how can you use DKI in your videos to improve the cost per lead?
We identified that Andy Harrington’s best performing keywords could be categorized into 3 different themes of…
- “Speaking Skills”,
- “Presentation Skills”
- “Communication Skills”
…so we created video ads according to these keywords.
If someone typed in “how to improve my communication skills”…
… they’d now see Andy Harrington’s communication skills related video ads.
Andy would begin the video by saying, “Honing your communication skills is essential in business today…” You can see how we did this below:
We had essentially customized the video ads to a searcher’s search query!
The Results
- When comparing ads with no pattern interrupt vs using the “STOP!” pattern interrupt we increased conversions and drove the cost per lead down from £4.41 ($6.69) to £2.74 ($4.15)!
- When we compared the new DKI videos for the previous in-stream ads, conversions from impressions increased on average by a whopping 85.68%!
(To see more data on this and 9 other great tips on improving YouTube ads, check out my blog post on 11 YouTube In-Stream Ad Tips.)
When advertising on YouTube or any platform for that matter, think about the 4P’s — platform, person, pursuit and promotion — and you’ll be well on your way to halving your lead costs.
How does the platform work and what opportunities do you have? Think about the person you are targeting and can you reach more people? Is your pursuit perfect for your viewers and if not, how can you improve the customer journey? And lastly, how can you improve your promotions so your ads turn more viewers into customers?
Small tweaks and improvements to each of these 4P’s & you’ll find your whole campaigns will improve dramatically.
(Digital Marketer Lab Member Extra: Access The YouTube Retargeting System Execution Plan now! Set up 3 different types of funnels using YouTube ad retargeting! Not a Lab member? Click here to learn more about DM Lab.)
Have a question?
Ask the DM Team and 7,856 other members in the DM Engage Facebook Group.
Not a DM Lab Member? Learn more here.
