Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this YouTube advertising growth guide, the five biggest mistakes you need to avoid,
when it comes to YouTube ads, to grow your YouTube channel.
Timestamp table of contents in the description, along with some other helpful videos to actually
set up all of your campaigns, if you decide YouTube ads are right for you, by the end
of this overly negative video.
And plus we'll have a bonus round at the end of three other promotion techniques, that
are commonly taught to new YouTubers that are actually just going to make you look desperate.
So make sure you stick around for that, cause those are just a complete waste of time.
But first let's talk about YouTube advertising and how it can and can't help you grow your
channel.
So number five has to do with organization.
If you're not a type A personality or you can't pretend to be a type A personality for
the few hours it takes to set up, your campaign, then YouTube advertising just isn't going
to be for you, because you have to be very detailed and very organized, when it comes
to setting up your YouTube ads account.
Now, while that isn't necessarily a mistake, it's just a big warning that I wanted to include
here, because I get a lot of comments on my tutorial videos of people who just think it's
overly OCD, but it's necessary in order to be successful, with YouTube advertising.
You just have to be a little OCD because of the way Google reports, some of the statistics.
Now, when it comes to mistakes, number four, here is impatience.
And what's really hard for a lot of new advertisers to wrap their head around.
Especially if you're coming from some other platform like Facebook, Instagram, or even
Google ads is that YouTube advertising is a time game.
It just takes time.
It doesn't matter how much money you're spending.
You can spend $5 a day or $500 a day.
It's pretty much going to take you the same amount of time to figure out what works and
figure out what doesn't.
Now, there are a lot of complex reasons behind this, but in Layman's terms, it just has to
do with the fact, that YouTube advertising is still relatively new and there's not a
lot of ad space.
So some of our bigger clients who are trying to spend 500, 800, 900 dollars a day on YouTube
advertising, actually just can't spend that much money just because there's not enough
ad space to go around right now.
So if you're on a small budget, this is actually an advantage for you.
Because on less than $5 a day, can be successful with your YouTube advertising.
And you just have to remember that it's going to take weeks, if not, months, to figure out
what targeting's working, what type of ads are working and just figuring out this whole
YouTube advertising thing.
It's not a set it and forget it right out of the gate.
It's going to take some time and if you're three or four weeks in, and you're still trying
to figure out what the heck's wrong with your ads or why that you aren't getting the results
that you want, that's completely normal.
And speaking of ads, the next two have to do with ads.
So the third biggest mistake I see, is running in-stream ads, to grow a YouTube channel.
Now, I think the best way to illustrate this, is just an example of how we experience YouTube,
right?
You're you go, you click on a video and then a pre-roll pops up or in-stream ad pops up
and you're stuck watching it for five seconds.
And then you get to skip or it's those annoying ones, where you have to watch the whole 15
seconds.
And I definitely don't recommend ever doing the 15 second one, for growing a YouTube channel.
But let's say you're trying to watch a video and some random person pops up and starts
talking about a similar topic, but not necessarily what you clicked on the video to see or worse,
they just start talking about why they're so great and why you should check out their
channel, when you're trying to watch another video, that's really annoying.
And it's actually one of the worst ways to try and start growing a relationship with
a potential subscriber.
Now here's the big difference.
In-stream ads are great, if you're trying to drive traffic off of YouTube, if you want
someone to take action, perfect, go for it.
But if you're trying to build a relationship with somebody, you want someone to subscribe
to your channel and then keep watching your content, it's not a great way to start that
relationship by just popping up in front of a video saying, “Hey, look at me, look at
me, buy my stuff and subscribe to my channel” And the other person's just sitting there
like, “Who the heck is this person?
What a loser”, skip.
So the best way to do this, is to actually use discovery ads, if you're trying to grow
your channel.
In-stream for driving traffic off of YouTube, discovery for traffic on YouTube.
Now, speaking of discovery, this is the second biggest mistake I see.
And this is running traffic via discovery ads, to an actual content video.
This will kill your video.
Please don't do this.
I see so many sad comments on my videos, and I've personally destroyed over 35 videos,
on this channel testing discovery ads.
So I know this is a definitive thing, discovery ads will kill your organic videos, because
of watch time.
On average, when it comes to running advertising your advertising watch time, while you get
a bunch of views for a couple cents, awesome.
That watch time statistic is going to be driven down because ad views tend to be less, than
organic views when it comes to watch time.
Not so great.
And YouTube cares about that watch time.
So when it comes to running discovery ads, you're trying to promote your videos or promote
your channel, have your content video, and then create another version of it.
And you only have to change a minute or two of the video, so it's not seen as a duplicate
in YouTube’s eyes and then run traffic to the second one.
So you have your normal content video, and then you have your video, that's just to run
advertising.
That way you can still grow your channel, you can build brand awareness, you can connect
with new people, on a video that is specifically there just for discovery ads.
And then you still have a chance to rank organically and get suggested organically, with your actual
content video.
I know it seems like extra work.
You're like, “Why can't I just drive traffic to my normal content video?”, but I promise
you it's going to destroy the organic rankings of your normal video.
And it's never going to see the light of day again.
And it's actually going to essentially just be dependent upon YouTube ads, which is not
what you want, for your organic posts.
Now, the final reason you might not want to be starting off with YouTube advertising and
this is a mistake in a broader context of, us just being small channels and getting started.
You have a lot on your plate.
You're trying to figure out how to rank your videos organically.
You're trying to figure out what your video should be about.
You're trying to improve your video quality.
Hopefully, you're actually trying to comment to all the comments that are on your videos,
which we'll actually get to in a second here.
And then on top of that, now you're trying to do YouTube advertising.
That is way too much in the beginning.
So if you're not already in a flow and kind of this nice rhythm of posting consistent
content, you know, three to four videos a week on YouTube, don't bother with YouTube
advertising.
It's just going to be a distraction.
So in the broader context of trying to grow your channel, the importance of YouTube advertising
on that spectrum, is probably should be a priority three or four compared to learning
how to rank your videos, making better videos and engaging with your audience.
And number four, if you can make more videos.
So if you have a choice between making more videos or trying to figure out this YouTube
advertising thing, just make more videos, the importance of you making more videos and
becoming more comfortable on camera well, as comfortable as we can be.
You know, talking to a camera is super important, so much more important than YouTube advertising.
YouTube advertising is something you can always add later, to accelerate the growth of your
channel, but it shouldn't be seen as a shortcut to jumpstart the growth of your channel.
So that does it for the five, I guess, technically three mistakes.
And then two warnings, when it comes to YouTube advertising.
And now, I want to get into the bonus round of the three other promotion techniques, that
I see taught, that is just a waste of time and going to make you look desperate.
So the first one in this bonus round that you don't want to do when you're trying to
promote your YouTube channel, is comment on other videos.
This is something that is an absolute waste of your time.
Spend all your time, commenting on your videos.
It's silly how many small channels I see, where they have a couple hundred views.
They have two or three comments and they just don't reply to them.
Reply to your comments, reply to all of your comments.
I personally still spend about five hours a week, replying to all the comments on this
channel.
That's how important I think it is.
And that's how important it replying to comments should be for you, not commenting on other
people's videos.
Even if you write like a paragraph or two, and then you link to your channel, something
meaningful about the video, you're trying to contribute to the community over there.
That creator is going to see right through what you're doing.
It's going to be spam, look like spam.
As soon as you try and link to your channel.
Now the second thing, speaking of spam that you want to avoid, when trying to promote
your YouTube channel organically, is going to Facebook groups and then trying to drive
traffic from Facebook over to YouTube.
Again, even if you spend a month or two engaging with that group and linking to other people's
YouTubes or trying to build value and rapport, number one, you should have spent all that
time making YouTube videos, instead of engaging in someone else's group and building up someone
else's community.
And number two, as soon as you try to promote yourself, it's going to look disingenuous
and people can see right through that strategy because it's been used so much.
Now the third thing you absolutely want to avoid, when trying to promote your YouTube
channel, is doing any sort of views from Fiverr.
Most of what's on Fiverr is just robots, even if you message them and you say, “Hey, are
you using robots?”
They're just gonna say “No, of course we're not using robots.”
And then you, you buy the gig and yeah, they use robots or what they do is, they go and
they spam a bunch of Facebook groups, which also doesn't help your brand long-term because
they're just going to Facebook groups and spamming your link everywhere.
And people are just going to look at it and go, “Okay, great.
They're just here and in spamming.”
So it kind of ties back in with why you really just don't want to waste your time with Facebook
groups.
So that does it for the bonus round of the three.
Don't do comments on other people's videos, focus on your own comments.
Don't spend your time growing, trying to grow your rapport in other Facebook groups, spend
your time making more videos and don't try and shortcut the system by going over to Fiverr
and trying to get a bunch of real views, because they're fake views.
Right?
So thank you so much for watching.
I hope you found this video informative and actionable.
If you got some value out of it, hit that like button, comment below, if you have any
questions or concerns about whether or not YouTube advertising is right for you.
I intentionally wanted to make this a very cautionary video because YouTube advertising
is an awesome tool, but it does come with a lot of risks and we need to consider it
in the context of trying to grow our channel as a whole.
So hit that like button, subscribe and as always, keep building the business you love.