Kyle Sulerud - April 27, 2022Today, this blog is going to focus on your YouTube ad creatives – the videos themselves. We’re also going to look at how you can take advantage of the Attentive Audience and the Powerful Delivery system that YouTube has blessed us with.
Video Ads are a crucial component of a successful YouTube Ad campaign. I’m using my AdLeg Arch framework to explain all of these components. If you’re missing any one of them, the arch will crumble. If you didn’t read the first blog in this series about the Funnel & Offer, I recommend you go start there.
I want to begin this blog by showing you an ad that’s known as one of the one hundred greatest advertisements of all time. It is debatable whether it actually appeared as an ad or not – but the point I’ll be making stands either way. It comes from the early 1900s from an explorer named Ernest Shackleton who was looking for men to come on an expedition with him to Antarctica. It says:
Why did this ad make it onto the list of the hundred greatest ads of all time? Well, this ad does a fantastic job of filtering. It is very clear who this ad is for and who this ad is not for, so the people who are not interested in a dangerous hazardous journey… What are they going to do? They’re going to skip this ad they’re going to read past it.
The same thing should be happening with your ads on YouTube. You don’t want to try to be all things to all people. It’s good if people skip your ad, you want that to happen. You want to be talking specifically to your target customers. So when we’re looking at this basic funnel that I shared in my last video…
This is what it actually looks like…
Most people are going to skip the ad. That’s fine. That’s actually great! We want people to skip the ad if they’re not interested in what we’re saying. It used to be that if someone skipped your ad within the first 30 seconds you wouldn’t pay. That’s not the case anymore. But it’s still good for the wrong people to skip your ad right away because it helps to train the algorithm to show your ads to more of the right people.
I’m going to share a very basic three-part YouTube Ad structure that you can take and use to go record some ads today.
The first part is the Hook. This is where you get the viewer’s attention and you also identify who you are talking to. You’re going to hook your specific target customer in by talking about the benefits that they are looking for that you can help them with or by talking about the pain they are trying to avoid. You can be creative here or you can be direct here, but the key is that you are identifying and speaking to your target customer.
The last part of the ad is the call to action. This is where you’re telling people to click on the link to take that action and take that next step that you want them to take. This middle section is where I see a lot of people get hung up. There’s a lot that can go in the middle. What I’m about to show you is not a complete list of everything that could go in the middle of a YouTube ad, but it is a simple framework you can put to use right away. What you can do in the middle of your ad is Teach, Tease, and/or Testify.
You can use all of these components or you can use one or two of these components.
Teach
Teach is where you are teaching something valuable. You’re ideally going to give people a benefit just from what they learned in your ad, so now they’re going to want to go and learn more from you.
Tease
Tease means you’re not going to show the viewer everything. You’re going to give them a preview of how they are going to benefit if they click on your link and take that action. Maybe you set up an open-loop – some question you open up in the viewer’s mind that can only be answered by clicking on your ad.
Testify
Testify means prove it. How can you prove that you are someone who should be listened to? You can include your own story, you can include your own results, or you can include student results/student testimonials. You’ll be positioned as an expert if you can find a way to testify and prove that you are someone worth listening to.
That’s what I call the Triple T Ad Formula. Use it, try it, and let me know how it goes.