Chapter 5
Developing Your Ad Strategy
IN THIS CHAPTER
Creating your marketing messages
Matching your messages to consumer moments
As you build the shape of your YouTube advertising campaign, you need to think about the messages you want your audience to be exposed to and engage with. In this chapter, you find out about a framework that can help you develop your messages called micro-moments.
Developing Your Marketing Messages
A key component when a marketer is developing an advertising campaign is the creation of the messages that will be communicated through advertising creative. Simply put, the marketing messages are what you want to tell your target audience. You may have just one message to communicate — for example, a price promotion on a product you’re selling — or you may have a variety of messages you’d like to communicate, such as the name of your brand, your product, your retail location, and a call to action (the action you’re asking people to take.)
A general rule is to keep your messages as simple as possible. Your audience likely won’t remember too many messages, and you have only so much time in a video ad, or any ad for that matter, to get across whatever you want to say.
You may have heard radio ads where the web address or phone number at the end of an ad is repeated three times. It’s repeated because people need to hear things like phone numbers or offer codes more than once to remember them. This repetition, while annoying, drills the information into their heads.
As you’re developing your messages, ask yourself one important question: “So what?” If your target audience sees your message and responds with “So what?” then you’re not delivering the right message to them. A great marketing message may
- Inspire a change in how they think of your brand or product
- Tap into an insight about something they want or need
- Speak to their beliefs, attitudes, and desires
- Feel timely and compelling
- Encourage them to take an action
Make sure that your marketing messages align with your campaign type (see Chapter 2) and the ad creative you want to make (see Chapter 4).
Discovering Micro-Moments
As you start to think through the various marketing messages you’d like to communicate in your advertising campaign, a helpful framework, known as micro-moments, can translate these messages to the YouTube platform. Google developed this framework to illustrate to marketers how technology and the daily use of devices, such as mobile phones, can reframe the way marketers develop and deliver their messages.
Think about how many times you touch your mobile phone during the course of a day. One research survey by dscout found that the typical cellphone user touches his or her phone 2,617 time every day. This study, which you can see at https://blog.dscout.com/mobile-touches, included every tap, type, swipe, and click. Those numbers broke down into 76 sessions per day, with heavier phone users averaging 132 sessions a day. That’s a lot!
Every time you pick up your phone to do something, it’s a micro-moment. A micro-moment is an instance in time where you have the intention to do something, such as watch a video or search for something. Each intent-driven micro-moment helps shape your choices and enables you to make decisions on what to watch, what to buy, where to go, and more.
Each time you’re using your mobile device, you’re engaging in some kind of intent-driven moment. Google’s micro-moments framework helps makes sense of these many moments throughout the day.
From a more strategic marketing perspective, the micro-moments framework challenges the conventional approach most marketer’s take of having campaign windows with start and stop dates. Most traditional marketers will plan a campaign to launch at a certain time, with messages and media planned to run over a certain period and eventually ending. A break may occur before the next campaign begins. For more on this topic, see the upcoming section “Flighting versus always-on versus pulsing.”
Instead of planning your marketing around your own calendar of product launches and events, the micro-moments framework encourages you to be always present to intercept moments when your potential consumer may want to hear from you. Your target audience is looking for things all day every day, and marketers who appear in those moments are the ones who win.
Types of micro-moments are
- “I want to know” moments
- “I want to do” moments
- “I want to buy” moments
- “I want to go” moments
I describe each of these types in the following sections.
An additional “I want to watch” micro-moment describes those times when people turn to YouTube to be inspired or entertained. Your passions and interests can be met at any time with a search on YouTube for the kinds of content you’d like to consume, and some marketers can take advantage of these moments. This moment is best met by marketers who want to use content, rather than advertising, to reach their target audience. Check out Part 3 for how to develop your content strategy, and Chapter 8 for video content formats that can meet your audience’s entertainment wants.
When you’ve determined the most important messages you want to communicate, you can match them to the ad formats found in Chapter 4. You’re looking for ad formats that will enable you to communicate your message effectively.
“I want to know” moments
The “I want to know” moments speak to those times that you are looking to learn and explore something. You may grab your phone, open up the YouTube app, and search for any number of topics that interest you.
Perhaps you’re interested in what’s happening in the news, recipe ideas, or gardening techniques for possible future projects. Marketers have an opportunity to be present with their messages that help people in their moments of wanting to know — for example, by offering an online cooking course or a free e-book for amateur gardeners. These want-to-know moments are a great opportunity for your awareness campaigns to let potential consumers know about your brand and product.
In Figure 5-1, I use the YouTube mobile app to search for easy meals to make at home. The advertiser, GayLeaFoodCoop, intercepted this moment with an ad for Nordica Smooth Dips. (This video ad is known as TrueView video discovery. If you’d like to run an ad like this one, see Chapter 4.)
FIGURE 5-1: GayLeaFoodCoop intercepted a moment of wanting to know with a helpful ad that appears in the top slot of the search results.
As it relates to your marketing needs, think about what people want to know. Can you create messages and video ad creative that intercept these moments of wanting to know?
“I want to do” moments
The “I want to do” moments include all those times you’re looking for a solution to a challenge, such as how to do a repair.
If your company sells lawn mowers, your video can appear in paid media when someone searches for how to fix my <competitor brand> lawn mower when it won’t start. Perhaps your message of “Our lawn-mowers start every time” or “Our nearby location can repair your lawn-mower” can appear against those competitor-related want-to-do moments, encouraging people to switch over to your product or visit your location for service.
I searched on the YouTube app for how to fix a cracked phone screen, and as you can see in Figure 5-2, Samsung intercepted that moment with an ad for its Galaxy Note phone. I searched again later on that day using the same criteria, and a different advertiser intercepted that moment.
FIGURE 5-2: Searching how to fix a cracked phone screen surfaced an ad from Samsung promoting a new Galaxy Note phone.
Marketers have opportunities every day to intercept these want-to-do moments with messages directed at new consumers and consumers of your competitors’ products.
“I want to buy” moments
Even if you’re not purchasing a product directly from YouTube, you may search for videos about products and services to help inform your decision on what to buy (see Figure 5-3).
FIGURE 5-3: I searched for how to buy stocks and saw an ad entitled Volatility Trading Stocks Made Easy.
For example, if you’re in the market for a new vacuum, you may look on YouTube for review videos of the models you’re considering to help you decide which one is the best for you.
A marketer’s video ads can appear in these moments, making these want-to-buy moments a great opportunity for your conversion-focused campaigns, encouraging people to click through to purchase.
“I want to go” moments
Although want-to-go moments are typically taking place on Google’s search engine or within Google Maps, where people are searching a destination with details on how to get to a location, some want-to-go moments occur on YouTube.
For example, people may search YouTube for destination content about places they’d like to go in the future. if you’re an adventure holiday company, think through whether you can intercept these want-to-go moments with your marketing messages. In Figure 5-4, I searched YouTube for Las Vegas-related phrases and saw an ad to visit Barbados. Perhaps something in their research showed people looking to travel to Las Vegas could be tempted to visit Barbados.
FIGURE 5-4: I searched YouTube for Las Vegas travel guide and was served an ad from Visit Barbados.
Buying Paid Media
A common misconception with YouTube is that if you upload your ad, people will see it. A lot of people assume that YouTube, along with other social media channels, are essentially free advertising channels. The reality is that uploading a video is another drop in the ocean in a sea of millions of videos already on YouTube. The only way to ensure that your video is seen by your desired target audience is to buy paid media. Paid media is a paid placement of your ad or content, meaning your ad or content will be surfaced to a potential viewing audience because you paid for it.
Even though buying paid media may seem unappealing, it’s actually a fantastic way to reach the people you want to reach to achieve your business goals. Sure, you can make an ad that lots of people see, but if they don’t convert into a purchase or another important business metric, then the video ad was a waste of time and effort. It doesn’t matter if people in England love your videos if you’re running a sports equipment store in Portland, Oregon. Paid media enables you to reach the people you need to reach, and it’ll help you quickly learn what works and what you can tweak.
Doing it yourself
You can buy paid media yourself. You don’t need any expertise. You just need a willingness to step through the process and commit to spending a little time each day looking at the results and thinking about changes you can make to ensure that the money you’re spending is providing a good return.
You don’t need a big budget, either. You can spend just a few hundred dollars on your advertising. When paid media works well, for every dollar you spend, you’ll get more than a dollar back, giving you a positive return on your investment. When you’ve got a positive return, you can justify spending more money on advertising because you know it’ll be driving your profits and growing your customer base.
The benefits of buying paid media yourself are
- You can save money by not having to pay someone else to do it.
- You learn about how paid media works and how to get more out of it.
- You can make decisions quickly.
- You become an expert and can take your marketing campaigns to new levels, delivering more results.
The challenges with buying paid media yourself are
- You need to take time to set up paid media and it requires an initial learning curve.
- You need to tend to paid media daily to ensure that everything is working and performing.
- You may make mistakes, which can mean wasted dollars.
If you have a small budget of just a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, I recommend buying the media yourself. If you have a budget larger than $10,000, you may want to enlist the services of a third party to help you (see the next section).
Using a media agency
You can find an individual or a small company who specialize in buying paid media. The largest clients with the biggest budgets use large media buying agencies who have teams of people buying media across a variety of platforms. Who you work with depends on your budget.
You don’t want to use up all your media budget on fees for someone to create and manage your campaign, with no money left for the actual ads themselves. Don’t spend much more than 10 percent of your total media budget on fees for service providers.
The benefits of using a specialist are that
- They can set up campaigns quickly because they know the systems well.
- They can advise you on the best options and choices to deliver against your desired results.
- Large agencies can often negotiate discounts on media directly with the platforms, passing those discounts on to their clients.
The drawbacks are that
- It’ll cost you some of your budget. You’ll need to pay for their time and efforts, which reduces your overall media budget.
- No one will care more about your business than you. Good media buyers and campaign managers will give you a high level of service, but not all are equal! Like any service provider, some people are better than others.
- You need to keep an eye on their work. You want to ensure that they’re spending your money well and providing the results you’re looking for. Think of it as a partnership.
Exploring Pricing Models
You have quite a few pricing models, or methods of bidding on ads:
- Cost per thousand (CPM)
- Cost per view (CPV)
- Cost per acquisition (CPA)
When you’re buying types of media other than YouTube video ads, you’ll come across different kinds of bidding types. The most common is CPC, cost per click, which is the default bidding type for text ads you run on Google’s search engine. You may also come across cost-per-engagement (CPE), cost per lead (CPL), and cost per install (CPI) —for example, the installation of an app. There are others, too!
Sometimes you’ll come across these bidding types with the letter e preceding them —for example, eCPM —which stands for effective. That just means you used different data to calculate the effective CPM. You can run a CPC campaign, but use your results to determine what your effective CPM cost would be. That’s a handy way of comparing campaigns bought via different pricing models.
Choose the pricing model that matches best to your campaign objectives.
Cost per thousand (CPM)
When you buy advertising on a cost per thousand, or CPM, basis, you pay an amount for every thousand impressions of your ad. An impression is a display or exposure of your ad. For example, if you are buying a radio ad on a CPM basis, you pay a set amount for each thousand listeners who are exposed to your ad.
CPM is calculated by dividing the total cost of your advertising by the number of impressions that it generates. For example, if you pay $2,000 to show your ad to 200,000 people, your CPM is $10. In other words, it cost you $10 per 1,000 impressions.
The formula to determine your CPM is Total cost of your ads / total number of impressions * 1,000.
You can set your maximum CPM bid in Google Ads (see Chapter 7).
Paying only when seen: Viewable CPM
When you’re buying media on YouTube, you can buy something known as viewable CPM. CPM ensures that you pay only when your ads can be seen. It may seem odd to say when “your ads can be seen,” as it suggests that people might pay to show their ads to people without them being seen, but the crazy thing is that’s possible!
Imagine you’re browsing a website that features ads throughout the site. You may click on a page but scroll only about half way down and miss an ad at the end of the page. You didn’t see it, but it was technically displayed as the page loaded the ad. Advertiser’s often prefer to ensure that their CPM based campaigns are viewable CPM.
An ad is counted as viewable when 50 percent of your ad shows on screen for one second or longer for display ads or plays continuously two seconds or longer for video ads. (In Chapter 7, you can see how you can set up a campaign and select viewable CPM as a bid strategy when you choose CPM bidding for your Display Network only campaign.)
The real benefit of buying using viewable CPM is that you’re going to pay only for impressions that are measured as viewable, and that your bids will be optimized to favor ad slots that are most likely to be viewable.
Viewable CPM is a bid strategy that applies only to videos (and display ads) running on the Google Display Network. When you buy ads directly on YouTube itself, you aren’t able to buy viewable CPM. That’s OK because on YouTube, you can choose to pay for your video ads only when people watch them.
Using CPM
Although you can use CPM when buying YouTube ads, people commonly use it to buy display advertising on the Google Display Network.
This pricing model is often used when people are running brand awareness and reach campaigns because they’re concerned primarily with reaching large numbers of people, regardless of whether they take an action or not. The act of showing the ad to as many people as possible is the focus of these awareness and reach campaigns.
Cost per view (CPV)
Cost-per-view (CPV) bidding is the default way to buy TrueView video ads in Google Ads. When you buy ads using CPV bidding, you pay only for video views or interactions, which makes it a pretty effective way to buy advertising. You’re paying only for people who actually wanted to watch or interact with your ad, rather than buying on a CPM basis where you’re paying to show your ad to people whether they care about it or not.
With CPV you pay when
- A view is counted, which is when someone watches 30 seconds of your video ad or the duration if it’s shorter than 30 seconds.
- They interact with your ad – for example, by clicking on call to action overlays, cards, and companion banners.
You’re charged for whichever comes first: a view or an interaction.
CPV is calculated by dividing your total ad spend by the number of total measured views. For example, if you spent $10,000 in media spend and received 25,879 views, your CPV is $0.38 per view.
Deciding your CPV
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all way to decide what you think a view is worth. Advertisers in competitive spaces may pay $0.50 per view, whereas the least competitive spaces may net you CPVs of just $0.02. What constitutes a reasonable CPV is a factor of the market you’re operating in. For example, if your video ads are part of your collective efforts to get people to sign up for your bank’s mortgage, a high value and long-term product, then you may be prepared to pay a higher CPV.
You can set your maximum CPV, which is the most you are willing to pay for a view or interaction. Whenever possible, Google Ads aims to charge you only what was necessary for your ad to appear on the page, so you’ll end up with an actual CPV that will be less than your maximum CPV. That’s because Google Ads is an auction system, so you pay only as much as is needed to rank higher than the advertiser immediately below you.
Using CPV
The CPV pricing model is a great choice when you want people to actually engage with your video ad and take actions, such as clicking to visit your website. You can use this approach for your brand awareness, reach, product consideration, engagement, and driving leads campaigns.
Make the most compelling ad you possibly can so that people will want to watch it. (See Chapter 6 for more on what makes for a great YouTube ad.)
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
Cost per acquisition (CPA) is a bidding approach that is great when your campaign goals are to encourage things like sales, signups, or other actions, such as mobile app downloads. Think of acquisition as the moment when your target audience takes an action that brings them a step closer to you – for example, by giving you their email address or purchasing a product from your website.
These types of acquisitions are also known as conversions because the person converted from being a noncustomer to being a customer.
Choosing your ideal amount: Target CPA
You can set your target CPA, which is the ideal amount you pay to acquire or convert someone. What’s great about Google Ads is that you can link your campaigns to things like your website’s ecommerce storefront, enabling Google Ads to use things like conversion tracking to optimize your campaign. The system serves up your ads and monitors to see which ones perform best at converting people. It starts to tweak how and where your ads are served up so that you avoid unprofitable clicks and get conversions at the lowest possible cost. This automation by the Google system means you get more sales while paying less for the clicks that lead to those purchases.
The bidding methodology automatically finds the best cost-per-click (CPC) bid for your ad each time it's eligible to appear. It sets a higher CPC bid for more valuable clicks and lower CPC bids for less valuable clicks.
Deciding your CPA
Most marketers calculate their ideal CPA based on the cost of their product or service. Here’s a simplified example. Say that you sell mobile phone chargers, which cost you $5 per unit to manufacture and ship to the end consumer, and you sell them online for $25 per unit. That means you’ve got $20 of profit margin to play with (just ignore things like overheads and the like for now.) You can set your CPA as high as $19, as you’d still be making $1 profit. In reality, your CPA would probably be a lot less than this amount.
Using CPA
Use the CPA pricing model when you’re looking to drive sales, signups, leads, or other actions where you’re converting someone from being a noncustomer to a customer.
Placing Your Media Buy
The vast majority of media bought with Google across search, display, and video is bought through auction, where advertisers set their bidding criteria and compete for their ads to be displayed.
However, you can also buy media through something known as reservation, which guarantees placements at a fixed rate cost. The approaches are different, and you may choose one over the other.
It’s my opinion that almost all marketers can deliver any of their campaign goals by buying media through the auction system, and that, with a diligent approach, they’ll deliver better results than through other methods of buying media. That’s a pretty broad blanket rule, but I stand by it! If you’re not sure which approach is right for you, go the auction route first.
Auction
In auction-bought media, you set up your campaign-making choices about the placements of your ads and the audiences you’d like to target, the pricing model, bidding choices, your budget, and timing.
The Google Ads system places your ad campaign into the auction with all the other relevant advertisers competing for similar placements and audiences. Every time someone is watching videos on YouTube, the system decides whether there’s an opportunity to display an ad. Google Ads then runs an auction to see whose ad should be shown and serves up the winning advertiser’s ad.
An auction is a vastly complex system, so the preceding explanation is fairly simplistic. An auction occurs each time someone searches Google, visits a website with display advertising, or watches videos on YouTube. Millions of auctions are happening every second! The good news is that these auctions happen automatically and lightning fast. Google Ads isn’t like eBay, where setting up an item listing is a pretty involved process.
Buying your media through auction is a great choice because
- You can control things dynamically. You can start, stop, and tweak your campaign settings at any point. This flexibility is great because you can optimize as you go, making changes to everything, including your creative, bidding, and placements.
- It’s not a case of highest bidder wins. Google considers various things, such as the quality of your ad creative and landing page. Google focuses on serving up ads people want, not just the ads someone paid to show, so you’re rewarded by making your ads better and more relevant.
- You can get started with a small media budget, with no real barrier to entry. You don’t need huge budgets. You don’t need to know anyone in the industry, and you don’t need to negotiate deals or go for long lunches with media reps to secure media space.
- You can buy space almost anywhere on the Internet. Advanced targeting options almost guarantee you’ll be reaching the right person.
Auctions have some cons, however:
- The onus is on you, or your media agency, to constantly review and improve your campaign. With such a powerful tool as Google Ads comes great responsibility, and you need to dedicate time to managing it.
- It is a more complex system than the old method of buying media. You’re not just buying space in a printed directory or on a radio station, signing a contract, and sending through your ad. With so many options, you need to make a thoughtful decision.
- Competitive categories have higher costs. For example, you have to bid at much higher rates to target people interested in mortgages because mortgage providers know they can pay more and still get a return on their media investment. These highly competitive high involvement categories are more expensive auctions to participate in.
Reserve
Another method of buying media with Google is known as reserve or reservation. The key difference between this method and auctions (see preceding section) is that you’re not running any auctions but you’re buying media based on an agreed-upfront rate.
You buy reservation media either based on the number of impressions you’d like to purchase or based on a cost per day. For example, the YouTube Masthead is a reservation media type where you buy the space for the period of 24 hours, which is pretty cool because it’s the only way you can buy advertising directly on the YouTube home page. (Chapter 4 has more details on this media option and other reservation options like Google Preferred.)
Most marketers who buy reservation are doing so because their campaign goals are to deliver brand awareness by reaching large audiences. If you’ve got a big budget to play with, reservation can help guarantee you’ll reach a volume of audience in a certain time frame, whereas auctions require a bit more flexibility to deliver to your targets.
The pros of this approach are
- Reservation can provide more control in how you buy given that you’re buying impressions at a fixed rate. You may prefer this method if you want to know exactly the price you pay, such as when you buy other media in a similar fashion or perhaps your budgets and processes work best for this approach. I once worked at a large media company where a central team controlled the budgets in a way that forbade me from using the auction until I got special permission to manage the campaigns directly.
- You can still buy reservation ads with Google based on topics, interests, affinity audiences, demographics, and even something known as first position. First position lets you reserve the first video ad someone sees in a session. If you’re buying reservation with other media companies, you’ll often find you’re simply buying media space on their site, without more advanced targeting options.
The cons are that
- In general, reservation can be more expensive. That’s mainly because you’re buying such a broad audience, whereas auction allows for more specific targeting, reaching just the people you want to target. You can debate this point, but I find reservation is best when your targeting criteria is “everyone.”
- If you want to buy reservation, you’ll need to work with a Google representative. Only the Google team can implement reservation media buys. If you don’t have a Google representative, in the USA call the Google Ad’s team at 1-844-201-2399 and let Google know you’d like to buy reservation media.
- Minimum spend requirements exist. These requirements aren’t published and vary from market to market. They also depend on the media type and its availability.
Scheduling Campaigns
You have something of a philosophical choice to make about how you’d like to market that will dictate your approach to ad media spend.
Consider the following options when you schedule your campaign to deliver media:
Flighting: Some marketers take the classic approach of flighting by scheduling various campaigns throughout the year), where a campaign may run with set start and end dates. A flight is the period when ads are running, followed by a period of no advertising, also known as a hiatus, followed by another flight, and so on. Sometimes your ads are running, and other times you’re not communicating anything to your target audience.
This approach goes hand in hand with reservation media buying (see preceding section), where you plan chunks of campaigns and reserve the associated media, running ads intermittently throughout the year. You know when your campaigns will run and how much they’ll cost. You can easily apportion your budget to each campaign, evenly or weighted.
If you’re a marketer who needs to advertise only at certain times of the year, then a flight approach to your campaigns may work well.Always-on: An alternative to flighting is always-on, which is somewhat self-explanatory, in that it means your campaign activity will be present in the market at all times. Always-on works well with the auction-based buying approach because you can set your total budget for the year and have the Google Ads tool evenly deliver your ads throughout that time, without running out of budget. If your budget is small, your ads may not run every day, but it does help guarantee a more even delivery and distribution of your ads ongoing.
If you’re marketing a product or service that someone may be interested in any day of the year, you should be running always-on campaigns.- Pulsing: This option is a combination of both flighting and always-on. Pulsing is the approach where you keep an always-on campaign running, often with a low-level advertising budget, but where you heavy up your media spend at key times during the year in pulses. Pulsing means you’re always present if someone is looking for you, but you’re also taking advantage of seasonal effects, such as peak selling periods. Perhaps you spend more advertising dollars during the holidays when more people are buying products.
The best approach for marketers to enable maximum successful return on their campaign efforts is to use the pulsing approach. You flight your campaigns, run an always-on effort, and pulse your media spend at key times, which ensures that you never miss out on any opportunities to speak to or sell to your target audience.
People are always searching and watching videos, and you’ll want to be there in those moments to intercept them. If you’re flighting your campaigns and your target audience is watching videos on YouTube, you may miss an opportunity to show them a relevant ad, so consider using flighting, always-on, and pulsing in combination.