How To Create Your Own YouTube Promoted Videos

Did you know that last year, YouTube surpassed Yahoo! as the world’s second largest search engine and still maintains that spot? In 2011, ComScore reported that in the United States alone, YouTube attracted 5.6 billion viewing sessions per month and the average U.S. visitor frequents the site 23 times a month with each visit lasting on average 26 minutes. By the end of 2011, that number increased to 20 billion video views a month.

With these pieces of data in mind, it is a no brainer that that there are a lot of eyeballs and a lot of time spent on a single site that a marketer can take advantage of. However, when it comes to marketing on YouTube, creating and optimizing a video is only half the battle. Attracting viewers is the real challenge.

YouTube Promoted Video operates similarly to Google Search, and offers advertisers a way to draw attention to a video, gain viewers and channel subscribers, and eventually influence downstream conversions. Promoted Videos show up according to a visitor’s search results either at the top or to the right of the page.

So here is how to best take advantage of YouTube Promoted Videos:

1. Create the complete thing

First and foremost, to maximize your presence on YouTube, you will need good, engaging videos and here there is a stress on videos as in plural and you will need a YouTube channel to showcase them. Equally important, are the video titles and descriptions you choose to use as these will be used by YouTube to match your video with visitors’ search queries.

Once you have a channel with several videos, you will need to monitor the feedback you get. If a video does well, then it’s time to invest in promoting it.

Like other Google ads, Promoted Videos are managed through AdWords and follow a similar format to paid search. When creating the ad, it’s imperative the thumbnail of your video and ad-copy reflect the nature of your video so as to attract the right type of audience.

2. Choose your keywords wisely

YouTube visitors are looking for video content and therefore it follows that the search habits differ from traditional search. Given this difference, simply using keywords from search or display campaigns won’t do your YouTube videos any good.

Keywords must relate to the video you’re promoting, and thus should be chosen independently. YouTube offers advertisers a keyword suggestion tool that provides recommendations based on your video description, video id or url, or target demographic.

3. Bidding time

YouTube Marketing

When it comes to keyword bidding on YouTube, you should think of it as you would for your search campaigns. You want to set a conversion goal and determine what your expected volume and budget should be each month. Naturally, you also want to determine the value of each click. A third party bidding tool, particularly one integrated with your other SEM campaigns, can prove to be useful in managing your YouTube bidding decisions and assessing the results of your promotions.

4. Overlay ads are important

One of the best things about running Promoted Videos is the ability to include an overlay ad in your video. This appears at the bottom of your video while it plays. The overlay is there to enable you to link from your YouTube video to an external site and is an invaluable technique for driving viewers to your site. Done properly, this won’t hurt your pocket at all.

Here’s a tutorial on how to create an overlay.

5. Engage your viewers

Although not perceived as such by the majority of people, YouTube is a social network. In that perspective, a video provides businesses with an opportunity to interact with their target audience. A successful video is one that doesn’t just get views, but also elicits a response.

For successful marketing on YouTube, if your viewers ask for a follow-up video, be sure to provide one! Similarly, if your video is shared on the other social sites by your viewers, be sure to respond to that and participate. This allows you to strengthen your brand.

Don’t forget that even though you are using paid ads to promote videos, you are still able to promote those same videos via other means. For example, you can share them on your Facebook business page, and encourage your fans to Comment and Like. Also, you can make use of OneLoad to distribute your videos.

What say you? Have you used YouTube promoted video service before?

Winson Yeung

Winson Yeung is the founder of CCArticles Writing Service. He loves to write about topics that are related to blogging and social media. Visit his blog winsonyeung.com

20 thoughts on “How To Create Your Own YouTube Promoted Videos

  • this is going to help people to increases there local business also by making and telling people about there company through promotional videos on u-tube..

    • Hi Rajkumar, I’m glad you find this tutorial useful!

      • Yes thank you Winson. Short and straight to the point. I have tried promoting videos on youtube, and you practically get instant traffic once your video is live.

        By any chance, do you know how the ranking system works on you tube?
        Is it similar to Google?

  • Hi Winson!
    YouTube is my second favorite place to hangout on the internet – of course my blog is #1!

    Video marketing is THE THING for 2013 and it’s really is growing as a social network too. I’m using YouTube videos to grow my email subscriber list as well.

    But I’m glad to see you you mention OneLoad and include my video in the post.

    • Hi Ileane,

      Yeah, your blog is also one of my most visited website too! And you have an excellent video there as well 😀

  • Now it’s time for video marketing and lot of business are seriously focusing on it. I think videos and infographics are easy and fun ways to speak your voice and spread awareness.

    • infographics is definitely getting increasing popularity especially due to the exponential growth of Pinterest. Combine them both and you will get a very good marketing strategy

  • Hi Winson,
    great post & nice video, I personally spend hours of time on youtube, even we use paid publicity, we must personally promote business on social media, by that our business can reach to everyone, instead of keeping just a video, best thing is to maintain a channel in youtube, so that users will regular visit for updates!!

    • good advice you got there! Combing social media and youtube channel definitely helps to increase your traffic!

  • amazing lesson to learn about promote youtube video. Due to help of this article I got some valuable point to promote video on youtube but can one can also tell how can I increase comment’s on youtube video.

  • Youtube promoted videos are a scam. Thanks for publishing this info. I didn’t know much about it, was considering doing it for my latest video,

    • That’s an interesting thought Christina. Care to share why you feel that YT is a “scam”? Have you had a bad experience using them?

    • Scam? Why would you said that? Would like to hear about your experience with youtube promoted video.

  • Great post and idea Winson!

    Indeed, I’ll remember it for when I’ll sell product via my blog and want to promote it 🙂

    Thank you any way for the info!

    Fabia

  • Vlogging proved to be very helpful for me. Video marketing goes viral very quickly. A nice entertaining video about the product on Youtube & other social networking sites will make the company hit. Good post, thanks for sharing.

    • yes, it’s a great way to promote your product. Even the greatest hit of all time gangnam style get popular because of youtube as well.

  • The key is making a video that elicits a strong enough emotion or reaction from a group of people that they feel compelled to share it with others. You have provided some good tips, thanks for sharing.

    • you have provide an good tips too by including strong emotion.

  • Creating Youtube promoting videos and putting them on Youtube is the new way to go these days. It is an effective way to promote your blogs and businesses because videos are intresting and easy to understand with that entire video and audio explaination. Thanks for the wonderful tips.

  • Hey Winson,
    Nice post and Yes, video is becoming best way for SEO as it attracts many readers easily and readers easily understood the content through video. I really like the video and Thanks for sharing these tutorials.

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