Kyle Sulerud - January 27, 2021So you started running some YouTube Ads, got some traffic, and maybe you’ve started to have some success. What’s next? Let’s look at four different types of retargeting ads that you can run to increase your revenue and really capitalize on the traffic you’ve already sent through your funnel with YouTube Ads.
We’ll be looking specifically at retargeting traffic from a webinar with a funnel of landing page, to webinar, to phone call, to sale.
In-Stream Retargeting Campaign
The first and most obvious type of retargeting campaign to run is an In-Stream retargeting campaign. I would set this up to target people who have opted into the webinar with the goal being to get people to book a phone call or fill out an application.
You can get even more advanced with this and set up audiences based on how much of a webinar someone watched. If they didn’t really watch, you actually wouldn’t try to get them to book a call right away. Instead, you could try to send them back to watch the rest of the webinar. Once they have watched most of the webinar, then you would try to get them to book a call.
It doesn’t have to be that advanced though. You could simply target those who have opted into the webinar and try to get them to book a phone call. Your retargeting ad would address this because you can assume that they have consumed some of your content. On the other hand, if they didn’t watch the whole webinar, maybe they have at least read some of your emails or are more familiar with you at this point. Then the ads are inviting them to fill out an application or book a phone call with your team.
If someone has already booked a call with you, you want exclude those people from seeing your ads. You don’t want to waste money on people who have already taken that action. You’ll be targeting people who have opted into the webinar and excluding people who have already booked a call or made a purchase.
There are different time frames to consider when setting up these audiences. Maybe you have a five or seven-day list of people who have recently opted-in for the webinar and you’re very aggressive with your retargeting to those people since they have the highest chance of converting. But you can also go further and further out, depending on who your customers are and how long it takes them to actually take that action.
The further out you go, you might want to bid a little less or decrease the frequency. Ultimately, the data is going to tell you how far you want to go out there and it might be longer than you think. I have clients where we retarget opt-in traffic as much as six months later, and we still get people to fill out applications and book phone calls.
Video Discovery Retargeting
These are ads on YouTube that you’re going to find in the feed or in the right-hand column. When you click on one of these ads, it takes you to a YouTube video to watch. You don’t need to get too crazy with these ads. What I do for most of my clients is send the retargeting traffic to some of the more popular videos on my clients’ YouTube channels. This gets potential customers consuming some of the best content because we can control which videos we send people to.
Potential customers are not necessarily going to take action right away from these discovery retargeting ads, and that’s fine. I have plenty of other retargeting ads running that will get people to take action right away. The goal with these discovery ads is just to get my clients in front of people more frequently. It gets the potential customers more comfortable with my clients and they see more of my clients’ expertise in action. That way, when a customer gets an email or sees another retargeting ad, they are more likely to convert with that ad.
Discovery retargeting ads don’t cost very much. You’re only paying when people click and watch the videos. So, when the ads are getting shown and people aren’t clicking on them, that’s essentially free advertising. Even though these ads don’t drive a lot of action directly, I like running them because they really help increase awareness and assist with all of the other types of retargeting campaigns that we run.
Display Ad Retargeting
If someone saw a YouTube ad and opted into your webinar but didn’t book a call, you can target those people with display banner ads. These ads can show up on YouTube, which is great, but they also show up almost anywhere online. Google banner ads are everywhere and that’s where you want to be.
To take advantage of your webinar opt-ins, you should set up banner opt-ins that are bringing people back to your application or back to your call-booking page. Hopefully, by now, they are more familiar with you because they have gotten your emails, watched some discovery ad videos, researched you a little more, they’re seeing your banner ads all over the place, and they’re finally clicking on one and taking that action.
You can also get a little more advanced with these ads. Rather than just bringing that traffic to your application page, you can bring the traffic to a different page. Maybe the page has a video on it where they can consume more of your content and then the video drives them to fill out the application. There are so many options with display retargeting, it’s not something you should overlook. It’s relatively inexpensive and it will help you get more calls from people who have not yet booked a call. If you want more calls and want to take advantage of traffic you’ve already paid for, then you really need to be using display retargeting.
Google Search Ads
There are a couple of different ways you can look at these. You can simply target your brand name in Google Search. If someone is googling your name, the name of your product, or your company, you can have an ad show up. Search ads are really cool because you can segment these ads based on audience.
For example, if people are googling your name and they have not opted-in to your webinar, you can show them an ad that gets them to opt-in. Or, if they google your name and have already opted-in but have not booked a call, you can make an ad specifically for those people. The goal of the ad would then be to get them to schedule a call.
The other thing you can do if someone has opted into your webinar, and now they’re searching for something related to what you offer on Google, you can put your ad in front of them. They’ve already opted into your webinar, you know this because they’re on your webinar retargeting list. If they search for anything even remotely related to what you can help them with, why not bring them back into your funnel and try to get them to book a call?
These are the types of ads that my company helps with, but there are other ad platforms that run retargeting ads that you can take advantage of. The goal is to be everywhere. Imagine the effect that this will have on your business – someone opts-in for your webinar and they don’t take action right away but now you’re hitting them with in-stream ads, discovery ads, display ads, and search ads.
You’re going to be getting in front of them again and again. If you have a product that can help them, eventually they will get the message. If you run YouTube Ads and you haven’t set up your retargeting campaigns yet, don’t wait! Get it done.