In early February before all live events were cancelled I presented at Social Media Marketing World 2020 in San Diego.  My talk covered the latest tactics and strategies we’re using right now to scale on YouTube.  This is the recording of my presentation at this paid event.  Here’s a quick look at what I cover in this talk:

• Could YouTube be your next big thing?
• 2 Proven Ad formulas for cold traffic
• Ad formulas for warm traffic
• What is progressive audience testing and how to use it
• How to leverage YouTube and Google Display Network together
• Plus more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1:

Five YouTube ad tactics to scale any business, so it's all about YouTube and advertising. A bit about Brett and then we'll get this show on the road. Brett is the CEO of OMG Commerce, an e-commerce marketing agency and Google Premier Partner. He started his first marketing agency way back then in 2003 and launched his first search engine marketing campaign in 2004. He's the author of several books including, The Ultimate Guide to Google Shopping. He's also host of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast, highlighting in fact what's new and what's next in e-commerce. Ladies and gentlemen, y'all know what to do. Can you put your hands together and join me for welcoming... Don't do that yet. I want you to hold that fire. Hold it, hold it, hold it. Keep holding it like a spring with tension.

Brett:

Hey, Brett Curry here. Before we dive into today's topic, I want to talk quickly about YouTube ads.

Brett:

People ask me all the time, what makes for a great YouTube ad, and it's true. The ad is the hardest part for getting YouTube to work. Now, I love the campaign structure. I love audience targeting. And I love tinkering with bids and using the smart bid algorithm. And I even liked budget management. I like all that behind the scenes stuff, but I've seen it time and time again where the exact same campaign structure just limps along with a mediocre video. But you get the right video with the right message that resonates with people, and that same campaign structure just takes off, it scales.

Brett:

And so over the last couple years, my team and I, we've been collecting good YouTube ads. We've been watching, we've been paying attention and looking at our own clients, looking at the numbers, finding what are ads that resonate and work on YouTube? And so we started building this little guide, this little guide that we use internally and we started categorizing ads and giving them fun names like the Manifesto and the UGC Mashup and the Have-it-all. And so we started kind of breaking down what elements in these videos make them work. And so I was speaking at a recent event and I just happened to mention that this resource existed and people sort of clamored for it. Everyone was like, "Hey, I want to see the guide, I want to see the resource, I want to see all these successful ads." And so that's what we've done. So we put together this resource kind of first time ever going to share it with a broader audience. It's free. So check it out and get our list of winning YouTube ad formulas with lots of examples. Let this be your inspiration for your next killer YouTube ad.

Brett:

So this is a free resource. We'll link to it in the show notes to this show, but you can also go to omgcommerce.com, click on resources and then guides and it's the YouTube ad templates and guide. Check it out, and I hope it inspires your next killer YouTube ad campaign. And now back to the show.

Speaker 1:

Now, ladies and gentlemen, y'all know what to do. Join me in welcoming the amazing, the admirable Brett Curry.

Brett:

That was awesome. I love the energy and so I want to keep this as high energy, as high impact as possible and also super practical, super useful. So we're going to get practical, we're going to get strategic, we're going to get tactical a little bit and hopefully you'll walk away with the tools, the tips you need to excel with YouTube advertising. So, I want you to put hands because I couldn't really see over here, how many of you are currently not advertising on YouTube? That is a lot of you. Most of you. Okay, how many of you are advertising on YouTube or you're really just getting started? Just dipping your toe in the water, just getting going. Okay... All alright, dude stood up. I like that. How many of you, you're advertising on YouTube, you're doing well and you just want to take it to the next level? Anybody there? Okay.

Brett:

Several of you raised your hands I feel like three times. I don't get that. But you're just excited like, "I'm just going to raise my hands. I'm really excited to be here raise the roof." So, to kind of set the stage, I want to look at how people are interacting with YouTube, how they're using YouTube, and how we use it to influence the shopping journey. So let's dive in just a little bit. So what you're probably asking yourselves is, could YouTube ads be the next big thing for our organization, for our company? And I still talk to so many people. I do a lot of work in the e-commerce space and there's so many e-commerce companies that are advanced with their Facebook advertising and they either haven't done YouTube at all or they've just dabbled in it, which sounds like you guys, right?

Brett:

But YouTube is massive. So why are we not using it? Why is it not the thing now? But I think I've got some theories that we'll talk about. Yeah, cash, absolute budget, but I think also is comfort level and know how for some key areas. I want to hopefully help solve that today so that you can ramp up your YouTube efforts and make it the next big thing for you guys. Now what's interesting, this is my third social media marketing world event in a row. And talking about YouTube ads the whole time, the first year. So I guess maybe I'm not being very successful if more of you aren't advertising. It's the third time I've tried to talk you into advertising on YouTube and the numbers are still low. But what's interesting is that three years ago I was just talking about YouTube remarketing and now we've kind of scaled to all encompassing full funnel YouTube. But this number was 1 billion.

Brett:

So it's global users, but that number, three years ago was 1 billion. It's doubled. The rate of growth on YouTube right now is still astonishing, but what's more important for that coveted demo, 18 to 34, how many of you would say 18 to 34 is a key demo for your product, right? So more people in that demo consume YouTube on mobile alone than on any TV station. Broadcast, cable does not matter. More people in that age group on mobile alone, not counting desktop consumption of YouTube, they're more engaged there than on any TV station. And you've probably seen this stat before, but this is such a key indicator of how people use YouTube, right? It is the number two search engine right behind Google. And so people go to YouTube for those learn, do and buy moments, right?

Brett:

"I want to learn how to fix the lawnmower," right? I have a son, he's about to graduate high school. A couple of years ago I saw he was searching how to ask out girls, right? And the good news is he's got a girlfriend and so YouTube worked. I was a little bit honestly offended that he didn't ask me. I was like, "Hey, do you not think your dad has game?" And apparently he doesn't think that I do and he's actually probably right. But we find what we want to find on YouTube, right? It is the number two search engine. And not only that, it's the number two most trafficked website on the planet, right? Again, second to only Google. So you want to scale your organization, you want to scale your reach, YouTube has scale more than any other platform but it also has these really specific focused niches, right?

Brett:

So I'm not into model trains but this is interesting. So this is a model train channel, almost 25,000 subscribers. Some of their videos have 700,000 views, right? So you want to go really deep on something interesting and something specific, that's available on YouTube as well. So just a couple of quick things about our company to kind of set the stage for what I want to talk about, we do this on a day in and day out basis. So we craft YouTube campaigns, we manage those campaigns for large e-commerce clients. Team of about 38 now and growing. And for agencies our size, we're one of the top spenders on YouTube. So everything I share today is going to based on real campaigns, real data. Stuff we're doing and testing, we've done a lot of things that did not work and we found a lot of things that have worked. And that's we're going to talk about today.

Brett:

Also, and this is more of like for another day, but I want to mention it, we did make the Inc. 5,000 list this last year, but I'm even more excited we made the Inc Best Workplaces. And I'm a huge believer that if you have the right culture internally and you treat your people right and you create and foster this environment of helping each other level up and honest communication and transparency and all these things we believe in, that translates into better business performance as well. So if you want to geek out about team building and things like that, I would love to talk about it. Couple shots of our team, that's us at the Google Chicago offices. In the lower left, that's at our Christmas party. I was wearing Christmas jammies. I don't know why I selected that picture, but it's a fun one and it kind of encompasses who we are as a team.

Brett:

So quick question. Oh man, the clicker didn't work and I had to click it multiple times and that just ruined the greatest reveal in this whole presentation. Okay. Anyway, pretending you didn't see what you just saw, what is the first thing you think of when you think of YouTube? Cat videos, right? Now I just researched this. I Google it because I wanted to know how many people are dog people versus cat people. So dog people, yeah, let's just see if this is true. Cat people? Yeah. But cats rule the internet. So it's like 60% identify as dog people, 11% identify as cat people and the rest of us, I don't know what we identify ourselves as. I like them both just from a distance.

Brett:

So I just want to share a couple of things that are interesting. So 2 million cat videos on YouTube right now and 25 billion views for cat videos. So if you learn nothing else from social media marketing world, you can come back with some real science behind cat videos. And not only that, I won't stop there. This is the first cat video largely believes... I guess I'm going to stand here, largely believed to be the first cat video ever produced. Now the dude behind the cats looks a little bit eccentric to me and that's Professor Welton and he was making these cats box. I can't confirm that no cats were harmed in this video, but I can confirm this was the first cat video. So there you go. You're walking away with some serious knowledge.

Brett:

More importantly though, for our discussion and looking at how does YouTube influence buying decisions, whether that's for a physical product or a service, 80%, this is a study Google did, 80% of people now say they switch between search and video when they're trying to find a product to buy. So I either find the product on search and then I go to YouTube to watch demonstrations and reviews or I discover it through YouTube and then I go to search to learn more, but 80% bounce back and forth in the process of their buying decision.

Brett:

A third of all shoppers now say they've purchased something that they discovered on YouTube first. And this is really interesting because I think this will shape how we use YouTube to influence buying decisions. Those that experienced YouTube in their shopping journey, 80% said it was at the beginning of that shopping process. So this kind of awareness audience or the cold audiences which is what we'll talk about in a minute, they're abundant on YouTube, we'll talk about how to reach them.

Brett:

For teenagers, this is and I referenced my son looking at how-to-pick-up-girls videos on YouTube. If you look at teens, the three most popular platforms now are YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat in that order, and YouTube does lead the day. So bright things ahead for YouTube. And now over the last couple of years, which-product-to-buy videos have doubled in watch time, right? So people are going to YouTube looking for things to buy, okay? But really ultimately, this what counts, right? So this is what we do on a day in and day out basis, helping companies scale to $1000 a day in ad spend, $25,000 to $100,000 a day in YouTube ad spend and while hitting cost per acquisition or cost per conversion targets or return on ad spend targets. So anybody likes the sound of that, getting that kind of scale while hitting your numbers on YouTube. Does that sound good?

Brett:

Okay, lots heads now. You wore out yourself with all the hand raising before and I was just like, we're just gonna nod. So this is what I want to talk about. And at its simplest form, this comes down to right message, right person, right time, right? How do we do that on YouTube? That's we're going to dive into and talk about. And so really as we look at kind this progression of how someone makes the decision to buy something, they go from not aware to then considering, to then buying to then hopefully becoming a loyal customer, YouTube can influence really every stage of that journey. But we're going to kind of focus on a couple of key areas today.

Brett:

And so let's talk about key number one. So we have got five keys. I'm going spend more time on this one than on the others because this is the hardest one to master. I believe, after talking to a lot of people about YouTube ads, one of the main reasons people don't invest in YouTube ads is because the creative aspect is perceived to be difficult, and it can be. And often the videos that work on Facebook are not the videos that work on YouTube. So it is a different animal. So what I want to do is I'm going to share with you some of our favorite ad approaches, we call them ad templates, although there's lots of room for creativity. But some of our favorite ad approaches for YouTube, we'll break those down, I'll show you why they work, we'll look at some examples, it'll a lot of fun. And this is also the creatives we're talking about. So these are the pre-roll YouTube videos, right? Those skippable ads that show up before you watch your cat video, these are the ads we're talking about.

Brett:

So proven formulas for cold traffic. Let's start with that. That awareness level traffic or that cold traffic first. So people that don't know you exist, maybe they don't even know a solution like yours exists. How do we reach them on YouTube? What kind of video ad do we need? So I'm going to talk about two, I'm going to share some examples and break it down. So the hero story or the hero journey and then the explainer. So let's dive right in. So this is one of our clients, this is EF Ultimate Break. They're group travel for 18 to 29-year-olds. They have an amazing video. I'm going play it in its entirety because I think you'll learn a lot from it. And so here we go.

Speaker 3:

This is you, or at least it could be you. You've been Island hopping through Greece with a group of people you just met who at this very moment are cheering you on as you jump off a boat, which to be honest, is a little scary. But YOLO, FOMO, right? Right. We are EF Ultimate Break, the best way to see the world for anyone 18 to 29. We handle everything-

Speaker 3:

(singing)

Speaker 3:

... you just travel. We've got people that do this, people that do that, and people all over the world who literally plan every detail of your trip to make sure it's absolutely perfect. We love travel. Scratch that, we're obsessed with travel, which is why we make it as easy as one, two, three. Find your trip, pay over time, travel.

Speaker 3:

We believe experiences are better than things, but what we really believe is that experiences are meant to be shared like french fries. Seriously, if you're not sharing endless plates of delicious food with new friends and new places at all times, you're doing it wrong. And when I say endless, I mean endless. Yeah, that should do it. Oh, hey, that's your tour director, the true MVP at the EF Ultimate Break trip, besides you of course. They're with you the whole time to make sure you get to where you need to go, eat what you need to eat and do as a local do. They're one part travel guru, one part logistical Ninja and three billion parts, awesome.

Speaker 3:

All right. All right. You get it. Now let's get back to the good stuff. Travel is all about expanding your horizons, trying new things and learning a little bit about yourself along the way. But it's also about having baguette fights in front of the Eiffel Tower. So what are you waiting for? Jump.

Brett:

Sweet. Alright, so who's in? Who wants to go? Go on that kind of trip. Yes. So good. Now this is a slightly higher production value than what you have to use on YouTube, right? But this is a great example. So let's break this down. Why is this such an effective ad? How could you take this and apply it to your business? So really the idea here is that the prospect is the hero, right? You are not the hero. You are here to help. You help to guide this hero journey or help create this hero story for your prospect. Now this video literally opens with, "This could be you," right? "You're standing on the edge of a boat, you're about to jump in. This could be you."

Brett:

Now, you don't have to start with exactly those words, but that's what you want to paint, where you can say, "Hey, this is what your life could look like. You could experience this, you could be this, you could be in this moment, you could be doing this very things." So you want to give your prospect the ability to see themselves in the video doing the thing that you're showing? So this could be you. Give them a glimpse of the good life. "What would life be like if I was enjoying your product or your service? So what would that look like?"

Brett:

And then also we're talking about how we eliminate the scary or the challenging stuff, right? Because remember, you're here to guide on this hero journey or to guide to help create this hero story. And so for 18 to 29 year olds traveling internationally, it's overwhelming, it's a little bit scary because of the safety risks, "I don't know the language, I don't know where anything is," right? So they say, "We take care of all of it. Everything. We got croissant gurus and travel gurus and accommodation gurus, and all you do is travel. We handle the scary stuff or the challenging stuff. We take care of all of that."

Brett:

You really want to bring to life the top two to three benefits and show rather than tell, right? So, you talk about visiting the Eiffel tower and talk about the structure or whatever, but isn't it more fun, isn't it more like Zesteral to say, have a baguette fight in front of the Eiffel tower, right? And then to show that, show the joy and the experience and all that cool stuff, right? So, show, don't tell. And then if you can weave in some unexpected benefits. Now their primary market is female. They do attract more female travelers than male travelers. And so they decided to throw in Sander, right? So they're talking about, "Hey, your tour guide or the MVP beside you, they're going to help show you the food and the language and all that stuff, and could be a hunk," right? So this tour guide could be a hunk, a little added benefit, throwing some humor there, which is always nice.

Brett:

Overcome objections, right? What are the reasons someone would say no? In this case it's expensive, right? "So do I have to save for like three years before I travel?" Nudge, "Pay over time, go do it down. Travel now, pay over time." And then strong call to action they said, "Hey, jump in. What are you waiting for? Jump in." And then the call to actions actually that are visual are more on the learn more type of call to action, right? So, "Check it out. Get all the details here." So that's the hero story. Very powerful ad type.

Brett:

Now let's talk about something that's little more straightforward, a little simpler, a little easier to execute. Again, this is a slightly higher end version, but it does a beautiful job of displaying what an explainer could be. And you could do one that's much simpler. So this is very straight forward. This is going to be from Grammarly. So let's give this a shot.

Female:

If you write anything on your computer, you need to get Grammarly.

Male:

I write pretty much all day every day and Grammarly makes my writing better.

Female:

As a student, I like that it's free.

Female:

It actually is correcting everything as I'm writing it.

Male:

Grammar errors, spelling errors. It even helps me find the right words to use so I can say what I want to say.

Female:

It catches all those embarrassing little mistakes before I hit send.

Male:

I downloaded Grammarly around my freshman year because I was just horrible at typing.

Female:

Grammarly is like my secret weapon for writing papers.

Male:

It's the perfect tool for your resume. You don't want any errors when it's your first impression.

Female:

I use Grammarly for important emails, social media posts, which there are a lot of.

Male:

I've used every tool out there and Grammarly is by far the best for improving your writing.

Male:

Grammarly is making me a better writer and it's free.

Male:

I would recommend Grammarly if you were a student.

Male:

My family.

Female:

My peers, my colleagues. It's like having your own personal proofreader for free.

Male:

Download Grammarly for free at grammarly.com.

Brett:

Anybody here use Grammarly? I'm just curious. Whoa, holy cow, almost all of you. They're one of the top video ads spenders so you may have seen that before or others like it. And so this approach works and it works very, very well. So let's talk about it. It's a clear problem solution premise, right? "Here's the problem, here's our solution." Nothing fancy. Not a lot of creative lead-in, just problem, solution, right? And so really what this is doing is it's sharing why the problem matters and how the solution works. Now in this case, we've all made grammar mistakes or spelling mistakes on our social media posts or job applications or memos or whatever emails. And so they don't need to really emphasize the pain a whole lot because we all feel that, we all know that.

Brett:

So depending on your service, you may need to really dig into the problem a little bit more. They focus more on the solution because the problem is so instantly identifiable, right? So here's how this solution works. It corrects as you go, right? I'm writing and it corrects as I go. What this also does is it identifies who it's for, what it does and how it works, right? So, the who it's for, think about what all they did there. They have, young professional, they have a student, they have somebody that just likes to post on social media, they have someone applying for a job. So showing the who it's for, specifically who it's for and how it works, it corrects as you go. It's easy, right? You just install it and it works it's magic, right? So the explainer, very powerful ad template. And you can use it for your business. It could be simpler than this. You could have a actual customers doing the talking if you wanted to, but this approach just works.

Brett:

So let's talk really quickly about getting the right assets for warm traffic. So those two work fantastically well the awareness level traffic, you can use them in other places as well, but what about when someone already knows about you? Maybe they've been to your site, maybe they watched the video, but they still haven't said yes, right? So they consumed the video, checked out your lander, but they have not said yes yet, What ad types do we want to run for them? And talk about three and talk about the UGC or influencer mashup. UGC for those that don't know, user-generated content. So, user-generated content mashup or influencer mashup. We'll look at the longer explainer and then the expert interview. We'll go through these really quickly.

Brett:

So the UGC or influencer mashup, looks something like this where you're taking actual customer testimonials or actual influencer endorsements and you're mashing them together. So real clips, real testimonials, really using these to kind of highlight your top two to three benefits. So what are the top two to three reasons why someone says yes to your product or service? Find testimonials or influencers who talk about those two to three things, mash them together and now you get the beginnings of a great video.

Brett:

And then also you want to demonstrate the pride in the process, right? So not only show the person on camera but show them enjoying your product or enjoying the travel, enjoying the experience or whatever. Allow for some demonstrations to be part of this video as well. So UGC mashup, we've also used this to cold audiences it works there too, but it's fantastic for warm audiences.

Brett:

The longer explainer, this is really simple, but basically you're just taking your explainer and you're going deeper. So often, this is that explainer premise, which you're going deeper, three to five minutes. You're showing more science, more research, more interviews, more whatever, to really tip someone over the edge. Because what someone has said to you if they've engaged with your video or engaged with your site and have not bought is, "I'm not sold yet." Right? "I don't have enough information. You haven't given me enough yet to say yes." So the longer explainer is hopefully going to tip them over the edge.

Brett:

There's also one we've used, we use this with supplement companies, medical devices, even footwear. And so the expert interview, a couple ways you can do this. You can do like talk show style or in this case, this was an interview of a podiatrist and another doctor, some other variety as well, but he was talking about minimalist running shoes. And how typical running shoes actually weaken your feet over time, but this type of shoes strengthens your foot, it strengthens your arch. And so again, it's one of those things where, "Hey, maybe I'm thinking about buying that shoe because it's cool and because my outdoor running buddies have minimalist shoes, but I've seen a few things, haven't bought yet, now the expert interview is going to push me hopefully over the edge to say yes."

Brett:

Okay, so that was just a few templates. There's actually a lot more. So for the last couple of years, my team and I, we've been collecting good YouTube ads and so we've been seeing kind of what works, why it works. And so I've put together this free guide. You can get it without any strings attached of all of our top YouTube ad templates. And I provide links to videos, right? So we explain why it works and then links to some of these videos you can check out. It's at omgcommerce.com under resources. Click on guides, and then it's the YouTube ad templates. So check it out, walk through all of the templates right there.

Brett:

Okay, so key number two. So now we're talking right audience, right? So getting the right audience and sort of at the right time as well. We like to talk about progressive audience testing. So do we create this brilliant YouTube ad and then just turn it on and run it to the universe of YouTube when it's everybody is on YouTube? Of course not. That would be wasteful and not a good idea. And so looking at some of the audience options, we'll break down a few of these. So if you look kind of from top to bottom there, it starts with demographic targeting. So age, gender, you could throw in income potentially there too, but demo all the way down to the bottom, it's remarketing, right?

Brett:

So at the top, that's a really cold audience, at the bottom, it's a very hot audience. At the top, it's a broad audience, at the bottom's very focused. Top, it's a big audience and at the bottom it's more of a small audience. And so where do we start? Where do we begin? And kind of in the middle, you have things like life events, someone that just graduated college or just got married, some life there or some in-market audience as we'll talk about in just a minute.

Brett:

And so the cool thing is understanding these audiences will allow you to harness all the information Google has about users so you can reach the right person right when you want to. So recently we did a study showing the same video to an audience based on intent signals. And we'll talk about what that means in a minute, but based on intent signals. And here's the thing guys, Google knows everything about you, right? Google knows what you're up to online. They know where you've been online and what videos you've watched and what searches you conducted on Google and things like that. And so when they leverage some of those intent signals, consideration lift goes up 30% and purchase intent goes up 40%. So 30% to 40% more effective when you reach a very targeted intent-based audience versus just broadcasting your ad to the YouTube universe, right?

Brett:

So we want to harness those intent signals in our intent-based audiences. So we're going after intent-based audiences initially. Let's talk about a couple of my favorite. First one is custom intent. So how many of you would say the way you search on Google is different than the way you search on YouTube? So you search on Google differently, you search on... Yeah, YouTube, hey, sometimes you want to watch a music video, right? You just want to chill out and have some music on YouTube, whatever. But Google, you're searching for everything. Literally everything. Like how old is this movie star and who is in this? And all kinds of crazy stuff we're searching for on Google.

Brett:

So what a custom intent audience allows you to do is you can build an audience of people based on what they searched for on Google and then reach them the next time they're on YouTube, right? So again, we're looking at a travel company or something. We can look for all the people that have searched on Google recently for group travel or price to travel to Greece or guided tours of Rome or things like that, where we can compile this list of keywords that people search for on Google. Now we can reach those people on YouTube with our app. Does that make sense? See how powerful that is? You know what these people want because they're searching for it on a Google.

Brett:

Now the other thing you can do is keyword targeting in YouTube, right? So this is the other intent-based audience that we really like to focus on initially. So I started typing in YouTube, typed in best in OI and then just let the suggest fill that in, right? So this is what people are typing in on YouTube. "Best noise canceling headphones, 2019. Best noise canceling headphones, 2020," right? So people going to YouTube looking for product demos and unboxing videos and things like that related to the product they want to buy.

Brett:

And so you can also target these people, right? So they're in YouTube, actively consuming content related to these keywords, and you can run your ad right there. Okay? So someone's looking for best noise canceling headphones in 2020, they're watching noise canceling headphones videos, we now show our ad for our new brand of noise canceling headphones. Very, very powerful.

Brett:

So the idea here is we want to get conversions, right? So whether you're trying to get a lead or an opt-in or an actual purchase, a lot of our clients, they're running YouTube directly to an e-commerce sale. So watch a video by some skin cream, right? Watch a YouTube video, buy a silicone wedding ring, right? Watch a YouTube video by whatever. Or it could be that you want to direct them to just opt into something, get a deal, whatever. So you want to get conversions and then go broad. Then broaden out your horizon. So in-market audiences, this is where Google is saying, "Hey, based on someone's recent behavior, based on their two-week behavior, we think they're in the market for an automobile or financial services or lingerie or whatever."

Brett:

So it's based on searches they've made videos, they've watched even places they've visited, right? Because if you have location tracking on, on your phone, Google knows if you've been to a car dealership, right? And so in the market for auto or whatever the case may be, so these in-market audiences, these are larger, usually 25 million plus. So you can start targeting them as well. And then you can start looking even broader than that. So affinity, that's more interest-based, topic-based. So I'm into fitness or fitness apparel or yoga or I'm a foodie, something like that or just straight demographic targeting. So start with intent-based and then broaden your scope, broaden your reach to these larger audiences based on either customer-intent or based on in-market or affinity and demo, okay?

Brett:

All right. Key number three, power your ad with data. This is why, and I'm a marketing guy, old school, started in 2002, did TV, radio, did direct mail. I was a Jay Abraham student and Dan Kennedy and really like this direct response type advertising. And I loved it because I love the science of why does one ad work and another doesn't, right? Why does one TV commercial get someone to say, "Yes, I will buy that sweatshirt then the other causes people to shrug." Right?

Brett:

And so looking at what causes people to buy. In the old days though, it was all just a bunch of like theories and ideas and who was the loudest in the room and who could convince everybody else that their creative strategy was the one to adopt, right? But now we have data, we have science, we can see what's actually working and what's not. So here's how to... So start with one of these templates we talked about, but then let the data speak, let the data show you what's working and what's not. So here's how to do that.

Brett:

And then this is what's interesting, sometimes your assumptions are wrong, right? Sometimes my assumptions are wrong. I know YouTube pretty well. I'm in YouTube every day. We're spending millions and millions of dollars on YouTube ads, I still get it wrong. Sometimes ugly wins and sometimes uncreative, Just really simple, straightforward, direct, sometimes that is what produces on YouTube. So here's some of the things to measure.

Brett:

So this is BOOM by Cindy Joseph. This is Ezra Firestone's company. And actually, there's a BOOM shirt right there, Laura, checking out the session. So watch these videos, they're fantastic. This is skincare for older women, boomer women primarily. So these top two videos, the top one is four minutes and 39 seconds, the top one is two minutes and 40 seconds. Those are our top two ads. These are primarily looking at cold audiences.

Brett:

So this is more of a cold awareness type traffic. So those are the top ads both on the size of the reach, the number of conversions we were able to get from those videos, And more importantly, we hit the CPA target, the cost per acquisition target with those videos. Now we could have sat around and said, "Yeah, but that's four minutes and 39 seconds It needs to be like 15." Because I know if I'm watching a skincare commercial I won't watch past 20 seconds. Right? And all of that is a who cares? None of that matters. Your opinion, my opinion does not matter. Mismatch. So it's the data. And we've tested a lot of 15-second ads, We've tested the new six-second bumper ads at our Google reps requests. We have awesome Google reps, but they usually do not work on YouTube if you're trying to get conversions. If you're just try to get views, they work great, but if you're trying to drive a conversion, those short form videos do not work nearly as well.

Brett:

Another thing we do, we like to pull audience-specific data for each video. So I can actually give you the spreadsheet if you want to see, there's nothing magical about it. But basically you download this data from YouTube or from your Google ads campaigns or your YouTube campaigns, and then break down each video by audience. So here's a cold audience, here's a warm audience, how did this ad perform to these different audiences? And you'll see that for some videos it's very different, right? It's very different how they perform. Some of those five, six-minute videos perform really well for warm audiences, not as much the cold audiences. So you need this data so you can make better decisions.

Brett:

And then, this is I think one of the most untapped resources in a Google ads account and is very, very powerful. So this is audience insights. So if you go to the tools section in Google ads, click on audience manager, and then audience insights, what Google is going to do, this is really only valuable after you've been running for a while, after you get some data, after you have some clicks and some conversions, then that's when this data becomes powerful. Google is going to tell you, "Hey, based on what we know about your users, your visitors, your converters, they are more likely to be in these audiences." So they're more likely... In this case, they're 3.6 times more likely, this is a more of a men-focused brand. They're 3.6 times more likely to be a truck or SUV enthusiast than the average population."

Brett:

So now, based on what Google is giving you is, "Here's a list of audience ideas." So now you've got these audiences, your initial tests set of audiences. Once you start getting conversions, Google is going to say, "Hey, test these next." Sometimes we find really counterintuitive ones like supplements that we're selling, an avid news readers is the suggestion from audience insights or financial services when again is our supplement and usually it works. Usually Google is seeing something here and so you should test these audiences.

Brett:

Alright, this is a quick one but also a powerful one, so leverage the YouTube and Google Display Network or GDN synergy. Okay, so how can we leverage that synergy? So here's a shot back to BOOM, shot of some of their display ads. So these are showing on the Google Display Network, so showing on news sites, blog sites, things like that. There are 2 million sites, part of the Google display network. You can reach 90% of the web through the Google Display Network. But that ad on the left, that is actually just their YouTube ad that we placed into a display campaign, right?

Brett:

So what this looks like, this is kind of the responsive display ad builder or what one of the views in there looks like. You can add images, logo, add some text. So this is just showing over time, this was primarily to a remarketing audience, but over time the top performing Google Display Network asset was our YouTube video. So that YouTube video then was appearing on news sites, blogs sites, things like that, but this is something that a lot of people overlook, if I'm running display ads, it needs to be an image. It needs to be an image only. Not so fast, use your YouTube ad in your Google Display Network campaigns and you may be surprised, it may be the best performing ad. And so what Google then sees is, "Hey, people are engaging with that ad, it's working, we're going to keep showing this YouTube video on the Google display network."

Brett:

How many of you guys are running Gmail ads? Whoa, not very many people, like five or something. So Gmail campaigns, this is another amazing way to leverage both images and YouTube videos. But Gmail ads, they appear like emails in your Gmail app. Okay. So it kind of can look like this on mobile. That's an ad for BOOM by Cindy Joseph on the left and Live Bearded there on the right. It does say ad there, but it shows up in the inbox on the Gmail app and looks like an email, right? What we're seeing as we run this, and we're primarily running this for remarketing, right? So somebody gets to our lander, they don't convert, they add to cart, they don't convert. We're running Gmail ads to those people. And so what we're finding is CPA, so cost per acquisition or cost per conversion, often 30% to 60% lower for Gmail ads than for standard display.

Brett:

A lot of times we're using these same images, the same videos, but because of this delivery mechanism and people are engaging often 30% to 60% of lower CPAs, which is pretty powerful. And so this is kind of what the builder looks like, with the ad there on the right, that's what that could look like. This was again for BOOM. You get a series of images, text, videos, but this is an extremely powerful type of campaign. And so if you have remarketing list... How many of you guys have remarketing lists? Okay, go build a Google Gmail campaign, right? If you have a remarketing list and you have images and you have some videos, if you don't have videos, you can still run it, but Gmail campaign is simple to set up, do it for remarketing and do it sooner rather than later.

Brett:

So let's talk about a couple of things and then potentially a Q&A if we have time. So key number five, make better decisions with smarter measurements. We talked about data a minute ago, right? Using data to power your ad, but how are we analyzing that data and what are we looking at? Because it's so easy. I love Google Analytics, but it's so easy to get in there and get lost and then to maybe focus on a metric that's meaningless, right? All the while, the real data, the good data is right there staring at you saying, "Hey, do this, do this," but we're not seeing it. Right? So smarter measurement to get better results. Let's talk this through a little bit.

Brett:

Anybody here getting good ideas on airplanes? How many get good ideas in the shower? That's because .. For me, I don't know man. I'm just thinking about like soap and I don't know. I'm like brain dead in the shower. I don't know why, but put me in an airplane, shut the door, go into airplane mode and all these ideas come to me. So about a year ago thinking about how do we communicate this better, how do we set up a structure for our clients a little bit better. And so I came with idea of AMP or accelerated marketing portfolios. And so thinking about your campaigns, not as silos, your campaigns, not as individual warriors, but thinking about your campaigns as a portfolio working together synergistically, making things happen on your behalf. So what does this look like? Well, this was another realization that kind of fed into this.

Brett:

This is the screenshot of a branded search campaign for a large advertiser. They were spending boatloads of money on Facebook ads even before we started working with them. So this is going to look at the performance of their branded search campaigns. That arrow is when we started running YouTube ads and their branded search campaign took off, right? Which going back to the data we saw, hey, 80% of people that view YouTube video in their shopping journey, they do it at the beginning, right? So they saw stuff on YouTube and they actually bought by clicking on search ad, right?

Brett:

So looking at, hey, if we just looked at the YouTube ad campaign all by itself and we didn't look at this, we might shut YouTube off prematurely thinking, "YouTube is not doing anything," right? So we shut it off, but then that goes back down immediately. We've seen this happen with large advertisers, you shut off YouTube and the branded search goes down, right?

Brett:

So thinking about all of this together, so here's what we looked at, and again, we're primarily e-commerce, so we're primarily measuring return on ad spend, but let's just look at some hypotheticals. So we're running a YouTube campaign to an awareness audience. We might see something like a 50% to 200% return on ad spend. So I spend a dollar and from that campaign I get 50 cents as return. How many of you guys like that deal? Spend a dollar to get... No, no, no. I didn't explain that well. You spend a dollar and you get 50 cents, not $1.50 but you're getting 50 cents, right? You're losing money is what that looks like on the outset, right? So YouTube, looking at the campaign itself, you're getting a 50% return to maybe a 200% return at that awareness level. Okay?

Brett:

But then let's move a little bit further down. So consideration, that's more like Google Search, Google Shopping, that type of thing. Hey, maybe we're getting like a 300% to 400%. So now I'm spending a dollar and I'm getting three to four dollars in return. Okay? Then I look at branded search and remarketing, maybe at that point that I'm getting like a 4X to 8X return on ad spend. But here's the deal. Even if those YouTube campaigns are at a 0.5, right? A 50% return on ad spend, they could make all of the rest of it bigger and more valuable. They could feed those remarketing campaigns that are at 800% return on ad spend.

Brett:

And so we're saying is a lot of our clients at the portfolio level want to be at a 2X to 3X. We can show you and we built a spreadsheet and this is something I can show you. It's a one on one on one, it's kind of confusing if you don't have a little bit of explanation, we can map out, if we were to spend X on YouTube and get even a 0.5 return, it's going to feed the rest of it and overall you're going to hit your global numbers and the overall pie is going to be much bigger. Does that make sense?

Brett:

So smarter approach, smarter measurement, don't just see campaigns as individuals. I know a lot of you have to show this to your boss and your teams and you have to convince them of this stuff. It's not super easy but we've got some tools I'm happy to share to make this a little bit easier. And so just a couple of very quick examples I'll just take about 20 seconds. BOOM, and this a quote from Ezra, we took YouTube from nonexistent to one of their top channels in a pretty short period of time. Grew their Google ads revenue by about 200%. Overall sales grew about 30%. Live Bearded, I mainly show these guys because they looks so cool and I secretly want to be like them, but grew their conversion 65% largely using YouTube. So with that, my man, do we have time for questions? Okay.

Speaker 1:

We have one or two questions.

Brett:

One or two questions. What do you got? Anything YouTube related? Yes sir. loud so-

Speaker 1:

Speak into the mic.

Brett:

... speak into the mike anyway.

Stevenson:

Okay. So Stevenson, strategist at 72andSunny and we have a wide range of clients. So some of them are dropping millions on YouTube, others are not as convinced. You talked a little about keyword targeting. How do you know when to lead into those broad searches? So someone types in, let's say leading and writes the active vision as an example. Someone is looking at when is the newest call of duty coming out versus getting a lot more niche for those brands that aren't willing to spend that much more money. How do you figure out that balance?

Brett:

Yes. Great question. So if you're talking about keyword targeting and are you talking about a keyword campaign in YouTube or are you talking about like custom intent audience.

Brett:

On YouTube. So keyword campaign on YouTube. So what we've found is that usually keyword campaigns don't explode in volume. So to give you an idea, sometimes we'll run these affinity audiences or really large audiences and whatever budget you give that campaign, it will spend all of that and then some, right? Because these audiences are massive. Keyword campaigns don't tend to do the same thing. Occasionally, but usually not. So we've actually found more success with slightly broader keywords per keyword campaigns. So if you were talking about like a video game type deal or whatever. So people looking at video game reviews, we've even target just the name of that particular video game. So what we found and also keyword targeting on YouTube, this will get a little bit technical, it's not actually based on the keywords someone's typing in. It's based on the content. So where custom intent, that's actually based on the keyword someone types in on Google. A keyword campaign on YouTube is actually contextual.

Brett:

So that's where we found like broader keywords do better. But just watch it. And then also, one thing I didn't mention, but we always like to bid with target CPA. So, set up a conversion action with us, an opt-in or a purchase, and then give Google a target to hit, those campaigns always work better. Whatever goal you give YouTube, if the goal is views, they'll find views. If the goal is conversions, they'll find conversion. So give them that right goal to key in on. We have one more question, maybe?

Speaker 1:

What I can do and ask ladies and gentlemen first of all, if you loved this session, can you give a round of applause to Brett Curry.

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