Youtube For Nonprofits: Why You Should Invest in Advertising

Before getting into the Best-In-Class youtube ads, maybe we should explain why nonprofits, specifically you’re nonprofit should be investing in Youtube in the first place. At Community Boost, Youtube ads or video ads are one of our favorite ad channels because it is one of the most affordable channels you can invest in for bringing new users and building your brand recognition or awareness for your nonprofit. According to The Nonprofit Acceleration Report, 21% of nonprofits expecting large revenue growth in 2022 are “very likely” to try paid digital ads (Youtube, Display, Google, Bing).

Youtube ads are pretty unique in that again, you’re telling your story in a visual format. Because if your aware of Community Boost, you will know that we believe VIDEO IS KING.

Start Investing in Youtube

Well, with YouTube, users can watch 30 seconds or more of that video and they’re automatically tagged for remarketing if their privacy settings allow. So after they watch 30 seconds or more, they get put into a remarketing audience that is just held on YouTube. We have specifically seen these lists grow extremely fast.

We’ve been able to create remarketing audiences for clients of 30,000 plus within a couple of months. That gives us the opportunity to remarket to these people multiple times.  The best part about this is that these people are only on youtube, as in they have not made it to your site yet. This is an overlooked and valuable asset because we know that in order for a brand to be remembered or for people to look into your brand, there need to be multiple touchpoints. Technically, youtube ads could be the start of online conversions.

The Power of Youtube Ads for Nonprofits

There are 2 billion YouTube users worldwide and it is the second largest search platform worldwide. Kind of mind-blowing right? Youtube ads have really unique marketing capabilities, however,  it is probably the most underutilized. With data privacy laws really impacting our ability to remarket to certain audiences, it’s really important that we utilize every opportunity that we can to remarket to people because of the known impact it makes on conversions.

In terms of a Youtube Ad, 70% of viewers say that YouTube makes them more aware of new brands, and viewers are four times more likely to use YouTube versus other platforms to find information about a brand, product, or service.

Refined Targeting on Youtube

Because we already know people are on Youtube searching for your brand and other brands, we know there is an opportunity for refined targeting and Youtube has great capabilities for that. However, you need to have a clear idea of who you want to be targeting.

For example, if somebody is looking for food banks near me, I can create a custom audience around those types of keywords so that my ads show up to those searching that directly. Again, it’s not a one-to-one comparison. Google can’t necessarily say that this person absolutely typed in food banks near me and you’re showing up for your ad, but we’ve seen it really impact our engagement in these videos.

Placement Targeting

Placement targeting is just what it sounds. It can target your ad in a certain place. So, if you want your video to show up in front of a local news video on YouTube and even on their site, you can target an ad to that destination as well. Do you want your ads showing up next to videos that people are watching just for pleasure at the end of the day to wind down? Or do you want them to be showing up next to videos that have to do with news or current event? This is another really great opportunity to grab people who are already most likely in what you have to offer. How perfect is that?

Key Benefits of Youtube for Nonprofits Advertising

In addition, there’s a lot of AI involved in YouTube along with bidding strategies and audiences. We have seen it perform very well in terms of being able to A/B test ad copy that goes with videos and button clicks. Although we are biased, we really do believe that Google’s AI is really successful and really helpful. So what are some key benefits of YouTube?

Brand Recognition

Advertising to users who are more likely to be interested in your content based off their search history for an affordable cost. We are actually seeing the data that shows it leading to higher brand recognition and therefore conversions or clicks to your site. We can then use this for remarketing purposes.

Affordable Awareness and Conversions

With Youtube Ads, people are watching 30 seconds or more of a video for around anywhere from 2 – 10 cents for really qualified placements. It’s a huge benefit to show your brand video alongside another trusted YouTube channel or another trusted source of information.

Where Do I Start?

So, you probably have a few questions by now. Where do I even start? Yeah. You may have a YouTube channel and even some content on there, but now what? What are the things you can start doing today to start impacting your YouTube video views and also prepare yourself to do YouTube ads later, right?

Before looking any deeper, in terms of ad spend, most of our clients invest anywhere from $500 a month to thousands of dollars a month on YouTube. $500 is a very easy way to start investing in something to build brand awareness, especially if you’re in a local community.

Youtube and SEO

It’s not something that’s talked about in our industry a lot, but Youtube and SEO are important things to understand if you want to get started.  The truth is, with youtube ads, titles matter,  descriptions matter, and how you format your videos really do matter. There are tools available for you to use for these purposes. For example, you can use a keyword planner and SEM rush to get a better idea of what keywords are being searched and what questions people have.

This will give you the power to come up with strong titles for your videos first and foremost. Then, it can inform how you write descriptions for your videos. This will help build your organic views for your videos because keywords inform YouTube about what your video’s about, right? Hopefully, you are aware that although this is a strong starting point, it’s also not going to have overnight success. However, it’s a really good step in the right direction to start answering some of those questions on the internet.

One of our favorite parts about our job at Community Boost is that we see nonprofits have such an amazing opportunity to communicate real information about the people that you’re serving or the issues that their solving. And if we’re connecting the people who are looking for information around these problems, issues, or community events, we might as well connect them with the nonprofits that are on the ground serving these communities, right? We need to ensure that the content is able to be found. Titles and descriptions DO matter!

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Youtube Playlists

You may or may not have heard of this before. Essentially these are playlists that you make for viewers to watch videos that are similar to yours. This will automatically pull up the next video on your channel and keep the viewer on the channel for longer. The main benefits of playlists are being able to organize your channel and keep your viewer interacting with or even subscribing to your channel.

Create Videos

You have the resources to understand the questions that people are searching for from your keyword search. You should be taking those questions, those searches and directly putting that content out. Remember, these videos do not have to be impeccable videos shot by a professional. You can use your iPhone or another camera. The most important thing is to just have a strong hook

The other thing we would recommend here cutting your long-form videos down a little shorter. The attention span is low these days so creating shorter form videos or putting the most important or attention-grabbing information, in the beginning, is key.

For example, if you have a seminar and touch on an important specific subject, you can grab that video, cut it, and upload it with specific titles and descriptions around that subject using SEO. You can still keep the full-length video, but those shorter clips are really important for ads and SEO.

To create solid engaging videos there are a few things we suggest:

1. Have a strong hook

Usually, we use videos in youtube ads called skippable instream ads where we capture the user’s attention for five seconds because users are not allowed to skip the first 5 seconds of the ad. I know they’re probably the most annoying videos that you have to watch before moving to the video you actually clicked on, but you have their attention for five seconds before they click on the skip button, right? Use those five seconds of their attention!

1. Have your brand logo in the corner of the video

Make sure that you have your brand logo in there and you have a strong hook so they can watch a little bit more of that video. Even if cutting clips out of a seminar, it’s extremely important to have the brand logo in the corner of the screen so you don’t lose out on gaining new advocates.

1. Video length should be between 1 minute and 1.5 minutes

We see the most ideal performance with this length of youtube video ads.

Why Use Youtube for Nonprofits?

So why use YouTube for nonprofits? Let’s recap. You know, building brand awareness or communicating your mission is super important and achievable on YouTube by doing it in a visual way that’s capturing attention. Unlike any other marketing channel, you’re capturing attention before the video that they’re watching. Then, once they watch it, you’re continuing to be top of mind because it’s an affordable marketing platform.

You’re able to advertise to these potential supporters multiple times. You’re finding both new users and pushing existing users down the line and you’re building a consistent channel for brand awareness. Because youtube is an affordable channel, if you can, it’s important to use these along with other paid ads. 

Isabelle Ashraf