In today’s episode, I’ll share some things you to know before you start your ad campaigns so that you get the best results from them and not waste your hard-earned money in the process.

1. Have an Ad strategy

As awesome as Youtube Ads are for promoting your podcast episodes, you’ll need to have a strategy in place in order for them to be effective.

Without a strategy, you’re pretty much going to be wasting your money. 

A simple strategy that I like to use is to

• Run an initial ad campaign to build a “warm audience” ideal fans 
• And then retarget that audience with future ads 

I do it this way to “mimic” the Youtube algorithm, and only show ads to people that have watched an episode of the podcast in the past, meaning that they are somewhat interested in the content of the show and are highly likely to click on future ads, watch and subscribe to your channel.

2. Have a monthly budget

It’s super important to have an idea of how much you’re willing to spend every month on your Ads so that you don’t end up spending more than you can afford or worse, going into debt as a result.

The good thing about Youtube ads is that you can set a budget limit and start and end date of every campaign you run, ensuring you never go over budget.

You cal always increase your budget or extend the time at a later date if need be.

3. Know your audience

Another important tip is to have a general idea of who your ideal fans are before you create your first ad.

The reason you want to know your audience is so that you don’t target the wrong people with your ads and end up wasting your time and money, and not getting the results you want with your ads.

You’ll need to do a bit of research to figure out who your target audience is, and this is something you should do when you plan your podcast. 

4. Get used to the ads interface

The Youtube Ads interface can be a bit confusing and will take some getting used to, especially if you’re a new user.

So it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the interface before you start running ads, as you’ll get the most out of your ad campaigns if you understand the interface. 

For example, you’ll need to do stuff like optimize your campaigns from time to time to pick the best-performing ones, and if you’re familiar with the interface, you’ll be able to do this quicker.

Thankfully there are helpful menus all over the interface that you can use if you’re confused or need help with anything, and pretty soon you’ll get used to the interface and be running your ads like a champ.

5. Test, monitor, and optimize your ads

In order to get the best results with your Youtube ads, you’ll need to run a lot of tests to see which ones perform best and monitor and optimize ads that are running.

Some of the things you could do include pausing ads that cost too much per view, testing out different audiences and pausing the ones that cost too much or aren’t running at all, testing out different thumbnails and videos to see which gets more clicks, and so on.

Thankfully Youtube provides you with all the tools and data you need to test and optimize your ads to get the best results you can with them.