YouTube Cards: How To Double Your Leads and Sales

YouTube cards are now replacing those interactive annotations that pop up on some videos.

These annotations could get out of hand sometimes with speech bubbles and pop-up windows that would end up disrupting the actual video playing behind them.

The YouTube cards can be accessed by the user from a very small “i” icon located in the upper-right corner of a video.

When you click this icon a small interactive panel opens. The other thing that differentiates annotations and cards is that YouTube cards can be displayed on both your desktop and your mobile phone but annotations can only be displayed on your desktop.

Types Of  Youtube Cards

Merchandise

This card promotes your licensed merchandise. These cards enables a store owner to send viewers to a landing page where they can make an item purchase on supported platforms which include Eventbrite or iTunes.

You can use this platform to promote any items that customers might be interested in for example views to download or podcasts.

Fundraising

This card links the user directly to a project on a fundraising site that has been white-listed.

E-commerce store owners can use this feature to spread awareness for fundraising efforts using YouTube videos effectively.

YouTube has partnered with a quite a few crown funding platforms which allow viewers to directly access donation pages through the YouTube cards.

Video or Playlist

This card links the user to another public YouTube playlist or video. If you link to a video in the playlist the card will automatically default to the playlist.

This feature can really help businesses or marketers to promote how-to videos or products or even draw back customers to a playlist where they are able to view all of the videos posted by the company or business.

Associate Website

You can use this YouTube card to link any other site or sites associated with your YouTube account.

This card will take viewers to a website associated with your account such as your online store. Before you can create an associate website card you have to add the site to be linked on YouTube.

This feature helps merchants to keep viewers to stay engaged with their brand by bringing them back to their product page, online store or even their newsletter sign up page.

You should utilize this feature to link your video to a blog post which is related to the content in your video.

Fan Funding

This card enables your viewers to make contributions directly from your video page is you have enable the fan funding feature for your account.

Channel

This YouTube cards enables you to call out a particular YouTube channel to your viewers. This channel could either belong to you or to one of your business partners.

How to create YouTube cards

• Go to the video manager page on your account and choose the video you would like to edit.

• On the menu bar click on the cards option

• Click the add card button which is usually blue in color

• Make a choice of the type of card you would like to add to your video and then click the create button

• The next you should take is entering the URL for the site you would like your viewers to be directed to or you can opt to choose a related video that you would like to link to the video you are editing and then you should click the create card button

• You can use the slider along the bottom of the screen to adjust the starter time of the card teaser. When the teaser starts it will flash the card title next to the static “i” button just for a few seconds

The beauty of using YouTube cards is that you can add up to 5 cards for a single video.

It is also very easy to delete or edit a card that you added to a video by simply clicking on the pencil icon that is next to the card in the cards tab.

Using Youtube Cards to Increase Conversions

Though YouTube cards came to replace annotations they serve the same purpose of encouraging users to interact with videos but they do this a little different.

While annotations would offer messages that were contained in speech bubbles and pop-ups that were often quite annoying, YouTube cards all that information is represented by a small letter “i” which appear in the top right corner of the video and does not disrupt the video playing in any way and when you click on it, it opens a very small window of information.

Increasing Conversions

You can mix and match different types of cards on your video depending on the length of the video and its purpose.

You should ensure that you add a customized image, CTA text, and title. You should ensure that these elements of the card are visually captivating so as to encourage the viewer to click through.

Ensure that the CTA text clearly tells the viewer what you would like him/her to do once they click through e.g. purchase a product or register for a newsletter.

You can use the videos strategically throughout the whole video so as to increase the effectiveness of the videos. Ensure that you place your card in the area where the viewers tend to drop off.

The YouTube cards are very beneficial to publishers and they also minimize the obtrusiveness of the CTA overlaying in videos.

These cards are also very clean and easy to use on mobile phones because they use minimalist layouts. Cards make it very easy for users to interact with its features because of their clean look.

Videos are an important and effective marketing tool for e-commerce merchants and the use of cards can help the marketing strategy go even further by turning the viewers into subscribers and sometimes even customers.

If you are a marketer or e-commerce merchant who is on YouTube but you have not yet started using YouTube cards you should wake up and smell the bacon.

Many of your competitors have already discovered the numerous benefits that this YouTube feature can offer them and are utilizing it to the fullest.

You should make it our priority to always know what developments are currently cropping up on this amazing e-commerce platform if you want to stay ahead of your competition.

If you want a cost-effective way to spread the message about your brand to as many people as possible then YouTube videos containing cards are the way to go.

I hope that you found the information provided in this article has been useful to you. Thank you for sparing the time to read through this article.