In this episode of Secret Car Marketing Tactics, we are looking at YouTube Video Ads, and how savvy car dealers and ambitious sales people are using these types of video ads to reach non-intenders for pennies and increase their sales volume with conquest vehicle shoppers.
I did a great video with Mike where we share with you why targeting non-intenders instead of active vehicle shoppers is a winning solution to make more deals from customers outside of your database.
If you haven’t seen the video, I strongly suggest you watch it right now. You will understand why non-intenders are prospects who are much easier to sell to than current vehicle shoppers, and why you can reach them at a fraction of the cost of active intenders.
Why Use YouTube Video Ads To Reach Non-Intenders
In a nutshell, you will be able to reach quality prospects for roughly $0.06 to $0.07 cents instead of paying $2-$3-$4 or even $5 per clicks for first page bids for intenders, which is going to considerably reduce your advertising costs. Second, you will be reaching fresh prospects that haven’t spent the last three months researching their next purchase, ready to leave a deal on the table for a few hundred dollars. The prospects triggered by these types of ads are looking for a solution to an automotive problem. You solve their problem, and you got yourself a deal!
To be able to complete this execution plan, you will need an Adwords account. If you don’t have one, you can get a free account when you visit adwords.google.com. You will also need a YouTube channel. YouTube channels are also free to set up.
So without further ado, let’s begin!
How To Set Up Your First YouTube Ad
The first thing you’re going to want to do is to sync your YouTube channel to your Adwords account. You don’t have to sync both to run the ads, but if they are, the reporting and the metrics you’re going to get from the campaign will be much richer.
You can sync both accounts very easily from either Adwords or YouTube, but I prefer to do it directly from the YouTube backend with a few clicks like here, then simply accept the invitation next time you log into Adwords.
Once that step is done, click CREATE CAMPAIGN and choose video.
Name your campaign, choose your daily budget. You can start with $5 to test the waters, and you can modify that easily later. Now set your location by clicking on Advanced Search.
At this step, you can define your target area by search or by radius. I prefer by radius for video ads, unless you have to be very accurate about the boundaries of your campaign. You can also exclude certain locations if there are some spots in the radius area you don’t want to reach with your ads.
You can tweak the schedule and the ad delivery options if you want, but the cost per view is so cheap that unless you live in an ultra-dense metropolitan area, you don’t have to.
Click Save and Continue.
On the next page, you’re going to want to change the name of this first ad group to TEMPLATE and leave it empty of all targeting. I’ll explain just a little bit later why you want to do it that way.
Paste the URL of the video you want to use. Choose in-stream for the video ad format. We will do all the in-stream ad groups now, and we’ll do the in-display later.
In-streams ads are the videos ads that play on top of the video users wanted to watch, with a little countdown allowing them to skip the ad if they don’t care to watch it. And in-display ads are the ones at the top on the right side. Most of your views are going to come from in-stream ads, but in-display ads are great for branding. Just make sure you use the custom video thumbnail on your videos to increase their relevance for prospects.
Enter your display URL by using uppercase letters for the first letter of each word. Bid $0.10 cents for your maximum CPV. Make no adjustment for popular videos. Take out from the demographics all 18-24 (unless you specifically want to market to them… but in my experience, you’re going to get too many views from that group without enough of them being credit worthy.)
Leave the targeting as is for now. We will fine tune that later by cloning this template.
Save your ad group.
Targeting Different Interests, Topics, Placements for Maximum Results
At this point, you’re going to want to come back to your campaign tab, choose your empty ad group TEMPLATE, copy and paste it a few times. Make sure to pause the group until you set your targeting.
Rename your ad groups for the targeting interests you intend to use them for and then set up your targeting of choices.
For interests, you will have a choice of affinity audience, in-market audiences and if you have set these up, custom affinity audiences. If you didn’t set up your custom affinity audiences yet, I recommend you watch the video I did so you can start remarketing to your competitor's Website visitors… I know, it’s crazy!
My recommendation at this step is to combine different groups of interests together to see how they perform. You can create as many ad groups as you want so don’t hesitate to get granular at this step to see what segments works best in your market.
You can then do the same for Topics and any other targeting you are curious to try.
This is why I like to keep the first Ad group template empty of any targeting. This way when you want to add additional targeting segments, you can start from an empty ad group with a few clicks.
Once you’ve completed your targeting for in-stream ads, you repeat the process for in-display ads. The only difference with these ads is that you will have to add a title and a description.
Don’t Forget The Call For Action!
Finally, I like to add a call for action overlay on the videos. These allow viewers to get on your Website or your sales funnel with one click from YouTube.
Your campaign is now ready to go!
I hope you liked the video and that you will use it to sell more cars for less money. If you did, make sure to subscribe to our channel to be the first to have access to these secret car marketing tactics.
Until next time, have an awesome week and most of all… Let’s sell some cars!
Sean Cassy is co-owner and the automotive digital marketing strategist at Turbo Marketing. You can contact him here by email or reach him from 8am-6pm every weekday at Turbo Marketing Solutions