Last updated on June 14th, 2024
What is the best video optimization process? How can CreatorUp help you make better-performing YouTube videos? How can you use TrueView in-stream ads more effectively?
HOSTS:
- Dane Golden: VidAction.tv | LinkedIn
- Tim Schmoyer: VideoCreators
- Matt Ballek: VidiSEO
Tip #1: What is the Best Video Optimization Process?
Matt Ballek is the director of strategic distribution at Magnet Media. They offer various categories of service, including auditing and YouTube content strategies, promotion, and video optimization, aka channel management.
Video optimization is more than just making sure new content is optimized according to YouTube’s best practices and features. The company goes back and performs these services across the channel’s video archive. Many clients have legacy content that is either performing well or has the potential to do so if it was optimized and organized well.
Matt likes to run a quick test to compare YouTube views to website analytics in order to find out how many website referrals have been driven by YouTube. Usually there’s a great disparity, with only a few visits coming from the videos. Matt’s team then goes back to make sure the videos are optimized and driving to the proper pages on the client’s website. Then they can determine which videos are effective and which ones aren’t.
Magnet Media will group videos together and then pair them off with different success metrics. Goals include:
- Discoverability
- Subscriptions
- Engagement
- Views
Tip #2: How Can CreatorUp Help You Make Better-performing YouTube Videos?
Dane Golden points us to the online educational resource CreatorUp, founded by Mike Tringe and Sara Akhteh. It’s designed to help YouTube creators and marketers produce better videos. There are dozens of video courses you can do a la carte and even a certification process that cost between $300 and $400. You can also do a $25 per month membership that includes everything.
Courses and subject matter include:
- Crowdfunding Death Match
- How to Direct a Comedy Web Series
- Tips for Cinematographers on Visual Storytelling
- How to Edit Videos Using Different Styles
- How to Make a Web Series
- How to Develop a Fundraising Video for Non-Profits
- How to Make Business Videos for Customers
Tip #3: How Can You Use TrueView In-stream Ads More Effectively?
Tom Breeze runs a lot of different TrueView (Adwords for Video) campaigns and he’s constantly testing pre-roll advertising methodologies. He doesn’t just to A-B testing, rather he may test 10 different variations. Tom has helped clients increase their effectiveness several fold by continuously refining his process. He helped Gideon Shalwick of Veeroll.com increase his in-stream video ad effectiveness by as high as 446%.
Tom likes in-stream/pre-roll ads because you can show the videos to very targeted audiences, yet you don’t have to pay unless someone watches more than 30 seconds of the video ad. If your ad is less than 30 you pay when they reach the end, but Tom recommends videos longer than 30 seconds.
Here are Tom’s TrueView in-stream recommendations:
1) Put yourself in your pre-roll ads
You should appear as the host of ads for your business. Or, if you don’t want to be on camera, you can at least get a presenter to represent your company. Tom compared hosted videos to animated videos with the same script and found that with the hosted version he saw a 64% increase in clicks and 132% increase in website conversions. Also he created a 76% savings on conversions, from $7.13 to $1.72 per conversions.
Animation promos can still work, but it’s definitely worth being in the video if you can.
2) Think of your pre-roll video “pitch” as having two parts
Again, as the advertiser, you only pay when the viewer watches longer than 30 seconds. Tom recommends thinking of the video in two phases: one before the 30-second mark, and another after. He recommends making one pitch in the first 25 seconds or so, then pause the activity of the video, then after the 30-second mark re-engage the viewer with another pitch. This method can potentially get users clicking through to your website before 30 seconds at no cost to you.
3) Decide how to start your campaign
a) Remarketing: Set up a remarketing list based on who views your videos.
b) Placements: This is where you target specific videos for your ads to run on.
c) Keywords
d) Topic- and interest- targeting can also work for some types of products and services.