Testing the Power of YouTube Lead Form Extension

There are one billion hours of video content watched on YouTube every single day and with it being the second largest search engine behind Google there are a lot of eyes on the platform that can become leads for your clients. It remains a strong platform and the lead form extensions make it all the more accessible. I recently had the opportunity to run a lead form test on the platform to exciting results, so let’s dive in. 

Google Lead Form Extensions

First, let me break down the lead form extensions. Like other platforms, Google’s lead form extensions automatically fill out user information on-site versus sending a user to a landing page and having them fill out the form. This saves the user time and makes the barrier to lead a much more efficient process. 

The lead forms within Google Ads are surprisingly robust. Question-wise, you can have up to 10-questions with the standard pre-fillable options around name, location, and work information. Plus 14 different call-to-action options covering effectively any action you would want a user to take from your form. 

However, the robust part is the list of additional questions for varying industries where you can set them up as multiple-choice or short answers. Each industry drop-down has a small selection of questions, giving likely close to 100 additional question options for the forms. 

In terms of ad copy, you can have a 30-character headline, your 25-character business name, and a 200-character description to let users know what you are about and why they should become a lead. Then, there is a Form Submission Message to lay out your thank you message with another 30-character headline and 200-character description. This also includes an additional call-to-action for the user to complete an additional step after becoming a lead. This is where you would add a link to send the user to your site or to a download page if you are offering an e-book, guide, or some other piece of content. 

Once you have it all set up, getting the leads is easy via a downloadable .CSV file or through webhook integration to get the lead form data directly into your CRM. From here, you add your YouTube ad and you are ready to get to testing.

YouTube Lead Form Extension Testing & Performance Results 

My YouTube Lead Form test was centered around a secondary-education client looking to gather additional leads for one of their programs. We worked within Google’s recommended practices for a lead form extension test, utilizing a budget 10x the Target CPA (which was 2X the search CPA) for 2-weeks to allow the algorithm enough data to fully optimize for the lead type. The test was made up of both prospecting and remarketing audiences with the end results stemming from prospecting over remarketing – but we expect this was due to the remarketing audience size more than prospecting outperforming first-touch users. 

Over the 14-day period, our CPL closed out at 64% lower than the forecasted 2X Search CPA goal, putting it right in line with the search CPL. After concluding the 14-day test, we continued to run the campaign type with pulled back spend and reported CPL decreasing further to be below the Search CPL. YouTube Lead Forms have ended up being 29% cheaper than our Search ads. Additionally, we found during the test that video drove a 204% lift in leads for our search campaign program and resulted in a 181% lift in incremental site visits. Overall, this was an exceptionally successful test and I would recommend testing it in your lead gen accounts.

To Summarize

In terms of optimizing for the test, make sure to have video creative that is made specifically to be part of a Youtube campaign. Andrew Harder has written a fantastic piece on Creating Compelling Video with YouTube’s Video Builder to help you get started. You’ll also want to focus your targeting on a specific audience. In our case, we went with a specific program so we could cater both the ad copy and targeting to those of higher-intent and quality. If you are looking for some direction on creating a solid audience, I also recommend checking out Mitt Ray’s article on 4 Best YouTube Retargeting Strategies that work in 2021.