How To Leverage Youtube Shorts In Advertising
Youtube Shorts is a great way to increase the reach of your channel/brand in a short, digestible format. Like TikTok and Reels, Shorts are snippy and allow you to tell your brand’s story, advertise a new product or simply connect with the user in a short space of time.
Youtube shorts are not only a great organic opportunity, but you can also use them in your advertising campaigns. With users taking preference in the more punchy, short-form content, testing shorts in your Youtube ad campaigns could have huge potential!
With that said, here’s some best practices to when it comes to creative to get the ball rolling!
It’s All About Length
Keeping your video short and punchy is the best way to keep users engaged and watch time up. You want your content to be 60 seconds or less and to not beat around the bush. When YouTube ran their initial tests in the early stages of shorts in ad campaigns, they found that content under 15 seconds performed the best.
So when mapping out your shorts content, think about the story you want to tell and how to keep it short, sweet and succinct!
Vertical Assets Are A Must
Shorts is a mobile first format and more users than ever before are navigating YouTube via mobile devices. Whilst the importance of catering to mobile users does speak for itself, YouTube did find a 10%-20% conversion increase per dollar when vertical assets were used over standard landscape assets.
Test That UGC/Lo-fi Creative
Leverage that Lo-fi creative. The great news about this content style, is it’s faster and cheaper to action than highly produced assets, you can get your customers and followers involved through UGC assets OR you can re-purpose existing content!
Need more ideas? Here are some formats recommended by YouTube themselves:
- Interview
- Explainer videos
- Listicle
- Reaction
- Commentary
- Challenge
Combining a couple of these within a video will help keep content interesting and the user watching.
The Importance Of Sound
Never forget about the importance of sound through voiceovers and music, sound can not only set the tone of your video, it’s the perfect opportunity to drive a message and provide further context and information to the user watching.
Think About The Pacing
With a short amount of time to deliver a strong message, pacing is key. We all know the importance of incorporating a call to action throughout your video content, but what about your key value proposition? This is what will get the user hooked so placement of this at the beginning is vital!
YouTube Shorts is very top of funnel, which means a lot of users watching likely haven’t heard of your business before. With this in mind, you’re not just selling your product, you’re selling your brand! Keep your brand front and center by featuring brand messaging at the beginning of your video and at the end so you remain in their mind.
Safe Zones
Remembering ad safe zones may sound boring but by golly is it important, being mindful of these will prevent any text and /or video from being cut off. Learn more about safe zones here!
What’s Trending
Keeping on top of trends and consumer buying habits will be your secret ingredient to your Shorts recipe, doing this exercise ahead and during a campaign launch will allow you to cater your messaging and content style to the user. Personalisation of ad content based on the user you’re targeting, what they like and where they are in their journey can garner you more watch time and improve engagement and click-through rate.
@misspinkdigital Trying to scale that Youtube activity and brand awareness? Here’s how you can optimize your video creative to do just that ✨ #googleads #youtubeads #digitalmarketing ♬ Storytelling - Adriel
