You Tube adverts

[stuartm1962]

Good morning everyone.

Has anyone used You Tube advertising and did you manage to turn a profit on it?

Just starting with a digital marketing agency and they have suggested that You Tube ads are a good way forward.

We work in the parcel delivery sector and would really appreciate any advice.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Just starting with a digital marketing agency

Errrrr - shouldn't you know this already?

 

[MBE2017]

I think it would depend on the cost, and whether your target market uses YouTube.
Who is your type of client?

 

[stuartm1962]

Errrrr - shouldn't you know this already?

Why would I know this already Paul?

I was asking for other peoples opinions, based on their experience of using that platform.

 

[stuartm1962]

I think it would depend on the cost, and whether your target market uses YouTube.
Who is your type of client?

We work within the music industry largely, as well as to advertising agencies.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Just starting with a digital marketing agency and they have suggested that You Tube ads are a good way forward.

I would ask them why they have suggested it, and what evidence they have of it being successful in your specific target market.

The answers to that - coupled with the questions they asked you prior to offering advice will give a good insight to whether you are dealing with marketing professionals or kids who enjoy playing on YouTube

The broad point is that somebody else's experience of a specific platform or medium are irrelevant if you are in different markets.

 

[stuartm1962]

I would ask them why they have suggested it, and what evidence they have of it being successful in your specific target market.

The answers to that - coupled with the questions they asked you prior to offering advice will give a good insight to whether you are dealing with marketing professionals or kids who enjoy playing on YouTube

The broad point is that somebody else's experience of a specific platform or medium are irrelevant if you are in different markets.

Morning Mark

They have suggested it due to the number of musicians that view You Tube. Bearing in mind the ad spend would be around £2-3000 a month, plus their managing fee, I want to be sure that it would be possible to show a profit on that kind of spend. I personally find it really annoying when an ad interupts what you are watching and wanted to get other peoples opinions and any experience that they have had.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Morning Mark

They have suggested it due to the number of musicians that view You Tube. Bearing in mind the ad spend would be around £2-3000 a month, plus their managing fee, I want to be sure that it would be possible to show a profit on that kind of spend. I personally find it really annoying when an ad interupts what you are watching and wanted to get other peoples opinions and any experience that they have had.

This suggests that your target market is musicians? That's a useful starting point.

Can they provide any stats to back their claims up?

Have you worked through the net benefit you'd need to actually make money against that spend?

At this point, I'd be probably be asking more specific questions around why/how musicians buy your services.

 

[stuartm1962]

This suggests that your target market is musicians? That's a useful starting point.

Can they provide any stats to back their claims up?

Have you worked through the net benefit you'd need to actually make money against that spend?

At this point, I'd be probably be asking more specific questions around why/how musicians buy your services.

Hi Mark

Would need to get around £10k plus of orders per month to make a profit on that spend, which is a lot of instruments to ship!!

 

[HFE Signs]

Yes, we've done it, it's a great way to bring in very cheap traffic, but don't expect to see any conversions. If you're looking for brand awareness then its cheap, but remember that it isn't very well targeted and most viewers are waiting for the skip add to show up

 

[Mark T Jones]

Hi Mark

Would need to get around £10k plus of orders per month to make a profit on that spend, which is a lot of instruments to ship!!

You've probably answered your own question.

 

[stuartm1962]

Yes, we've done it, it's a great way to bring in very cheap traffic, but don't expect to see any conversions. If you're looking for brand awareness then its cheap, but remember that it isn't very well targeted and most viewers are waiting for the skip add to show up

Thank you very much for this reply, that has helped my decision. As you say, you are looking for the skip ad to appear!!

 

[WaveJumper]

I am with the above I would be looking for hard evidence of their success rate before committing and on a personal level I never watch adverts on Youtube ever

 

[MBE2017]

I would be very careful trialing a new unknown advertising medium at £2-3k per month, why not £300 to begin with? I would suggest looking at other companies who can put success rates and testimonials in front of you, its no guarantee, but its better than nothing.

Look at "use growth" as an example, they use Facebook, YouTube etc but I think they specialise in the home improvement market, so you might not be well suited.

 

[DontAsk]

most viewers are waiting for the skip add to show up

This. Every time. Every advert.

I don't see ads in Brave but on the smart TV they are just annoying.

 

[Siobhan-DFH]

Like most people, I dislike ads ins anything I'm watching. For me, it's negative branding. The chances of me clicking through to an advertiser while watching a film, or YouTube tutorial, is zero.

On the other hand, attractive banner ads/display ads on websites where musicians hang out for professional purposes, such as booking studio space - they might entice me to click through. Or an offer on Instagram. Yes.

As someone said above, unless you're a huge company with cash to splash, I wouldn't commit £1-2K to any media channel untested. I'd start much lower and scale up based on conversions. No vanity notions of improving brand awareness either. Specific ads and channels either convert for you or they don't. Why waste money on gaining hypothetical brand awareness when you could be spending the same money elsewhere on a different channel that brings in orders.

Good question to raise by the way. I'm experimenting with Instagram ads currently and this is making me reassess.

 

[fisicx]

@stuartm1962 - how many YouTube ads have you ever clicked on?

If a musician is watching something on YouTube it’s unlikely they will want whatever you are advertising.

 

[Paul Carmen]

@stuartm1962 this whole approach to marketing and digital is the wrong way around. Now I understand the brief to agencies and marketers is often framed the other way around; e.g. I want more business, I've got an XYZ budget, what can I do... but it's wrong.

I don't know what's profitable for your shipping business, nor what services you want to specialise in, but that's the approach you should take; e.g. what do I want to sell, where is my customer and how do I get to them.

If shipping musical instruments is lucrative, requires your key skills and is a profitable service, then you/they should be doing this the other way around.

Disclaimer here, as lead gen is what we do, but if we did this for you we'd find out more and research:

• more about your service; what it entails, price to customers, profitability etc
• that services customer type; e.g. is this professional music artist or amateurs, booked by an agent/tour manager, related to an instrument purchase etc
• where would each search for the service, e.g. a musician and an agent may do something very different
• what keywords do they use; e.g. is there search volume out there to make this a viable campaign
• is this something you might need to offer as B2B to other companies rather than B2C

Once you've done this type of work you can figure out what marketing to do. Its highly likely to be some sort of search based marketing.

YouTube is more about brand awareness, or pushing something revolutionary/exciting to customers. It's like door dropping flyers where most end up in the bin, the conversion rate is low, as the customer has to be interested in your service at that time or you're just annoying them.

If you have a limited budget and need a high return on leads/sales from it, then research and targeted campaigns will achieve far more, as you're marketing to people looking for what you provide.

 

[UKSBD]

Ignoring the cost of the the ads, how much are they charging to make the ad?

 

[Fagin2021]

Yes, we've done it, it's a great way to bring in very cheap traffic, but don't expect to see any conversions. If you're looking for brand awareness then its cheap, but remember that it isn't very well targeted and most viewers are waiting for the skip add to show up

YouTube has a place in the marketing mix but is very much a 'top of funnel' (awareness) activity which needs support from (for example) a search campaign, to achieve conversions.

On its own, you might get one in a thousand people see your YouTube ad' click through to your site's landing page and convert.

It's normally accepted that you need to run YouTube ads for weeks or months before seeing any benefit. You should ask your agency some tough questions about how they can justify the spend.

 

[fantheflames]

Not sure YouTube would be the right call with ad blockers. I'd consider a different approach, such as advertising with Spotify. People that listen to podcasts are more liking to engage with an ad than people that watch videos or listen to music.

 

[The Byre]

We work within the music industry largely, as well as to advertising agencies.

In which case you should be looking at the websites of music mags like Sound on Sound and all the guitar and drum and keyboard mags, as well as places like gearspace.