How to Use YouTube Ads for your Dropshipping Business Promotion
Getting to know the world of YouTube ads is one of the smartest ideas if you’re running an online business or if you’re planning on running one. Whether you’re a dropshipper that wants to wider its audience, an online boutique that wants to increase its engagement and boost sales or you’re just preparing your penetration strategy, using YouTube ads as means of promotion will greatly contribute to your overall success.
Let’s be honest! Online platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and others are some of the most used services for bolstering the imprint your business makes and advancing the engagement rates with your potential clients. In fact, these platforms serve as a natural habitat for the millions of ads generated daily. YouTube isn’t any different.
As part of the Google Ads platform, YouTube Ads uses practically the same interface and offers a somehow familiar experience if you’ve previously used the Google Ads platform for the promotion of your business.
Needless to say, it’s far more suited for beginners rather than Facebook, per se. It’s a fact that many businesses are turning to Facebook in order to reach their desired results. However, Facebook has become a bit overbearing with its constant change of policies due to numerous issues that arose through the years.
So, in order to evade this constant turmoil, many marketers changed their game and started using YouTube as their main platform for ads. In this article, we’re going to cover the topic of YouTube ads, how they actually work, and how to find their best use in order to generate results.
Therefore, if you’re interested in finding out this and a bit more, you’ve come to the right place.
Read on!
The reasons for choosing YouTube ads
The first question that pops in mind when choosing any platform where you’ll place your ad campaigns is pretty simple: Why? What’s the reason for choosing YouTube ads over any other platform? Well, there are multiple reasons why YouTube is increasingly selected as the main channel for launching marketing campaigns.
Cost-effective PPC possibilities
PPC advertising is one of the most used tactics for advertising your business, period. In fact, the basic rule of PPC campaigns is the following: payment is made only when someone clicks on your placed ad.
Of course, the amount you pay is only and only regulated by you so you don’t have to worry about losing any money. With all this said, PPC will always be one of the most cost-effective strategies because it’ll never waste you money you didn’t give consent to be spent.
Anyhow, YouTube also supports the PPC model, which makes it a pretty appealing platform for all marketers. By creating a PPC optimization checklist to set up, track, and improve the performance of your campaigns, you can easily leverage great traffic from your YouTube ads.
Targeting made easy
Let’s face it, lots of funds are lost on bad targeting. In fact, you can invest thousands of dollars in campaigns but if your targeting game is low you’ll see no results whatsoever, and it’ll be as if you’re pouring your money down the drain.
Now, YouTube has you covered on these issues and allows you to specifically set your target audience. In fact, you can get extremely specific with the numerous options this platform provides.
Despite the standard sets of targeting details like age, location, gender, or topics of interest, you can also set your target audience by re-engaging with consumers that were initially interested in your products or services.
You can also use a similar audience setting in order to target consumers that are similar to those who are mainly interested in your products and services. You can also limit this target to only include the interest for specific products that you’re selling.
There are numerous targeting options you can use that’ll fit your needs whether you have a specific audience or you’re targeting broad groups of people. The only way of finding out what’s best for your business is by testing different types of targeting campaigns and measuring the results.
Easy-to-read metrics
Getting the analytics for your marketing campaigns in the YouTube Ads platform is a pretty easy and straightforward process. It’s very important to always analyze your campaign results and see the key features of every video ad that you have run on the platform. Additionally, you can always visit your Google Ads account in order to check the specifics like costs, views, and budgets.
Videos > Any other content
Yes. Videos will always be high up on the pedestal for being the best at communicating with the audience. People will always show higher affection towards videos because the connection just feels more natural. Inanimate pictures and plain text can incite a certain reaction, but this reaction will never be as strong as the one a video can provoke.
Consumers want to get a hold of the faces behind a certain company, in order to better understand the intentions of the products they sell or the services they provide.
For example, if you’re running a dropshipping store that sells luxury clothing items, you should go with a video that’ll animately show your products, price ranges, special discounts, and shipping rates through some sort of a catchy performance that’ll make your potential client stay a little bit longer and see what’s your ad about.
Of course, YouTube provides several ad formats you can choose from but we’ll speak of that matter a bit further in this article.
Huge user database at your fingertips
The greatest perk of advertising on YouTube is the enormous user database. According to the latest statistics, the number of active YouTube users currently amounts to 2 billion. In fact, this number gives your business an open sea of possibilities, even if you decided to narrow down your audience with a targeting strategy. Either way, you can cover an enormous portion of users and place your products or services so that you can generate positive campaign results.
Additionally, due to this huge number of users, you’ll quickly see results from your run campaigns. This is due to the fact that more users will be interacting with your ads and you’ll definitely drive more traffic, get more clicks, and eventually generate sales.
Types of YouTube Ads
So, you’re all set and done to go with YouTube ads and put a good word out there about your dropshipping store. However, there’s one last thing you need to know in order to get out there in the open. YouTube offers several video formats that you can use in order to engage clients in various ways on the YouTube platform or any other partner website.
Skippable In-stream Ads
You can use the skippable in-stream ads to promote your content before, after, or during a certain video on the YouTube platform as well as other sites that are partnered with Google. As the name suggests, these ads can be skipped by whoever watches them after 5 seconds.
This ad format allows for a more loose payment policy which allows you to be charged only if a viewer watches 30 seconds from your video ad, or the full ad if it’s shorter than 30 seconds.
Additionally, YouTube will also charge you if the viewer in any way interacts with your video ad. The skippable format is used when you want to present your products with a video and raise brand awareness.
Non-skippable In-stream Ads
Barely identical to the skippable ads, you can use these ads to promote your dropshipping business but ensure that the potential clients will watch your entire video and get the full message without having the possibility of skipping it. Due to this fact, the upper time limit is set to the maximum of 15 seconds, and they can appear before, after, or in the middle of the other videos.
However, you should really be careful with these ones because sometimes you might incite a reverse effect on your target audience. Viewers might feel frustrated that they’re forced to watch your ad and you’ll end up with alienated customers. So, carefully consider your video content. Find something that’ll be catchy for the audience, and will give the incentive to check your products and website.
In-feed Video Ads
The in-feed video ads can be used for placing your products, or your brand alongside video content that your target audience will probably see on YouTube. These ads mainly pop in the search results, in the “watch next” section, and in the home feed in the YouTube app.
The ads consist of a thumbnail, a headline, and two lines of text. In order to view the ad, your potential customer will have to click on it. However, if the client is on the YouTube ad, this ad will play without sound and with subtitles on. Of course, this won’t be counted as an impression and YouTube won’t charge you. Only people that’ll interact with your ad will be seen as impressions and you’ll be charged for those impressions only.
Bumper Ads
Bumper ads are a cool set of ads that you can use to show off the inventory you offer with your dropshipping business. In fact, you can use these ads to reach a wider target audience than usual, and offer them a short, but sweet introduction to your overall business story.
Whether marketing a specific product or your brand, a memorable skit will do the trick. Bumper ads only last for a maximum of 6 seconds (they can be shorter though if you manage to show everything in a slightly tight time window) and they can play before the start of other videos after the video finishes or in the middle of the video.
The bumper ads don’t have the skip option available which guarantees you that your whole message will be placed. This is great as you cannot annoy your potential clients or even the wider audience (if you choose to cover a wider audience segment) and you can only spark curiosity.
The more curious audience, the more impressions.
Outstream Ads
These types of ads are focused on the mobile experience of the users. This means that they’re appearing only on the mobile site or tablet site or the mobile app of YouTube. This way people can easily be made familiar with your fashion inventory while they’re scrolling to find their video on YouTube.
In fact, once the ads appear on the user’s screen they’re designed to play automatically, but with the sound turned off. Of course, there is the “unmute” option if the user is interested in hearing more from you and your brand.
The charging here is a bit different from the rest of the ads. You get charged if your ad is dubbed as viewable, which by definition means that your ad was visible 50% on the user’s screen and was played for two seconds without interruptions.
Additionally, the out-stream ads are a pretty versatile set of ads and can appear as banners, in-feed, and interstitials, but can also be placed in fullscreen format and portrait format. Therefore, these ads are mainly used as a brand awareness instrument, but also you can use them if you want to improve your reach.
Masthead Ads
If your goal is to reach a pretty big audience in a very short span of time then you should consider going with Masthead ads. However, these ads are a delicate piece of service YouTube provides, and their availability is tightly related to a reservation made by a Google sales representative.
This format can be suitable for desktop, mobile, and TV screens. When on a desktop, these ads play without any sound at the top of the home feed and for 30 seconds.
They can appear as widescreen ads or with a 16:9 ratio. An informational panel that consists of assets from your channel is located on the right side. Once the autoplay is over, the ad returns to show the thumbnail set for the video. If people click on the ad, they’ll be taken to the watch page of YouTube where they can watch the whole video ad.
When on mobile, the video ad plays for the whole duration without any sound, if the video is on the top of the home feed. It consists of a thumbnail, headline that can be customized, descriptions, and an external CTA (call to action).
When on TV, the ad autoplays for its full duration and is located at the top of the TV YouTube app. People can interact with the ad through the remote control of the TV, and they can click on it in order to be taken to a page where the video will be played on full screen. Unlike mobile ads, CTA cannot be added to the ads for TV.
Still hesitant?
If you’re still thinking about whether to advertise on YouTube or if it’s worth trying, you should be aware of several things before even starting.
YouTube is considered the second most visited web page after Google. This information clearly shows you that aside from Google, YouTube is the number-one video content website in the world. Therefore, placing ads on a platform such as YouTube is highly advisable.
Another important thing you should know is that the revenue of YouTube for 2021 amounted to $28.8 billion. This is a solid jump if we compare the revenue with 2020 and 2019 when youtube generated $19.8 billion and $15.2 billion, respectively. The upward trend is surely present and it won’t stop in the future either.
According to 78.8% of the marketers on a global scale, YouTube is a video platform with the highest amount of effectiveness.
But what is most interesting is that if you’re a dropshipper whose main niche is a luxury fashion and you want your shop and product inventory to get before the eyes of a much wider audience segment, then YouTube will definitely provide you with the easiest solution. According to studies, 70% of the shoppers say that they want to learn more about certain products from the companies they encounter while searching videos on YouTube.
Finally, we must point out that YouTube is slowly taking over the baton from live TV as well. According to recent research, 6 out of 10 users prefer to watch videos online rather than watch live TV and the shows displayed there. It seems that people are spending much more time watching videos on their phones or computers and the TV time is slowly shrinking at the expense of this phenomenon.
How to create engaging videos?
Catchy Start
The first thing you need to remember is that the beginning of the video is the key to the hearts of your consumers. In other words, you need to incite a reaction, stop them for what they are doing and direct their full attention to the video ad.
Graphics and effects, bright colors, and amusing fonts are key elements you need to incorporate in order to get the desired reaction. If you’re offering a certain promotion of particular fashion products, or you have exclusive luxury products, then this should be the primary hook.
Thumbnails
Thumbnails are the first thing your potential client will see and can be the deciding moment of whether consumers will get interested in your fashion store or will scroll past through without noticing it.
That is why a well-designed thumbnail will have greater success and will definitely help you get more consumers on board. You can try using free online software for creating original graphics that will be used as thumbnails.
An enticing picture of a model wearing the dress you’re selling would be a great idea as well.
Emotional message
As much as it sounds like a cliche, video ads that will incite an emotional response are better performing ads. This is due to the personal side of the ads that always seems to generate more engagement.
Lastly, do you know that people tend to purchase items subconsciously and based on some emotional factors? Therefore, always incorporate a personal touch and an emotional spark that will catch the attention of the wider audience.
Captions
People scroll through their phones in rather unusual places. That’s why it is more than necessary to always include captions in your video ads. There are times (frequent times) when people who scroll through YouTube cannot play the video with the sound on but are interested in the message the video sends.
If the video lacks captions, comprehending would be impossible and the loss of interest would be instant. But if you include captions, you can pretty easily circumvent this. In fact, sometimes people want to see the captions regardless of whether the sound is turned on or off.
That is why the safest thing to do is to always include captions, as they’ll not cost you that much, but will definitely help you earn new trusts and land more customers.
Targeting your audience
Before even starting your work with the videos, you’ll need to understand who your audience is. This little fact will be the purpose of your video and will definitely guide you through the process of making it.
So, if you’re a dropshipper that offers high-end fashion products you need to target an audience that will fall in this mold. Fashion enthusiasts, people who are searching for these items, people that have already visited your store (remarketing), etc.
This is essential, as you’ll primarily need to start running your ads and then narrow it down according to the results you’ll get from the initial campaign.
To summarize
Handling a dropshipping business is not as easy as some might think. Yes, the risks and costs for running it might be minimal as you’re not holding any inventory of your own, but that only means that all your attention should be directed towards the other segments of a successful business, especially the promotion part.
Nowadays, there are multiple online platforms that can do the job for you for a certain charge, but choosing the right one that will suit your business is the tricky part. Therefore, with this article, we wanted to bring you closer to the YouTube ads platform and introduce you to the main features this platform contains.
As we’ve mentioned earlier the online video industry is constantly evolving and marking huge revenues from year to year.
Although Facebook and Instagram offer a much easier approach for running ad campaigns, even beginners can follow on and lower charges, YouTube is a platform that will enable your content to reach massive audiences, and actually grant you more conversions. With this said, we hope that with the help of this article you’ll reach your desired campaign outcomes.
Learn more:
- How to create Google Ads for dropshipping?
- How to create Facebook ads for dropshipping?
- How to build Instagram ads for dropshipping?
- How to generate engaging clothing ads?
About the Author
Dimitar Alimaskoski
Content writer and music fanatic. Always using song lyrics as inspiration for my words.
