How To Run A Successful YouTube Ad Campaign Without A 7 Figure Budget

Whether it’s organic or paid, YouTube remains the most rated platform on the Internet. And when one of the smartest paid search experts calls it “the most inappropriate ad listing on the Internet,” you’re ignoring it at your peril.

What I really love about YouTube is how it gives you the power to consume media in any way you’re comfortable with at any given time.

• Shorts are for the guy who swipes a vertical video at 11 pm with a loud, tight fist, who wants to have fun. Interesting content captures the mind and helps them find new creators, so ads have about two seconds to win the next two.
• Internal YouTube is a completely different planet. A viewer chooses to watch a 15-minute video about an obscure, popular topic that they like or are new to. They have settled down, with a purpose and focus that is lacking in Shorts. Your ad needs to carry the same energy as the content that distracts you.

But most YouTube ad tips are written around the world and by brands that spend more than seven figures a month on ads. This article is unique and for the practical marketer with a small budget.

The Biggest YouTube Setup Mistake … and How to Do It Right

Most brands don’t understand the difference between YouTube formats. They create a Demand Gen campaign, upload one video, throw in a $100/day budget, and let Google control their destiny. That, of course, means that Google will automatically go to whatever placement is easiest for you, not what it converts for you.

What we do for our Shopify clients:

• Separate Demand Gen campaigns by placement type: one for short, one for internal broadcast, one for image placements if it makes sense.
• Match the format of creation and placement. The short gets the video straight, it’s hooked in the first second, the captions are baked in. The stream gets a long, story-driven cut.
• Don’t judge performance by last click ROAS alone. Watch the keyword search lift and the volume of direct traffic. YouTube plants the seeds that Search will reap weeks later.
• Keep CPMs honest. We saw $5 CPMs on Demand Gen vs. $25 on Meta, but the stats only check if placement is correct.

Why YouTube On Demand Gen Gives More Control

Demand Gen gives you the ability to target specific audiences. This is different from Performance Max, where you can add any audience you like, but they are treated as a signal to steer the system.

Here’s how it works at the most basic level of all bidding strategies:

• No targeting settings = 100% algorithmic targeting.
• Target ROAS or CPA only = trying to meet your goal.
• Increasing audience = limited campaign exposure.

Adding an audience can have the effect of increasing costs, so you have to make sure everything is aligned with what you’re trying to do on the business end.

An option on Demand Gen that is great and not available on paid social channels like Facebook or Instagram is building a list of people who are looking for specific words.

So if I was running a small campaign with a modest budget but I only wanted to show up if someone wanted to [kitchen cabinets]I can go as granular as I like. That level of control is a welcome feature.

A good place to start is your top performing search terms from Shopping, Performance Max, and other campaigns. Create “target audiences” and those – perfect for B2B in particular.

I can also build on my customer list: email subscribers, website visitors, lapsed buyers who bought from you in the last six months but not in the last few weeks. You can select any criteria for which you have data.

Then, like Facebook and Instagram, you can use that to build a lookalike audience to target people who are most similar to your existing customers. The third is just Google’s list of compatibility, and, in the market categories, they have a lot of things here.

Don’t forget: If you want to run a retargeting campaign, turn off Optimized Targeting so it doesn’t automatically target your audience. With any audience you create, if you stop, you can see about 20% more conversions for the same amount. If you’re not trying to run retargeting, I’d usually keep it on.

A Note for Small Budgets: What High Spending Accounts Can Do But Can’t

If you’re running small or B2B-focused campaigns, it’s very important to give YouTube strong viewer signals so it knows who to follow, because it doesn’t have much of a signal from conversion actions.

Larger campaigns and older/larger accounts with tons of conversion data can go much deeper with targeting and let the bid strategy find you. This is what we default to unless we see something in practice that indicates otherwise.

It’s also important to always check the placements and make sure you don’t include things that don’t move or drive junk leads. For big budgets, this is neat. For you, it’s do or die.

There’s Every Reason To Stay Talking About YouTube

The diversity of YouTube and its relative isolation from how much machine learning has taken over other forms of advertising is a huge strength.

I can target people based on life events and things like that – these are too broad and don’t accurately reflect what someone might be looking for, so I don’t like these options. I can target based on household income, parental status, and other such demographics. I can put an exclusion to block people who have bought from me recently.

But the important common thread here is being able to choose when and where to show my ads. I may select different audience segments for different pieces of the media mix. I may have different channels targeting different types of ads. If all my art is horizontal, I probably only want to appear live – as opposed to direct video and Short.

But at the end of the day, a platform is still a platform. Your campaign setup is what really determines who you will appear in front of. Get that wrong, and you might as well donate your budget to a charity where it can do more good.

Get it right, and YouTube becomes one of the most effective acquisition channels in your media stack.

Additional resources:

Featured image: Roman Samborskii/Shutterstock