Guide to YouTube Ads for Real Estate Agents

Despite YouTube being one of the most successful and popular social media platforms, for real estate agents, it's still a relatively untapped territory. Of course, many real estate agents have a YouTube presence but it's still not enough, just toes dipped in the water.

What real estate agents don't realize is that YouTube is a huge marketing platform that gives you the opportunity to reach every kind of audience you need: whether you're a real estate agent targeting millennial homebuyers, or your clients are people over 50, YouTube can help you target them.

Here is the thing, YouTube is a platform for everyone. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. Facebook and Instagram can be divided based on age differences. Usually, Facebook is a preferred social media platform for older people, whereas Instagram is a platform where youngsters thrive. YouTube, however, is oriented to cover all ages—which is good for real estate agents. You can find all kinds of content on this social media platform, which makes YouTube the most relatable one.

Now with that information in mind, let's dive into the world of YouTube Ads.

What Is a YouTube Ad?

First things first: for you to be able to create a YouTube ad, you need a Google Ads account. (Also, your YouTube channel should be connected with your Google Ads account.)

Now that we've established this important information, let's dive into what a YouTube ad is and what kind of YouTube ads are out there.

A YouTube ad, like any other ad, has a goal to introduce your product and service to a wider audience, to promote it and bring more leads. There are three types of YouTube ads:

• In-Stream Ads: In-Stream Ads are the most popular and common ads. They play before, after and during the YouTube video. Viewers can skip In-Stream Ads after five seconds and you only pay if a viewer watches 30 seconds of your ad or clicks on your link.
• Discovery Ads: Discovery Ads appear next to related YouTube videos. It can be a homepage, in a search result or on a video partner site. And you only pay if the viewer clicks on the ad and views it.
• Bumper Ads: Bumper Ads are usually no more than six seconds long and the viewer can't skip them. Like In-Stream ads, Bumper Ads play before, during and after the video. The only difference is that you pay per thousand impressions, known as CPM (cost per thousand), or how many times your ad was shown to viewers.

Target Different Types of Audiences with YouTube Ads

We've already discussed the different types of YouTube Ads, now let's talk about targeting the right audience.

What's so great about YouTube Ads, is that it gives you various tools to narrow your target audience. Here is how:

A YouTube Ad gives you the option to specify your audience with the following parametres (note: targeting ads based on age, gender, parental status, or marital status is against Fair Housing rules):

• Household Income: From top 10% to top 100%.
• Geo-Targeting: You can target the audience based on their location either country, state or city.
• Operating Systems: Android, iOS, Blackberry, etc.
• Devices: You can target your audience based on the devices they use: personal computers, mobile devices, or laptops.
• Audience Type: This is one of the most important parameters in the YouTube Ad. Types include:
• • Affinity Audience: People who are interested in a specific topic. For example, people who are interested in the homebuying process and are searching it on YouTube.
  • Custom Affinity Audience: People who searched the specific topic on other search engines. For example, people who search homebuying process and tips on Google.
  • In-Market Audience: Audience who actively searches the topic with the goal of purchasing something. Continuing our example of homebuying, people who actively search for homes on real estate websites, for example, are considered as an in-market audience because they actually have the goal of purchasing a house.
• Affinity Interests and In-market interests: You can actually narrow down your audience even more by targeting it by interest, e.g., food, health, fitness, etc.
• Keywords: Keywords are one of the most important ways of targeting your audience. Choosing the right keywords will help you to narrow down your real estate audience and be more precise. How can you find the right keywords? There are many options. You can type into Google, for example, real estate and see in the suggested searches which keywords are most prominent. You can also check different keyword research tools and websites to determine the right keyword settings.
• Placement: You can target specific websites, YouTube channels, etc.

How to Set Up a Campaign

Again, in order to be able to set up a YouTube campaign, you need a Google Ads account.

Log in to your Google Ads account and choose the campaign section and then a new campaign.

Here you will see several options, such as:

• Sales
• Leads
• Website Traffic
• Product and Brand Consideration
• Brand Awareness and Reach
• App Promotion
• Create a Campaign Without a Goal's Guidance

All these options are created to emphasize your mission, or what you want to achieve with your YouTube campaign. Either you want to increase your brand awareness or get leads—either way, YouTube will consider your goal and will market your campaign with that goal in mind.

If you're just starting to create YouTube campaigns, experienced marketers advise choosing the "leads" option. Why leads, you ask? Well, here is the thing about YouTube. In order for your campaign to perform well, it needs to have information about your target audience. And the more precise this information is, the better. Basically, the YouTube algorithm uses your previous experience with targeting people on YouTube. And if you don't have any campaigns created on this social media platform, YouTube simply won't have any samples it can base its targeting on.

So, first things first, choose leads as a goal for your YouTube campaign.

As you complete the first step, YouTube will offer you the next steps.

Next, think about the name of your YouTube campaign.

Then set up the budget. You want to spend daily on your YouTube ads. Enter the amount of money you will be able to spend on your campaign daily.

Our research shows that $10-20 is a pretty good way to go. Also, in the budget section, you will be given two options:

• Standard
• Accelerated

Both options mean how fast your ad will be served by YouTube. Choose the Standard option, at least for starters when you're just testing the waters with your YouTube campaign.

After setting up the budget, you will need to set up the bidding budget. If you're not retargeting someone and in this article, we'll assume that you're not, then you will need to choose the option Target CPA. CPA stands for cost per acquisition.

And this part might seem a little bit tricky. You will be competing with other companies for leads and since YouTube doesn't have any data on what one lead costs you, because you are a newbie in the YouTube campaign world, and you'll put, for example, $3, it will assume that you're not competitive enough and your ads won't run. So, marketers suggest putting a higher amount of money in the bidding section when you first run your YouTube campaign. And then, when YouTube has more data on what one lead costs you, you can lower the bidding price.

Generally, marketers suggest that after running your first YouTube campaign, you can make your bid three times your one lead price. In a nutshell, if one lead costs you $5, then the bidding price should be $15.

After finally setting up the bidding strategy, choose the right language. You have many different options. And be careful, you don't want to accidentally choose the wrong language because you don't want your ad to be shown to people that don't understand. So, if your audience is mainly English speakers, choose English.

The next step is eliminating the content you don't want your ad to be shown on. You have many different options you can play with, depending on your goal and your audience preferences.

Now, we're moving on to filling up the sections that will help us narrow the audience. We already talked about the different options that we have; you can check out the beginning of this article, but we just want to remind you that the more precise your target, the better results you will get.

After you fill up all sections for targeting your audience, you will be able to choose the video for your YouTube campaign. Remember, the video already needs to be uploaded to your YouTube channel.

Choose the video you want to use as a YouTube ad, then type in a call-to-action text and the headline of your campaign.

After that, your YouTube campaign is finally finished!

What Videos Work the Best?

It is very important to choose the right video. Otherwise, you will spend the money for nothing. Generally speaking, depending on what type your ad is, the time or even the content will vary.

For tIn-Stream, ads 2-4 minutes long are the best, Bumper ads preferably need to be 5-6 seconds, and Discovery ads also need to be 2-4 minutes.

For the content of your video, it needs to be engaging and personalized. Ads with real people in it work better than animations. The first seconds of the ad are crucial—if you're able to interest your audience, then congrats! You created the right ad.

Aside from the content, call to action buttons are also very important. The more eye-catching, the better they will be.

Few Final Words

YouTube ads are a very powerful tool that can help real estate brands skyrocket. For now, it's the untapped territory for most in the industry, which creates an immense opportunity for real estate agents and brokerages.

To view the original article, visit the Realtyna blog.