Do you have a video that you want to share with everyone? What’s the best way to get your video to gain real YouTube views? One of my favorite methods is to use video campaigns with YouTube & Google Adwords. Check my free video tutorial below. You should have a Youtube & Google Adwords account with your video uploaded before starting this tutorial and a working knowledge of creating ads with Adwords.

The transcription is also included in case you want to follow along. Please comment if you’d like to see me create more free video tutorials and let me know what you’d like to learn how to do in digital marketing, seo, or other promotions next.

TRANSCRIPTION:

So you have a great video and you want everyone to see it. But how do you market your videos online?” Hi, I’m Ally and today I’m going to walk you through paid video promotions” through YouTube and Google Adwords. There are different types of ads that can be used for video promotions. You can choose to have your video show up in search engine results, run directly after selected content, or be played as an ad at the beginning of other videos. Before we get started make sure you have both an Adwords & Youtube account with your video uploaded and ready to go.

Let’s go to your Google Adwords account and log in (“www.adwords.google.com“). Click the down arrow on the Campaign tab and select “Online video”. We are now on the “create a new video campaign” page. From here we will set up our ads & connect our YouTube account to our Adwords account. Connecting accounts gives us extra features and more specialized reporting to monitor our ROI or return on investment.

Let’s get started by clicking on the “Linked YouTube accounts” option under the Shared Library tab on the left hand side. When you land on the “Link A YouTube Channel” page, click on the large blue button that says “Link Your YouTube”. This will pull up a window with two linking options. We can either link to our personal YouTube account or link to someone else’s. For this example I’m going to be using one of my own YouTube accounts so I’ll select the first option and click “Go to YouTube. Since we’re already logged in to YouTube it’s going to direct us right into the “Link an Adwords for video account” window.

Our first action will be to name our Adwords in case we ever need to link multiple accounts. For the purpose of this demo I’m going to name mine “Demo Feb 2015”. Below this box you will see three permissions options. Leaving all three of these boxes checked will give us the most opportunity to promote and monitor our ads. Read each option and make sure that it aligns with your campaign goals. After you have decided on your permissions click the “Finish” button but don’t close that window quite yet.

Before closing it, scroll down to the “Account name” section of the page and verify that your Adwords account was added correctly. If it was, you will see the name of the account listed with your customer ID, permissions, & options. If your account is listed here close out the window and go back to the Adwords tab. Select the “Done” button from the “Link a YouTube channel” prompt. Your channel and permissions should show up in a list at the bottom of the next page like this. Good job, your Youtube account is now linked to Adwords.

Let’s create our first video ad.

We’re going to go back and pick the “All Video Campaigns” option on the left side navigation. Your browser will be directed back to the “Campaign” option or it could show you the “All Video Campaigns” view.

Now we’re in the ‘New Video Campaign” wizard. Our first step will be to add a name, description & budget. Our ad costs will be determined by how many views our video receives. As a general rule you will end up paying 5 to 7 cents per YouTube view. Knowing this will give you a better idea of how much you want to spend per ad so that you can set your budget accordingly. Enter your budget amount in this box and let’s continue on.

For our next step we will be choosing which YouTube Networks we want to use. YouTube Search, will show our ads when people are searching for videos. “Youtube Videos” will show our ads at the beginning of other videos. The final option “Include in the Google Display Network” will list our video’s ad on sites that aren’t YouTube also. For this example I am going to leave all of these boxes checked. If you decide that one or more of these options aren’t for you, unclick the box or boxes and we’ll move on to location targeting.

In the Languages & Locations section we are going to specify the location of the audience we want our ads to be shown to. We always want be as specific as possible. If you are running a national or international campaign you can still target areas that you are most interested in. Being too broad with your choices can really hurt how effective your ads will be. For my ad, I’m going to select the United States & Canada. Enter your desired location in the box below and your ads will only be shown in those locations. Let’s select our desired language and move on to creating the ad to display.

Let’s copy our video url from YouTube and paste it in this box. A preview of your video will appear so that you can confirm that you put in the correct link. If you accidently put the wrong one in use the “Change Video” option and find the correct link.

Next on our list is selecting our “Ad Format”. We can choose between default ads or ads optimized for mobile devices. Since we aren’t focusing on any mobile app or site let’s choose the default option.

It’s time to select the type of video display we want our ad to have. For an “in-stream video” display this will show our ad at the beginning of other people’s videos that are related to whatever your video is about. For example if I was trying to sell pet products I would focus on pet videos to run my ads in front of. If we select this option a person would have to watch at least 30 seconds of our ad before being able to continue to the original video that they want to watch. If someone skips our ad before the 30 seconds is up we wouldn’t be charged for that view. People’s attention spans are dwindling more and more each year. It’s a good idea to keep your ads as short and sweet as possible. Anything over 30 seconds is probably overkill. The next option is an “In-Display” ad. These are ads with your video’s thumbnail, header, & description that will show up in searches that match your desired keywords.

For this example I’m going to use the “in-display” option. Fill in your ad information by creating a description and title with phrases and words relevant to your ad campaign.

Once we’ve created our ad we’ll choose our landing page, either our YouTube channel page or the YouTube page for the video. Sending people directly to your video’s page is the best option for direct promotion of our main video. Once someone clicks on our ad they will be directed to the page where our video will begin playing automatically.

Pick a name for your ad and then select Save & Continue. From this point you will be selecting targeting options as you do for all of your other ads. Once this is completed your ad is ready to go. Don’t forget to test out different ads and monitor your analytics to see what options work best for your video.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that this video has helped you understand a great method for marketing your Youtube Videos.