Cooper

There is a lot of information on the internet about landing pages. I suggest you do as much research as possible when creating your landing page. This checklist is for a YouTube specific Ad campaign.

This is a proven formula that is working right now in successful YouTube campaigns.

Get Someone’s Number Before You Ask Them To Get Married

We know for a fact that YouTube is a great tool for collecting leads. The best way to entice viewers to become leads is to offer a lead magnet.

For those who don’t speak Digital Marketer, a lead magnet is something of value you can give people for free.  In return, they offer you their name and email (maybe a phone number, but people are often reluctant to give this out right away).

Once you have an email you can begin the process from lead to customer with your email marketing. Here is a great resource from Digital Marketer to help you come up with lead magnet ideas

What Type Of Headline Keeps People On Your Page?

• What Your Headline Should Be…
  • A statement that touches on the fears or desires of the customer
  • A statement that shows the major benefits of your product
• What Your Headline is not…
  • It is not your product name
  • It is not misleading comments or information

Not Having a Video Is The Biggest Mistake You’ll Make

People are on YouTube expecting to watch a video, give them what they want and put a video on your page.

According to a study by eyeviewvideo.com, adding a video to your landing page can increase conversion rates by 80%.

From our experience the most successful landing page videos are about 1-3 minutes long and go into more depth about that value and features of your product and/or lead magnet. We have seen people be successful with videos up to 20 minutes long.

It’s most important to retain the same formula from your video: Ad = Hook + Value + CTA

Having The Main CTA or Form Above The Fold Will Decrease The Drop Off Rate

Lower your bounce rate by having the checkout form/button above the fold. “Above the fold” means that people do not have to scroll to see it.

It should be placed next to or just below your landing page video.  Also check out the cool mustache I gave Jake in the image.

Tell People How They Will Benefit

Give a list of the top features of your product or service. These features should be specific to the desires and fears of the customer. No one will read a list unless it relates to them

It is often beneficial to add a disclaimer or money back guarantee to be upfront and confident about your product. Google also likes the transparency and it may help get your ads approved. If you need more help getting your ads approved you can check our post about it.

Testimonials Do Something In Minutes, That Would Take You Months 

People don’t generally like being sold to. However, they’re a lot more ok with being sold to by your customers than they are with being sold to by the actual vendor.

If you don’t have testimonials, ask for them.  People are often willing to give them to you if you have provided them value. If you have video testimonials use them in your landing page video.

Why do you think restaurants want a high score on Yelp?

Do You Need A Checklist & Visual?

Here are the 7 things that we have discussed to far…

1. Get An E-mail Address
2. Headline
3. Video
4. Form/Checkout for Lead Magnet
5. Product Image
6. List of Features
7. Testimonials

If you want a really good visual here is a great one by Neal Patel.

Follow the formula we laid out and use this visual from Neal Patel and you will have a landing page that converts.

From here you have two great options for moving forward.  If you want specific campaign advice, set up a free consultati on or you can join the Video Power Lab.  You want to be successful, we want to make you successful.  So, we are offering these tools to make you successful.

Get Instant Access To The Lab

“Hey you, with the face, looking at your computer screen. I see you reading this post.  I know what you’re here for. You want to learn how to create YouTube ads that don’t suck so viewers will stop skipping them and buy your stuff.  Well that is what I am teaching you right now.”  I hooked you by directing my comments to you specifically . And if you’re still reading, it worked.

Creating a good hook is a giant problem most people have when writing their script and filming the ad.  They do not have a hook that will grab attention and create an engaged the audience.  Lets face it, if you are not hooking your audience your ad is worthless.  Putting money into an ad with a crappy hook is like putting money into a TV ad.  People are just going to fast forward it.

Your Hook Is Like Your Underwear… 

“Your hook is like your underwear; it covers the important stuff, but leaves people curious.”Jake

People are on YouTube to watch the video they chose, not your ads. You have 5 seconds to steal their attention. If the audience does not see how this ad is relevant to them, they do not care to watch it. Their mouse is already hovering over the “Skip Now” button, chomping at the bit to get the annoying YouTube Ad off their screen.  Your job is to make them choose your video in that crucial first 5 seconds.

These Geico Ads are great examples of hooking the audience.  They get their message across before the audience gets a chance to skip.

The Elements Of A Good Hook That Nobody Knows About

Be upfront with you audience. Tell them why you are there and what value you are going to bring to them. The people who are interested will listen to what you have to say. This will segment your audience into your potential customers and those who are not interested.  The skip button then actually becomes your ally, because you only want to spend your ad dollars on people who are potential customers anyway. Everyone else can go ahead and skip.

Call Out Your Target Audience

One way that we often segment our target market is to call them out.  This will catch the attention of everyone we actually want listening to our message, and get the others to skip. We get a relevant audience watching our ad and stretch our ad dollar in the process.  In our video ads we would say…

“We only want to talk to serious marketers. If you are not a marketer or business owner, skip this ad because we don’t want to talk to you.”

Address Their Fears or Desires

The two most powerful things in the world are fears and desires.  When someone is afraid of something they will do anything to prevent it from happening.  The same goes for a desire.  A person will go to many lengths to get what they desire. If you can address a fear or desire of your customer, they will listen.

Say you were targeting businesses and entrepreneurs, a good phrase that would insight the fears or desires would be…

“Are you scared that you will be trapped in a cubicle for the rest of your life? Do you have aspirations to own your time?”

Look People In The Eye

Something that we have noticed is that your ad should have an actual person talking. This is especially the case in the first 5 seconds. People are more inclined to listen to you if they can see you.  A voice over is easily tuned out when you are trying to skip an ad, but when you can look a person in the eye it does two things

• Lets the person see who you are.
• People begin to trust you are more inclined to listen to the words coming out of your mouth.

Almost every ad we run has someone talking to the camera at some point during the ad, especially at the beginning. When you can look someone in the eye and are confident in your message, that is powerful.

This is one of our Ads  that nails all three…

 Geico’s Missed Opportunity

Let’s return to the Geico ad that we saw above.  From my perspective Geico nailed the hook.  Beautiful work on that front.  However, they missed a huge opportunity.  The one thing Geico failed to do with the unskippable ad was a Call To Action.  They would have thrown a CTA in at the end that drove a ton of potential customers to their website.  Instead the great hook was wasted, and the ad became a passive experience. This is how you should feel Geico…

If you want to create YouTube Ads that don’t suck, you can join our Video Power Lab.  Or if you want to talk to us and see what we can do to help you create campaigns that don’t suck, setup a Free Consultation.  We’ll be here when you want to succeed.

Don’t Know Where To Start? Set Up A Free Consultation.