Video marketing is one of the hottest marketing strategies. According to various statistics, 80 percent of global Internet consumption in 2019 will be video content and 85 percent of internet users in the USA watch online video content every month.

This article explains how, and more importantly “where” you may add video marketing into your Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. It then explains how to create a PPC video and offers video marketing tips.

Creating Video Ads for YouTube

Google Ads has video marketing and PPC, which means you may create a video ad and post it on YouTube. These are the ads you see before or after videos on YouTube. If people view your ads, then you pay a fee. How you pay the fee depends on the type of ad you post, but the most common type is where you pay if the viewer watches for more than five seconds.

Video Ads for Facebook

Facebook is home to the largest children-and-young-people audience on the internet, so it sometimes pays to post a few video ads. As you set your campaign objective, you must pick the “video” related objective, and move forward to upload your video ad.

There are a few options for uploading your video, including a slideshow format. This enables you to give users a sneaky peak at the best bits of your video with the hopes your viewers will then click to watch.

Ads on Instagram

Instagram has a very juicy reputation for helping companies introduce and sell their new products. This is mostly due to the fact that the Instagram audience is a little more mature, and because it is a very visual tool where things that are new and interesting get high levels of attention.

Oddly enough, even if your advertising content varies wildly from the content you post on Facebook, the advertising platform is actually the same. Post video ads the same way you would on Facebook but be sure to angle and direct them to appeal to a more mature audience.

Video Marketing on Twitter

The Twitter advertising platform looks very similar to the one you see on Facebook. You have a series of objectives that you may select. If you are looking for PPC video marketing, then the “Promoted Video Views” option is the one for you. You may upload videos, then set headlines, calls-to-action and URLs to your ads.

It can be confusing as to how this works, but the short version is that you can upload a video of 2 minutes and 20 seconds (or up to 10 minutes with select accounts), and then promote it via the Twitter PPC platform to achieve more views. This is a little different to the types of video ads on YouTube.

Creating Your PPC Video Advertisement

Let’s say that you want to put your video ad onto YouTube. You may be tempted to build an ad similar to the types of ad you see on TV, such as car ads and sofa ad. In most cases, this is a mistake because those types of ads only work for established brands.

One method you may use is to use your regular video format and simply talk to your target audience. For example, if you were Captain Disillusion, you may show examples of your debunking methods in a montage and then maybe say a few words to the audience. This would help explain what you do, give a few selling points, and then give the watchers a connection that may convince them to watch, and/or subscribe.

For example, if you were the Ted Channel, you may take a more personal approach and have the character talk to the audience, probably with a funny comment or two, in order to spread brand awareness and hopefully endear the watcher to the main protagonist.

Your best bet is to sell the steak and not the sizzle, which is contrary to the old marketing saying. People are used to the sizzle, they are bored of the sizzle, and they have no time for it. In genuine terms, they actually have no time for it because most people are going to skip your ad after it becomes skippable within five seconds.

If you want people to continue watching or to click, you need to get right to the point and not dress things up. If you have reached a truly potential buyer/viewer, then your video will be watched or get a click, if not, then people will skip your ad and it will save you money.

A Few PPC Video Tips

As you may have gathered from the last tip, you should consider scaring people away. There is nothing wrong with the bulk of your viewers turning your ad off because the bulk of your viewers will not be your target audience and/or will not be paying customers. That is one of the problems with having ads that are too generalized and too interesting for the audience at large.

For example, Whiskers cat food ran a PPC video campaign with the tagline, “Why do cats paw at things?” and showed a short slideshow of cats pawing things as they sat down. In essence, they were trying to sell cat food, but the video looked like a typical funny cat video that one may see regularly on YouTube. All sorts of people clicked it, from people who do not have cats, to young children wanting to see a fluffy kitty.

Marketing execs may say that it helped grow the brand, but the fact is that most of the people who saw the ad have never bought cat food and will never buy cat food (even if they are now aware of the Whiskers brand).

And the Conclusion is – Target and Test!

As you may imagine, the most valuable video marketing tip is that you should market, test, and analyze.

The creators of the previously mentioned cat food ad thought their campaign was a roaring success because of the massive number of clicks their ad received, but sales of their cat food only shifted a tiny percent, which is less than most all of their (seemingly) less successful campaigns.

In truth, the company had more success with accidentally viral memes in terms of cost-of-advertising to units sold, than they did with their supposedly successful video campaign.

The moral of the story is that even though they cannot be blamed for celebrating a high CTR (Click Through Rate), they should have targeted, tested, and analyzed, and then re-engineered their videos and tried again. This process of trial and error is the only way to consistently ensure results with video PPC marketing.

Check out our PPC blog for more information and in-depth details about affiliate advertising, Pay-Per-Click, and all things marketing. Enjoy expert advice, and tips to help you squeeze the most out of your marketing budget.

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