After spending thousands of dollars and months of their time on creating the perfect video for their SaaS, the last thing that a company should do is embed it on their homepage and wait for someone to stumble upon it.
YouTube Press recently proclaimed that viewers watch one billion hours of videos on YouTube daily. A report by Tubics found out that there are 38 million active channels on YouTube of which 15 million are content creators and 22,000 of them have crossed 1 million subscribers.
The world and the ways of SaaS marketing have changed completely in the past few years. Video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year whereas 83% of video marketers say video has helped increase the average time their visitors spend on the page.
Forbes Insights said that 83% of senior executives admit to watching more online videos today than they ever before. According to MotionCue, 76% of marketers say that video has shown positive ROI in their marketing efforts.
Basic measures to take with SaaS YouTube Advertising:
To keep the ROI high on what you spent for the ad, a few basic measures are nonnegotiable. Use a low-risk CTA instead of one that has multiple action steps. Establish your brand’s approachability in the video by highlighting the number of clients and their experience of working with you.
Cleverly target your audience and engage in retargeting potential customers who have shown interest by making your YouTube ads frequent their screens more.
Not only can you use YouTube ads to promote upcoming online and offline events, but you can also put up clips from webinars and podcasts to get more engagement and sign-ups.
In case your company does tedious groundbreaking research and is an expert in the area, do not shy away from sharing your research and findings with your target customers in your YouTube ads, as they will help deepen customer relationships with the brand.
You can offer an inside view into the workings of the company and the product itself in your video ad creating intrigue, and raising awareness and trust. Software feature integrations have found their way into YouTube video ads and help dazzle new and existing customers alike.
Targets that SaaS video advertising immediately fulfills:
1. Videos help in putting out awareness and information about the SaaS company. Whether it is the launch of new products and services or advertising new features in existing products, the reach of video platforms is incomparable.
If a company wants to offer rewards or introduce shopping campaigns to increase sales, videos work best to put the word out in the street.
2. In fact, video ad settings on platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn assist in segregating and targeting audiences of different demographics, languages, financial backgrounds, and regions and therefore perform better and save money for the company.
3. Videos bring in more sign-ups for free trials and demos by helping customers understand the product better. In fact, videos play a key role in amplifying long-term growth by forming an emotional bond with the customers through the art of storytelling.
4. Reviews, testimonials, and case study videos provide concrete social proof of the company’s performance and assist in establishing an unshakeable reputation.
Read More: How SaaS companies are improving user engagement using videos
SaaS marketing competition is fierce:
The fight for the customer’s attention and loyalty is real for the competing brand. SaaS marketing is a brutal environment, with each company trying to establish themselves as trustworthy and their product as unique and life-altering.
In the midst of this is YouTube which is a hybrid platform. Putting up a video there will automatically give it traction in Google searches too. Unlike Facebook where most engagement will be on the videos you post that week without a paid component, YouTube videos keep getting views for months and years on end, making your old videos rank better and get more visibility.
3 things to decide before starting:
Product Demo videos:
This is one of the most essential pieces in your SaaS marketing kit. A good demo video not just successfully gives the potential user a tour of the product, it subtly informs the user on the non-highlighted aspects like affordability, relevance, and usefulness, prodding the client into making a decision according to his needs and taking action sooner.
Case Studies and Testimonials videos:
These videos vouch for the company and the product. Clients being interviewed, sharing their experience helps build trust like nothing else does. It humanizes the brand and gives a peek into the actual solutions the product provides. These videos also showcase your work, therefore proving to be a welcome mat to the new leads.
Social Media videos:
The monthly log-ins of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube range from over a billion users. With its blindingly wide reach, each platform has a different video specification. With their astounding ROI, the placement of social media videos is imperative for SaaS companies.
How-to and help videos:
Critical in converting users to loyal customers, a how-to video is what keeps a customer going. They explain upgrades on the product, how to use previously launched products, or even answer frequently experienced problems, thereby severely shrinking the churn rate.
Webinars:
An active webinar strategy can change the face of a SaaS company. According to research carried out by Demio, 78 of the brands in Forbes’ The Cloud 100 2019 list run webinars for their audiences.
Engagement of customers, working with primary industry stakeholders, increasing brand awareness, producing new leads, and showcasing the product are just a few of the gains of broadcasting SaaS webinars.
Expert Interviews and Trending News:
Interviews and insight videos from experts in the field can engage the customer helping to convert them. Trending news videos raise awareness, bring new eyeballs to the SaaS company, and increase sign-ups.
Grammarly:
Grammarly is a cloud-based SaaS that identifies and corrects grammatical and punctuation mistakes. The company has millions of views on their ads and they have leveraged YouTube in the best possible way for exposure of their software.
Most ads establish a personal bond as they pay homage to their customers and put forth emotion-evoking relatable stories and characters, with excellent graphics in the forefront while placing their product in the background.
Monday.com:
It is a project management software. It is intuitive and adjusts to shifting needs. Most of their YouTube ads have over 5 million views. Their storylines are captivating, resonating strongly with the customer’s emotions, and end with a powerful CTA that nudges you to give it a go.
ClickFunnels:
It is the best tool in the market for creating sales funnels to ensure traffic and a good conversation rate. Their ads have hundreds of thousands of views and are immensely popular. ClickFunnel has a very cinematic approach to their YouTube ads and their videos are loaded with nostalgic old-world elements while keeping marketing buzzwords as a part of the dialogue.
1. TrueView In-stream Ads:
These are the basic, skippable type of YouTube ads. The content is fully customizable and advertisers pay only if the first 30 seconds are viewed or if the user clicks on the call-to-action button.
These ads play out right before the user-selected video can start. Users can opt to skip within 5 seconds of watching these ads. The length allowed for such ads is 12 seconds to 6 minutes.
These ads can include royalty-free music and a full-fledged story. Case studies have by far shown the best performance in this video format.
2. Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads:
Their run time is 15-20 seconds and they cannot be skipped by the user. A major difference in this format is they can be placed anywhere in a video, be it before the actual video, mid-way through it, or after the video.
Before their appearance, the user will see a 5-second countdown before the ad starts on a desktop. For a phone, in the YouTube app, these videos will appear as yellow markers.
3. Video Discovery Ads:
These are regular videos that are advertisements and are available on YouTube. They pop up on the YouTube homepage, with related videos on the YouTube video watch page and search results pages.
The destination video page will feature a spot on the right-hand column and a banner display ad will appear once the user clicks on it.
4. Overlay Ads:
This is a more non-intrusive format of advertising where the banner ad appears and sticks at the bottom of another video. This is a good way to supplement some visibility in your overall ad campaign.
5. Bumpers:
This is the briefest and the crispest kind of ad format that YouTube offers. It is non-skippable and plays right before the video that the viewer is trying to watch.
With a 6-second length limit, it does not work for content that is trying to tell a story. But when optimally used by highlighting the most important components of your SaaS, it shows a greater amount of remembrance by the viewers.
How to get more views on your YouTube SaaS ads using these tips for the title –
The most important part of your SaaS ad that will increase your CTR tremendously is the title. It needs to stand out and grab eyeballs and it should be short and crisp, preferably not exceeding the best performing length, that is 70 characters.
Longer titles get truncated in the search result. It needs to be descriptive enough to be self-explanatory. Ensure readability by capitalizing the first letter of each alphabet.
Adding a number can really help if you are offering strategies or tips because it gives a more specific overview of your content and can even help create a better-planned video.
Include a powerful adjective to trigger a psychological response from the viewers. Use SEO keywords that will help your video jump out in any search engine. Try to position the primary keyword at the very beginning.
You can even write one entire word in uppercase to get your eyes on your title. Never use clickbait to lure the viewers in. They won’t trust you or your brand the next time.
Try to include a CTA in the title if possible. You can even put some words within bracelets like a content sneak peak. Before finalizing the title, it is recommended to use a headline analyzer tool to understand the strength and efficiency of your title.
1. Optimize the thumbnail
Use a personalized relevant image as the thumbnail which allures the viewer to click on your video. Make sure that the size is appropriate for different device users. Reduce noise in the background so that the focus is on the product or the person in the image.
Why this works: The thumbnail provides absolute clarity on the content that can be expected inside the video. The background is kept plain and does not create a distraction.
We see a high-resolution image of an intrigued-looking Dan Martell with a magnifying glass which resonates with the theme of the video of finding adopters. The title is crisp and straightforward. The font of the title is bold and eye-catching.
2. You can consider increasing the length of the ad
Primarily, the company pays for a 30-second ad if the viewer watches it till the end or they pay for a long ad, once the user has engaged with it for the first 30 seconds.
So instead of restricting the content to half a minute’s time, they can plan it in such a way that the important messaging and highlights can be kept in the beginning, while the entire story idea can play out in the end.
In fact, to promote watching the ad till the end, it can be mentioned in the beginning that the viewers will be incentivized with rewards waiting at the end of the ad.
Why this works: Here the ad length is long and since it is a skippable ad, Ankur Warikoo has unloaded all of the information in the first 30 seconds so that most of them get hooked on the benefits and the ones that skip can still recall what he had to offer.
3. Understand the metrics of your ads
You can keep tabs on different categories in the ads settings and options. In the ‘views’ category you can decipher the percentage of viewers and earned ads.
‘View rate’ helps in understanding if the ad is captivating enough. The ‘audience’ section segregates them on the basis of financial backgrounds, age, gender, etc. ‘Conversions’ will give you feedback on your ROI and leads.
Why this works: These sections and constraints are available on all of YouTube’s ad options, ranging from language and locations to networks and income, as they help narrow down the audience and target the ad better.
4. Use YouTube card
A small ‘i’ symbol appears on the ad for users who have engaged with the content for a long time. This notification helps in featuring the product or service that is being mentioned in the video to drive quick results.
You can customize it completely and use it to control the traffic on your video and where you want to take them next.
Why this works: The ‘i’ symbol appears on the top of the video once the viewer has engaged with this video for long enough. And on clicking the ‘i’ a slab appears on the right-hand side.
So as the video plays (as marked here by A), the slab suggests more of Patrick Dang’s videos (as marked here by B) to get the viewer to take control of the traffic on A video and direct them to the B videos.
5. Work on negative remarking
This means creating a separate list of people that the ads of your long-running campaign will not be shown. This will help in utilizing your budget fully and redirecting more towards people who have seen your channel and shown interest in your product.
6. Provide closed captioning
This will help your video cater to the needs of all your viewers from different backgrounds and countries, as YouTube’s automatic captioning can be unreliable. You can go a step ahead and provide translated captions for viewers who speak different languages.
Why this works: Since it is a podcast the closed-captioning makes the viewer more comfortable with recognizing the words and understanding the concepts better.
7. Create an effective CTA
Your CTA needs to be short and positive, with a strong action word, set up against bright contrasting colors while being able to harness the excitement of the audience and pushing into the desired outcome.
The CTA will depend on the type of your video ad. It is recommended to use A/B testing or Multivariate testing to ensure you choose the right one.
Why this works: The video immediately ends by explaining what is to be done next by means of a clear and concise CTA.
8. Invest time in designing an end slate
The end slate can act as a jump pad for the viewers who have watched the ad till the end and are clearly interested in your product.
Whether you want to take them to a landing page, get them to watch more videos, or make them sign up for trials and demos, you can put up personalized image icons and URLs to lead the traffic in the desired direction.
Why this works: The end slate serves multiple purposes here. As the speaker keeps talking, the video puts up an important CTA, addressing people to like, share and subscribe to the video and channel while also linking up similar videos of Shash Singh to lead the traffic and keep them watching more of Shash’s content.
Over time, YouTube has become the most powerful platform for customer acquisition through SaaS video marketing, thanks to its ability to zoom in on the targeted audience and confetti-shower them with information about significant benefits your company will add to their lives.
According to a 2018 survey by Searchmetrics, 62% of universal searches on Google include a video, and 8 out of 10 of those video results come from YouTube. Think with Google discovered that 40% of shoppers from all over the globe said that they purchased products that they had discovered on YouTube.
So if the expense is a sore spot for you, then understand that with the right brainstorming and strategy your value-providing YouTube video will help generate leads and awareness and will result in a superior ROI.
Some steps that can be taken are to keep the SaaS marketing video short to enhance the performance, to choose enticing thumbnails, to avoid video fatigue by not putting out too much content, working on the end card and CTA, optimizing design, and size according to the platform and adding captions.
Choosing the right target audience according to the demographics, financial background, gender, age is important, customizing the language and overall style of the video according to the location, and setting a daily budget based on analysis of what would provide the highest ROI are some ways of boosting YouTube ads on Google for your SaaS.
YouTube provides the format of using non-skippable in-stream ads that can be used to deliver the entire message to the target audience without giving them an option of skipping the video to promote the SaaS product or service by playing them before or during the YouTube video it is being run with.
The first few steps include uploading your selected video on YouTube, creating a new campaign in Google ads, configuring the parameters of your campaign, deciding between the various adoption YouTube offers for ads like non-skippable, overlay, discovery ads, bumper instream ads, etc., selecting the demographics of the target audience, choosing the language and locations in which you want it run these ads, setting a budget that suits your brand, deciding the start and end dates, choosing your bidding strategy and inventory type, and finally keeping a track of the data provided by Analytics.
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