The biggest mistake entrepreneurs and marketers make when they’re crafting video ads is trying to sell without providing value.

Of course, everyone knows that you need to deliver value to your clients, and hopefully that’s something you already live by.

However, in my experience, you actually need to overdeliver value at every step of the client relationship, from your initial ad all the way to your sales call.

This is the direction all marketing is going. More than ever, you need to provide value at the very top of your funnel.

Before people opt into your list, before they sign up for a webinar or take any other step, you need to provide plenty of value!

Here is the step-by-step breakdown for how you need to structure your video ads:

1) Provide some kind of hook to draw in your audience.

2) Give them genuine value in the ad.

3) Offer a clear and concise call to action that leads them to the next step.

We can boil this down further:

Hook > Educate > Call to Action

That’s the basic three-step framework for all of your video ads, and every ad I’ve produced or helped a client produce has used it.

Let’s look at each of these steps in detail.

First, you hook your ideal clients by calling out a problem or a concern in the marketplace in a way that is provocative, generates curiosity, and showcases your solution.

For example, one of our best-performing hooks of all time goes like this:

“YouTube ads beat Facebook ads every time. Let’s face it, Facebook ad costs are going through the roof, and even when you have great ads, they’re almost impossible to scale. Well, in this video, I’m going to show you how you can use YouTube video ads to get consistent leads and sales for your business.”

Let’s break down that hook and analyze what makes it so effective. We start off with a bold statement—a pattern interrupt—that captures people’s attention right away: “YouTube ads beat Facebook ads every time.”

Now, this fact is far better known today than it was when I first started running the ad. At the time, the market was very focused on Facebook.

At the time of my ad, saying “YouTube ads beat Facebook ads every time” was a pattern interrupt, which is a way of saying it demanded audience attention.

It was a provocative statement that made my ideal clients pause and think, “Whoa, really? Is that true?”

Once you’ve hooked your audience, you need to educate them about the problem you’re going to solve.

First, call out the problem, then propose a solution.

In my ad, the problem I presented was that Facebook ad costs at the time were going through the roof, and even with a great ad, it had become almost impossible to scale.

I was calling out a major problem that I knew my ideal client was struggling with, and I then presented a solution: our YouTube ads program.

However, I wasn’t just selling them on our program, I was providing value in the video itself. So I said, “I’m going to show you exactly how you can use YouTube ads to get consistent leads and sales for your business.”

You present the problem, propose a solution, then educate viewers with valuable information in the ad itself. Making a sales pitch isn’t enough.

The ad must provide value. That’s the key to selling in this day and age.

To do that, you don’t have to share your entire program or provide a ton of information—save that for your webinar—but you also don’t want to give them too little.

This is supposed to be a “value ad,” so you need to provide a small dose of incredibly valuable content. Give them a few “golden nuggets” that viewers will find very useful.

If you’re a coach, consultant, course creator, expert, author, or speaker, this should be easy to do.

You can provide value based on what you teach people by sharing some small, actionable tips, tactics, or techniques that are worth their weight in gold.

But what if you’re selling a SaaS product or some kind of service that can’t be boiled down to golden nuggets?

How can you still demonstrate that your product is going to provide a solution to their problem?

In that case, you can showcase how your product or service provides a solution that other products and services do not.

Do you remember the commercial for Bounty paper towels? They show two spills of equal size on a countertop, then they use two different brands of paper towels to try to wipe them up: Bounty and a generic brand.

The Bounty paper towel absorbs the spill with a single swipe, but the rival product just pushes it off the countertop onto the floor. And then they share the motto: “Bounty, the Quicker Picker-Upper.”

How is this providing value? Because they’re showcasing how their paper towels will absorb two to three times more liquid than their rival’s product.

They’re not just saying, “Bounty will clean messes. Buy it.” They’re showing the product in action compared to lower quality rival products, and in so doing, they demonstrate a better solution to a common problem for their ideal clients.

In my video ad, I showed viewers how they could target a YouTube ad to reach the right people. I didn’t just tell them, I showed them, providing actual footage of YouTube Creator tools and a demonstration of how to use them.

It wasn’t an exhaustive analysis of everything on the platform, just a few powerful golden nuggets that provided value apart from the sale itself.

The final step, then, is to provide some call to action so your target audience knows how to take the next step in a relationship with you and your product or service.

You can direct them to a website, to a webinar, to sign up for an email list or a free trial, give an email address or phone number, or mention some stores that carry your product.

Whatever the case, make the next step crystal clear.

Of these three steps—hook, educate, call to action—it’s the second one that people usually get wrong.

Far too many video ads simply say, “Here’s a problem. Buy our solution.” There’s no real value, and therefore, there is no transfer of trust.

Remember, you need to be overdelivering value to clients before you make your sales pitch.

This is simply the way the marketplace is evolving.

The value ladder is climbing higher, so before you get to the call to action, make sure you’ve provided a few golden nuggets.

That’s what makes it a “value ad.”

Once you’ve done that, make sure your call to action is clear and very simple.

For example, my ad said, “Now that you’ve seen how powerful YouTube ads can be, I want to invite you to sign up for our free training on exactly how you can scale your business to seven or eight figures using laser-targeted YouTube ads. So click the link right here on the screen. When you do, you’ll get a page that looks just like this.”

That last sentence is important.

I actually showed viewers the signup page that the link would take them to, then explained the information they would have to enter.

I even put in my own information. “Just enter your name and email address like this, and you will get instant access to our free training.”

This boosted conversion rates dramatically.

By showing people exactly what they would be doing when they clicked the link, I eliminated surprises.

They saw the landing page, saw the information I would be requesting of them, and saw how easy it would be to provide that information and access the free training.

You need to make your call to action as easy as possible.

In eCommerce, I recommend that marketers show viewers how to add the product to their shopping cart and how to check out.

This eliminates any confusion by priming viewers for exactly what they’re going to do.

If they’ve already seen it, then it’s easier to go through the motions than if they have to discover the process on their own.

And that’s it. That’s the framework for a powerful and effective value ad. Hook them, educate them, then provide a simple call to action.

The “Value Ad” Framework for YouTube Ads by Aleric Heck