How to Set Up YouTube Ads for Your Dropshipping Business

If you’re thinking of launching a dropshipping business, congratulations! It’s a venture with a great opportunity to be profitable with minimal time investment. There’s a catch, though: you’re only successful as your ability to create awareness of your product. It’s critical to promote yourself to make your buyers aware of what you’re selling. One of the best ways to do this is knowing how to set up YouTube ads. 

If you’ve never set up ads using Google or YouTube before, it may seem like an intimidating process. Luckily, we’ve done it plenty of times, and we’ve created a quick guide to help you get started. There are some basic best practices you can follow to easily set up your account. This step-by-step guide will show you how to use YouTube ads to launch your dropshipping store.

Of course, if you’re interested in our team having us manage your ads, check out our “done for you” ad services. Let’s start with the basics of how to set up YouTube ads.  

Step 1: Create Your Google Ads Account 

Google owns YouTube, so you’ll need to go through ads.google.com to set up a Google Ads account. 

Google Ads does a good job of walking you through this process on the site. If you follow their basic steps, giving them the information they require, it should only take you a few minutes. 

You’ll need three things upfront: 

  • A Google AdWords account
  • A YouTube channel
  • A YouTube analytics account

These will give you a place to put your ads, as well as a way to measure the success of those ads. From there, you can upload the video to your YouTube channel. 

If you go to your Google Ads account, go to Tools > Linked accounts, where you can link your YouTube Channel to AdWords and Analytics. 

Step 2: Set Up Conversion Tracking for Your Website 

Screen grab of how to manage YouTube ads

If you’ve ever run Facebook ads, setting up conversion tracking via Google or YouTube is similar to using Facebook Pixel. 

Why do you want conversion enabled? So Google and YouTube can gather information on your customers and their activity while watching your ads. 

When you know what ads work (and which ones don’t), you’ll know what part of your approach is leading your prospects to convert into customers. 

You can go to Tools and Settings > Measurements > Conversions. Google will walk you through how to monitor your conversions, providing the steps for you. 

Step 3: Create Your Campaign 

If you’re running Facebook ads already, you’ll likely already understand what goes into a campaign. YouTube ads differ slightly, but they have the same objective: sales. 

Here’s what you need at this stage of how to set up YouTube ads: 

  • Skippable in-stream ads.
  • Your budget. At this stage, you’ll select what budget you’re starting out with. We typically start with anywhere from $30-$50 per day, but it depends on your business’s resources and goals.
  • You’ll also want to set your bid strategy to “maximize conversions.” 

Choose the location where you want your ads to play. You can play it domestically, internationally, or a combination of the two. You should have a good idea of what areas you’re looking to target with these ads, which is why this function YouTube offers is invaluable. 

Once you’ve selected your location and budget, you’ll have to confirm all your selections. To conclude this step, you’ll enter your website destination link where you want to send potential buyers, including a description with the URL. This will make sure all of your potential customers are pointed in the right digital direction. 

Step 4: Targeting Options

Here, you’ll choose different ad groups to run within one campaign. You’ll want to create three distinctive ad groups. In this order, focus on targeting specific:

  • Keywords
  • Topics
  • Interests

For keywords, Google will generate a set of keywords when you enter the website name. They’ll make suggestions that may be the best ones to use, leading to the most conversions. Google is really good at this, so you’d be well-advised to listen to and use their recommendations.

For topics, you’ll have to make estimated guesses, selecting topics you think will likely lead to sales. You can target specific niches. For example, if you sell skincare products, you’d choose the “beauty or fitness” topic group. 

For interests, target audiences with interests and hobbies that best align with your product.

Step 5: Analytics and Scaling

Online business owner editing and setting up YouTube ads

Finally, the fifth step deals with using analytics to monitor your ad’s progress. Use your analytics dashboard to determine which ads are working the best. 

Remember those ad groups you set up? Look out for the ones giving you the best results. What approach did you use in successful ads? What about the unsuccessful ones?

Whatever your analytics reveal is working for you, scale those ads up to do more of that while cutting back on the strategies that aren’t converting.  

Other Important Tips for How to Set Up YouTube Ads

Additional tips for creating successful YouTube ad videos

Following those five steps are how you can set up your dropshipping business’s YouTube ads. But there are a few other important pointers you’ll want to consider when creating your ad. 

The most important part of your YouTube ad is the first 10 seconds. Your whole video will need to offer value and information, but the opening should grab the buyer’s attention and compel them to keep watching.

If the first 10 seconds don’t move the needle, your ad is in trouble. The worst thing you can do is get the viewer off to a dull start, losing their attention. 

Also, don’t use capitalization, exclamation points, or repeated symbols in your ad headline. YouTube doesn’t allow these in ads, so don’t do it. 

As far as video length goes: the minimum recommended length is 12 seconds, while the maximum is 3 minutes. The length of your video will depend on what you’re looking to achieve and how fast you can move the reader from research to conversion. 

Our last recommendation for how to set up YouTube ads successfully is test, test, test. Always evaluate your ads and how well they’re doing with your analytics dashboard. Shamelessly continue pursuing the strategies that work while ruthlessly cutting out the ones that don’t. 

If you’re looking for someone to handle all of this for you, we offer “done for you” ad management services. We’re experts at managing YouTube ads and can help you. If you’re looking for more valuable insight into how to make money online, subscribe to my YouTube channel for more tips or sign up for my free webinar today.

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How to Get Your First 1,000 YouTube Subscribers With No Experience Making Videos

Welcome back, Empire Builders! If you’re just starting out on YouTube or considering starting your own channel, you’re in luck. Today I’ll be going over how I come up with my video topics and how you can get your first 1,000 YouTube subscribers. Let’s jump right in.

Finding Your Niche

I’m sure some of you have decided to start a YouTube channel because you have a topic in mind that you love to talk about, and you want to share that passion with others. If you’re about to start an ecommerce business and want to use a YouTube channel to help drive traffic to your sales funnel, that’s a great way to both spread knowledge about a topic you like and build your audience. It’s a strategy I definitely recommend, and I’ll take you through the process I use to choose a niche and ensure it has potential.

Personally, I always start with hobby niches. Just Google a list of hobbies and go through to find one that interests you. Once you have one in mind, go to Google Trends and type in the name of the hobby. This is just to see if enough people are searching for the topic to sustain a business. 

Make sure the results show that the topic has had steady traffic in the last few years. Then you can feel pretty sure that it’s not going anywhere. You don’t want to pick a fad topic that isn’t time tested. Why? Because you want to bring people to your channel, and then to your website, consistently for years to come.

How to Find Video Topic Ideas

Video Topic Ideas on YouTube

First, go to YouTube and search for your topic. See what kind of content people are consuming. When you see the top-ranking videos, don’t try to compete with people who have millions of subscribers and views (especially when you first start out). Be specific to your niche. 

For example, if you picked pottery as your core focus, type “how to make pottery” into YouTube. That topic is still too broad, so add a space after it and see the suggestions it brings up.

You’ll see things like “how to make pottery at home without electricity” and “how to make pottery glaze from scratch.” You could even go a step further by picking one of those subtopics and adding a space again to check the suggestions; keep narrowing in on a very specific topic. Those suggestions tell you what people are searching for. If the results don’t have any videos with that exact title, yours would come up first. With enough unique and valuable videos, you’ll be well on your way to getting your first 1,000 YouTube subscribers.  

Video Topic Ideas on AnswerThePublic.com

Screen grab of researching topics on AnswerThePublic.com

Next, go to AnswerThePublic.com, which is a resource for finding what people are searching for. Once again, type in your topic. You’ll get two or three free searches a day, or you can upgrade to the premium version. When you type in your topic, the results will come up on a display wheel. 

I prefer “how-to” video topics as those will be relevant for years, long after you get your first 1,000 YouTube subscribers. You could potentially get views every day and drive business to your website. The point is to make the videos an asset to your business, so make evergreen content and always include a call to action. Many people quit before they give it enough time to be successful. If you make consistent content and release two or three videos a week — and really stick with it until it’s successful — you will see both your channel and your business grow.

How to Optimize Content to Get Your First 1,000 YouTube Subscribers (And More)

Screengrab of adding keywords to YouTube videos

At Ecommerce Empire Builders, we use a paid tool called VidIQ. I highly recommend it. This tool will tell you what keywords are best suited for your content. When you create a video, VidIQ will suggest keywords as tags for your video. Always make sure that the title of your video appears somewhere in the description, as well. Look at our videos for examples, and feel free to use them as a template to help your creative process.

Use as many of the keywords as possible in your description and headline to help people find your content when they search for the topic. Basically, give YouTube what it wants. Help it show your content to the right people by working within the system they use. Again, I can’t recommend VidIQ highly enough. If you don’t use that, use some kind of tool to help you with this. It goes a long way.

How to Get Your First 1,000 YouTube Subscribers

Someone following a cooking how-to video to make dinner

Now I’m going to go over how to get your first 1,000 YouTube subscribers, and I’ll be sharing some little tricks and hacks that I used myself when I was first starting out on YouTube. All you really have to do to get more subscribers is provide value. However, there are some things that will help speed up the process. One thing I did was leverage Facebook groups. Just type in your niche, and search under the ‘Groups’ category to find groups of users who are already interested in your niche topic.

If you are careful and go about it the right way, you can advertise in these groups. Everyone has heard that you can’t advertise in these groups, but you can if you approach it correctly. Don’t join these groups and start spamming your links or being overt about your products and services, especially as a new member. That will get you flagged. Go into the groups and be helpful. Add real value. Join the biggest, most active groups, and comment on people’s posts — answer questions, help them, and be genuine.

Do this consistently for at least a week so you won’t be flagged as a new member anymore. They will start seeing you as part of their community, and you’ll earn their respect along with some goodwill. Watch the activity and wait until you see a common question that keeps coming up time and time again. If it’s something you have a video on, answer the question and link your video with a nice response explaining that you just shot a video on the topic. You can even give them the timestamp for the information they’re looking for. Remember, the point is always to add real value.

Start Building Your Ecommerce Empire

If you’re interested in learning more, sign up for my masterclass, where I’ll teach you how I made a full-time income online with a 5-page funnel. You can build up your own business without touching a product, building a site, or investing in ads. I’ll even give you the $100k funnel template FREE just for showing up! Get ready to build your empire.

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