How to Setup YouTube Cards to Drive New Business Leads

How to Setup YouTube Cards


If you haven’t heard the news, YouTube has rolled out a new “advertising” feature called, YouTube Cards.

These Cards will soon replace what we have all come to know as annotations. Annotations are those little text messages that popup over a YouTube video that you’re watching.

YouTube ad cards are a huge improvement from the outdated annotations and include an image, title, and smaller text.

They are somewhat comparable to Facebook ads in that you can use an image as part of your strategy to get your audience to click on your ad cards in order to drive them to a landing page of your choice.

Why YouTube Cards Are Better Than Annotations

Youtube Cards offer an incredible opportunity for video marketers to drive inexpensive leads and traffic to the landing page or website of their choice.

Specifically YouTube Cards will be powerful for local business marketing or any business that has a great lead magnet to give away on a landing page!

Since ad cards include an image and a larger text, they will undoubtedly convert better and receive more clicks.

Here are the three main reasons why you should immediately begin using these ad cards within your digital marketing campaign.

1). YouTube Cards Are Mobile Friendly!

(Considering 50% of YouTube traffic is attributed to mobile viewing devices, this is big. Annotations were not mobile friendly thus you lost half you audience when you used them).

2). YouTube Cards Include a Picture & Bold Text

(Similar to Facebook ads, YouTube cards include an image. However, unlike Facebook, there are no restrictions to the amount of text used in your card image. This implies big time conversions!)

3). YouTube Cards Come in 5 Variations

  1. Merchandise Cards – For anyone wanting to advertise physical products related to their video
  2. Fundraising Cards – For anyone wanting to link directly to a fundraising project on approved 3rd party sites.
  3. Video Or Playlist Cards – For anyone wanting to link directly to another related video or YouTube playlist.
  4. Fan Funding Cards – For anyone wanting to accept donations from their viewers for their awesome free content on YouTube.
  5. Associated Website Cards – For anyone wanting to drive traffic to their website or a landing page of their choice. (The card we’re most excited about).

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How YouTube Cards Can Be Used to Drive New Leads Inexpensively

YouTube cards are free to add to any video that you upload to your YouTube channel.

We can tell you right now card variation #5, the “Associated Website Card” will become the most popular amongst the card variations.

Using an associated website card you can drive new traffic to any landing page or website of your choice (that you own).

Since paid video views on YouTube come in around 2 cents per view (depending on your targeting), we would expect a great video with an attractive YouTube Card to drive website clicks at anywhere between 50 cents and a dollar.

Considering any clicks from a YouTube Card have previously watched a video with your content, it’s like your audience has already been primed to buy/ convert with what ever offer you provide them on your landing page.

How to Setup YouTube Cards

Now that you’ve been introduced to YouTube cards, lets go ahead and take a closer look at how to setup them up properly.

In the following video we will cover:

1). Where to Find YouTube Cards in your YouTube Dashboard

2). How to Confirm Your Website With YouTube so you can use the cards

3). Best Practices for creating a YouTube Card that Converts

What do you think? Will you try YouTube Cards to drive new leads for your business?