I believe most of us would associate Google Ads pay-per-click campaigns with a catchy headline, description and possibly an attractive graphic for the display networks.
However, many marketers have been increasingly using videos for running successful Google Ads campaigns in the past few years.
Now moment you hear ‘videos’, you are probably thinking of YouTube Ads. Well, you are not wrong. However, in this case I am talking about YouTube Ads as well as using videos even for actual Google Ads campaigns that appear with Google search results and on their display network.
I cannot stress enough the importance of using videos in your digital advertising campaigns and some of the reasons for this are as follows.
Quickly Grab Attention
Few years back, the average time any business had, to grab the attention of a user before they left their website was only 7 seconds.
While I do not have any official statistics with me, I am quite sure the average time is now even lower than before.
Therefore, you could be getting a lot of clicks to your ads on Google Search and Display networks, but if your sales page cannot immediately hold the attention of a user, you are losing money.
To counter this, many marketers turned to professional video production. Instead of filling up the sales page with lots of text, you now have a video that is right on top. The video starts playing as soon as the user enters the web page.
In a visual world, videos have the ability to quickly grab attention. No one has the patience to read sales text anymore. They want to be told exactly what they will be getting and preferably would like to see a video demonstration.
Using well-made videos with visuals and speech is the ideal way you can make a user stay on your website and go through your offer.
You can even break up your videos into smaller modules and have them appear at different stages of your web page. That way you can have a quick welcome video, a video for product demonstration and another for special offers.
Visual Demonstration with Personal Connection
We are living in a world where streaming and OTT platforms have pretty much taken over how we consume content.
Our attention spans are getting lower and ability to consume text content has definitely taken a beating.
We want things quickly. We want things explained and demonstrated. We want to visualize before making any purchase decision.
Videos are obviously the best for visual demonstration. Regardless of how you structure your sales pages, you must include videos somewhere in them.
Even if you have nothing to demonstrate, simply having a video with someone explaining your services or greeting the user adds a personal touch to the sales page. It develops connection with the potential client and provides the comfort level needed to convert them into a sale.
Lower Cost Per Click with High Quality Score
Note achieving low cost per click works two ways with videos.
First, you could simply create videos and use YouTube Ads. Cost per click on YouTube is in general lower than Google Search Ads as there are no crazy bidding wars for each keyword.
The other way to achieve low cost per click is to increase the quality score for your Google Ads campaign. One of the ways to achieve high quality score is by having a landing page that makes the user stay on the page for a longer duration.
Google algorithms calculate how many click throughs your ads are getting. However, more importantly they calculate how the user is interacting with the sales page after the click. If Google feels your sales page is highly relevant to the users, they will increase your quality score, show your ads more often and in turn, reduce your cost per click.
YouTube Ads
Finally, instead of using Google Ads along with sales pages, you could simply create videos and upload them to YouTube.
YouTube Ads are now an important part of the overall Google Ads experience. YouTube allows you to display your videos when someone searches for something relevant within the video platform. You could also choose to have your video ads play before, during or after any other video a target user is watching on YouTube.
The best part about YouTube Ads is that they offer multiple ad extensions that can include various call to action buttons, text and other information.
YouTube Ads are quite comprehensive and you could simply use your videos with YouTube without running a Google Search campaign.
Final thoughts
Videos can be used in multiple ways with Google Ads.
You can have professional videos play on your sales page. You could use YouTube Ads to target specific user interests. There are a lot of things you could do with videos.
It does not matter how you plan to use them, what matters is you do use them as videos will give you the edge we all desperately need with ever increasing costs and competition online.
