Thinking about using YouTube advertising to increase sales and build your brand?

It’s not a shabby idea.

In February 2016, Google CEO Sundar Pichai claimed YouTube visitors watch hundreds of millions of hours of video every day. The platform also has more than one billion active users each month. So how can your brand start reaping the benefits of advertising on YouTube?

Start with AdWords

YouTube is a Google property, and all advertising on Google starts in the same place – in Adwords. If you have an account, click here to go to the video campaign screen. If you don’t have one, you will need to register on AdWords before getting started with YouTube.

Once you have AdWords set up, you will need to link it to your company’s YouTube account. Click on the account settings menu (the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen) and select “Linked Accounts.” One of the options on the next page will allow you to link your YouTube and AdWords accounts.

Types of YouTube Ads

In-Stream Ads – These ads give users a five-second taste of your video content before they can hit the “Skip Ad” button. These ads are charged on a Cost-Per-View model, and you only pay if someone watches 30 seconds or more of your ad.

In-Display Ads – You’ll find in-display ads in the right hand column where viewers can browse other videos to check ut. In-Display ads are shown at the top of the feed, and best used to advertise content that’s relevant to the what the person is watching. These ads are best used for building your YouTube channel following and getting more views on your content.

In-Search Ads – These ads function in much the same way a Google Adwords campaign does. When a user queries a specific topic in YouTube search, a couple ads appear above the organic results with a thumbnail and a call-to-action. These “search-based” ads are seen as less intrusive than In-Stream ads, and can help you add subscribers to your channel.

Start Managing Your Campaign

If you are familiar with Google Adwords you will find it pretty actually easy to manage your YouTube ad campaign. The strategies are pretty similar.

First, you will need to configure your YouTube campaign so that it reaches the right people, then figure out how much you want to spend.

You can set a daily budget, which works a little like a pay-per-click. The difference is, with PPC, you pay every time someone clicks on your ad. On YouTube, you only pay when the user watches your ads for a certain amount of time.

Budget isn’t the only part of your campaign you will need to configure. You will also target your ads based on certain criteria, including location information, age and gender, interests and topics you want to target, and when you want the ads to appear. You can also use keywords to trigger the ad, getting as general or specific as you want. It all depends on what you are advertising and who you are trying to reach.

Make Sure The Video Is Compelling

The filters you use for ad targeting is important, but they won’t do you much good if you don’t have a good ad to run.

It’s important to make your content short, direct, engaging, and professional. YouTube users are an impatient bunch, so you want an ad that says its piece quickly and gets out of the way. Short ads with powerful messages and strong production values stick with viewers in a positive way.

You will need to upload your video to your linked AdWords/YouTube account as you configure your campaign. In other words, don’t start working on picking out your settings and preferences until you have a video that you are confident will get the job done.

Just like AdWords, advertising on YouTube comes with a learning curve. As you go, you will likely make some tweaks—from your budget to your keywords. Don’t be afraid to make changes if they might help your ad perform better. Google will give you some analytics to work from once your campaign is up and running, and you should use these insights to improve your YouTube advertising as you go.

YouTube offers enormous potential to businesses of all sizes, but the ones who know how to deliver a powerful message really fast are the ones who are killing it on this platform. If you can grab someone’s attention and make them want to know more about what you offer – you will earn every dollar you make from the campaign.

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