Module 4 - What are your objectives?

Why set objectives before you start?

Because you need to put your mind to exactly what it is you want to achieve out of YouTube. We all want the magic to happen overnight, but let us be smart about how we set our objectives, what we set out to achieve from a three month test campaign, and how that can then scale beyond it.

There are a few different objectives you can set, and at the end of this session I will give you a little exercise to help you set yours.

What does a brand awareness objective look like?

A brand awareness objective is about getting eyes on your brand, product or service. Look at your business, your product and your service, and ask whether you are looking to position your brand in the market for the first time and literally get eyes on it.

Ask whether you want to build a new audience. Perhaps you are very well known with one particular audience but not another. Or ask whether you want to widen your reach, because currently you are in one territory and you want to move into another.

An example objective might be to achieve one million views on an ad campaign within a month.

What does a lead generation objective look like?

A lead generation objective is about the data you capture and where it goes next. It may be that you have a product or service that lends itself well to lead generation, and that it is really important for your business to bring those leads in. Think about whether you are capturing data for remarketing or for a sales team, and about the journey the customer will go on.

If you are doing data capture for remarketing, that is great from a YouTube perspective, because with YouTube you can really find a new audience and then warm them up by bringing that email data into a marketing loop, where the customer is continually communicated with through an email marketing funnel.

Or perhaps you need to bring in a conversion and capture data so that it can be handed to the sales team to take from there.

What counts as a conversion objective?

A conversion objective is any specific action you want the viewer to take: buy now online, enquire, download a brochure, or pick up the phone. A lot of the ad campaigns I have worked on are all about getting conversions, and there are various different conversions you may look to achieve.

If your objective is enquiries or brochure downloads, you would write it as a number to convert within the first three months, and attribute a figure to each month. All of this is dependent on how much ad spend you are going to put behind the campaign.

If the conversion is purchasing online, you may say that you want to sell 100 units in month one, 200 units in month two and 300 units in month three. So consider how many purchases you want to achieve when setting your objectives.

What if the conversion is a phone call?

If the conversion is a telephone call, that changes your creative and your tracking. You may want to display the telephone number on screen, either at certain points or visible all the time, and give your campaign a dedicated telephone number so that you can completely monitor anything that comes off the back of that YouTube campaign.

Do not forget that you need to build it all in with Google Tag Manager so you can track those same conversions. We have another module on that.

How do objectives change if you are focused on the bottom line?

If you are looking to increase the bottom line, the question becomes whether you want volume sales or profit. Perhaps you have a product or service area that is highly profitable, and you may focus your ad campaign on that one particular product or service.

Set your objectives for a three month test campaign in isolation, but then think beyond that to your mid to long term strategy for scaling up. In three months you can set a certain amount of objectives, and should you reach those milestones, in months three to six and beyond you can increase them.

Also consider that if your business operates in multiple territories, you can start a test campaign within one territory and then scale it up across different territories across the world.

What makes an objective SMART?

A SMART objective is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Be specific when setting your objectives. Be measurable: are you looking to get one million views on your video, how many conversions are you looking for, and how many leads are you looking to bring into the business.

Ask whether they are achievable, and really think about this based on the data you currently have in house about how you are bringing leads in and at what quantity. Also think about what your business can cope with. You may not want to put a massive amount of ad spend into your campaign to begin with, because your business may not be able to cope with the increased volume of leads.

Ask whether they are relevant. Is what you are doing across the whole campaign relevant, and is it something you think your target market would act upon?

Then make sure all your objectives are time-bound. I would set your initial objectives based on a three month period. To achieve one million brand impressions on my video within the first three months is an example of a SMART objective.

What is the activity?

Set your SMART objectives. Write no more than four to five, and if it is three that is absolutely fine. Then think about your short term strategy and your long term strategy.