When we onboard new brands at the ThoughtLeaders Agency, we really dig into what their performance goals look like and if they are looking for a more short-term or long-term strategy.
What’s awesome about Youtube is that creators on the site are constantly making content for EVERYONE. Whether you are interested in current events, how-to videos, or any niche hobby you have, there is a channel for you out there.
So how can marketers use this to their advantage? And how does this relate to your immediate performance goals? This is something I speak with our team of Account managers all the time…
The best way to take advantage of the diversity of content on YouTube is by laying out your conversion goals at the start of your campaign and targeting the correct content to be able to hit those expectations.
In my experience, most brands are purchasing and evaluating a sponsorship on the views a video will get in 30 days (i.e. I’m purchasing a video based on the views I assume the video will get after 30 days).
With that in mind, if you need quick conversions or looking for a more short-term campaign, it’s critical that you find videos that reach their full maturity before the 30-day mark. This type of content is normally news and current events related, in the picture below you can see a few videos from the YouTube channel David Pakman. These videos are only 10 days old and many of them have well surpassed their projected views. You can also see in the graph that their views projection is starting to flatline, indicating that the video itself has nearly reached its maximum potential.
When looking for a more long-term strategy, brands should aim to sponsor videos with a longer-tail. These are usually general knowledge, science, or how-to channels. This content will be relevant for a longer period of time. One mistake many brands make when sponsoring these types of channels is not fully realizing the value that was delivered by these channels past the 30-day maturity mark. They look at how many conversions were achieved within the month and if their ROAS/CPA wasn’t hit, they move on. This is a huge mistake when sponsoring evergreen content.
Videos that overdeliver on views actually save brands money because it continues to drive views and conversions well past the 30-day mark. 💰
Let’s assume you booked a video for a $30 CPM on a video you anticipate will get 100k views (i.e. you paid them $3,000), but seeing that the sponsored video is evergreen, on the 60-day mark the video is at 200k views.
The actual price you got on the video was a $15 CPM with that rate consistently lowering. Or you can even view it as the brand saving $3,000, which they would have needed to spend to get 100k views on a different video.
At the end of the day, it’s all about a brand’s conversion goals and whether they want to get the value immediately from the channels they sponsor or want more value from their dollar which may take a longer time to fully realize.
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