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Top 5 Reasons to Advertise on YouTube

Top 5 Reasons to Advertise on YouTube

by | Feb 7, 2018

According to Google, “Every month, more than 1 billion people watch more than 6 billion hours of YouTube video.” With such a large audience spending so much time on one platform, it’s no wonder that YouTube is becoming the preferred place to advertise for many businesses. From easily accessible statistics to a proven influence on purchasing behavior, discover these five reasons why your business can benefit from YouTube advertising.

1. YouTube’s Reach Is Enormous

As a hybrid between a search engine and a social media network, YouTube is uniquely positioned to reach an incredibly wide range of internet users. Forbes classifies internet users into two basic categories: those seeking information and those seeking social interaction. YouTube is the second most popular search engine after Google, with more searches than Yahoo, Bing, Ask and AOL combined! It also ranks as the third largest social media network. This allows YouTube content to reach users in both of Forbes’ categories, which most other advertising platforms do not achieve. Google also reports that YouTube reaches more people aged 18-49 than any broadcast or cable TV network—and that’s on mobile alone. If you’re trying to communicate your business’ message to the widest possible range of customers, YouTube is the platform for you.

2. YouTube Influences Purchasing Behavior

Between advertisements, vlogs, and videos by prominent influencers, studies show that YouTube content has a significant impact on customer purchases. Entrepreneur cites a case study for a custom shoe retailer, Shoes of Prey, which partnered with influencer Blair Fowler to host a giveaway on her YouTube channel. As a result, Shoes of Prey permanently tripled its online sales. A recent YouTube Insights report also notes that 66% of beauty product purchasers, 72% of auto-vehicle purchasers, and 62% of smartphone purchasers indicate that YouTube influenced their buying decisions. If your business falls into one of these categories, then YouTube will directly impact purchasing decisions for the majority of your customer base. If your business falls into a different category, it’s still a great idea to take advantage of YouTube’s market influence with some well-placed advertisements or brand videos.

3. It’s Easy to Track Ad Metrics

Up-to-date metrics are key in evaluating your advertising strategy and ensuring that your ad dollars are being used most efficiently. YouTube makes this process easy and accessible. Google offers information about views, costs, and budget details through AdWords, while the Analytics tab of your YouTube account provides more in-depth information about your viewers. Although the available data depends on what format and pricing you choose for your ad, some examples include views, clicks, engagements, reach, and frequency. You can also track video viewership or quartile reporting, which shows how often an ad is watched to 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of its length. These metrics make it easy to evaluate where your ad is performing well and where it should be improved so that you can adjust your strategy and better meet your advertising goals.

4. Advanced Targeting Is Available

If you’re advertising to people who aren’t interested in your product, you’re wasting time and money. Correctly targeting your audience is crucial to getting the best performance out of ads. Through YouTube, you can target people based on demographics like age, gender, parental status, and interests. By targeting affinity audiences, you can ensure your ads reach people who have already demonstrated an interest in relevant topics. With custom affinity audiences, you can target even more specifically—for example, instead of targeting car enthusiasts, you could narrow your range to people interested in classic Dodge muscle cars. You can also target in-market audiences—people actively researching products and services like those you offer. Beyond targeting people, YouTube also allows you to focus your ads on specific channels or videos. This means that with some research, you can place your ads on popular videos that are relevant to your target audience, helping you make sure that your company message gets where you need it to go.

5. ROI Is High Across Pricing Options

A recent meta-analysis conducted by BrandScience, Data2Decisions, GfK, Kantar Worldpanel, MarketingScan, MarketShare, and others reveals that YouTube advertisements offer a higher ROI than traditional television ads, in almost 80% of studies. That’s a huge testament to the effectiveness of YouTube ads. However, before you can consider your return on investment, you have to consider your investment, and there exist a wide range of price points for running YouTube Ads. Search Engine Watch lists homepage ads, or YouTube Homepage Redzone, as the most expensive option, with interactive ads costing around $300,000 per day. A much more affordable option is TrueView In-Stream, which are 30- or 60-second pre-roll ads that viewers can skip after the first five seconds. In-stream ads are cheaper than traditional cost per click (CPC) or cost per view (CPV) ads, averaging only four cents per view. With such a wide range of pricing options, it’s up to your business to determine its ideal budget and take advantage of that better-than-TV ROI.

With a wide reach, influence on purchasing decisions, easily available metrics, advanced targeting, high ROI, and flexible pricing, it’s easy to see why YouTube advertising has gained popularity in recent years. Now is the perfect time for your business to take advantage of this platform’s many benefits.

Do you want to learn even more about Video? Attend Search Influence’s next webinar, “How to Spiel Like Spielberg: Using Videos to Showcase Your Business” on Tuesday, October 3, 2017 at 1:00pm EST. Register for the free, live webinar here!

Online Marketing And SEO Best Practices For Medical Practices

Online Marketing And SEO Best Practices For Medical Practices

by | Feb 7, 2018

If your medical practice isn’t emphasizing online marketing and SEO, then you are missing out on a lot of potential patients. When people are considering a new cosmetic procedure, they don’t drive around town looking for billboards and neighborhood clinics. They also aren’t heading to the local library for outdated medical books. Americans have learned that searching online is the fast and easy way to get information and find local services. SEO is critical to making sure that your practice isn’t lost in the shuffle of search results. Here are a few of the most important aspects of marketing your business online.

Establish a Goal
Building a website is only the first step toward attracting new patients online. Would you like to reach nearby communities or generate interest in the latest procedures? If the community is already searching for the services you provide, then you may want to focus on making your practice outshine the competition in search results. While it would be nice to rank well for every service you provide, SEO is a long-term process where it’s best to prioritize key services. An online marketing campaign is more effective when your goals are defined clearly.

Use Analytics
When a website is in development, developers will commonly have it “live”, but hidden from search engines. So, when it’s launched, developers commonly forget to make the website crawlable by Google and other search engines.

Another rookie oversight is the failure to use Google analytics. Without analytics, you are blind to essential information about your web traffic. Trying to optimize a website without analytics is like treating a patient you can’t see. If the bounce rate is high or visitors rarely view more than two pages, you have a symptom that can be addressed with upgrades and changes to the site. If the content on your landing page is driving away traffic, maybe that page needs a facelift. Once you begin an online marketing campaign, analytics will provide a benchmark and basis for comparison about whether the campaign is beneficial.

Make sure you own your analytics account. Often designers and developers will set up Analytics within their parent account meaning you can’t take it with you.

Leverage Social Media
For a medical practice that provides elective procedures, an active Facebook page is just as impactful as your website. Your website provides credibility for your practice, describing a number of big-ticket procedures, but Facebook makes your practice relatable. Building a relatable brand leads to conversions. In fact, 86 percent of small business owners feel that Facebook is a valuable marketing tool for their brand. Much like with the website, just creating a Facebook page isn’t enough. Consistent, engaging posts are needed to build your brand and reach out to people in the community. Marketing on social media allows you to target specific demographics within your community, making the most of your advertising dollar. For more helpful tips, check out this free guidebook to growing your medical practice on social media, including confidentiality guidelines and how to use paid promotion on Facebook.

Develop Original Content
When it comes to your website and social media, content is king. Your website should not have tips and explanations that have been recycled from other sites. Content that has been directly copied verbatim from other websites will result in ranking penalties from Google. Almost as negative, website content that is poorly written or misleading may drive readers away from your practice. The best solution is to invest time and effort into meaningful content that’s relevant to potential patients. Regular updates on social media can be time-consuming, and a small practice may not have anyone on staff familiar with the business side of online marketing. In these cases, outsourcing the work of producing quality content is often more efficient than hiring someone in-house.

Target the Right Keywords
Dovetailed into defining goals and developing original content, keywords make sure that search engines understand the primary services of your practice. Popular procedures are a good place to begin. Methods that were common in past decades, like keyword stuffing, can get your website penalized by search engines. Natural, original content is the new ideal, but that doesn’t mean that keywords are dead and gone. You still need to find natural ways to include keywords in many of the same places. Meta descriptions, title tags, headings, and alt text for images are all effective places to incorporate search terms naturally. Unlike in the past, you now need to make sure that any keywords are appropriate for the given page and occur organically within the content.

If your website is failing to bring in new patients, then these best practices could be just what the doctor ordered. A thriving online presence is the result of choices that consistently promote visibility and quality over time. Marketing through social media and PPC advertising also helps, but a generous promotional budget isn’t enough to compensate for unoriginal content and keyword stuffing. Future patients are searching for your services online—utilize these guidelines to make it easier for them.