Finance HNWI Ppc Campaign

How to use YouTube to reach high-net-worth individuals

Receptional

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July 8, 2021 | 5 min read

The average Brit spends almost six and a half hours a day watching video content

Which is a lot.

What’s more, over the past year we’ve seen an increase in watch-time for streaming services like Netflix and Prime. And we’re spending an hour a day, on average, watching YouTube.

All those viewers represent a fantastic marketing opportunity. If you’re looking to build a consumer brand, there’s no better channel than YouTube.

But what if you’re targeting high-net-worth individuals?

It’s tempting to think that high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) have loftier hobbies than the “average Brit”.

Which is why my agency, Receptional, has been surveying them to understand their buying habits and how they make financial decisions.

Where does the HNWI start their research?

Like many of us, they start with a search engine.

In fact, more than 80% start their financial research on Google. And online, social media and YouTube are as popular for research as print.

So yes, you want to be visible on Google, but you’ll also need to be present across the other online channels, too.

So why YouTube?

Well, for one thing – it’s a great place to learn new things.

Which is really quite important if you're trying to build a brand: the platform is more trusted than Google or the BBC.

Where does YouTube fit?

How does the channel fit with your other marketing activity? And what level of resources should you dedicate to it?

Well, YouTube works well throughout the marketing funnel from building brand awareness to convincing warm prospects, through to the point of conversion.

What’s best practice?

So what does best practice look like? How much should you spend? And where?

Let’s imagine we’re promoting an imaginary brand on Google’s platform. We have an imaginary £100,000 budget. The actual number doesn’t matter for now – we’re just keeping the maths simple.

There are many different models for allocating budget. At Receptional, we recommend:

60% of spend dedicated to search ads
30% invested in display
10% of our online marketing budget goes towards video ads.

Clearly, these figures are examples, your budgets and costs will differ.

What are the different audiences available in YouTube?

If you go into your Google account, you can see what Google knows about you.

It’s a lot. Google knows more about us than any institution in history. Google knows who we are, where we are, what we’re looking for, and what we’re buying,

Here's a screenshot from my phone, showing what Google knows about me.

First you see demographic data (age and gender), as well as the brands I search for. And then a broad range of interests based on how I use my phone, where I go, and what I search for. These are all gleaned from my searches and online behaviour. The list goes on and on.

Which, as a marketer, means we can access loads of targeting information that’s useful for our campaigns.

But it gets better. Nowadays on Google’s ad platform – which includes YouTube, of course – we can combine these interests with search data.

Let’s look at two different ways of finding an audience.

Custom audiences

First, custom audiences – we combine the different types of information. For example, we might combine demographic data (who the audience is) with our understanding of how they behave.

So we might target younger male home owners from a particular location who’ve logged into a competitor’s account.

I’m sure you can see how we could craft a message and an offer that really resonates with our target audience.

Custom intent audiences

A second option is custom intent audiences.

We can show a YouTube ad to someone who has recently searched on Google.

So we might want to advertise our brand to everyone who’d searched in the past seven days for “life insurance”.

It’s a great way to introduce our brand.

Your competitors’ customers

One key advantage is that you can easily target your competitors’ customers.

We know the biggest brands have invested millions in brand advertising. They’ve already built an audience.

Millions of people are searching for their brand. And, by using YouTube, you can introduce your brand to their customers.

If you were promoting life insurance, for example, you could target all those people searching for Vitality.

And, you could show them your YouTube ads. Outlining your unique selling points.

So there you have it – a few reasons why you should be targeting HNWIs on YouTube and how to do it. In my next post, I’ll talk about the creative you should be using.

If you'd like to learn more, take a look at our eBooks on how high-net-worth individuals buy online and building your brand on YouTube in 2021.