Ad creatives are the ads served to users on a social media or digital media platform. On YouTube, these are most often video ads and may include images, video, audio, and text. When combined, these creative elements form a full video advertisement.
YouTube ads are just another way to expand your reach. To ensure your campaigns are most effective, though, you need to ensure you are creating killer YouTube ad creatives.
This article will look at the ten best ideas for creating killer YouTube ad creatives. By the end of the post, you’ll understand how to ensure your ad creatives are the best they can be.
10 Ideas for YouTube Ad Creatives
Here are a few ideas for creating top-notch YouTube advertisement creatives for your video ad campaigns.
1. Use the Element of Surprise
In a survey of Twitter users, 43 percent of respondents say they would watch the entire video ad if it has interesting content. That is where the element of surprise comes in.
There are a handful of brands that are known for their outlandish and surprising ad content. These include Skittles, Cheetos, Doritos, and Old Spice. Their content often starts on a relatively normal note, but then takes a surprise turn.
Take a look at this Old Spice YouTube ad they ran before Super Bowl LV:
The ad starts with a relatable activity that then turns fantastical in a matter of seconds. The element of surprise here is funny and lives up to the brand’s usual commercial antics.
2. Be Relatable
A crucial part of any successful YouTube ad is that it is relatable to your target audience. What that looks like will differ, but here are some tips to help.
To be relatable, you must first know who it is you are relating to. That would be your target audience. They will be defined by various data points, including:
age
gender
education background
purchasing power
social class
location
consumption habits
With that information in hand, you can shape a story that either piques their interest or pushes on a pain point. Your ad creatives would be tailored to that audience using relevant audio and visuals.
The key is not to try too hard to relate. It should come organically within the creative process. The better you know your audience, the more natural it will appear.
3. Improve on Competitors’ YouTube Ad Creatives
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every YouTube ad creative. If a competitor created an ad with the right idea but less-than-stellar execution, this lets you step in and improve.
To be clear, this does not mean plagiarizing your competition’s work. The fact is, there are no truly original ideas, but every idea can be expanded upon and improved.
What creatives could be added to enhance the experience?
With a few ideas on how to improve your competitor’s video ads, you can now work to create a campaign with improved video ad creatives. The best place to start is by applying a unique angle to a similar ad creative concept.
4. Include a Call to Action
Do you want your ad to educate, inspire, or convert? You are likely looking to achieve at least two of the three. Instead of leaving your audience wondering what they should do, tell them.
A call to action is a message that clearly states what action you want your audience to take. You’ll often see these as “Learn more” or “Buy now” online. There is often hesitancy to include a direct call to action as it may appear pushy. The fact is, viewers will know they are viewing an ad and expect to be told what to do.
If you’re wary of direct calls to action, consider a subtler approach. Let’s take another look at that Old Spice advertisement from above:
At the end of the ad, the star can be seen gesturing to the top right of the video playback. He’s pointing to a call to action, which aligns with how YouTubers often point out additional information or other videos to view. It’s a subtle touch, but one that uses YouTube’s in-built features to drive their point home further.
5. Continuously Experiment
With ad creatives, it’s crucial to experiment and track audience engagement continuously. This ensures better results as you learn what your audience responds to.
What should you be testing? When it comes to testing, creative elements that include text, font color, and size can be manipulated to test viewer engagement. This is especially important with calls to action.
For best results, stick to testing just one creative element at a time. You can run multi-element tests once you have data from these initial A/B tests.
6. Tell a Story or Narrative
One element of a good ad is the ability to draw your audience in. An easy way to do this is by using storytelling. A story can be informative, heartwarming, funny, or a combination of the three. What’s most important is that you draw the audience into the story with vivid ad creatives.
Take, for example, the “A Parent’s Imagination” Subaru Forester ad. It clearly outlines the fears of all parents as their teens take to the road:
The combination of somber music and the back-and-forth visuals between imagination and reality drives the story home. It’s a story easy enough to understand without dialogue and one that pulls at the heartstrings.
7. Make the Ad Seem Native
Whether you intend to inform, educate, or convert, your ads don’t have to be explicit in their intention. In fact, obtrusive and blatant advertisements can be harmful to your overall marketing campaign.
According to HubSpot, 77 percent of online browsers say they prefer to ad filter rather than completely ad-block. Viewers dislike the more obnoxious and intrusive ads, which means the industry needs to adapt. One way to do so is with native ads, or ads that seem to be part of the landscape instead of separate from it.
This is growing increasingly common with influencers who seamlessly incorporate sponsorships into their video content. You can do the same with ads that play as more of a mini-episode or vlog than as an advertisement.
8. Incorporate User Generated Content
User-generated content, or UGC, is content provided by real users of the service or product. These are often in the form of reviews, photos, or videos submitted to the brand on social media sites or via feedback forms.
One way to incorporate user-generated content into YouTube ad creatives is with customer reviews. This Grammarly video ad featuring a writer, filmmaker, and Grammarly user is a perfect example of incorporating UGC into YouTube ad creatives:
9. Highlight the Benefits
Brands commonly focus on the features in ads. However, potential customers really want to see direct benefits.
What is the difference between features and benefits? Forbes offers a succinct explanation: Features are the attributes of a product or service, while benefits are the advantages a customer gains from the product or service.
You can use many of the above ideas to highlight the benefits. These include telling a story or incorporating UGC.
Many brands do this well, but perhaps none as well as Apple:
The ad lists the technical features, while also showing how they benefit the consumer. You don’t have to sacrifice features for benefits; rather aim to show both.
10. Consider the Device
YouTube, like many digital media platforms, is optimized for use on various devices. Its video content and, therefore, its ads are also optimized in much the same way. This ensures a better experience for users whether they’re on desktop or mobile.
With this in mind, consider optimizing ad creatives to work across various devices. YouTube encourages this with the capability to upload multiple versions of one video ad in different aspect ratios.
YouTube videos can be uploaded in square, vertical, and landscape ratios to best serve all YouTube users. This may require a little extra work to ensure the full experience is viewable in all aspect ratios, but it’s worth the effort. By uploading your video in numerous ratios, you ensure you are reaching a broader audience.
3 Examples of Successful YouTube Ad Creatives
Now, let’s look at a few:
1. HelloFresh
Recipe videos and GIFs have taken over social media news feeds over the last few years. HelloFresh takes advantage of this with their recipe video advertisements.
The brand commonly uses influencers and TV personalities (in this case, Antoni Porowski) as the home-inspired chef. This is a great way to leverage influencer relationships with their loyal viewers, thus making it more likely they’ll watch the entire advertisement.
2. Always
There has been a sharp increase in brands using their platform to draw attention to serious issues. However, Always pioneered this form for video advertising.
The documentary-style of Always #LikeAGirl video ads tell a story in a relatable manner. The advertisements draw in the viewer and stir feelings of hope and inspiration.
3. Skittles
If you’re hoping for a chuckle, then Skittles won’t disappoint.
Skittles, similar to Old Spice and Doritos, uses the element of surprise regularly in its video advertisements. While the regular use of surprise may seem contradictory, the brand always outdoes itself, which keeps viewers engaged.
Frequently Asked Questions About YouTube Ad Creatives
What are the fundamentals of YouTube ad creatives?
Brand: Help consumers hear or visualize your brand.
Connect: Make consumers feel something about your brand.
Direct: Encourage consumers to take action.
What makes a good YouTube ad creative?
Beyond the fundamentals, a good ad creative will follow a traditional story arc. This contains five elements, which are the lead-in, the build, the climax, the offer, and the branding.
The beauty of the many social and digital media platforms is the ability to create different types of ad creatives for different groups of your audience. The type of ad creative that is most successful, then, will vary by platform.
On YouTube, the most successful types of ad creatives are video. The same may not be true for Instagram or Facebook.
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YouTube Ad Creatives Conclusion
Once you have wrapped your head around YouTube ad creation, the hard part is over. You can spend the rest of your time on the fun aspects, which include ensuring creating fun and effective ad creatives.
The above guide will help you implement new ideas into your creative process and inspire you to create the best ad content possible. That doesn’t mean you will always create the “perfect” ad, but you can learn what ad creatives work best for your audience through experimentation and testing.
What of the above elements do your favorite YouTube video ads include?
How did I get over 942,000 subscribers without spending money on ads? Plus I am not famous, I’m not funny and I’m not a male model. 😉
I use a formula and it works well to get more YouTube subscribers for any industry and any account.
Even my clients at my marketing agency are using it and it’s working wonders for them. So much so most of them have over 100,000 subscribers now.
Now before I teach you how to get more subscribers, let me give you a quick overview…
How to Get More YouTube Subscribers
There’s a simple formula that I go into this article to getting more YouTube subscribers (which you can read below.
Hook people with your intro
Ask them to subscribe
Create videos that are around 10 minutes long
Ask people to leave comments (this is how you go viral)
Respond to every comment with an answer and question
Leverage YouTube shorts
Run contests
Do keyword research and use keywords within your title
Optimize your thumbnails for click-through
Promote your video hard in the first 24 hours through email/push notifications
Don’t forget to upload the transcription
If you want to learn formula in-depth just keep reading below and I will go over what I just covered above. Or if you want the short version you can also watch the video below.
Give Your Channel a Theme to Gain YouTube Subscribers
Before you do anything, you need to give your channel a theme.
If you look at many of the top YouTube channels, you’ll notice that many of them stick to a theme.
Take a look at Derek Halpern‘s channel, for example.
Notice how a lot of the YouTube videos he creates are on topics related to business and success.
Having a theme makes it easier to create consistent YouTube content.
On top of that, you can make your channel the ‘go-to’ place for specific content. This is the goal of a social media platform.
If your channel caters to a specific niche, then people who care deeply about that niche will want to become subscribers.
For example, imagine your videos are all about Facebook marketing, and you aim to help business owners.
If a business owner who wants to learn more about Facebook marketing subscribes to your YouTube channel, they’ll get an update any time you post content.
This helps them stay ahead of the curve without having to do a lot of work.
If you’re struggling to come up with a theme for your channel, think about the problems your business solves and who it solves those problems for.
Then, produce videos based on the topics you know will help the people your business serves.
Post Incredible Content to Gain YouTube Subscribers
When we type in the keyword, we see the suggestions above.
Now, those topics might seem a little broad, so you may want to pick one of those keywords and go through the same process again so that you can generate something more concise.
Let’s add the word ‘tutorial,’ for instance.
By adding the word tutorial, we are now provided with more concise keywords.
The fact that these keywords appear in the suggestions lets us know that people are searching for these videos.
You might argue that there is a lot of competition for such keywords.
And while that may be true, later on in the post, we’ll figure out how we can get people to view our videos, even when there is a lot of competition — so don’t let it be a concern for now.
The great thing about the approach above is that it gives us a place to start.
If we want to produce content for a certain niche, this technique lets us know what kinds of content people will already have an interest in viewing.
My tool Ubersuggest is another great YouTube keyword research tool. Simply type in your main key term and click “Keyword ideas” in the right sidebar, and it will deliver more than 400 keywords for you to consider.
You can also use the Google Keyword Planner tool to come up with content ideas. That’s because there will be some coherence between Google search results and YouTube search results.
Let’s stick with the topic of ‘pencil drawing.’
In the ‘Your product or service’ box, enter a keyword-based on your business. If I were running a business that taught people how to do a pencil drawing, I’d enter ‘how to do a pencil drawing.’
You want to keep the keyword broad at this stage because it’ll allow for the keyword tool to develop a wide range of ideas for you.
Once you’ve entered the keyword, you’ll then see this page. It shows several ‘Ad groups’ of keywords.
Each group of keywords centers around a certain topic.
As you can see, I’ve arranged the groups in terms of ‘Average monthly searches’ and descending order. This gives us a sense of where there might be a lot of competition.
Let’s click on the mid-range group called ‘Drawing Techniques.’
I’ve highlighted a few keywords that might represent good YouTube content opportunities.
I chose these keywords because it’s clear to see how you could create a focused, high-value video centered around these keywords.
You might think that these keywords don’t have that many searches and, therefore, aren’t worthy in terms of effort required.
However, remember we’re not just going to post a handful of videos and then be done with it.
Cultivating a YouTube channel so that it eventually has many subscribers often requires posting a lot of content. In fact, the biggest YouTube channel has over 4,200 videos.
If you want to publish massive amounts of content while keeping it relevant, you need to be able to niche down your content as much as possible, so each video provides value.
If you niche down, it’s only natural that the level of searches per month will go down.
Even if you focus on low-volume keywords, they’ll all come together to help you build momentum and establish yourself in a YouTube niche.
You’ll also notice there isn’t a ton of content for those lower volume search terms, which represents an opportunity.
Look at what happens when I type in the ‘Simple drawing techniques’ keyword.
There’s a playlist there, but other than that, there aren’t any fully optimized titles or even videos based solely around the topic of ‘simple drawing techniques.’
Improve the Production Quality of Your YouTube Videos
Production quality shouldn’t be a top priority, but it can definitely increase the number of YouTube subscribers after a certain point.
As long as your videos are rich in value and provide the viewer with the information they need, you’re doing a good job.
When the videos start to bring you a return, then you can focus more on production quality.
Here are a few tips.
Ensure what you’re saying can be easily heard. You must speak clearly and enthusiastically. You’ve got to project your voice.
Otherwise, people might not be able to understand what you’re saying. They might even get bored.
You don’t need to act like an extrovert; just try and prevent your voice from becoming monotonous.
If you’re recording your content using a phone or a laptop, the microphone might not be enough. So, you may want to invest in a quality external microphone.
However, test it to see how things actually sound before you make this investment.
You also need to ensure that your video is easy to watch.
You don’t want to make it hard work for your viewers to see what is going on. This means you need to ensure lighting is adequate.
If you’re recording a talking head style video where you’re talking to the camera, ensure that your face can be clearly seen.
If someone is recording you, then ensure the camera isn’t shaking.
If you’re recording your laptop screen, make sure your actions can be clearly seen and that anything you type can be read.
Use Video Editing to Improve the Quality of Your YouTube Videos
When it comes to video editing, you have a couple of solutions. When speaking about video editing, what we’re referring to is improving your videos’ style and not so much about removing minor mistakes.
More often than not, you’re going to make minor mistakes when recording your video. You don’t need to put tons of focus into removing these bits, as they don’t harm your video all that much.
In fact, they might even help your video as they let other people know that they’re dealing with a real person rather than a sly media marketing salesman.
Where editing can come in handy, though, is when you need to create cuts in your video or add a title screen.
If you’re not an accomplished video editor, you could seek someone from Upwork or perhaps even Fiverr.
Alternatively, you could purchase a video editing suite and learn to do everything yourself.
That method might save you a bit more money, though you might end up spending a lot more time learning how to edit videos on your own. This takes time away from your media marketing.
That might not be the best trade-off, depending on your circumstances.
As mentioned, you don’t want to over-edit your videos, though you want to give them a sense of style that separates you from the crowd.
Often, the easiest way to do this is by having custom intro music and a custom title screen.
Another way that you can post incredible content is by creating videos based on your product being used.
Demonstration videos can go a long way in showcasing your product as something worth buying.
You can even turn some of your blog posts into videos. Nearly 59% of executives would rather watch a video than read a chunk of text.
Okay, so that’s the basics of creating incredible content.
The next point will be essential if you want to ensure that your YouTube subscriber rates grow consistently over time.
Get More YouTube Views by Posting Often and Consistently
This is probably the hardest part of growing a YouTube following — though it can also be one of the most important.
The average company posts 18 YouTube videos a month. Posting content consistently is a great way for you to compete.
Plus, if you’re constantly posting new content, then people have a reason to become a subscriber and share it on their social networks.
After all, people are less likely to subscribe if you’re not going to post any more content — why should they?
If you use the tips mentioned earlier, then coming up with ideas for posting new content is pretty easy.
You just need to set a schedule and stick to it.
How Often Should You Post New YouTube Videos?
If you want to keep things simple, look at what your competition is doing, and then one-up them. If they are posting twice a week, aim for three times a week.
Sometimes, however, the best plan is the one you can stick to.
Consistency in your media marketing campaign is important, as it’ll keep existing subscribers coming back for more. This will result in more YouTube views — and also improve engagement.
Engagement on a video tends to come in the following forms:
Thumbs up or Thumbs Down
Social sharing
Subscribing
Commenting
Favoriting
Ideally, you want to improve the engagement levels in each of these categories through any social media site.
People like to engage with content on YouTube; did you know that over 100 million people per week take a ‘social action’ on YouTube every week?
Another mind-blowing fact is that 700 videos are shared every minute on Twitter. So while YouTube is not a social media site, it is a valuable tool for any social media marketing platform.
Great engagement will help make the video more visible in the YouTube search engine.
This will expose your video to more people, who can then become subscribers themselves.
If you want to view some statistics in terms of how your videos perform, you can use the YouTube analytics dashboard.
To gain access to this feature, you must first turn on monetization for your videos. This means that you are willing to show ads on your videos.
If you don’t want to show ads on your videos, don’t worry. You still have control over which videos are monetized and which ones aren’t.
Let’s take a look at how you can get that done.
Sign up for a YouTube account and then go to the ‘Creators Studio’ section.
On the left sidebar, under the ‘Channel’ option, select ‘Monetization.’
Choose ‘Enable My Account.’
Now, you’ll be able to access the scheduling features provided by YouTube to program your media platform.
You’ll also be able to access a lot more in the way of YouTube analytics.
If you want to schedule a video, click on the ‘Upload’ button.
Then click on the dropdown menu and select the ‘Scheduled’ option.
Then drag and drop your video, or click the icon to upload it.
On the next screen, you can adjust the scheduling options.
Now enter the date and time you want the video to go live.
If people are subscribed to your channel, they’ll get a message when your video goes live.
Make sure to schedule that date into your social media management platform, if you have one. This will ensure that Tweets, Facebook updates, and LinkedIn posts are sent out simultaneously.
If you have an email list relevant to your video, you might even want to send a message out to those folks.
Consider staggering the messages, so you’re not bombarding people on multiple platforms all at once.
Consider Turning Long Videos into Multiple Short Videos
If you’re struggling to develop content ideas daily, consider splitting up longer videos into several shorter ones.
In long videos, you likely cover several points about one main topic.
You could edit out certain topics and then create mini videos using those topics. Shorter videos are more convenient for social network sharing.
These are videos that will be relevant whether they are viewed today or five years in the future.
This will apply to some niches more than others.
For example, I spoke earlier about the pencil drawing business, which naturally lends itself to producing a lot of evergreen content. A video about Instagram marketing, however, might be out of date in five years.
Take a look at your niche and see if you can create ‘how-to’ videos that will stand the test of time.
Even if you’re not looking to create evergreen content, it’s worth creating ‘how-to’ videos to provide value.
Optimize Your Videos to Increase YouTube Subscribers
Before anyone can become a subscriber to your channel, they need to first click on your videos.
No matter how good your video is, once it is seen in the YouTube search engine or sidebar, it will have some competition in the form of other videos.
So how do you get people to pay attention to and click on your video?
You need to focus on three areas — the headline, the thumbnail, and the description.
These three elements will have the biggest impact on influencing YouTube users to click on your videos. Be sure the meta tag is relevant and includes key points.
This is because they’ll help your rankings in the YouTube search engine. They’ll also improve your videos’ ability to entice users to click on them and share them on social media.
YouTube categories and cards can also drive clicks, so we’ll cover those too.
How to Create a Good Headline for YouTube Videos
If your video is based on a certain keyword, then the video’s title must include this keyword.
When you do this, you increase the chances of someone clicking on your video.
If the video’s title matches what they were searching for, they’ll assume that the video covers everything that they need to know about that topic.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that you should be ridiculous in how you’re creating your titles.
For instance, earlier, we identified the keyword — ‘simple drawing techniques.’
If we had a video on that topic, we could write the headline like this — ‘Simple drawing techniques: 5 tips that will make drawing easier.’
Side note: An interesting experiment might be to split the ‘simple drawing techniques’ title into separate niches. This is a common social media marketing technique for blogs and helps videos too.
For example, ‘simple drawing techniques for cars’ or ‘simple drawing techniques for eyes.’
This is a great example of how you can take a big niche or keyword that is receiving a lot of traffic and identify opportunities within that niche.
As I mentioned, you’ll have to experiment a little when you do things this way. But, there’s no telling what kind of opportunities you might uncover.
As you can see in the example above, the video title uses a colon to separate the text.
You’ll also notice that there are videos where the ‘|’ symbol is being used.
You’ll have to test which one works better, though it could just be that this symbol serves a similar purpose to what the colon would have done.
When it comes to creating YouTube headlines, you’ll want to follow the rules that already exist for blog posts.
You need to have a mix of something that people are searching for and something that grabs their attention. This is core media marketing that can lead to social network inclusion.
You can do that by using the keyword your video targets in the headline and then including power words in the gaps.
As we’ve discussed, the style of your videos is going to influence the headline. If you have a ‘how-to’ video, then you’ll need to account for that in your headline.
Similar to blog post headlines, numbers also tend to work well in YouTube headlines.
Use Engaging YouTube Thumbnails
When it comes to the thumbnail, there are a couple of approaches that you could take.
The first is to show a clear image of whatever the video is about. For example, if you’re talking about a laptop, you’d want to include a picture of a laptop.
Like this:
Alternatively, you could just show a picture of a person interacting with whatever the video is about.
Like this example:
However, one of the increasingly powerful ways of creating video thumbnails is by adding text, like this:
Don’t just drop some text and call it good. You can also heavily edit the thumbnail image so that it clearly stands out.
Here’s another one:
If you want to create thumbnails like this, you need to follow these rules.
How to Create a Custom Thumbnail for YouTube Videos
They have a YouTube thumbnail template, so use that to get started.
If you have some images of your own, you can upload them and then overlay text onto them.
I’ve just gone with the option of creating a basic thumbnail from scratch. Obviously, you can create something much better than this.
If you want to upload a custom thumbnail for a video, just go through the normal upload process.
On the page where you can adjust the video information, pick the ‘Custom thumbnail’ option.
You’ll then have a custom thumbnail that will be shown around the YouTube platform.
Create Better YouTube Descriptions
Creating a description for your YouTube videos could become an entire post in itself. We’re going to cover the basics here.
You need to keep in mind that you have a lot of space here, and YouTube tends to use what you say to rank your content. Don’t ignore the meta tag and its importance.
The first couple of lines on your description should be written so that they are easy to read in the search results.
Here’s a great example.
In this section, you may want to use some of the keywords you used in your title. That way, you can ensure that it has some coherence. This will also improve the ranking ability of your video.
When people click on your video, they have the option to click on the ‘Show More’ text.
This will expand the description. You can use this space to insert a ‘subscribe to channel’ link.
If you want to do that, use the following link format: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=
Make sure that you enter your channel name after the ‘=.’
So, for Kissmetrics, it would be: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=Kissmetric
When people click on this link, they’ll be taken to your channel page, where a subscribe box will pop-up.
You can also enter some other information, such as your other social media profiles, important links, and even your content posting schedule in the description.
You can also describe the things that are being discussed in your video, like this —
You could even highlight what is discussed at certain time sections in your video like this: 21:48 – How to prevent your website from being penalized by Google.
These timestamps will actually take those who click on them directly to the specified location in the video.
Add Tags to Increase YouTube Views
It’s also important to add tags. This will help improve the chances of your video appearing in the YouTube search engine.
You don’t want to use anything that is misleading here. Have a mix of some really specific tags that describe your video. Then, add a few broad tags that are still related to the genre.
There’s no harm in using some of the suggested tags provided by YouTube, as long as they align with what your video is actually about.
Use YouTube Cards
YouTube Annotations used to be the best way to engage users by directly adding links and other content to your video.
Today, you have the option of using YouTube cards. You can add up to five cards to your video with a customized image, text, and call to action.
Here’s how you would go about creating a ‘YouTube card’ for your video.
Select the ‘Video’ option inside of the ‘Video Manager.’ Then click on the ‘Edit’ drop-down menu for the video you want to add a card to.
Then select the ‘Cards’ option.
You should then see this screen.
Click on the ‘Add card’ option and then choose the ‘Channel.’
Then, enter your channel name and add text.
The teaser text is the text that appears on the little graphic that appears in the video.
Here is how it will look:
If you want to adjust when the card displays the ‘teaser text,’ adjust the slider below.
You’ll notice, however, that the ‘i’ will always be visible in the video.
If people hover their mouse cursor over the ‘i,’ they’ll see the following.
This card will also appear at the time that you have chosen above.
Clicking on this will take users straight to your YouTube channel. However, no subscriber box will pop-up.
Engage Your YouTube Audience
Another way to boost your YouTube subscriber numbers is by engaging with your audience and creating a community.
There are several ways that you can do this.
Respond to YouTube Viewer Comments
Responding to comments is a simple — but effective — way to engage users. This will show YouTube viewers that you value their opinion. Plus, the fact that you’re going through this effort might encourage them to subscribe.
You could even argue that this counts as customer service work that improves the customer experience.
When you look at it through that lens, you use the fact that 22% of people post positive things on social networks about a company after having previously posting something negative — all because they got a response.
If you’re getting any negative comments on your YouTube videos, address them promptly.
This can increase YouTube subscribers because people see this interaction and appreciate the fact that you engage.
Host a Q&A Session
You can do this using Google Hangouts on Air or YouTube Live. You might even just ask at the end of a video for viewers to post their questions in the comments section.
Then, in the next video, you could spend some time going through the questions you received.
Ask Viewers What They Want
Another way to engage your audience is by creating videos based on what they want. For example, you could use a survey to ask your audience what they want to see you talk about.
You can then create a video based on a viewer’s suggestions and call them out in the video to say thank you.
Consider Collaborating With Other YouTube Video Creators
When it comes to boosting subscriber numbers, you also have the option of doing collaborations with people in your industry.
If you go about things in the right way, you may just end up joining the 18% of companies that regard their video marketing as ‘very successful.’
The best way to go about this is to find channels with a similar audience.
Both of you could then arrange an event where you can both benefit from the interaction.
When you collaborate, you must encourage people to subscribe to your channel.
Also, make sure the videos you publish immediately after the collaboration are amazing, so they want to subscribe.
Host Interviews to Increase YouTube Subscribers
Alternatively, consider doing interviews on your channel. If you can find a way to interview the top people in your niche, you’ll be able to attract their audience to your channel.
When your channel has a decent number of subscribers, you’ll have a greater ability to attract these opportunities.
Of course, you shouldn’t let low subscribers be an impediment that stops you from trying.
Email a few people who might be worth having on your channel and ask them if they’d be willing to be a guest.
If they say no, respectfully ask if they’d be willing to do a show when your channel has more subscribers. See if they can provide you with a ballpark figure that they’d be happy with.
You don’t want to be rude, but there’s nothing wrong with asking for a potential future way to make it happen.
To get the most out of ads, target keywords your videos are created around.
This will ensure that your videos appear at the top of the search results when people enter that keyword.
If you are just getting started, you might want to get a feel for the platform first. But, if you’ve got a solid YouTube monetization plan, ads can be an effective way to drive subscribers and YouTube views.
How to Get YouTube Subscribers: Frequently Asked Questions
How many followers do you need to monetize your YouTube videos?
You need at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in a year to make money off YouTube videos.
How do I become a successful YouTuber?
You can become successful as YouTuber by employing strategies such as producing great content, optimizing your YouTube videos for the algorithm, and sharing your videos across multiple social channels.
What are some ways to make money as a YouTuber?
You can make money from YouTube by publishing popular videos that run ads; becoming an affiliate; offering paid memberships; and more.
How do you get YouTube subscribers?
You can get YouTube subscribers by creating videos on pop culture and tie them to your niche; optimizing your videos for the YouTube search algorithm; posting and promoting your videos across multiple channels; and simply asking viewers to subscribe.
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How to Get YouTube Suscribers Conclusion
Ignoring the potential on YouTube is a huge mistake.
One of the keys to consistent success on YouTube is increasing your subscriber count — but don’t fall victim to those buy YouTube subscribers scams.
Instead, work to create exceptional content that will keep your audience coming back for more.
Then, make people want to click on your content using brilliant thumbnails and killer headlines that draw them in.
When people finally click on your video, then you can ask for a subscription.
Once you’ve got those fundamentals down, you’re free to experiment with things like collaborations and YouTube Ads.
If you put enough effort in, you’ll see those subscriber numbers start climbing — which can lead to website clicks and more.
All you need to do is get started!
What have you found to be useful when it comes to boosting subscriber numbers on YouTube?
On the one hand, you’re expected to keep up with trends. When a new social media platform starts to take off, you’d better be there promoting your brand.
Still, you can’t just blindly follow those trends. Popular platforms become saturated with dozens of competitors, and standing out becomes nearly impossible.
Don’t get me wrong; social media ads can work wonders. I’ve just noticed there are plenty of underutilized marketing platforms right now. The most noticeable of which is YouTube ads.
YouTube ads are one of the most overlooked ad formats in digital marketing, and it’s easy to figure out why.
The massive focus on social media ads combined with the challenge of creating compelling high-quality video content makes YouTube ads a tough sell to small business owners.
Can YouTube ads be tough to grasp? Sure, at first. Luckily, once you get over that initial hurdle, YouTube ads offer some pretty unique marketing tools you can’t find anywhere else.
That’s why today, we’re taking a deep dive into the world of YouTube ads, from ad types to strategy. We’ll even walk you through creating your first one!
5 YouTube Ad Types
If you’re unfamiliar with YouTube, their primary advertising format is known as the TrueView ad. Before we can understand the value of skippable in-stream ads, we need to take a closer look at YouTube’s TrueView ad approach.
TrueView ads were created to solve a massive problem. Before TrueView ads, users lacked any meaningful way to control their advertising experience. Without a way to meaningfully interact with the content, ads ran the risk of being both frustrating and irrelevant.
YouTube was hoping to present itself as a valuable advertising platform, but its original approach to advertising severely limited the effectiveness and efficiency of brand marketing efforts. No brand wants to waste precious time and money selling to viewers who simply aren’t interested.
Here’s the simple explanation: Your brand only pays for TrueView Ads when viewers watch for at least 30 seconds, watch your entire video, or interact with your ad via call-to-action (CTA).
1. Skippable In-Stream Ads
The first variation of the TrueView ad is the skippable in-stream ad. At a minimum of 12 seconds and a maximum of six minutes, in-stream ads play before a viewer’s video on YouTube.
These ads feature a countdown timer on screen, as well as a link to the brand website. You can also tag on a companion banner ad, but it’s worth pointing out these companion banner ads won’t be on all YouTube pages where your in-stream ads are served.
Of course, the most important part of this variant is the option to skip the video ad after five seconds. If they choose to skip and don’t interact with your ad, you don’t have to pay a dime. Assuming you uploaded the video to your YouTube channel, once the viewer watches for 30 seconds, a view is attributed to your view count.
2. Video Discovery Ads
TrueView Discovery ads are promoted throughout YouTube, appearing as an image thumbnail with up to three lines of text. These ads function as an entirely optional way for viewers to consume your brand content.
Discovery ads are visible on the YouTube homepage, at the top of a viewer’s YouTube search results, and on the suggested videos list on their video’s watch page. The best part? Your brand doesn’t spend a dime on these ads unless viewers interact with them.
That’s what makes this advertising approach so useful to brands and marketers. TrueView ads work to protect both the viewer’s time and your brand’s money.
3. Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads
If the TrueView approach just doesn’t interest your brand, YouTube has plenty of other options. Non-skippable ads function a bit differently on this platform. They might look just like skippable ads on the surface, but you’ll be limited to a 15-second ad window for non-skippable ads.
Beyond that, you’ll be dealing with a cost per thousand (CPM) payment structure, forcing you to pay for every thousand views.
The only scenario where you’d want to use something like this is when you’re dealing with a proven target audience or when your brand is looking to maximize its reach. Otherwise, there’s a strong chance you could waste time and money selling to the wrong prospects.
4. Bumper Ads
As you research YouTube ads, you’ll likely come across bumper ads and wonder what purpose they serve. What makes them different from the traditional non-skippable in-stream ad?
The most significant difference is the duration of your ad window. Instead of 20 seconds, bumper ads are expected to last less than six seconds.
Why would this distinction matter? Well, a viewer’s time and attention are valuable commodities. YouTube needs to protect their user experience, primarily by providing users with relevant information. YouTube limits these bumper ads to avoid frustrating viewers with non-skippable ads.
The key to making bumper ads work is creating something memorable. The format might not support long-form stories, but there are plenty of ways to portray your brand in five seconds.
5. Masthead Ads
Think of YouTube Masthead as YouTube’s premium advertising experience. Imagine your ad being the first thing viewers see whenever they use the platform. It’s a marketer’s dream come true, and with good reason.
Of course, there’s a reason you’ve never seen a small business on that masthead. That premium experience comes with a premium price tag. At about $2 million per day, masthead ads are extremely expensive and far beyond the average brand’s marketing budget.
Think of these like Super Bowl ads: impressive reach and traffic, but not reasonable for most marketers. YouTube’s other advertising formats are more cost-effective, easier to experiment with, and generally more valuable to your brand’s marketing journey.
What Makes YouTube Ads Unique?
With all the different variants and the added work of creating a compelling video ad, some marketers might wonder why they should use YouTube ads over social media ads. After all, that’s a ton of extra work when you could just make some simple visuals on Facebook ads.
While it’s certainly easier to make ads on social media, YouTube is a powerful tool for brands looking to promote high-quality video content to a massive audience. In fact, in a side-by-side comparison, an Agorapulse study found YouTube ads produced more views, more clicks, and higher conversions than Facebook Ads!
How to Decide Which Kind of YouTube Ad Is Right for Your Business
You’re ready to get started with your YouTube video ads. You’ve done all your audience and keyword research, and you know what the messaging should look like. Now you just need to pick an ad format.
When you’re first getting started, settling on a format to use can quickly become confusing. Should you use TrueView ads because you’re only charged per interaction? Are impressions more important or is traffic your only priority?
If you’re completely new to the world of YouTube ads, this breakdown of video ad formats by marketing objective exists to help you take that first step forward. Not to worry, your brand will start to identify what works well over time via testing and data collection.
Brand Consideration: Video Discovery Ads
One of the most compelling reasons to experiment with discovery ads is their potential as a brand consideration tool.
Instead of focusing on squeezing in a quick ad before someone else’s video, you can integrate your ad content into the YouTube search experience. This is where your keyword research can really shine. Create content that revolves around those low competition keywords with high volume.
When viewers click on your ad, they’ll be taken to your YouTube channel to watch that video. The goal here is less about CTAs and conversion and more about providing a closer look at your brand. If you have great instructional videos or interesting presentations, a discovery ad can work wonders for you.
Brand Awareness: Non-Skippable Ads
For the sake of clarity, let’s define a few terms before we move on. Brand awareness is about maximizing visibility for your brand. Ideally, it lays the foundation for effective lead generation.
The main objective of lead generation is to both identify likely prospects quickly and offer properly defined metrics. Both lead generation and brand awareness are powerful tools when used correctly, but it’s vital you understand when to best use them.
Think of brand awareness as the top of the marketing funnel, leading into quality lead generation.
If your primary marketing goal is casting a wide net, non-skippable ads can effectively raise awareness for your brand. These ads can appear pre-roll, mid-roll, or even post-roll. If you’re worried about placement, YouTube serves these ads whenever they believe viewers are most likely to watch.
TrueView in-stream ads are perfect for this because they’re designed to be skippable. They introduce a level of reliability to the marketing experience. This potential prospect found the first five seconds of your ad compelling and was willing to stick around.
My favorite part? If a viewer doesn’t want to consume your content, they can just leave, at no cost to you. If the viewer does want to interact, they’ve now provided you with some very valuable information. They’re genuinely interested in your brand!
Message Reinforcement: Bumper Ads
Let’s say you’ve already established an audience via digital media. You want to get a message out to them, maybe to announce your latest shoe release or phone launch. You need to maximize your budget, but you don’t really need to educate your target audience on the brand.
This is one of the scenarios where bumper ads perform well. The bumper ad doesn’t allow for much in terms of storytelling or education. What it can do is allow just enough time to hype up a new product or service.
Reach: Masthead Ads
We’ve already established that Masthead ads aren’t for the average small business. While they may not be a cost-effective way to market your brand, they do highlight a lesson about ad budgets in marketing: specifically, the concept of ROI.
On the surface, spending millions of dollars on a single ad can seem ridiculous. What if the messaging doesn’t land perfectly? What if you were wrong about the target audience’s pain points? It seems like such a massive risk. Still, massive brands are doing this regularly. Why?
Well, consider how these massive brands approach marketing. With millions on the line, their latest marketing campaign is composed of detailed, layered strategy with one element at its center: data, and lots of it.
This data, likely collected over several years, confirms they’ll receive a positive ROI from this investment. Where small brands see risk, massive brands see growth opportunities.
Of course, it’s not like only massive brands are entitled to that level of confidence. The commitment to making data-driven decisions is what elevates any marketing strategy.
Masthead ads aren’t impressive because they’re expensive. They’re impressive because they show that with enough data, even the biggest risks become manageable.
How to Create a Video Ad for YouTube
Let’s say you’ve never created a video ad before. All this video ad strategy sounds great, but it won’t make you a master visual content creator overnight. Fortunately, you don’t need to spend months learning how to edit to make compelling videos. When in doubt, a little external guidance goes a long way.
Google is hard at work getting YouTube Video Builder, their accessible video creation software, ready for the public. In the meantime, tools like Promo and Animoto walk you through the process of building strong video ads in minutes.
Measure the Success of Your YouTube Ads
YouTube ads track plenty of metrics for you automatically, everything from watch time to engaged-views data is available, if you’re interested.
Unfortunately, that much information can be overwhelming when you’re new to the platform. When you’re first getting started, focus on view rate for skippable ads. This is essentially your true engagement rate, determining how well you can turn viewers into interested prospects.
If your view rate is low, there are a few possibilities. Maybe your headline doesn’t draw people in. Maybe your video doesn’t capture the viewer’s attention quickly enough. Remember those first five seconds need to be compelling.
For non-skippable ads, the focus is still on engagement. The only difference is that you’ll use click-through rate (CTR) to determine whether your ad connects your target audience.
If your CTR is unusually low, there are two possibilities. Either the video is being delivered to the wrong audience or the video itself is not connecting with your target audience. I advise testing for both by experimenting with different target audiences and creating multiple videos.
How to Create YouTube Ads
Ready to get started? Here’s how to create your first YouTube ad.
Upload Your Video
Log into your brand’s YouTube account and click on the camcorder icon on the top-right of YouTube. Then, click “Upload Video.” From there, you’ll be taken to the upload window where you can now upload your video. Make sure you fill in title, description, and tag information.
Create Your Campaign
Sign in to your Google Ads Account and select “New Campaign.” You’ll see an option to choose a campaign goal, but just click on “create a campaign without a goal’s guidance” for now. You can now select a campaign type, so select “Video” or “Display,” based on your goals.
For our purposes, we’re going to focus on the “Video” option. At this point, you’ll be asked to select a campaign subtype. Select the most appropriate option and click “Continue.”
Configure Your Campaign
Now that you’ve created your campaign, it’s time to configure it properly. Start by giving your campaign a name for easy data collection.
Then, confirm your bid strategy, ad budget, and campaign duration. From there, also confirm your networks, locations, and languages.
Content exclusions are in this section as well. This determines where your ads are shown. If your brand is typically family-friendly, you’ll likely want to choose limited inventory. If your brand is more mature, expanded inventory could be a good fit. You can also exclude certain types of content and labels here.
Target Your Audience
When targeting your audience, start by defining their demographic information including age, gender, parental status, and household income. Google also lets you experiment with some more specific audiences like “bachelor’s degree” or “health care industry.”
Use keywords, topics, and placements to further narrow down your targeting.
Finalize Your Ad
Set your maximum bid. In the “Create your video ad” section, find your YouTube video and choose the appropriate video ad format (as listed in the above sections.)
Once your video ad format is selected, fill in the “Final URL” and “Display URL” sections. You can also include your call-to-action and your headline here. You can auto-generate a companion banner, or upload your own below. Once you’re ready, click “Create Campaign” and you’re all set!
Final Thoughts on Growing Your Business With YouTube Ads
Listen, I get it. Wrapping your head around YouTube ad creation can be a bit of a challenge at first.
The idea behind this guide is to arm you with a strong foundational understanding of how YouTube ads function, and how you can make your own.
Feel free to bookmark this guide if you ever need a refresher course, especially when it comes to campaign and video creation.
Fortunately, YouTube ads function just like any other digital marketing platform. Focus on your key metrics, test regularly, and above all else, respect the data. The path to consistent growth might not be glamorous, but it certainly gets results.
What digital marketing platform do you think is underutilized right now?
Whether you run a YouTube channel, blog, or social media empire, it pays to know how many subscribers you have on each platform. Not only do subscriber counts show you which channels are working and which aren’t, but you can also leverage them to build stronger and more profitable partnerships with brands.
Checking your subscriber count isn’t always easy, though. For every platform like YouTube that makes your following incredibly transparent, there’s a channel where it can be next to impossible to find your subscriber count.
Notice I said “next to impossible,” not “totally impossible.”
I’m here to explain how you can check your subscriber count on every major channel and social media platform.
Why Is It Important to Know How Many Subscribers You Have on Different Platforms?
It’s vital to know exactly how many subscribers you have on each platform for several reasons.
Let’s say you’re an up-and-coming marketing influencer. Part of your income will come from brands paying you for sponsorships and endorsements. Exactly how much they pay you hinges on how many subscribers and followers you have.
If you can show 50,000 people subscribe to your podcast, 100,000 people read your blog each month, and almost half a million people follow you on Instagram, you’ll be in a very strong position to command a big payday.
Your subscriber count can also help you make decisions on your way to becoming an influencer or growing your business’ following in general. Imagine you created accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest when you started your business and posted to all of them equally.
At some point, you need to focus your efforts on the platform where you see the most success. Your subscriber count is a great way to quickly separate the good social media platforms from the ineffective ones. After all, what’s the point of wasting time on Pinterest, where you have half a dozen followers, over Twitter, where you have several thousand?
It’s not just social media subscribers you should think about, though. Perhaps you have a blog that gets upwards of 100,000 visitors every month, but you only have a couple of hundred people on your email list. This indicates your email marketing strategy isn’t working, and you should take steps to change that.
How to Check Your Subscriber Count on YouTube
YouTube is one of the more transparent subscription-based platforms out there. Log in to your account, click on your profile photo, and head to your channel. You’ll see your subscriber count underneath your channel’s username.
You can also see your subscriber count by navigating to YouTube Studio. In addition to the overall numbers, you can find a list of your 100 most recent subscribers.
Visitors to your channel see a shortened version of your subscriber count rounded down to the nearest 10, 100, or 1000 subscribers. YouTube Studio provides a handy table showing how your subscriber count will be displayed to viewers.
YouTube also notifies you within YouTube Studio and via email when you hit certain subscriber milestones.
How to Check Your Subscriber Count on Your Podcast
Podcast success goes way beyond subscriber count, but the metric many podcasters want most is how many people subscribe to their podcast. This is often the hardest number to find.
Part of the problem is consumers can use dozens of different podcast apps to subscribe to shows rather than a single platform like YouTube. That means your podcast subscriber count will only ever be an estimate.
Most podcasting platforms, from the free to the pricey ones, provide some way to check your subscriber count. The method (and accuracy) varies by platform. The platform, however, should make it clear how to find this number. It’s usually to the side of where you post your podcast to begin with.
Some podcasting apps release subscriber numbers, though. You can end up with a bit more accuracy this way, but it takes more legwork on your part.
A couple of these are Podcast Addict and Castbox, though both account for about two percent of the market. Multiplying either subscriber count by 50 could give you a vague idea of how many subscribers you have in total, but it won’t give you the full picture.
A final suggestion from The Podcast Host is to publish a new episode and hold back from promoting it on social media, email, or anywhere else. In theory, any downloads occurring within about 24 hours of your show being posted are automatic downloads from subscribers; so if you have 50 downloads within a day of posting your episode, you likely have around 50 subscribers.
How to Check Your Subscriber Count on Social Media
Most social media platforms make your number of subscribers readily available, so finding them is simply a matter of knowing where to look.
Here’s how you can find your subscribers on all of the major social media platforms.
Facebook
How you check your follower count on Facebook will depend on whether you have a private user account or a business page.
Private users can allow people to follow them by turning on public posts and allowing people who aren’t their friends to follow them. This is an excellent option for bloggers and public figures who don’t want to have a private and a business Facebook account.
If this is you, head to the “Friends” tab on your profile page and click the “Followers” sub-tab. This will show you a full list of followers. You can see the total figure even faster by reading the “Intro” section on your profile page.
Facebook Business Page owners will need to navigate to their page, click on the “More” tab and then “Community” in the dropdown menu. Here you can find your total follower count, what your followers have posted on your page, and any posts where your business page was tagged.
Instagram
Instagram puts your number of followers front and center. At the top of your profile, you can see how many people you’re following and how many people follow you. Once you get over 10,000 followers, the number will be rounded down to the nearest 100 or 1000 followers.
If you want to get an exact subscriber count, use Instagram’s Insights tool. Navigate to that section on the app and click on “Audience” to see an exact follower count and a growth comparison with the previous week.
Twitter
If you have fewer than 10,000 followers on Twitter, you can see exactly how many people follow you by looking at your profile page. If your follower count is higher than that, Twitter rounds the nearest one hundred followers.
To find the exact subscriber count on Twitter, head to the Analytics section and hover your mouse over the subscriber number in the top right-hand corner. An exact count will appear.
Snapchat
The only way to see your subscriber count on Snapchat is to have a Public Profile. Not only will you be able to see your subscriber count on the back-end of the platform, but you’ll also have the option to display your follower count publicly.
TikTok
You need a Pro account to check your subscriber count on TikTok. With this kind of account set up, head to the “Settings” menu and click on “Analytics.” This shows a graph with how many video views you received over the last 28 days and how many followers you have.
Note: You need to wait seven days after creating a TikTok Pro account before analytics data becomes available.
LinkedIn
When I talk about subscribers on LinkedIn, I don’t mean the number of connections you have. I’m talking about the number of followers you have.
To see how many followers you have, sign into your account and scroll down to find the “Activity” section. There you can see your exact number of followers.
Pinterest
Track your Pinterest subscriber count on your Analytics dashboard. In addition to your follower count, you can see engagement metrics, popular pins by your fans, referral traffic, other top influencers, and competitor data.
How to Check Your Blog Subscriber Count
People don’t subscribe to blogs in the same way they subscribe to YouTube channels or podcasts. That makes coming up with a subscriber number a little trickier. Here’s what you can do to estimate your subscribers.
Create an email newsletter and see how many people sign up.
Having an email newsletter is probably the best way to gauge how many people “subscribe” to your blog. However, you need to ask people to enter their email addresses without giving them anything other than your updates in return, as Ahrefs does, for example.
If you offer them something like a discount on a product you sell, you can’t prove they actually read your blog every week—they may immediately stop reading after they get their discount.
If you already have an email newsletter, count your subscribers.
Checking your blog subscriber count can be as simple as opening up your email marketing platform and seeing how many people you have on your email marketing list.
If you don’t have or want to send an email newsletter, use Google Analytics.
If you don’t think your email list accurately depicts your subscriber numbers, you can use a Google Analytics report to estimate the subscribers you have. Navigate to the “Audience” tab, click on the “Behavior” dropdown menu, and choose “New vs Returning.” This will give you a chart that separates new users from returning visitors. I’d recommend taking the data over the last 30 days to get an accurate idea of your subscriber count.
Conclusion
Your subscriber count is certainly worth knowing, but it isn’t the end-all, be-all. Measuring the engagement on your website, YouTube, and social channels is also an effective way to show brands and other potential partners how valuable your following is.
If you’re still feeling a bit stuck, whether with subscribers or engagement, that’s okay—there are a lot of metrics to take into consideration. For some extra help, check out my guide on how to make social media marketing work for you.
On which platform do you have the most subscribers?
If you’re looking to get into video marketing, there’s no better channel than YouTube. They’re the second most visited website on the entire internet, with over 2 billion users, have virtually no competitors, and consumers are increasingly spending more time watching more online videos.
The good news is you don’t need to flood thousands of dollars in YouTube advertising. If you create a good channel that constantly puts out quality content that people want, you’ll get the attention and eyeballs you need to drive customer acquisition through YouTube.
Here’s how to do just that.
Part 1: Create a Great Channel Layout & Organize Your Youtube Content
This blog post won’t get into the weeds of how to upload a profile picture, cover image, or the steps to upload a video. YouTube already has those steps. It’s easy, and you don’t need any instructions from me.
I’m going to use this first part of the guide to talk about why you need a great channel layout.
The first step to YouTube marketing is to have a great channel layout. When people come to your channel, they need to know what you’re about and what types of videos you have.
Here’s how my channel looks:
My value proposition and color scheme are simple and match my website. The CTA says how often I publish new videos. My trailer is like an extension of the value prop.
People want to learn SEO and social media marketing from me. So, I’ve created a ton of videos on those topics and organized them into different sections:
This organization makes it easy for people to get an idea of what types of content I publish. If you have a lot of videos, I’d recommend you do the same.
Create Regular YouTube Video Content
Consistently updating your channel with content will keep your channel feed active, increase your presence on YouTube, and help you build an audience.
You should aim for a minimum of one video per week, but the right amount of content depends on your audience, your goals, and your content.
One simple way to create a steady stream of content is to produce shorter versions of long-form content. Build a theme around a topic and then post bite-size versions of the theme on a weekly basis. This will keep your audience engaged and coming back for more.
How to Write a Great YouTube Title
This is one area you cannot ignore. Titles are very important in YouTube. No matter how great your video content, it won’t matter if you can’t get anyone to actually click on your video in the first place.
There’s a few different tactics I see marketers and creators on YouTube using.
The first one is the sports gossip outlet TMZ Sports. They’re not marketers, but they know how to get attention, and that’s important for marketers. Let’s see if you can find a trend in their titles:
Business Insider follows a similar formula. Let’s see some examples from their YouTube channel:
What TMZ Sports and Business Insider essentially do is write half a sentence and leaves it as a “….”. This means that if you want to find who said what or what the kids should, you’ll have to click on the video to find out.
None of these titles are mistakes. They are intentionally written this way to get you to click.
Is it clickbaiting?
A little bit. But you shouldn’t completely avoid clickbait, because some of it works.
Here’s how to do it yourself.
YouTube’s title character limit is 100, but right around 50-55 characters is where they start to cut off the text on the desktop. This is where you write your cliffhanger. Look what TMZ Sports does when they write their titles.
If I had a video about my SEO hacks, I may write a title like this:
Search Engine Optimization | These four SEO hacks will skyrocket your traffic
The part in italics is what will show as the title on YouTube. You see that I leave a cliffhanger that will make people want to click. I also put in the keywords search engine optimization and SEO in there to make it clear what the video is about.
I’d then put the Google logo in the thumbnail to catch the eye and make sure people know it’s about Google SEO.
Keywords are the other important aspect of YouTube SEO. You need to make sure you put those keywords in your title so it attracts the right audience. Keywords like social media marketing, search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization, ROI, and blogging are all keywords you’ll find me using. If you know your niche, you’ll know what keywords you need to use.
Now that we have the title, let’s move onto the visual title – the thumbnail.
Design The Right YouTube Thumbnails
Don’t skip this part. Choosing your YouTube thumbnail is just as, if not more, important than crafting a great title.
Let’s first go through a couple of the goofy hacks marketers use on their thumbnails.
Use Arrows and Circles
Marketers are increasingly using red arrows and circles in their YouTube thumbnails and their social graph images. Here’s what I mean:
There is clearly no need for a red arrow here. So why do they add it? Because it draws eyeballs and clicks.
I’ve used this tactic as well.
You may want to give it a shot and see if it increases your views!
Include Your Logo to Boost Brand Awareness
Here’s another hack that marketers like to use: putting your logo on the thumbnail. That way, even if no one clicks your video, you’re still drawing awareness and spreading your brand.
CNN puts its logo on every thumbnail:
Look how big that logo is. Does it need to be that big? Of course not, but it spreads the CNN brand, even to people who won’t click and watch the video.
I do the same thing, but instead of a logo, I use my face and include my brand colors.
I don’t need to put my face on this thumbnail, but it helps my fans recognize me. And if people aren’t familiar with me, they’ll see the title of this video and wonder who the heck that guy is and may click and video and be introduced.
Just remember that viewers shouldn’t feel like they’ve been tricked into viewing your video. Your thumbnail needs to accurately represent the content of your video.
Cross-Promote with Other Channels
To increase your reach on YouTube, make it a priority to identify and reach out to other similar channels to cross-promote or collaborate in a mutually beneficial manner.
This doesn’t mean that you need a huge following on YouTube already. You can use your email list, social following, or even embed videos on your website to drive traffic.
We’ve covered how to get people to click on your videos and cross-promoting. Now let’s go on to another facet of marketing on YouTube, which covers optimizing your videos for YouTube search.
Here’s how to put your best foot forward to get near the top of YouTube’s search results (without having to pay for it):
Writing Great Descriptions
YouTube has a great section detailing how marketers and creators can write great descriptions. I’d recommend you take a look at that if you need a full guide.
The part that I want to emphasize is the importance of using keywords early in your description. Here are the keywords I put in one of my videos:
When you know what keywords you’re trying to rank well for, you can put those in the title and description. You can also mention those keywords in the video and put those in your closed captions.
Just never force anything and keyword stuff. It just makes you look spammy and untrustworthy.
Your descriptions should be at least one paragraph. YouTube gives you 5000 characters to write. Don’t be bashful. Use as much of it as you need to.
I use my description as a transcript. But I also put links to my blog and social above the fold. So even if people don’t read the entire description, they still see links to read my blog or get in contact with my social:
Write descriptions with keywords. Make it easy for people to find more information about you.
Add Closed Captions on Videos
Ever remembered a great line from a TV show, typed it into Google or YouTube, and found the exact clip on YouTube?
If that great line wasn’t in the title or the description, then you found that because the search engines used the captions to find the video.
That alone should convince you that you need to have captions available for your videos.
The key to optimizing your tags is to place your important terms first. Use quotes for keyword phrases such as “video production” and provide a blend of common and long-tail keywords.
You want to provide enough tags to thoroughly and accurately describe your video. Think about what your potential viewer may be searching for on YouTube.
Drive Comments, Likes, and Subscriptions
When watching a video on YouTube, how often near the end of the video do you hear the phrase, “If you liked this video please give it a thumbs up or make a comment”.
That’s because more likes and comments signal to YouTube that the video is getting audience engagement. People are talking about it and rating it. It struck a chord with them.
As a result, YouTube will rank it higher in their search results.
Another thing that will get a higher ranking is a large number of people subscribing to your channel, and most good YouTube creators and marketers know this. That’s why they ask you to subscribe.
I could write an entire article on getting more YouTube subscriptions. And fortunately, I have. Take a look if you want more subscribers.
Part Three: How to Produce a Great YouTube Video
This is the last part of this blog post, but you should treat it as the most important part of YouTube marketing.
Create a Great Opening and Sustain Viewer Attention
If you’re relatively unknown, then the first few seconds of a video are absolutely crucial to get exactly right. They “hook” the viewer in so they want to watch your entire video.
I’m sure you’ve all seen some ads from Tai Lopez. But have you actually watched them to truly understand what makes him such a great creator?
This was one of Tai’s ads:
When creating an ad, you have five seconds to hook the viewer in so they watch more of your video. You see what Tai Lopez does? The background is him standing in a mansion, and the first thing he says is that he’s going to give you a tour of his mansion.
Then he introduces himself. To keep you watching, he gives you a video tour of the mansion while he talks about himself and what he offers. This is great marketing that few people have done.
Who would want to click “Skip Ad” on this video?
Can you imagine if he was sitting at a desk with a white wall as his background giving the same talk? No one would watch it.
Your videos should work the same way. Even if they aren’t ads, you should treat it them as such. Hook the viewer in with visuals and a few great opening lines. Then keep them entertained. Watch what I do in this video:
My hook comes in with high energy naming companies I’ve ghost-written for. The rest of my intro (which is only 15 seconds) outlines what the video is about and why you can benefit by watching the rest of my presentation.
Create Calls to Action
The key to a successful marketing campaign, even on YouTube, is creating clear and concise calls to action. Depending on the message, you can use the beginning, middle, or end of a video to direct the actions of your viewers.
Having too many prompts can cause confusion, so keep your CTAs minimal and simple. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for viewers to perform an action.
Here are a few important actions to use on your videos:
Subscribe: Give your viewer a reason to subscribe (e.g., new videos every week or never missing an episode).
Like / Add to Favorites / Share: Ask your viewers to “like,” “favorite,” and “share” the video so your content appears in more places across YouTube. You’ll be amazed at the reaction you get when you simply ask for it.
Comments: Encourage your audience to participate by asking a specific question or requesting a topic they’d like to see covered in an upcoming video.
Video Graphics: Create a video “end slate” that appears at the end of the video to direct viewers to your website.
How to Grow Your YouTube Channel
Want to grow your business with YouTube? Here’s a complete guide to building a successful YouTube channel to market your business.
Create a great channel layout.
Use branded images, a video trailer, and organize videos by topics.
Create regular YouTube content.
Aim for a minimum of one video per week, but the right amount of content depends on your audience, your goals, and your content.
Write great YouTube titles.
Write a cliffhanger, but make sure to include key terms.
Design the right thumbnails.
Use arrows and circles to draw attention to your video and consider including a logo to stand out.
Cross-promote your channel on other platforms
Make it a priority to identify and reach out to other similar channels to cross-promote or collaborate in a mutually beneficial manner.
Get your YouTube SEO right.
Use your title and description to target important key terms and increase your visibility.
Add close captions to videos.
Ever remembered a great line from a TV show, typed it into Google or YouTube, and found the exact clip on YouTube? If that great line wasn’t in the title or the description, then you found that because the search engines used the captions to find the video.
Optimize YouTube tags.
The key to optimizing your tags is to place your important terms first. Use quotes for keyword phrases such as “video production” and provide a blend of common and long-tail keywords.
Ask for comments, likes, and subscriptions
More likes and comments signals to YouTube that the video is getting audience engagement, and YouTube will rank it higher in their search results.
Create a great opening.
The first few seconds of a video are absolutely crucial to get exactly right. They “hook” the viewer in so that they want to watch your entire video.
Create calls to action.
Having too many prompts can cause confusion, so keep your CTAs minimal and simple. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for viewers to perform an action.
Conclusion
Congratulations, you made it all the way through this massive guide. Now you are set to become the next YouTube star! Or, at the very least, build a relationship with your target audience through this massively popular platform.
Apply the principles outlined here and grow your presence on YouTube. Remember, it may not work on the first try, but continuing to produce high-quality content on YouTube can deliver amazing results.
Every now and then Google and YouTube provide us with a little insight into what they’re thinking. This small glimmer of hope shows us that we, too, can have success on the platform with the right steps. The YouTube Measurement Program is one of these little glimmers. YTMP provides a clear list of all the …
Marketers who use YouTube are often in search of tactics for generating more views for their videos. While not the only metric that determines the success of a YouTube marketing campaign, generating a decent number of views for your videos is something that you should definitely try to achieve on this social media platform. After … Continue reading How to Get More YouTube Views
Marketers who use YouTube are often in search of tactics for generating more views for their videos.
While not the only metric that determines the success of a YouTube marketing campaign, generating a decent number of views for your videos is something that you should definitely try to achieve on this social media platform.
After all, what’s the point of uploading a video, if nobody is going to watch it, right? Especially your target audience.
So, if your videos aren’t getting enough views, there’s a good chance that you’re missing something, as competition isn’t at peak levels on this media platform just yet.
In this post, we’re going to take a look at tactics that you can use in order to generate more views for your YouTube videos.
We’ll cover some of the fundamentals that will help you over the long term, but also some unique tactics that you can put into action that will help generate quicker results with your target audience.
By the end of this post, you’ll have a high level of confidence, when it comes to knowing what needs to be done in order to generate more views for your YouTube videos.
Let’s begin!
Great Video Content Gets More YouTube Views
This might sound obvious, but it’s something a lot of people ignore in social media.
If you want your videos to get more views and greater search results, you first and foremost absolutely must create great content.
If you can do that, generating more views for your videos will be a heck of a lot easier.
Go over to InVideo and check out all of the different solutions they offer for people looking to quickly and easily edit amazing videos. You don’t need to have experience as a video editor in order to leverage their tool. It’s easy to use and should be part of any marketer’s arsenal of tools.
People will share your video content on social networks if it is good, so your viewers will end up doing a lot of the promotional work for you.
Since I don’t know your business or your audience – I can’t tell you exactly what you should be doing, in order to create great content.
What I can tell you is this – great content is often content that provides exceptional levels of value.
It’s important that you don’t get caught up in the wrong things, when looking to create great content in getting more YouTube views.
People often worry about content length and production quality.
Sure, content length might matter, to a certain extent. But, are you really going to stop watching a 1-hour video, if it’s providing immense value?
Value trumps everything for search results, especially high production quality.
I’m sure that you’ve experienced this for yourself – where you’ve watched a long YouTube video that wasn’t overly produced, right to the end, because it was so informative.
You may have even done that for a webinar – which, in a sense, is similar.
In fact, the video below ranks near the top in YouTube search results for ‘how to make a website.’
It is highly rated, and get this… it’s over 2 hours and 30 minutes long!
It’s not overly produced, it’s just high value that meets the need of its target audience.
Here is its ranking.
If you look above it, you’ll notice that the other video is also very long.
So remember, content length isn’t something that you should obsess over on this social network.
The same goes for the production value of a video.
YouTube Views Don’t Depend on Video Production
More and more marketing companies are investing in YouTube, which means that there are many highly produced videos out there, but you don’t necessarily have to join that pack just yet.
YouTube is a forgiving media site if your content is good.
When your videos start to get some traction, then think about investing in fancy production and camera equipment to help you get more YouTube views.
To begin with, just make sure that you cover the basics with this social media platform.
If you’re creating a ‘talking head’ video – make sure that everything is well lit and that the audio is clear.
If you’re creating a screen capture video, ensure that the resolution is high and the audio is easy to hear.
If you’re creating a slideshow, create something simple and visually engaging. Use strong images and minimal text on your slides. You can use a tool, like Haiku Deck, for this. A custom thumbnail also helps people remember your brand.
For More YouTube Views, Focus on Value Above All Else
Remember – providing value should be your guiding principle.
If you want to learn how to provide value, you have to learn more about your audience – and, more specifically, what they like.
If you want to learn what content your audience likes, then take a look at the existing content that belongs to your niche.
There are two approaches you can take.
The first is to take a look at blog posts that have done well in your niche.Then, create incredibly informative videos, based on those blog post topics.
Or, you can just take a look at other YouTube videos that have done well in your niche and create better videos that provide more value and deeper levels of insight.
If you’re an expert in your niche, then it shouldn’t be hard to create better videos, when using other videos as inspiration.
If you find yourself struggling, however, just take a moment to assess what could have been done to improve the other video.
Did it ignore something that was actually important?
Did the video fail to fully explain certain sections?
Did the video fail to provide actual results/case study information?
Was the pace too slow –or was it too fast?
Was there too much information on the screen – or not enough?
Could diagrams have been used to better illustrate a point?
Maybe some data could have been used?
You may even want to review the comments about that video. See if there’s anything that the audience felt was missing.
Say I’m in the business of teaching people ‘how to build a pond,’ or building it for them and I’m looking to do some content marketing.
I can just type ‘how to build a pond,’ into the ‘YouTube Search box.’ Then. I’m presented with content ideas.
Not all of the ideas are relevant, so I might select the first option and see what else comes up as a result of ‘Autosuggest.’
If I go with the option of ‘how to build a pond in your backyard,’ I’m presented with some helpful ideas.
I can then repeat that process, using other keywords, if I want to come up with even more video ideas.
It might also be a good idea to cycle through the alphabet, after having chosen a ‘base’ keyword.
So, this time, I type in ‘how to build a pond a’
And, as you can see, there are plenty of video ideas here that look relevant. I can use those to create super niche video content that will resonate with a certain demographic in the social media platform.
If you have an existing audience on YouTube, consider asking your audience what they’d like you to cover next.
More often than not, your audience will provide you with ideas that you can use.
The great thing about these video ideas is that by acting on them, you can be sure that there will be an audience for them.
If you have done a good job with creating great content that meets people’s needs, you’ll find that organic views will be easier to come by.
Remember, YouTube is a media site that wants to improve the user experience.
The best way that they can do that is by presenting their audience with content that is great.
If your content is great, it will achieve an increased number of comments, shares and positive ratings.
Following all of that, there’s a good chance it will rank higher in search results. There’s no official word on this, but it’s definitely part of the mix.
After all, as mentioned by Brian Dean, YouTube doesn’t have to rely entirely on Backlinks to rank videos in the YouTube Search engine – they also have a ton of detailed user experience data to help them.
This user experience data is arguably much more powerful in letting YouTube know where it should be ranking content.
So, if your videos produce a great user experience, there’s a good chance that they will perform better in the rankings, too.
Optimize Your YouTube Video to Get More YouTube Views
Optimizing your video can help make it so that your video appears when it should and where it should. This includes the search listings and the ‘related video’ suggestions.
If you want to optimize your video, there are four things that you must take care of.
Title
Tags
Description
Thumbnail
It’s easy to over-complicate this and over analyze everything. Try to keep it simple.
Write Better YouTube Titles
For the title, it’s important that you don’t try and make it like ‘clickbait.’
If you’ve created your video around a keyword, make sure that your title clearly explains that your video covers the keyword in question.
So, if I created a video, based on the keyword ‘how to bake a chocolate cake for beginners,’ my title might be…
How to Bake a Chocolate Cake for Beginners – Spent $5 and 5 Minutes cleanup
Note: If you want to write great titles, you might want to work out what it is that your audience doesn’t like or fears, in relation to the topic in question.
In the example above, people might worry that it costs a lot to bake a cake and that cleaning up is a pain. If I address that in the title, the video then becomes that much more enticing.
Use YouTube Tags
For the tags, provide some keywords that relate to the topic of your video.
Try not to use more than 10-12 tags with this media site. You’ll lose your target audience and dilute search results data.
Picking the right tags will help your video appear in the ‘suggested videos’ section when someone is watching a related video.
Now, let’s take a look at the description.
Create an Accurate, Optimized YouTube Description
When writing the description, it’s important that you don’t try to ‘outsmart’ Google. Don’t keyword stuff and don’t rely on any ‘tricks,’ that you might come across.
You could end up over-optimizing your video, which can have the opposite effect.
Your aim with the description is to clearly describe what the video is about and what people will learn as a result of watching it.
If you look at the top results returned for a YouTube video search, you’ll notice that there will be a wide variation, in terms of what the descriptions look like.
That’s because, as mentioned above, user experience also plays a big role in ranking the video. So, while your description is important, don’t get too stressed out about getting it ‘right.’
That being said, if you absolutely need a checklist for writing your descriptions, here’s one that you can use, courtesy of Brian Dean.
Here’s what an example description looks like.
But, as I said, the top-ranking videos all tend to have varying styles that they use for their description. You don’t necessarily have to follow what is above.
Just provide the story behind your video, what it covers, and what people will learn as a result of watching.
Note: If you want to do something that will improve user experience, consider providing ‘timestamps’ in your description, so that people can quickly get to interesting sections of a video.
YouTube Thumbnail Optimization
For the thumbnail, there are a number of approaches that you can take. I’ve covered how you can create engaging YouTube thumbnails in this post. A custom thumbnail becomes part of your media platform branding.
For the most part, you can experiment with the following.
Use images of people in your custom thumbnail
Edit your thumbnail to include text overlay, using a keyword, based on the topic your video covers
Include an image that reveals an interesting section of the video – for example, the end result of a ‘how-to video.’
You will tend to find that you’re able to generate the best results when you combine some of the above.
Here’s an example of how you can use an interesting image and relevant text overlay.
As you can see, the custom thumbnail isn’t overly dramatic. It includes some text, related to the video keyword and an image of an interesting section of the video.
Here’s an example of using the image of a person, with text overlay and even possibly the ‘end result’ that is to be achieved, too.
You’ll want to experiment here, of course. But, those two examples and the tips provided should be enough to let you know what tends to work well.
Experiment With Ads to Drive YouTube Views
Ads might sound like a little bit of a cop-out here. I get it; you might not want to pay to play the YouTube view game.
Running YouTube Ads is definitely one of the best ways to generate the right kind of views for your videos.
YouTube Adslets you target your ideal audience and make sure they find out about your video.
It takes a lot of the guesswork out of the whole process on this social media platform.
Running ads allows you to get some real-time feedback, in terms of how good your video is, speeding the process of working out whether or not you have an engaging video on your hands.
If you find that people are watching your video to the end and sharing it a lot, then you know you’re on the right track, in terms of the strategy that you’re using to actually create videos.
Enter in a keyword that explains what your video covers. Then, write down other relevant keywords that are provided by ‘autosuggest.’
As you can see below, if I enter ‘how to bake a cake,’ I’m presented with relevant keywords worth targeting.
I’ve highlighted some that are potentially worth my while.
Note: The assumption here is that I’m teaching people how to bake a simple cake. That is why I’ve chosen those somewhat basic keywords.
If I want even more relevant keywords to target, I just select one of the ideal keywords and then press the ‘spacebar.’
And, I’m presented with even more keywords to target.
As I mentioned above, you can also cycle through the alphabet to find other relevant keywords.
Then, I just need to note these keywords in a Google Doc and input them, when setting up my ad targeting.
Promote Your YouTube Video Everywhere
Just because you’ve created a YouTube video doesn’t mean that you can now only promote on YouTube.
Post links for your YouTube content to all of your other digital assets, including your email list or your Facebook page, and other social media sites.
If you know of some influencers who might find your video useful, you may even want to let them know, via email, that you’ve created something that they might enjoy.
Don’t be afraid to let the world know that you’ve got something new to offer.
Increase YouTube Views By Building a Subscriber Base
You’ll also want to focus on building a subscriber base for getting more YouTube views on future content.
If you can get subscribers, your videos will automatically get a good chunk of views, as soon as you post them. If these views represent a good user experience, your video might also do a better job at ranking, too.
Aside from creating good content, there are some key steps that you can take, to get more subscribers.
Mention, at the beginning and end of your video, that subscribing helps get the video out to more people in your social network.
By actually saying it, people may be more inclined to take action.
You can also make an effort to create content consistently.
Creating more videos will ensure there are more ways for your content to be found. This, of course, can help improve your subscriber count.
It also gives people a reason to become subscribers, as they’ll want to know when you publish new content.
Note: If you can create ‘Evergreen content,’ then the content you create will pay dividends for a long time, as it will still be relevant for people in the future.
This means that the video will drive subscribes, long after its creation.
Conclusion
For many, getting more YouTube views sounds complex and obscure.
Hopefully, you now have a better sense of how to get more viewers to your videos.
There are many avenues that you can go down. The most important step is to create good quality content about topics important to your viewers.
If you can take care of that, everything else you do to get more Youtube views will be much more effective.
Do you have any tips when it comes to generating more YouTube views? Share what works for you in the comments section.
In the next few sections, I’ll explain what YouTube analytics is all about, how to access it, what metrics you need to track, and how to leverage this information for better ROI.
What Is YouTube Analytics?
YouTube analytics is the native analytics platform on the site, providing access to vital metrics about video performance including watch time, viewer demographics, traffic sources, impressions, and more.
What is the point of all this information?
This data is here to help you understand what type of content your audience is interested in so you can improve your YouTube strategy.
If you hate wading through data, you’ll be happy to know YouTube analytics is pretty straightforward.
Instead of overwhelming yourself with a ton of information, you can choose to focus on the data that matters most to your brand.
Why Is YouTube Analytics Important?
Simply put, knowing about your YouTube videos’ performance levels is vital to understanding how effective your efforts have been. When you know that, you can create more of the content your viewers love.
This fact is of particular importance if your products appeal to this demographic.
But YouTube isn’t just for teens—people of all ages and demographics watch more than a billion hours of YouTube videos every day.
How to Access YouTube Analytics
Ready to dig into the data? Here’s how to access YouTube analytics.
From the YouTube homepage, navigate to the top right corner, where you see your account’s avatar.
Click on the image, and you’ll see a drop-down list of account options.
Select “YouTube Studio.”
On the next page, you’ll see the Studio dashboard.
There’s a sidebar on the left, which allows you to access different parts of your account.
Click “Analytics,” which takes you to an overview of your YouTube channel’s performance.
The overview page provides details like views, watch time, subscribers, estimated revenue, and real-time reporting.
You’ll also see four primary analytics tabs:
Reach
Engagement
Audience
Revenue
The statistics you see here are for the last 28 days. That’s YouTube’s default setting.
However, you can view metrics for a different period by clicking on the drop-down on your screen’s top right corner.
What if you want to see how well your videos have performed within 60 minutes or 48 hours of hitting the publish button?
The real-time report provides these details.
YouTube has information in place to help you understand the metrics, even if you’re a beginner.
All you have to do is hover over your chosen metric or click the “i” in a circle appearing near the metric’s name.
Here’s an example:
If you want to understand the metrics further, the “Learn More” link at the bottom of the box comes in handy.
In addition to overall channel metrics, you can also view individual videos’ metrics.
To access video metrics, click on any video from the overview page.
Click on “See More” to dive deeper into the analytics of a specific video.
Alternatively, you could click “Advanced Mode” at the top right corner.
Want to see how two videos performed against each other?
The comparison feature allows you to compare two videos, one video against itself over different periods, or a video with a group of other videos.
If the video is part of a series, you can discover how it compares to the others.
Additionally, you can discover if there is a difference in seasonal video performance.
To access this feature, click “Compare to” at the top right corner of the page.
Here, you can select the periods, video, or group to compare.
Another useful option is to add filters to your metrics.
You can find the filter option beneath the video’s title in the upper left, underneath the image from your video.
Clicking the “+” icon at the top of the table of metrics brings up a big list of metrics you can check out.
Want to save or share your data? You can easily export it for further analysis.
To do this, navigate to the top right corner of the page you want to export and click the download icon—a downward-facing arrow with a line beneath it.
This will bring up two options—Google Sheets and .csv—so you can choose the format you prefer.
Vital Metrics to Track on YouTube Analytics
It’s easy to get lost in the sea of data on various marketing platforms. There’s so much information, and it’s understandable if you get overwhelmed by all the filters, options, and tools.
And the same applies to YouTube analytics.
Don’t worry, though: YouTube analytics is comparatively easy to use.
Keep in mind you only need to view metrics answering a specific question you have.
These questions might include:
How do viewers engage with our videos?
When do they exit the videos?
Which videos convert the most viewers to subscribers?
Do our YouTube audience demographics match with our buyer personas?
With these and more questions in mind, it should become easier to view the metrics you need.
Below, I’ll share seven essential metrics in YouTube Analytics and insights you may derive from them.
1. Demographics
When creating a video, you need to know who you’re targeting—and who’s watching.
YouTube’s demographics data reveals details like the top countries and cities your viewers are watching from, viewers’ ages and genders, the times and days they most often watch videos, and more.
Location
If you have many viewers from a particular country or city, and your brand allows for this, you could tailor content to those locations. If you’re advertising a local product, but your videos aren’t generally being viewed locally, it may be time to investigate your keywords.
Age and Gender
Knowing who your audience is can help you create relevant and appropriate content. After all, you wouldn’t want to produce R-rated content if your viewers are typically 13-17!
Furthermore, the times and days viewers are on YouTube provides insights into when you should publish new videos.
If you run YouTube ads, having demographics information can also improve your ability to target content accordingly.
Finally, you can compare your demographics data to your buyer persona.
Do they match?
If so, great! If not, will you change your buyer persona or your content?
2. Traffic Source Types
Traffic source types indicate where viewers find your videos, such as YouTube search, Suggested videos, Channel pages, direct visits, views from external sources, and others.
In addition, you’ll see how viewers from each source behave.
These metrics provide information about the sources responsible for your video views. For example, you might find your blog drives a ton of traffic to YouTube, which means you may want to embed more videos in blog posts.
For more details about how people found you, you can click on each source. For instance, clicking on “YouTube search” will show you what keywords led users to your videos.
You can also see which sources contributed little to your views and try to figure out how to boost those areas.
For example, a low number of views from YouTube search might mean you need to improve your YouTube SEO.
Or, a small number of views from Suggested videos might indicate you need to engage your audience better. Higher engagement means YouTube may see your videos as valuable and suggest them to people viewing similar content.
There are even more insights to uncover once you dig into the data.
3. Watch Time
Getting a lot of YouTube views is good, but getting a high watch time is even better. “Watch time” is how long users spend watching your videos.
YouTube’s algorithm uses this metric to help it understand your content’s quality. This means a long watch time improves your chances of showing up as suggested videos and on search pages.
You can analyze each video’s watch time and compare it to the video’s length.
What types of videos have high watch times? What types have low watch times? Why do you think that is?
Considering the differences between videos with high and low watch times can help you create better content in the future.
You should also examine videos with a high watch time at a particular time of year. This could be a seasonal video—and if it did well, consider creating a similar video next year.
4. Subscribers
When a viewer clicks the “Subscribe” button, they’re confirming their interest in your content. They’re then more likely to see when you post new videos—and watch them.
YouTube Analytics displays the number of subscribers you’ve gained and lost during a given period.
You’ll also see which videos contributed to your subscribers count.
Which videos are responsible for a high number of subscribers gained? Which ones are responsible for subscribers lost?
Analyzing these changes can help you improve the content you create. For example, if longer videos tend to drive more subscribers, then you should focus on longer videos
You can also view subscription sources, which tells you where subscribers found your content.
There’s another way to understand what drives subscribers—comparing them with non-subscribers.
For example, you can compare these two audiences on metrics such as watch time, including the time spent viewing and what percentage of the video they watched.
Thirty seconds means something very different on a 45-second video than it does on a 45-minute video!
In the image above, there’s an anomaly. You see, non-subscribers are outnumbering subscribers significantly. This data indicates a need for further investigation—perhaps check their traffic sources.
5. Top Videos By End Screen
If you’ve ever watched YouTube, you know many videos end with images of other videos to watch. Those images are there to entice users to keep watching.
The metric related to this tells you which end screens accounted for the most clicks.
By clicking on “See More” in the engagement tab, you’ll see details such as end screen elements shown, end screen element clicks, and clicks per end screen element.
As a result, you can identify videos that keep viewers watching.
Why is a specific end screen more effective than another? Once you figure this out, apply the insights to other videos.
6. Top Cards
Card elements are interactive and allow you to promote other YouTube videos or links to your website. You can see an example in the image below—the “Suggested” bar is a card element.
Card element metrics show you details such as card clicks, cards shown, clicks per card, and more.
From these numbers, you’ll discover which cards were most effective at converting viewers.
Ask these questions:
What makes these cards effective?
Are cards more effective on some videos than others?
At what time are cards most effective in a video?
What makes some card teasers effective?
By diving deeper into these metrics, you can find answers to these critical questions.
7. Revenue
YouTube ads are essential to revenue. However, to run YouTube ads, you need at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. Focus on making great content using your metrics as a guide to get to these numbers.
You can see an example of an ad overlaying a YouTube video below.
If you’re running ads as part of the YouTube Partners Program already—or when you get to that point—the revenue section of analytics is crucial.
Here, you’ll find details such as your revenue sources, top-earning videos, ad types, monthly estimated revenue, YouTube Premium revenue, and more.
What are the top-earning videos? How are they different from the low earners?
You may get answers to these questions and more by diving deeply into revenue analytics.
All that said, you don’t have to monetize your channel through ads—I don’t do this myself. Instead, I use YouTube for branding, education, and to drive traffic to other resources.
Other YouTube Analytics Tools
YouTube analytics provides a ton of metrics about your channel performance, but it’s not the only source of data available.
That’s why you should use other analytics tools to gain more insight into your YouTube campaigns.
Using these tools, you can obtain analytics for other channels in your industry, enhance YouTube SEO, and get recommendations to improve.
Here are three other tools to better understand your YouTube video performance.
Vidooly
Using your YouTube analytics information, Vidooly provides suggestions about how to improve your videos.
They also grant access to video tag analysis—meaning the words in your video’s metadata—so you can discover high-performing tags.
To help you rank higher in YouTube keyword searches, Vidooly also has a keyword tool that may boost your videos’ SEO.
If you run influencer marketing campaigns, Vidooly can help you figure out which influencers may help grow your channel.
ChannelMeter
ChannelMeter provides access to extremely detailed audience insights.
Beyond that, you can monitor how videos from influencers perform. This is handy if you run YouTube influencer marketing campaigns—or if you want to emulate some of their ideas.
ChannelMeter also allows you to check on your benchmarks and follow trends among similar videos so you can adapt accordingly.
Unmetric
One of Unmetric’s most significant features is the benchmarking tools. These tools allow you to compare your strategy against your competitors.
For example, you can look at your competitor’s click-through rate, engagement rate, and video completions. This tool can help you develop campaign goals and identify new trends.
Furthermore, you can see how you fare against your competitors and obtain insights that may boost your campaigns. They even provide ideas for content creation.
Conclusion
YouTube Analytics is essential to running any successful YouTube campaign.
You can learn about your audience, what you’re doing well, and where you can improve—without being bogged down by unnecessary data, thanks to YouTube Analytics’ helpful filters.
What aspects of your videos do you think YouTube analytics can improve?
As the most-viewed site globally, YouTube is a must-visit destination for marketers and content creators looking to increase audience reach.
While it is possible to optimize YouTube SEO to score top results, without an understanding of the YouTube algorithm, SEO alone won’t manifest videos on a potential viewer’s suggested video list.
YouTube’s product chief underlined the reality of the impact of suggested-to-watch videos in an interview, noting 70% of a user’s time spent on the platform was dictated by the company’s suggested video algorithm.
70%. That number is huge.
To truly execute a successful YouTube marketing strategy, improve organic reach, and take advantage of that massive percentage, you need in-depth familiarity with the unique YouTube algorithm. Here are nine ways to increase your organic reach on YouTube.
The YouTube Algorithm’s Evolution
What began as a venture capital-funded technology startup in 2006 is now our go-to spot for all things video.
Although YouTube itself has undergone significant changes over the past fifteen years, its algorithm has, by far, been its most dynamic feature.
Before 2012, YouTube charted video success by the number of views alone, regardless of the length of viewing. This singular YouTube algorithm led to a profusion of clickbait videos that relied upon misrepresentative headlines and thumbnails to earn views, with most audience members jumping ship immediately.
Today, we still see the roots of the platform’s infancy in the current YouTube algorithm, which draws heavily on view duration as a component of a video’s ranking.
How Does the YouTube Algorithm Work?
While YouTube’s stated mission is to give everyone a voice and a window to explore the world, one of YouTube’s lower-ranking goals is to engage viewers for extended amounts of time, maximizing the number of advertisement interactions.
Why does this secondary goal matter? Because YouTube suggests videos that satisfy this goal of increased exposure to advertiser content.
YouTube uses an algorithm based on three main qualifiers: relevance, engagement, and quality.
To benchmark relevance, YouTube explores the pairing of title, description, tags, and content with an individualized search query.
Engagement aggregates the number of responses from users, including watch time, engagement, and frequency.
Quality rating is determined by a channel’s ability to demonstrate trustable authority.
In addition to these three qualifiers, YouTube’s algorithm also draws on a user’s historical views and a video-specific assigned score, one that weighs both novelty and frequency of channel uploads, among other attributes.
This combination of statistics allows YouTube to recommend videos that speak directly to a viewer’s interests, continuing a narratively static viewing material chain.
These videos will appear in six different locations on the YouTube platform:
Search results
Recommended Streams (as shown in the screenshot on the right side in the below screenshot)
Notifications
Channel Subscriptions
Trending Streams
YouTube Home Page
Much like any search algorithm, YouTube’s ranking system is in constant flux, evolving and adapting in an ongoing attempt to better define and satisfy user engagement.
How do I Improve my Organic Reach on YouTube?
Armed with a concrete understanding of how the YouTube algorithm works, it’s time to break down how you can harness your newfound knowledge to increase your organic reach.
1. Keywords and Metadata
YouTube made it explicitly clear in their algorithm explanation that content-relevant keywords, descriptions, captions, and tags all matter when you’re optimizing videos for search. Make sure you do your keyword researching using a tool like Ubersuggest to make sure you’re mentioning terms users are looking for.
By writing compelling, keyword-rich titles and descriptions, you increase your chances of attracting audience members’ attention and increasing your video’s search visibility.
Check out this post if you need to brush up on SEO basics.
2. Optimized Description
The quote “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” is true of YouTube just as much as life.
Ensure audience engagement by crafting attention-getting copy that not only attracts your potential audience but also harnesses your keywords’ power.
YouTube slants toward the verbose, advocating long descriptions, so don’t be afraid to go the extra wordy mile with them.
Although your prospective viewer will only interact with the first few lines of the description unless they select the “show more” option, those few short lines are valuable real estate when it comes to attracting your audience.
3. Video Transcription
Closed captions not only help those with accessibility needs, but allows users to watch videos in silence.
To make the most of closed captions, upload self-created subtitles. By uploading these yourself, you ensure that, when these captions are indexed for search, they are more accurate than automatically-generated ones, in many cases.
4. Whole-Video Views
Because YouTube ranks videos by engagement, longer watch times mean more opportunities to earn the coveted suggested video inclusion.
If you’re struggling with viewer attrition rates, you’re going to want to tighten focus on your videos’ first few seconds and ensure you:
match the description with the first few seconds of video content, and
snag a viewer with an impossible-to-ignore hook.
Don’t forget to study your audience retention graphs and pay attention to what those metrics are telling you.
These quick fixes help you further engage your audience, extending watch time, and earning your video a higher score via the YouTube algorithm.
5. Conversational Conclusions
Rather than simply ending your video, use various tactics to influence your audience’s next view.
By directing viewers to another video on your channel, you increase interaction and likelihood that they’ll return to interact with future content, both of which satisfy the YouTube algorithm’s engagement portion.
To direct your audience, use watermarks, end screens, and cards, all of which can be clicked and linked to your next video, ensuring continued viewing of your channel and content.
6. Subscriptions
When viewers subscribe to your channel, you automatically increase your organic reach. To increase your number of subscribers, consistently create great content, videos viewers are dying to see.
While consistently creating great content may be easier said than done, it’s essential to building your channel. Create a channel trailer, reach out to influencers, and engage with all comments left on your videos.
If you’re looking for additional strategies to increase your subscribers, check out our YouTube Marketing Guide.
7. Serial Viewers
By crafting videos that continue a conversation, viewers are helpless to resist watching the next in the series.
To keep viewers on your channel, you can create playlists of videos with similar content: these are collections that will attract and sustain viewership.
8. Cross-Promote Content
Social channels are free advertising for your YouTube channel. Promote your videos on all your social accounts, website, and in your email marketing—anywhere you have an audience.
An example of a recent YouTube video shared on this blog.
You can also publish a blog post with the video and a summary or transcription.
9. Actionable Analytics
These numbers don’t just exist to make you feel good; they tell you what’s working well and when, and to identify who is watching what and when.
Conversely, these numbers also tell you what isn’t working, which is inarguably the more influential insight. By identifying what isn’t working, you can try new strategies and content, attempting to delight your audience and improve your reach through different approaches.
By digging deep into YouTube analytics, you can unearth realities about your videos and your audience, allowing you to tailor your creation process to suit the needs of the audience you’re trying to reach.
Conclusion
With over one billion hours of video watched per day on YouTube, it’s undeniable content creators and marketers need to take advantage of the platform to curate and grow their audiences.
By understanding how YouTube suggests videos, content creators and marketers can make their videos work harder and use its nuances to your benefit.
How you changed how you upload videos to satisfy the YouTube algorithm?
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