How To Make YouTube Ads For Books

Marketing a book is about engagement, exposure and community building to promote or sell something. An effective marketing campaign is at the heart of marketing success, and one of the most powerful marketing tools available to everyone is YouTube. Like any marketing effort, you need a strategy for attracting the desired customers. If you are an author who wants to sell books, YouTube offers a remarkable opportunity for prospecting and marketing your books because of its appeal to billions of people around the world.

Buying Book Reviews is another necessary component to marketing your book. Read this article to find out if it's right for you.

The challenge is bringing everything together in a coordinated manner to achieve the greatest results. The ad content plus the search, shopping and display campaigns need coherence, appeal and relevance. It is not just a matter of “making a video.” A YouTube marketing campaign is like any other marketing campaign. It must be:

• monitored for results
• refined to continually capture a bigger audience
• periodically adjusted to add different audiences
• assessed for performance on a routine basis

It is discouraging to spend time and money developing a YouTube video and have it fail to drive book sales. You have to know how to structure and manage the campaign to get optimal ongoing results, and not just one-off, success. Having a YouTube channel and posting a video without a marketing strategy fails to take advantage of the full marketing power of YouTube.

For free growth strategies read this article about marketing your book on a budget.

YouTube Video Ad Rules!

Anyone can post a video on YouTube, and some of them are painful to watch. Admit it! They are amateurish, rambling and lose the viewer before the end. No one wants to be bored or believe they are watching a video by someone who did not take the time to make an appealing video. “If you wanted to torture me, you'd tie me down and force me to watch our first five videos,” said Jon Bon Jovi. We know how that marketing story ends because obviously, he learned how to do better. For lessons on producing your own videos head over to SkillShare and find a creator you enjoy.

You do not want to waste your time posting a low-value video. A low-value video can harm your brand as an author. At Accessory to Success, we talk to people all the time who discover they need a consultant to help them incorporate basic marketing principles into their videos, no matter where they will be posted. It is not nearly as easy as people tend to believe.

A great first step in the process is storyboarding. This is the idea of breaking down all the steps in the process. Intro the product, show it in use, mention a feature, show a benefit, etc. We made the below templates on Canva.

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One important marketing point to keep in mind is that YOU are selling yourself as an author and selling your books. YouTube is not selling anything. It is YOUR ability to make the connection with viewers via video that sells books. You can project authenticity in a way Facebook or other social media posts cannot achieve.

However, developing a YouTube marketing campaign requires a lot of work if it is to be done right. A great marketing campaign is a balance of hard and soft sell, and people tend to go strongly one way or the other. Go too hard, and you will lose viewers. Go too soft, and viewers will not take action. Following are just some of the principles of an effective YouTube video marketing campaign. For more read the book Hey Whipple Squeeze This.

1. Focus the ad on what makes you special as a writer

Are you the author of the book? Underscore the video ads by emphasizing your knowledge and expertise as a writer who is delivering a quality book. This builds your brand as an up-and-coming influencer. You may be a pro at writing fiction or nonfiction; mysteries or fantasies; horror or action books; or historical or political books. Every ad should be based on a common theme – quality writing or knowledge of the subject matter or ability to entertain, etc.

There are an endless number of TikTokers and vloggers that would be happy to make you promotional videos too. Don’t forget that or be scared to reach out. To find influencers quicker try this article.

2. Establish a hook to capture the targeted viewer’s attention

The first five seconds of a YouTube video is when viewers decide to continue watching or click the “skip ad” when it appears after five seconds. Five seconds is such a short time, so whatever the viewer sees in that time must be appealing and make the person think, “I need to watch more of this video.”

You should be considering the first 5 seconds of your YouTube ad as the headline. 5 different variations of the first 5 seconds must be made and tested to see what captures attention the best. More on value prop testing like this in the Facebook ads article we wrote.

There are different ways to hook a viewer. For example, you can use humor, but humor is not always appropriate, depending on the book topic. Other hooks include promising a fascinating story, creating an awe-inspiring opening scene, alluding to a surprise, opposing a commonly accepted idea, or asking a question and promising an answer. A book cover reveal over several videos is a teaser and attracts the curious and playful. You can use an odd or interesting visual with a question that directly involves the viewer.

An important marketing principle is that people buy solutions. A point made well in the book Competing Against Luck. You are selling a book, but the problem is the viewer is looking for a book that meets a particular need – entertainment, expanding knowledge on a topic, learning something new, mastering a life skill, etc. You are offering a book that is a solution to a problem. The hook should point to that solution.

3. Remember how YouTube charges for ads

Your YouTube ads can run under 30 seconds or over 30 seconds. If the ad is less than 30 seconds, you pay YouTube only if the viewer watches the whole video. If the ad is longer than 30 seconds, you pay if the viewer watches your ad for at least 30 seconds. Views are counted though at 10 seconds. If the viewer interacts with the YouTube ad, you pay no matter how long the ad runs.

This is important information because you want the people most likely to purchase your books to watch the ads. You want the ad to attract solid leads but discourage unlikely buyers in less than 30 seconds. You do not want to find yourself paying YouTube a lot of money for ads that do not produce sales. So you are using the first five seconds to get a viewer’s interest and the next 14 seconds to help them make a quick decision as to whether to skip the ad.

Also, don’t romanticize any one ad. If it doesn’t work, let it go. Make a new ad. This may be the hardest part for some readers. Just not understanding why something doesn’t work. Remember, it's only about the data. Something either works or doesn’t.

4. Expand on the lead while staying on track with the theme

You have asked a question and have a viewer’s attention because you can meet the viewer’s need. Now what? The remaining ad can demonstrate the additional benefits of buying your book. They may include things like available formats, rapid delivery, what makes this book different, how you developed the characters, the research process or anything else that sets you apart from other authors. Remember your goal is to keep the viewer engaged.

5. Keep marketing even as your audience grows

Growing a YouTube audience and attracting new audiences requires an ongoing marketing campaign. Each video expands on the one before it in some way while adhering to the theme mentioned earlier. You may add information, like reader comments, book popularity or awards received. This kind of information will help the skeptics who are telling themselves they do not know the author and have no reason to believe the book brings little value.

Growing a YouTube channel is extremely difficult, so this is much more about being active. For some reason YouTube gives preferential ad placements to accounts that are actively posting on YouTube. It’s something about activity that relates directly to performance. So make sure you post either a YouTube Short or regular video regularly (once a week). This will help your paid ads performance.

6. Compel the viewer to take action through value

The YouTube video is only successful when it convinces people to take action. Your video must be persuasive and compel action. Show the viewers what they will receive – the book – but also what value they will gain. It could be something like more information on a topic of interest, an entertaining read for relaxation, reader testimonials about what they took away, a how-to guide that simplifies life or anything else of value. Tell your viewer what to do, like “go to my website” or “purchase the Ebook on Amazon.”

Great YouTube Ad Examples

Here are a few wonderful examples of spectacular YouTube ads to help you visualize the above learnings. Keep in mind that an ad like this always needs an exciting offer like a great warranty or a trial and a Call To Action to get them to your website.

Old Way Vs New Way

You’re basically going to say: My book is the best book on the market and every other book has got it all wrong / isn't as good. Tell them why they need your book. The mission to successfully change lives needs to be bigger than the one viewer, it’s a movement to change the industry, etc. Ask yourself: What is my book saving the world from? Then answer it in your ad. You need people to feel impulsive after watching the video thinking: “I wish I knew about this sooner.” For more inspiration on this read the book Fascinate.

Here are a few examples:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BvwpjaGZCQ
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYmmW3mNS80
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fry-C_CYa_4
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9NkEJeVLs8&t=3s
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoxZRMmtM4g&feature=youtu.be

Explain The Pain

In this strategy you’ll want to tell the story of your book. What is the deeper reason you wrote it and who you wrote it for. This is an important step in the process of having potential buyers identify with what you’re saying. Pro Tip: It should not be for everyone. Try to speak to a specific audience of people. This way people will either immediately identify with your product or not. This is best.

This is the beginning of developing trust. If you back that up with a few testimonials then you should establish credibility.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2eKaOc3wo
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOo9iJ8RYWM
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2eKaOc3wo

Opportunity to Scale YouTube Are Endless

The opportunity to scale with video marketing is almost endless because YouTube’s global usage will certainly continue to increase. View costs are insanely low still. You can get 30 second views on an ad for $.02. $.02!! You wouldn’t even pick two cents up off the ground. Yet you can pay it and have a potential buyer watch an ad of yours for 30 seconds when they could have skipped it in 5 seconds. Amazing value. Incomparable.

Then there are influencers who you can scale too. You’ve heard of “influencers” or people who have a reputation or credibility in an industry and claim knowledge and expertise on specific topics. Celebrities have large audiences in the millions and the power to persuade. But Shopify points out that there are different levels of influencers that include nano influencers (1,000-5000 followers); micro-influencers (5,000-20,000 influencers); power influencers (20,000-100,000 influencers); and mega influencers (100,000-1,000,000 followers). For more on this consider our article about using Influencer Marketing to sell more books.

You can become one of these types of influencers and sell thousands of books, even as a nano influencer, but you need to invest in your personal brand. These influencers will include links in their description and those are backlinks that aid in your site’s credibility in Google’s eyes. This will help your rankings in SERPs. Also these YouTube videos basically live forever. As the influencer grows their channel your link will get more traffic and be more valuable.

A poorly designed video ad and/or a lack of a solid marketing plan campaign will not achieve the desired results. For example, you can pay us to make a book review and link to your site in the description. As our channel grows, so will, the value of that link.

Why Use YouTube to Sell Your Books?

There are many channels for Social Media today. How do you choose which one to go after?

The sheer volume of people using YouTube makes this one of the most desirable social media marketing platforms. There are more than 2 billion active users on YouTube with more than 30 million paid subscribers. The social media site has experienced phenomenal growth which is not surprising since Google owns YouTube.

YouTube is technically a search engine, but it has a different role as a video-sharing site. The Hootsuite Global State of Digital 2022 Report says YouTube gets 14.3 billion visits each month and 1.7 billion unique visits monthly, so the video-sharing feature is essential to capturing a big audience and adding different audiences to promote yourself as an author and your books.

Put simply: Just from a search & reach perspective, you must be posting on YouTube.

You can target any age group or multiple age groups too. Pew social media demographics research found that 95 percent of people aged 18-29 years old, 91 percent of people aged 30-49 years old and 83 percent of people aged 50-64 years old use YouTube. Another significant statistic is that 54 percent of U.S. adults visit YouTube several times a day or once a day.

By the way, YouTube is good for selling books written by you or selling a variety of other people’s books as a bookseller. In fact, some people are selling thousands of books each month that are low content – journals, meal diaries, guestbooks, etc. The author develops the form and the reader essentially does the writing after downloading the form. Even in these situations, you still need a marketing strategy and campaign to attract and retain the people who are likely to enjoy your products.

Find Success on YouTube

With a great YouTube marketing campaign in place, Accessory to Success can help you use YouTube content to get found within YouTube and on Google’s search engine results and get shared across social networking platforms. This is a path to becoming an influencer in your own right as an author. We can help you develop, implement and monitor a YouTube marketing campaign for authors by providing guidance based on our in-depth knowledge of social media marketing strategies that work.

For a book on YouTube Ads, please read The Ultimate Guide To YouTube Ads.

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