Smart Ways to Lower Your Cost Per Lead on YouTube Without Compromising Quality

More businesses are adopting Pay Per Click (PPC) ads as a strategy to increase sales and reach on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. But one great concern such businesses face in this regard is how to achieve lower cost per click. Cheaper costs per click will make such marketing campaigns cost-effective, leading to better profits. Cost per Lead is the amount spent to acquire each lead generated from a YouTube ad campaign. Having a good understanding of your Cost Per Lead and knowing how to cut them down can positively affect your marketing campaign. This article will explore smart ways to reduce the cost per lead for your YouTube marketing campaign without compromising quality.

What does CPL mean?

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When running a YouTube ad campaign, it is imperative that you cut down your cost per lead. You certainly would want to spend little money to get leads while making a lot of profit from the campaign. Cost Per Lead is determined by the total amount spent on a campaign divided by the number of leads gotten from the campaign. If you spend $1,000 for 100 leads, your CPL will be $10.

What are YouTube ads?

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YouTube advertising is simply a way of advertising content on the YouTube platform to optimize user reach. This could involve your video showing up in YouTube search results or playing just before a user views a different video. There are three major types of YouTube ads:

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1. TrueView

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TrueView ads are ads that do not have strict time restrictions, which means they can last between 10 seconds and 6 minutes long. However, viewers have the option of skipping TrueView ads after 5 seconds. The good thing about TrueView is that you only get to pay when viewers interact with or watch the ad. 

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With TrueView ads, YouTube only sees the ad as watched when the viewer has seen the video for at least 30 seconds. Also, you get to pay when a viewer interacts with your ads by clicking on a link.

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2. Preroll

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Preroll YouTube ads are simply ads that the viewers can’t skip and have to watch till the end. They usually pop up after, before or in the middle of a YouTube video. Preroll YouTube ads currently have a time limit of between 15 and 20 seconds. On record, preroll ads are known to have the best engagement rate for all YouTube ad forms because viewers are forced to view them.

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3. Bumpers

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This type of YouTube ad spans 6 seconds long and is the shortest type of ad, and is not skippable. Bumper ad videos are best used as a part of a bigger video campaign.

How to cut down your cost per lead on YouTube

1. Leverage on Bidding

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Biddings for YouTube advertising are done with AdWords, and it usually comes with multiple bidding options. With Google ad words, you can explore options such as cost per click, cost per view and cost per action. Upgrades in Google's algorithm and AI make it possible to set your bidding budget. Also, you can target your CPA bidding and let the Google algorithm take care of the rest.

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However, you should do well to vary your bid levels if you aren’t getting the result you want in terms of cost per lead for the ads. You will find out that the cost per lead varies depending on the targeting, ad, creative quality and dynamics.

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2. Efficiently target your audience

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When creating YouTube ads, you should have a target audience set. A target audience is a group of people who will most likely patronize your service or product. This audience is set to assist your business in connecting with the right leads. You may be running a business with different groups of people fitting into its target audience. 

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In this case, you could set a broader target audience while attempting to reach such people. What you should know about setting a broader target audience is that you should expect more significant competition. To avoid being caught in a rat race for customers, you should consider targetting your audience instead. When your focus is narrowed down, you will have less competition, and this will lead to more leads on your ads and cause lower costs per lead.

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There are different ways for you to target your audiences, such as using gender, age, or profession. Also, YouTube makes it possible to target your desired audience based on their behaviors, interests and connections. Doing this makes it easy and flexible to determine how you intend targetting your audience. 

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3. Avoid ad fatigue

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Your audience may view your advert multiple times when running a YouTube ad campaign. When the audience sees a video ad too many times, they may get tired, which may affect the result of your YouTube ad campaign. Usually, your click-through rate will likely drop as the ad frequency rate rises.

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To reduce ad fatigue, you should limit the number of times your target audience views your ads. When the ad click-through rate reduces, the ad is no longer as effective as it should be. Preventing ad fatigue helps you to engage your leads and, in the long run, cut down on your cost per lead without compromising quality.

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4. Use Negative and positive keywords

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Leverage your Search Terms Report, the terms your advert pops up for depend on your chosen keywords. You could schedule this every few months with a date range set to some months.

• Bad: Low CTR/ high Cost Per Conversion and irrelevant terms- Ensure to add these terms as Negative Keywords.

• Good: These keywords usually have low Cost Per Conversion and High Clickthrough Rate- You should include these terms as your new keywords.

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In the case of Negative Keywords, consider if you would instead add them to campaign level or ad groups. Also, when you are judging the Cost Per Conversion, the information needs to significant statistically, and as such, you should only aim for search terms at about 300 impressions at least.

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5. Use engaging headlines

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YouTube ads are usually effective when you can capture your audience within the first few seconds and encourage them to view the rest of the ad. With so many ads popping up on people’s screens, you must be creative enough to keep them watching your ad until the end. Make sure the headline is clear enough and attempts to target a specific audience, as this will make them more interested.

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6. Route your audience to giveaways on your website

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Giveaways are an intelligent way to get more people interested in your YouTube ads; more often than not, they may choose to share your videos. This means you will get more interactions and views for your posts at a reduced cost.

Final thoughts

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YouTube ads are a smart way to increase reach and patronage for your products and services, as YouTube boasts billions of users worldwide. But there are a few things more frustrating than getting little for spending much on your ad campaigns. Cutting down your Cost Per Lead is possible if you remember leveraging on giveaways, using the right headlines, avoiding ad fatigue, and targeting the right audience. 

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