Time to breakdown the results after my first YouTube ad campaign.

The good news: I learned a great deal about marketing my work (which I’m about to share).

The bad news: this campaign had a very poor outcome. But that’s ok. I know why it was so ineffective.

What Went Wrong

The ad did very little, if anything, to grab the viewer’s attention. Visually it’s very weak. YouTube did not grant me permission to pick a thumbnail for the ad, and what I ended up with is a boring screen grab from the video. But that’s not the main reason for the ineffectiveness.

The main reason this video failed to have an impact is very simple to understand yet complicated to correct. What needs to be adjusted for future marketing is the audience I target these ads to, and reaching a target audience cannot be done until I first define my target audience. Failure to do so ahead of time put my ad in front of +380K viewers who completely ignored my video.

If we look at the numbers, we can learn a few other things:

Den ganzen Beitrag lesen…

It’s hard to get people to commit to a full movie right on the spot, especially since most people don’t want to watch a clip longer than 2 minutes.

A bigger issue: an 68 minute movie is too long to commit to if you know nothing about it. I’m using a youtube ad strategy to walk people into to the film, giving them a little taste over several steps to see if Master of Inventions is their cup of tea and giving them the option of seeing more.

It’s a strategy straight out of Permission Marketing. Instead of yelling WATCH THIS LONG THING YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT NOW!, I want to entice a wider audience. Start off with a manageable clip (5 seconds-ish) ending with a call to action if they’re interested in more. If so, the can continue down the path towards the movie, each step getting them deeper and gaining more of their attention. As important, the option to bail at any time keeps them at ease, never in fear of the hard sell.

I think most people are on the fence, easing them into Master of Inventions would be more effective, instead of demanding their devotion right off the bat.

I’ll be running ads that are only 5-second videos for various products in the film. At the end of each video is a link to watch the first 5 minutes. On the first 5 minutes is an annotation that links to the full film.

Like so:

Amazing chart, right?

I already have one set up for the bulletproof coin sorter. Check it out:

I’m betting the Singing GPS one will yield the most hits. Regardless, ads are expensive, so I will be focusing the attack on Reddit and StumbleUpon. I have a few dollars left over to do them on Youtube proper. We’ll see how well it goes and adjust accordingly.

What do you think? Any ideas for improvement? Comments? This is a work in progress so please add to the conversation.

Spent 6 days with keywords related to comedy:

boston comedy festival, British comedy, Chicago, comedy center, comedy central, comedy club, comedy connection, comedy Facebook, comedy movies, comedy shows, comedycom, nyc, onion news network, online, sketch comedy, stand up, stand up cancer, stand up comedy, stand up records or youtube

Before doing specialized searches, I used comedy related tags. It seemed like a good idea, but the results always sucked. Let’s peep the results this time:

campaign cost: $60
- 73 ad clicks
- 1 new vimeo connection
- 37 vimeo views
- 25 views of the trailer
- 0 new Facebook group subscribers
- 0 new mailing list subscribers

Pretty poor.

Let’s see how I do with ‘Inventions’ keywords. I know that I’ve never marketed to this type of crowd before, and I’m interested to see how I do in a non-media related target search.

I’ll be starting that campaign soon. On we go!

New clip from Master of Inventions. In this scene, Jeff slips into a daydream during a boring meeting…

from Joe Avella on Vimeo.

It’s an homage to the bank scene from They Live:

Become a fan of Master of Inventions! / Join our mailing list

Here’s a little back-n-forth I had with 2 commenters recently. I don’t know these geniuses in real life, but I’d say we are evenly matched in the “wits department”. The first is with darkangelofyou13, a Rhodes Scholar from Princeton, I believe; the other is Professor jackolantyrn356, all the way from Cambridge. Halfway through my discussion with Jack, darkangelofyou13 popped in. He can’t resist a good debate!

From the comments section of Wheelchair Werewolf:

darkangelofyou13
what the heck??!?!?!? i don’t get the piont of this not one bit,this is just really stupid

joeavella
oh darkangelofyou13, why can’t you be more like darkangelofyou 1-12?

darkangelofyou13
who?? okay sorry but i don’t know who that is

joeavella
oh, my bad. I thought your name was DOUGangelofyou13. I know Doug Angelofyou07 & 09. Thought you were related. I apologize. I’m such a goof!

Shortly after, I meet this joker:

jackolantyrn356
Dude WTF?

joeavella
What the fuck does “WTF” stand for???????????!

darkangelofyou13
it stands for “what the fuck” Way to but in on the convo, dude! PS this is a sincere comment. Unreal.

joeavella
ha! and I said “what the fuck” when I asked what it meant! Did you notice that?! Earth to me, is anybody home????? Oh my O.M.G. I need to wake up, right? Classic. Cah-las-ic!

jackolantyrn356
It mean What the fuck! I mean this is funny man but messed up!

joeavella
No kidding, me and darkangelofyou13 were just talking about that. Man, I think it’s about time I got my head screwed on! classic me! I’m such an air head! I’m LOLing out loud!

jackolantyrn356
I know! But hey I mean its good man just a tad ummm…..well dum….

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Good job, guys.