youtube

How To Come Up With New Video Ideas

April 27, 2017 by Jake Larsen

Do you ever wonder how to come up with new video ideas for a YouTube Channel? This could be a personal Channel or one that you manage for a business. Either way, we’re all familiar with the looming thought: “Crap. I need to come up with a new video for my YouTube Channel to post by tomorrow”.

Trying to be creative & original all of the time can be hard, & even lead to major burnout if you don’t find a way to lighten the load. You don’t always have to pull ideas out of thin air. We’re going to share a secret of how to come up with good video ideas for YouTube. This one simple hack will not only save you from creative burnout, but it will also take your video marketing skills to the next level!

YouTube Search Hack

To get started, open up YouTube and a text document to write down the video ideas that you come up with during this process. At the top of your text document, write a general search term that you’d like to find new ideas for. If you were an accountant maybe you would write something like “do your taxes” or “business taxes”. If you have Channel that teaches video production tips and techniques maybe you could write something like “Premiere Pro” or “how to make video”. For this example we’re going to use the term “how to come up with video”.

Take the term you just came up with and start typing it into the Search bar in YouTube. As you start to type, it will start to autofill suggestions. These are the most popular search terms with that search term on YouTube right now. Take the terms on this list that you think you can make a video of and write them down on your text document.

If you create a video for any or all of these terms, you’re going to have a much better chance of getting your videos seen. Another benefit of creating videos with these terms is that you’ll have a more recent version than all the ones that are out there right now. As long as your video is good quality and has good audience retention, YouTube will favor your video because it has the newest information.

New Video Ideas (Remix)

It’s been said that we live in the Remix Generation. Take this to heart when you’re trying to come up with new video ideas. We’re not necessarily talking about ripping off someone’s video and auto-tuning it into a song. To “remix” means to produce a different version by altering the original product. In this case, consider the “original product” as the video idea, not the video itself. You can get ideas from other people and then make your own version. Challenges are great examples of this technique. How many different “Mannequin Challenge” videos do you remember seeing?

While you’re looking up search terms, click on some of the autofill results. Once you do that, look at the kinds of titles people are using for each search term and add your own spin to it. For example, take “how to come up with video” and change it to “how to come up with video in 5 minutes or less”. If you have a plugin like TubeBuddy or VidIQ that will allow you to see the tags that people use on their videos, you can also use some of those terms to help you brainstorm new video ideas or search topics.

Make Great YouTube Videos

Using these methods you’ll be able to come up with a month’s worth of content in less than 30 minutes. Not only that but you’ll also dominate your search terms and rank better on YouTube overall. Another benefit of building a strong organic presence is that it will do wonders to help with your paid traffic.

If you’d like some help with making great videos for paid traffic, download our FREE Video Ad Formula. This powerful tool will teach you how to create a successful video ad that converts strangers into loyal fans and paying customers.

The Timeline of a High Converting YouTube In-Stream Ad

April 19, 2017 by Jake Larsen

The sequence and formula of your In-Stream ad are critical to the success of your YouTube ad campaign. If you get this wrong, you’re going to be wasting your time and money. It doesn’t matter how much you spend on ads, or how accurate your targeting is. If you’re promoting a bad video, it will fail every time.

It’s kind of like the saying: “You can polish a turd all you want, but in the end, it’s still a turd.” We don’t want you advertising a turd video.

If your video follows the correct sequence and formula, it will be able to accomplish 3 things:

Capture the attention of a complete stranger… stop them dead in their tracks.
Change the relationship of a stranger into a warm acquaintance.
Get them to take action by clicking on the video.

We’ve launched hundreds of video ad campaigns in all sorts of industries; Real Estate, eCommerce, Auto, Life Coaching, Business Development, Beauty, Health & Wellness, Electronics, Investing, etc. Although the message changes across industries, the video structure and sequence stay the same.

After years of consulting, we’ve seen people make the same mistakes made over and over. Finally, we created a simple graph so you can clearly see the timeline of the perfect YouTube in-stream ad.

In-Stream Ad Timeline

Capture Attention

The very first thing your video needs to do is capture the attention of the viewer. We’ve all experienced “the longest 5 seconds on the internet”. You’re about to watch a YouTube video that you’re really excited about, but when you click on it, an ad starts playing! You hover your mouse over to where you know the “Skip Ad” button is about to appear and start your countdown. “Five, four, three, two, one…”*click*.

As an advertiser, those 5 seconds are absolutely critical to maximize in order to capture your viewers attention. If you’re wasting time showing your logo or rolling a fancy intro you will lose them. However, if you address your target audience directly, they might pause for just enough time to allow you to hook them in.

Build The Problem

Now that you have their attention, you need to build the problem. They’re giving you their time, what are you going to do for them? What problem are they having that you are going to solve for them? If you just jump right into your sale here, you’ll probably lose them. This will probably take another 5-10 seconds.

Make A Connection

At this point you’ve basically said to your audience “Hey! Are you a [kind of person] looking to [solve X kind of problem]?”. In order to make a connection with your viewer, you basically want to let them know that you know how they feel. Relate to them. Tell them what makes you a credible source to solve their problem. This should usually take about 10-15 seconds.

Offer The Solution

Here you go. This is what you wanted to do right from the beginning. Now that your viewer knows that you understand their problem, they’re ready to hear the solution. Tell them. This is where you can talk about your product or service and all of its benefits.

Don’t drag this part on too long though. It should take about 15-20 seconds. Remember, they still have a video that they’re waiting to watch. The second you start boring them, they’ll be gone at the click of a button. Literally.

Give A Call To Action

The call to action is the goal of the whole video. Without a call to action, your video loses SO much value. We always say that if you don’t tell people what you want them to do at the end of the video, then that’s exactly what they’re going to do…nothing.

Most of the time you should use YouTube End Screens for your call to action. You can only put these in the last :20 of your video but they are clickable on both mobile and desktop.

Things to Remember

There are some key elements that you need to understand that lay the foundation of a great in-stream ad:

You only get charged per view. A view is counted when a viewer watches the ad for at least 30 seconds or to the end of the video (whichever is shorter) or clicks on a card or other elements of your in-stream creative.
The whole purpose of the video ad, is to get people to click. Period. You need to build the whole video around the click. The “click” could be a Card, CTA overlay, or End Screen.

Ninja Tactics & More

TELL PEOPLE TO SKIP YOUR AD: Invite the viewer to skip the ad if they’re not your target audience looking for specific guidance. This way you won’t waste your ad spend on people who aren’t interested.

SHOW & TELL: Make sure to give a verbal call to action as well as point to where you want your viewers to click. This will drastically improve your click through rates.

When you follow these guidelines on your video ad, it will have a bigger impact on the viewer. If you have a bigger impact on your viewers, you’ll be able to generate more leads and sales at a lower cost. And if you don’t want that, you probably shouldn’t be in business.

Keep this In-Stream Ad Timeline in mind when you create your next YouTube ad.

If you want to take your YouTube ads to the next level, download our “Video Ad Formula”. This free resource includes more useful tips, tools, and examples of how to make effective YouTube ads. You can download it for free by clicking the link below.

Writing A YouTube Ad Script

April 6, 2017 by Jake Larsen

If you’re a savvy marketer who’s way ahead of the curve, then you’ve already dabbled in advertising on YouTube. You probably also know the feeling of getting your video shoot set up, hitting record, and having no idea what to say.

When Video Power first started, we hated recording new ads for ourselves because they were so disjointed and rambling. It took us forever to shoot an ad and get it to a polished final product.

Finally, we came up with a YouTube ad script outline that would help us avoid being in that spot ever again. We’re going to teach you this outline so that you can write an awesome YouTube ad script every time.

Using our YouTube Ad Script Template, you’ll be able to pump out ad scripts in minutes. These ads will not only be easy to create, but will be setup in a way that will grab and keep your viewers attention and get them to act on your offer at the end of your video.

Know Your Audience

First, you need to know who your audience is. The more you know the better. Basic demographics are a must, but if you know what they love, hate, do, think, etc. you’ll really be able to catch their attention.

Next, think about what your call to action is going to be. What do you want your audience to do? If you don’t ask, chances are they won’t do anything at all.

Finally, think about your audiences challenges and desires. What are they trying to accomplish? What’s standing in their way? What frustrations have they experienced in trying to reach their goals?

Grab Attention

Once you know your audience, you can use our YouTube Ad Script Template to help you structure your answers into a script.

Start by grabbing people’s attention! We like to do this by calling out our exact audience. “Hey are you {insert your target audience here} looking for {insert one of their desires/goals}?”.

This serves a double purpose. Not only does it catch the attention of your target audience, but it turns away people who aren’t. Because YouTube charges advertisers based on views (if they watch 30 seconds or half of the ad), you aren’t charged for people who skip early.

Build Emotion

Once you’ve caught the attention of your audience, you’ll start to build emotion. Talk to your viewers about the pains and/or desires that they’re experiencing.

The pain is what your customers experience without your product or service. The desire is accomplishing their goal in an easier/faster/better way.

Emotional Connection

Imagine you were struggling to learn how to golf. Two people approached you and offered to help. The first had read every book in the library on how to golf, but he hadn’t actually picked up a club for himself. The other was a pro who had never read a book about golf, but had been playing for years.

There should be little question in your mind as to which one you would rather get advice from. The pro had been in your shoes at some point and had overcome the difficulties that you were experiencing. The other guy might know a lot about golf, but he couldn’t say “I know how you feel. I’ve been there.”

It’s much more effective to be able to relate to your audience than it is to tell them how much you know. One tool that we like to use to help us do this is called the feel, felt, found technique. We actually used this in the opening of this blog post.

Feel, Felt, Found

Feel – Explain to your audience how you think they feel about their situation (Ex: “You probably know the feeling of getting your video shoot set up, hitting record, and having no idea what to say”)

Felt – Relate to your audience so that they know you felt the same way that they do at some point (Ex: ”When Video Power first started, we hated recording new ads for ourselves because they were so disjointed and rambling. It took us forever to shoot an ad and get it to a polished final product.”)

Found – Tell your listeners how you found a solution to the problem that you both experienced (Ex: “Finally, we came up with a YouTube ad script outline that would help us avoid being in that spot ever again.”)

Solution

If you follow all of the previous steps, you’ve created a perfect bridge to present your viewers with the solution to their problem. If this solution isn’t your product or service, then you have lead the audience the wrong direction.

This is where you can talk about product features, service benefits, etc. Show your audience how the solution that works for you (or your other customers) can work for them.

Timeout

Before we get to the most important part of writing a script for an ad, here are a few quick pointers:

When writing your script make it conversational. When you’re talking to the camera visualize that you’re talking with someone. You don’t want to look like you’re reading a script or come off robotic.

Feel free to add little notes or indicators within the script to help with editing. Do you need to point to a link for people to click on? Will you be adding a lower-third? Or will b-roll be covering you up? These notes will help you when shooting the video so you know how to adjust your video while recording.

Finally, make sure you add plenty of keywords into your script. For instance, the video for this post is teaching you how to write a YouTube ad script. When we transcribe the video the keywords in the metadata will match up with the title, description, and tags.

Call To Action

Back to the script now. To finish things off, end the script by writing a call to action that states an offer and benefit. You should ALWAYS have some sort of call to action in any video you make, whether it’s an ad, a how-to, or just a fun shareable video.

Here’s our call to action: If you want access to our easy YouTube Ad Script Template, you can click the button below to download it for free.

This resource will help you craft the script for a successful video ad that converts in just minutes.

The 3 Kinds of Videos To Make On YouTube

March 23, 2017 by Jake Larsen

You’re most likely hoping to grow your business by putting videos on YouTube. Or maybe you’re a YouTube Creator trying to make YouTube your career. Either way, at some point, you’ve probably wondered what kind of videos to make on YouTube.

Do either of these situations sound familiar to you:

You keep hearing that every business should be using video in their marketing. You don’t really know much about YouTube but you know your company has a few videos lying around somewhere, so you upload those. Weeks later, your video views finally break into double digits…
You have a YouTube Channel that you’re trying to make new videos for all the time. You’ve done every online video trend from the Harlem Shake to the Mannequin Challenge and are just hoping for some of them to catch on.

The Model T.E.A.

Most companies use their YouTube Channel as a junk drawer for crappy corporate videos, and too many Creators run around chasing every online trend they can find in hopes of going viral.

Everyone wants to go viral, but if you look at some of the most successful Channels on YouTube they didn’t get there by creating one viral video, they did it by creating very specific regular content for their audience.

Coming up with ideas for regular new content is not always easy. Luckily, we know what kind of videos YouTube likes to see and we’ve created a content plan for you. The type of content a successful channel should have include teachable videos, entertaining videos, and videos that advertise what you’re all about.

We call this the Model T.E.A. which stands for Teach, Entertain, and Advertise.

Teaching Videos

The first type of videos you need to lay the foundation of your channel are teaching videos. It’s sharing what you know in How To, or DIY videos; even testimonials, reviews, overviews, or FAQ’s. Anything that informs and gives information in your field should be found on your channel especially if you’re a business.

According to Google, 91% of smartphone users turn to their phones to get ideas while completing tasks. They also shared that in the first 4 months of 2015 more than 100M hours of how to content had already been watched in North America alone. Searches related to “how to” on YouTube are growing 70% year over year. People are coming to YouTube to learn, so teach them.

These should make up about 60% of your videos. Ideally, that would mean posting anywhere from 2-3 times a week, but if you can only manage one of these a week, start there. This type of content is fairly easy to make and we’ll go over that in a future video so make sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel.

Entertaining Videos

Next you need to create content that is entertaining and lets people know who you are and what you’re all about. This is your weekly content or series, and should make up about 30% of your video content. It’s what people come for when visiting your channel.

This can be an interview series, a vlog, a rant video, or an epic rap battle! Look at it as your regularly scheduled content or your own TV Show.

This could also be a good category to put your videos about the latest trend in. Most of this content won’t be relevant for as long as your teaching videos. Because of that, it might be a good idea to do some keyword research on what’s currently trending before creating these videos.

Advertising Videos

The final type of video you should create on a monthly basis is video for advertising! These videos are meant to convert your audience into subscribers, leads, or customers. They should make up about 10% of your content and can be promoted as In-Stream or Discovery Ads.

If you’re a YouTube Creator thinking “oh that one’s just for businesses”, break out of your box and think again! You need to be looking at your Channel as a business. You can run ads to your Channel to get more subscribers. I used ads to take my family vlog from 0 to 4,000 subscribers in six weeks.

In order for your business or channel to grow you need to build a loyal following. These videos are specific to that purpose. If you need some help with this kind of video, check out our free Video Ad Formula. It will teach you exactly what to say to make the perfect YouTube ad.

Benefits of the Model T.E.A.

Teaching videos will help you establish yourself as an authority figure in your space. Entertaining videos will help you develop a relationship with your followers and keep them coming back regularly to your Channel. Advertising videos will increase your reach to attract new followers.

The Model T.E.A. will help you overcome that stressful feeling of having no idea what kind of videos to make on YouTube. You’ll be able to bring in more subscribers, provide them constant value, and eventually they’ll turn into customers.

How To Buy YouTube Views The Google Approved Way

March 10, 2017 by Jake Larsen

Do you want to start a YouTube Channel but are overwhelmed by the thought of starting from ground zero? You know how to make videos but growing an audience from rock bottom is such a daunting task. That’s how I felt when I decided to start our family vlog Channel. However, after years of placing ads on YouTube for businesses, I found the quickest, easiest, and only Google approved way to buy YouTube views & get tons of real subscribers.

How cool would it be to be able to generate thousands of real, engaged subscribers for your YouTube channel at the click of a button? Let’s get one thing straight right away, I’m not talking about buying fake, robot YouTube subscribers. I’m talking about using YouTube ads to accelerate building real, authentic relationships.

I’m going to break down a real life case study of how I used YouTube Ads to go from 0 to 4,000+ subscribers in 6 weeks with no previous following, and how you can too.

Misconceptions

Before we go further, we need to resolve some misconceptions you may have about YouTube Ads…

Pfffff, YouTube Ads, those are so annoying. Nobody even watches them. That’s what our clients thought too until they saw the kinds of results our video ad campaigns generated. Last month alone we were able to get more than 1.5 million views and 12,000 conversions across our clients campaigns. The truth is, 95% of the YouTube ads out there aren’t even set up correctly AND don’t know how to target the right audience.
I can’t create YouTube Ads, because I’m not a big company. YouTube is not TV. You don’t have to be a big brand or company to run YouTube Ads. We’ve been able to setup campaigns for brands that have reached millions of people. I’ve also created campaigns for myself with as little as $10 a day. And I’ve been able to reach viewers worldwide from from the comfort of my own home..
Isn’t buying YouTube views sketchy? Yes, it can be sketchy to buy YouTube views (and you can get your Channel in a lot of trouble for doing it), but what you’re really paying for here is distribution. The views, subscribers, and leads that you will acquire are just a byproduct of the distribution. If you want to buy some bread or milk, you go to the grocery store. If you want to buy online distribution, you go to Google Adwords. We’re not buying fake views and subscribers like other sketchy people offer. These are real people who are choosing to watch your video, choosing to click and choosing to subscribe to your channel.
Why would I want to pay for views when I can get them for free? At the end of the day, you have to weigh your costs. You’re investing valuable time and energy making videos. How frustrating is it when they get no views? Your videos are worthless if nobody sees them. It only costs a couple cents per view so it’s worth the investment.

Case Study: Larsen Family Soul

My family and I decided that we wanted to start a family YouTube Channel. In talking to some friends who are currently on YouTube, we heard that it can take a long time of consistently creating videos before you even start to build your subscriber base. Even with a solid video SEO strategy combined with creating daily videos it could take you 3-6 months before you’re starting to get some good engagement.

Everyone I talked to said “Jake, if you want to take YouTube seriously, you’ve got to upload daily.” For me, it felt awkward to think about uploading videos daily that would have zero views and zero comments for the first few weeks or months. Plus, I didn’t have the time to be creating daily videos and I didn’t want to wait 3-6 months to get a subscriber base.

So here’s how I went from 0 to my first 4,000 subscribers within 6 weeks with no previous following. The secret sauce, was knowing how to use YouTube ads.

How to Buy YouTube Views (The Right Way)

Here’s the exact process I followed…

1. First, I created a fun “Channel Trailer” type video that introduced my family, showed some funny clips and asked the viewer to follow along on our adventure by subscribing to the Channel (Click here to watch it). By using our Video Ad Formula, I was able to make sure this was an engaging video that would prompt viewers to take action.
2. I researched the top 50 Channels that my target audience would be watching already. These are the channels that you’ll specifically be putting your video ad on. Since we had a family vlog, I made a list of 50-100 other family vlog channels on YouTube with the largest followings.
3. I created a YouTube Ad campaign in Google Adwords and placed my video on the Channels that I had just researched using “Placements” targeting. Once the ads started running I was able to track my costs, views, clicks and subscribers all within AdWords and paused some of the Channels that weren’t getting as good of results.
4. We started seeing immediate results and comments. When I turned the campaigns on, I almost immediately started getting more views and subscribers. People would see my video ad, subscribe to my channel, then watch more of my other videos.

We were averaging about 670 Subscribers a week without any previous following by promoting just 1 video.

It was like turning on a fire hose! It was really cool to see our subscriber count shooting up and the comments people were leaving.

Here are some of my favorite comments…

David said, “I would just liked to say that I really like your channel! I saw your advertisement and it was the best YouTube Channel ad I’ve ever seen. It was very professional too.”

Said said, “I came here from your ad which made me love the channel already!”

Then you always get those type of comments from people like 9-BBN that say, “You’re the reason people use Adblock”
I’m totally fine with comments like this because YouTube awards your videos based on watch time and viewer engagement (good or bad). All 9-BBN is doing by leaving that comment is helping more people see our video organically.

Takeaways

It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to grow a personal YouTube Channel or a business. YouTube Ads offer instant results. You can use them to get more subscribers, leads, customers, etc.

Now you know how to use YouTube Ads to actually grow your Channel. The process is simple but it does require some work and a little bit of knowledge in setting up the whole process.

If you’d you like further knowledge of our Video Ad Formula, you can download it for free by clicking the button below.

Creating Great Custom YouTube Thumbnails

March 8, 2017 by Jake Larsen

So you’ve spent hours writing, producing, shooting, and editing an awesome video. You upload it to YouTube and sit back and watch the views start pouring in…then your mom calls and says “Honey I’ve already watched your YouTube 300 times! My little star!” Thanks mom.

So how do you get more views on your video that aren’t from your mom? You need to entice people to click on it! And how do you do that? By creating great Custom YouTube Thumbnails.

Why Custom YouTube Thumbnails?

Sure, YouTube will automatically create a video thumbnail for you. Heck, they’ll even let you choose from three (wow!) automatically generated thumbnails from your video! So why waste the time and effort create Custom YouTube Thumbnails for every video?

Think of your YouTube Thumbnails as an awesome movie poster! If you saw a movie poster that was just a randomly generated screenshot from the movie itself, do you think you’d want to see it? Probably a lot less.

Your videos “movie poster” will show up in search results, related videos, & suggested videos. It’s going to be everywhere on YouTube and Google so you want it to look good and be enticing enough for someone to click on it.

The Video Thumbnail is the first thing people see, even before the title of your video, description, or your Channel banner. If it’s boring, they’ll most likely skip right over it.

Enabling Custom YouTube Thumbnails

Before you even think about making your thumbnails, you need to make sure you’re set up to upload Custom Thumbnails on your videos. To enable this feature, you will have to verify your YouTube account if you haven’t already. Next, go to your Creator Studio and under “Channel” go to Status and features. Make sure that the Custom thumbnails box is enabled.

Creating The Perfect YouTube Thumbnail

Now that that’s over with, you can open up your favorite graphics editor. We like to use Photoshop, but there are tons of other (and less expensive/free) options.

YouTube recommends that you set the size of your thumbnail images to 1280×720 pixels. Create a new image that size and save it so you’ll have a template to use in the future.

When creating an image for your video thumbnail, you should use an actual clip from your video or something that truly represents what your video is about. If you misrepresent your video with a thumbnail that’s just clickbait, people might click on it, but they’ll leave your video fast! This will cause much more harm than good. YouTube rewards and punishes videos based on how long people spend watching them.

The image you pick for your thumbnail should convey some sort of emotion or action. Our friends over at VidPow recommend showing a person’s eyes and face. They’ve discovered that lot of emotion and excitement is shown that way.

To do this, scroll to a frame of your video that you want to use and either export that frame to your image editor or take a screenshot of it (⌘+Shift+4) and import it. Once you have the perfect image, you should then adjust it to have a high contrast, bright colors, and be over sharpened.

Next, add your personal branding using your logo and/or brand colors. You should always be consistent with the style of your thumbnails. This will make it easier for people to identify your video from a sea of other videos. Almost like how you can always pick out a McDonald’s from any other restaurant because it looks the same no matter where you travel.

Finally, you should add some text to let people know what your video is about. Try to pick 3-6 words max that are descriptive of your video. We suggest that you make it blocky and a high contrast from your background image so it stands out easily.

Keep in mind that, depending on where your viewers see your thumbnail, it could be big or small. Because of this, you will need to make sure that your text is big enough to be read even if it shows up small to your viewers.

Also remember to not to put any graphics on the bottom right corner because they could be covered up by YouTube’s timestamp overlay.

Uploading Your New YouTube Thumbnail

Once you have your thumbnail all set, save it. Then go back to the video you want to upload it to on YouTube. Click the pencil that says “Info & settings”. All you have to do now is click the box to the right of your video that says “Custom Thumbnail” and select your new image.

Be sure you save your changes, and then you’re good to go! Hopefully that will get more people (besides your mom) to start clicking your videos.

Getting people to click on your thumbnail image is important but you also need to learn how to get keep their attention and get your viewers to act.

Download our Video Ad Formula to dive into the specifics of how to create a successful video ad that converts and show you how to turn strangers into loyal fans and paying customers.