What I did with YouTube Ads to 1.5x the revenue from my online course

In the plethora of ways to advertise your online course, paid as well as free YouTube ads could be among one of the least-known opportunities. When I began making use of YouTube advertisements to advertise the online courses I run, at first wasn't quite sure what to expect. However, after seeing the outcomes I immediately felt that these ads are an effective method of advertising for the vast majority of online course creators.

Below is a snapshot of my typical monthly evergreen income prior to making use of YouTube ads:

This is one I found before I began making use of them:

Cool, isn't it? However, I'd like to inform that, based on my own experience, YouTube ads aren't a ideal fit for every industry. I've tried them in two separate areas and found results mixed. For my online class "The 80/20 Drummer, YouTube ads 1.5xed my earnings.

  Key factors for advertising on YouTube successfully  

After having watched an YouTube campaign succeed and another fail, I've narrowed down a few key factors that likely made the difference in the first instance: communicating to a particular user avatar, providing proof for every assertion in addition to targeting a segment of people who were already using YouTube. Once I was getting strong numbers of views, I experimented with different video and format options, and then increased my focus to the highest performing one.

  Know thy audience  

Below is a screen shot of the rate of view from my most recent campaign:

This is 23.49 percent of those for the video that popped up prior to the video they planned to see (impressions) ended up watching at the very least 75. (My primary CTAfor the video "click this link to access your handbook" was about 75% throughout the film.) What made so many who were in my audience view the video in take the CTA?

Then, when it came time to write the scripts I made an effort to be as close-as-possible to my audience' own words. Below is a draft of the final video script for my very first round of advertisements:

Contrary to a more general strategy, this lets my readers know that that I was adamant about their suffering as well as that my message was for them specifically.

  Prove abundantly  

The drum advertisements I began by responding specifically about my viewers' specific difficulties. It was great to made them feel like I was able to understandthem.

How did they determine if my course worked or did it not?

Easy: They could see me playing the drums.

Video is a great - and, in my opinion untapped - tool for every field in which you can demonstrate competence in a visual way. That makes it a no-brainer for:

• Martial Arts
• Fitness
• Cooking
• Dance
• Music

Other fields, including testing prep, language acquisition, math, chess, speaking skills and social speaking, are all suitable for video even though it is a more subtle technique.

If you're considering video ads the best question to consider is "how will I utilize video to provemy system works? What's my equivalent of an effective dance routine?" It could be something as simple as demonstrating the mathematical problem, or a two-minute interview for a client with a "success account". It's important that you've taken some step to prove your method is effective.

  Find out if YouTube is the "water cooler" to your viewers  

It's entirely possible you could do everything correct and not get the desired outcomes. Why is that? YouTube could not be considered a "water cooler" for your audience.

One reason YouTube performed so well with drums is drummers go to YouTube to see drum-related videos.

When you are planning a new campaign, consider "does my target audience spend time online on YouTube?" A good way to corroborate your speculation is to research your area of interest on YouTube and then look up the viewer and subscriber counts of the most popular channels.

Are the top channels have more than half-a-million subscribers? Do they have more than 100,000? Then you're probably safe. If not, more tests are needed. These niches that I have mentioned earlier (from martial arts to public speaking) are all popular with fan bases on YouTube. Others, like (as I discovered) marketing, do not.

If you believe that your followers tend to be in YouTube, you don't have to create a kitchen sink ad campaign to prove your theory. Just make a one-minute video which demonstrates something that is valuable to your audience, and spend $5 per day to promote it. (E.g. If you're in the cooking area, for instance, you could discover that lots of people are having trouble in slicing up pineapples. So your video might include "the 30-second hack to cut through a fruit, even if you don't own the sharpest knife" (or "Can the knife you have on your table cut the pineapple?") Link from the video to your landing page in the event that users want to "learn more". If engagement is strong, you have a good base to build on.

  Test, and then Double down  

The first time I launched my top-rated YouTube campaign last spring I launched with three videos, each with three variations on the same script (all of them written in the audience's own words).

First, I ran the videos in a single week and then looked at which ones had the most opt ins. (I track opt-ins rather than views when I can, because you're looking for people who will decide to take the next step, and sometimes the best-performer in opt-ins may not be the one with the highest view count.)

Next, I tested the winning entry in two formats:

In-display, which means your video will show up in the suggested results on the right column, and in-stream, which means your video plays before other videos, whose owners have enabled monetization.

In-stream was clearly the winner, although this might not happen for each sector or type of business. Sometime, people who clickan In-display results may sign up for a higher rate than those who were simply interrupted.

I had good evidence from the results of a earliervideo campaign to prove that the ads were ROI positive. But I still needed a way to track the outcomes.

  How did I ensure my ads were profitable  

In other posts the process of determining whether a paid traffic source may be more an art form than science. In this case one, I canceled a campaign I believed was not ROI-positive during the last year and then noticed a decline in sales, which only came back after I reinstated the campaign. What was the issue? I was under-counting the sales from that campaign.

The squishy thing about attribution is that not everyone who buys clicks directly from your ad to your site. A few people might see an ad, check out some of your other content and then return the next day to search you on their own accord. This is why I prefer to utilize a mix of techniques to monitor the performance of ads.

  Direct Attribution  

Visitors who directly click from your ad to visit your landing page are fairly easy to track. Google permits you to setup conversion tracking directly within your campaign dashboard. As long as you have an account with analytics, you can embed an pixel onto the "thank you" page following purchase and Google will count your sales.

As a believer I love to appear over-the-top, yet I'm quite low-tech when it comes to it. Each ad links to a specific website with the opt-in option of its own:

Most email services will let users embed opt-ins for different types on each page of your website. You can also "tag" customers with the lead source. I'm using Infusionsoft, but even MailChimp permits this.

Next, I count those sales that were made by the close of the month, and see how many "buyers" have been tagged by an advertisement that was a lead source. If I earned more than what I paid for, then it's profitable. (You could perform this by hand in the spreadsheet, however Infusionsoft makes it easy for you to make it automated.)

As we've previously discussed, this method, it doesn't include buyers who saw your ad but didn't click directlyto your landing page. And given that a good ROI for paid traffic is 150% (meaning you've earned $1.50 for every dollar you invested in advertisements) So those additional sales you're not taking into accountmight have you in the black without your even being aware of it.

  Indirect credit  

To count the customers for whom my ad was their first contact with me, but who didn't click directly to the landing page, I use surveys.

I ask "where did you find my name?" at two points in my funnel. First right after the subscribers have opted-in (in exchange to receive a bonus clip), then after they buy.

I use Infusionsoft forms. However, you can do this even when you're using google sheets, with the help of API software like Zapier (who can guide you through it on their site). Connect your Zapier account to Google Sheets as well as to your email provider. Then, when google creates a row on the sheet to collect a response then the API will add an email tag to your provider.

Not everyone who opts-in will answer the survey. This means you'll under-count to a degree. However, the best part is that if you're profitable using the metrics above, then there's no doubt your ads work at the very leastas well as the figures suggest.

  Can YouTube advertisements be a money machine for an online course?  

Nate Smith is a direct-response copywriter and funnel master who helps experts build passive income streams, by creating and scaling up successful online courses. The founder is also of 8020MarketingGuy.com