In this article, you’ll discover how you can do brand storytelling and craft your company’s narratives through compelling YouTube ads.
Did you know that the manufacturing industry is the United States’s most vital sector and accounts for 78 percent of its total production?
If you’re a manufacturing company in the U.S., you may be engaged in one of the most popular sectors—developing chemicals, consumables (food, drinks, and tobacco), machines, metal products, computers and electronics, and motor parts and vehicles—or none of the above. You may be doing B2B manufacturing, B2C manufacturing, and so on—but whatever it may be, one thing is certain: you need to have a solid plan in marketing for manufacturing to help your sales team acquire enough customers for your products throughout the year.
In previous posts, we’ve covered why you should promote your manufacturing company through local SEO, as well as explained the best practices for your manufacturing company’s PPC ads.
In this post, we’ll explain the importance of brand storytelling and the impact of a narrative-driven YouTube ad to your marketing for manufacturing.
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Narratives That Your Manufacturing Firm’s YouTube Ads Should Contain
Storytelling is king when it comes to manufacturing marketing strategies—and this also applies to all marketing channels, including YouTube advertising services. We recommend crafting and sharing relatable narratives or stories because those are memorable to potential customers. The nice thing about video is that you can write or imply a whole novel’s worth of story in it.
As such, you need to touch upon a compelling hook that best captures the interest of your prospective buyers, especially on social media sites, where people are looking for connection. Create individual YouTube ads for the needs of your target audience or audience segment, and tell a story to each of them.
Even on YouTube, the ads that have the most relatable stories tend to be the most memorable.
For example, you can show your target buyers the ways in which your specific manufactured item can improve their life. You can show engineers how much more work they can do if they choose your fabricated metal products or chemicals. You can even add in an emotional element and emphasize how your products can help them finish their work faster and get home to their families earlier.
You can appeal to finance managers and procurement professionals by emphasizing your company’s cost-effective materials, parts, or goods and how it solves their supply chain woes. You can also showcase superior American-made goods versus lower-cost imports to quality assurance officers by warning them of the risks (such as higher likelihood of accidents) of using low-quality materials. At the same time, you can feature your products and company’s core values.
The point is that, whatever your products are, you’ll be able to easily and effectively use YouTube advertising services to promote them.
Types of YouTube Video Ads and How to Incorporate Storytelling into Them
When making a manufacturing narrative that details things like the supply chain, quality control, B2C (Business to Customer) or B2B (Business to Business) deals, and so forth, the type of video ad you use can determine at least how you’ll go about conveying your story.
When investing on YouTube advertising services, you should be aware of the wide array of paid media available, from in-feed video ads to bumper ads and even overlay ads.
The type of ad or ads that you’ll invest in can limit or expand your storytelling, whether you’re selling something to potential buyers or trying to convert them into buyers by directing their clicks to your manufacturing webpage. So make sure to choose wisely when it comes to YouTube Ads services. Here are the differences between them:
In-Feed Video Ads
An in-feed video ad typically shows up on the YouTube homepage, your YouTube video watch page related videos, and your search results pages. They’re part of your feed—hence, “in-feed”.
The storytelling possible in these in-feed video ads is like those in “normal” videos since they’re recommended ads rather than ads that interrupt what users are watching. The destination page also offers a right-hand column area where the companion banner display is placed.
Skippable In-Stream Ads
Among the paid media options in YouTube, skippable in-stream ads are their standard video ad type. You should get this type of paid media if you’re confident that your prospective buyer will view your ads for at least 30 seconds or all the way until it ends.
Create content that will compel your potential customers to keep watching by having some sort of hook. Also, keep in mind that YouTube Ads services cost a bit more whenever a viewer performs a call-to-action (CTA), such as clicking your website or landing page link.
Each skippable ad is as short as 12 seconds and can go as long as 6 minutes. In this type of YouTube ad, you can discuss manufacturing issues, show your products as the solution to it, and add a CTA to click on some sort of link within that time span.
Make sure to avoid running a standard commercial here like with in-feed video ads. Instead, try to create content that has a compelling hook or problem to make sure that users will keep watching. Ask yourself what would make someone not press the skip button on your video. For example, you can start your video with a bold claim that your local furniture shop is the solution to rising furniture costs by national retailers and then share the massive price differences between your shop and popular stores when it comes to common furniture pieces.
You may use royalty-free music, people, and dialogue in these commercials. All of those are ingredients in showcasing a compelling story around your product, service, or manufacturing company. They can substantially multiply the results of your online marketing efforts.
Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads
A non-skippable in-stream ad gives you more leeway when it comes to storytelling because you’re not forced to come up with a hook in the first 6 seconds of the ad just to prevent users from skipping it.
With non-skippable in-stream ads, you have a more captive audience. This is usually the ad type used for long-form informative videos, like how glass is made (if you’re a glass manufacturing company) and the many different glass-related products in your portfolio.
If you want the most creative freedom from a YouTube ad, the best type of ad to get is the non-skippable mid-roll ad, which is commonly used for TV-style commercials.
These types of YouTube advertisements can range from 15 to 20 seconds. They can play during the main video as a “mid-roll” ad, before the main video you’ve just clicked at, or at the end of the video before auto-playing the next video.
Since they can’t be skipped, adding a CTA to this type of ad is a must. This ensures you can maximize the attention of your target audience while they’re viewing your ad.
It usually helps your unified and uniform narrative theme to have the ad play on a popular video related to manufacturing—like a mid-roll video commercial about the history of automobiles if you’re promoting an auto parts manufacturing company.
Also, make sure that your ad includes elements such as people, dialogue, story, and brand identifiers within those 15 to 20 seconds.
Bumper Ads
The shortest type of YouTube video ad is the six-second bumper ad. Its storytelling value comes from how it’s also non-skippable ads but placed at the beginning of each video.
This means that you can use them as supplementary teasers, trailers, or complementary ads to larger campaigns. For well-known campaigns that have run for so long, most YouTube viewers can easily identify their brand in only six seconds. Thus, companies with such campaigns can usually get away with shorter bumper ads.
Overlay Ads
Lastly, overlay ads are banner ads that hover at the bottom of each YouTube video. We recommend using these to supplement a larger ad campaign and overall manufacturing narrative. They’re advantageous in that they’re less obtrusive to a video compared to commercials or mid-rolls ads that viewers can’t skip.
Overlay ads allow your business to get clicks from target buyers that you wish to convert into a loyal buyer for your manufacturing company. The link can be a good landing page that features your overall campaign’s brand storytelling or narrative.
Looking for a Professional Manufacturing Marketing Agency?
Now that you’ve learned how to develop a narrative for your manufacturing firm, you may want to read our post about the secrets to optimizing your YouTube ad campaigns.
If your manufacturing company requires professional advice to come up with the right narratives for your YouTube video ads, have a chat with us at Zero Company. Our YouTube Ads agency has been providing top-notch Internet marketing and advertising services for more than two decades.
Consult our YouTube marketing agency for free to find out how you can run practical YouTube ad campaigns with compelling narratives!
