With the recent launch of YouTube in South Africa I thought it would be a nice idea to post a little how-to guide that shows you how to use the most simple form of paid promotion the video sharing site has to offer: Promote-Your-Video, or PYV.
This guide is aimed at giving insight into how to run a (successful) YouTube PYV campaign. There are many alternatives to PYV and YouTube, but those would need to be highlighted independently. Check out the YouTube Blog for any further information and help you might need.
Choosing the right video
Choose what video is most applicable to the content you are trying to promote. You need to decide if you want to highlight a particular feature of your product or consider if you are going to promote the bigger picture of what you are trying to sell. It’s a very similar process to conducting research for text-based adverts: the copy must include keywords and phrases that are most applicable to the product at hand. It is vital to create a relevant keyword base and, as with text ads, the smaller and more focussed the foundation the better the performance will be. Furthermore, analysis and optimisation are thereby made much simpler. This not only applies to the keyword research, but also to the tagging of the video.
Keyword Research – Most effective methods
Everybody has their own method of conducting keyword research which they think works best. Below I will highlight the methods I use which can, of course, be used in conjunction with any other research matrix.
By typing in a keyword/phrase into Google one can discern the most popular searches, of which many one would not even have considered to be applicable. This gives some insight into what the market, from a basic user’s perspective, is actually searching for. Later on one can decide if these keywords are applicable and/or effective or not. Whilst I primarily use Google Suggest ,all the same methodology applies to the YouTube auto-fill suggestion box.
YouTube suggests phrases when a user conducts a specific search. Image Credit: YouTube
- Competitors’ terms
It’s helpful to take a look at what competitors are doing. In terms of video one can scan YouTube and various other video sharing sites to see what tags they are using. It’s vital to look at more than one in order to get the bigger picture and not leech from someone who does not know what they are doing. Another helpful tool is KeywordSpy. This lets you type in any competitor's URL and see what keywords they are using, which are the best performing ones and how much they are actually spending. I use this as an augmentation to all of the above, rather than giving it too much emphasis. Furthermore, you have to pay in order to make use of this tool.
- Keyword Research Tools
I’m not a fan of these tools. At all. Keyword research needs that element of human creativity to really be able to excel at such a subjective task. An automated keyword tool can definitely help, but it’s not intuitive. It’s data-based and therefore driven by past searches instead of the future searches. I use them to fill the gaps rather than set the foundation.
For videos, YouTube offers its own keyword tool, which in its nature is very similar to the one Google provides for AdWords research.
- Organic Search Phrases
Once the video is uploaded and has been tagged (even if only with a few base phrases) it is advisable to let it accumulate views organically in order to ‘activate’ YouTube Insight and see what phrases have been used to find the video. This, however, is only useful if the video has had some time to accumulate a solid base of views. These key phrases can then be added to the already existing list and can also serve to determine if the research that has been done is encompassing enough.
How to create a PYV advert in Google AdWords
The first step is to upload the video to YouTube. Once it’s there it is essentially ready to be implemented into AdWords and the campaigns.
- Create campaigns that will be used solely for videos. The structure is the same as for any text based campaign i.e. adgroups, keywords, matchtypes, etc, and can be done through the AdWords editor. Once you have completed this upload the changes and find the campaign in the AdWords interface.
- Choose your targeting: If you want to target the entire content network, just ignore the placements, and in order to target just YouTube add www.youtube.com. Some videos perform better on YouTube whilst others do not. Try create a separate campaign that does not target any specific sites in order to discern where the majority of your viewership lies.
- Now you create your first PYV advert. Once you have done all of the above it is time to visit the AdWords interface. You have to create your first advert here as it’s not possible to do so in AdWords editor. Find your campaign, select an adgroup and then the “Ads” tab. Here you find the button “New Ad” where you select “Display ad builder”. On the left is a tab that gives you the option to select ‘Audio and Video’ adverts, where the YouTube Promoted Videos Template is located.
The interface which is used to create YouTube PYT campaigns. Image Credit: YouTube
From the image above:
- Ad Name is for your reference only
- Headline and Description follow the same conventions as any PPC ad.
- When you select your YouTube video, paste its URL in to the ‘search for video’ pop-up that appears.
Once the first advert has been created, changes can be downloaded to AdWords editor and the URL can be copied across to any other advert that should be using the same video. However, remember to adjust your ad copy to make it relevant to the keywords in that particular ad group. Approval of the video ads takes a while as they are checked manually by Google. Depending on the targeted territory the waiting period can be anywhere from few hours to a few days.
Optimising your PYV Campaign
There are two things which you should be doing to optimise your PYV campaign on YouTube. Firstly, update your content. It's important to keep your content fresh so users will keep coming back, especially if you're promoting a channel. Secondly, you will need to refine your keywords. Review user comments and responses. Can you use their discussion to inspire new keywords or better promotion text? Try using a Search Terms Report after the campaign has run for a few days. This can help you pick good negative keywords to help users find you more easily. It can also help you find new keywords to try.
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Posted by Hp computers on 2010/11/03