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Are you ready to crack the YouTube ads code? Ready to learn how to win now and into the future even as privacy issues are causing media buyers to pull their hair out?
Here’s the Audio from a recent, wildly popular webinar I presented at. We had just over 2,000 people attend to hear our Winning Formula for Scale for YouTube ads for eCommerce.
This presentation is fast-paced and full of practical tips and examples. Here are 3 reasons to listen:
Learn how top eComm brands are profitably spending $500k per month on YouTube ads. Many were spending $0 on Google ads just a few months or years ago.
Diversity. In a world of tracking issues, algo updates and constant uncertainty - you need to diversify your customer acquisition channels.
Understand how creative, campaign and audience strategies work hand-in-hand to deliver stellar results.
Brett Curry
Mentioned in this episode:
Episode Transcript:
Brett:
Hey, what's up? Brett Curry here. Welcome to this virtual event, YouTube Ads for E-commerce: The Winning Formula for Scale. I am absolutely delighted that you chose to spend a couple of hours with us, and I'm excited because I've seen the power of YouTube for good brands. And now is not the time to be dependent on just one traffic source. Now's the time to diversify. And if I may be so bold, you need YouTube ads to grow your business.
Brett:
And whether you're just starting on YouTube ads, you're just considering it, or maybe you're running YouTube ads but you want to step your game up, our commitment to you is we want to deliver the goods with this event. We want this to be practical, helpful, actionable, and hopefully we can have a little bit of fun along the way. Hey, I know what a commitment it is to join a virtual event. And so I want to keep this fast paced and make it well worth your time.
Brett:
So with that, I want to dive right in and get to the good stuff. This episode of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast is brought to you by OMG Commerce Resources. That's right. Here at OMG Commerce, we want to help make sure you're educated and in the know to capitalize on the latest tips, tricks, and strategies to help you grow your e-commerce business.
Brett:
So if you go to omgcommerce.com and under resources, click on guides, we have some cutting-edge free information for you on things like how to dominate with Amazon DSP ads or how to use Amazon sponsored brand video ads and how to craft the perfect ad. We have several guides on how to capitalize on YouTube ads, from creating the perfect ad to knowing when you're ready to scale. Plus there's the newly updated Google shopping guide plus more. Check it all out at omgcommerce.com and click on guides under resources. And now, back to the show.
Brett:
So we're really looking at three steps. This is a three-step formula, this winning formula for YouTube ads. And just to break it down really quickly and then we're going to dive into each of these. It comes down to creative strategy, and then audience strategy, and then campaign strategy. And you need all three of these and you need all three of these working in harmony together and that's when you get fantastic results.
Brett:
And we've done this dozens of times now, taken brands from zero on YouTube ads up to a thousand a day, 10,000 a day, 20,000 a day, all while hitting a CPA target. And that's what I want to show you how to do today in this event. Now, you might be asking, why are we doing this event? Well, first of all, we want to help people. We are an agency. So we run these campaigns for clients. We also enjoy helping people.
Brett:
And this kind of came from an in-person event, if you remember what those were like, just before the initial lockdown. So we were invited to the YouTube LA office. This was me speaking on stage at the YouTube LA office to a packed house of e-commerce brands and laying out here's how you grow on YouTube if you're an e-commerce brand. Quite a bit has changed since then. A lot has changed favorably for e-commerce, but a lot of shifted with YouTube.
Brett:
So this is an updated presentation. That event went so well, we had people saying, "All right, when are you doing your next event? Where's the next event going to be? We got to attend." So this is the next event, right? We still can't meet in person fully and so we're doing this event virtually. But this is part two to that event. It's updated, it's expanded, it's deeper, and it fits now for where we are with e-commerce and YouTube ads right now.
Brett:
So just a little bit about OMG Commerce and we're diving right in to the good stuff. So we are an e-commerce agency. We focus on Google ads, YouTube ads, and Amazon ads. I'm very proud of our team. We've hit the Inc 5,000 list. Now, the last three years in a row, we've made Inc Best Workplaces and Local Best Workplaces in one of our main cities where we work. We've got about 50 on our team, so we're expanding and growing. And then we have both the media side, so the campaign structure side, and the creative side in our agencies. We can help with both.
Brett:
And we are one of the top spenders on YouTube ads. So everything I lay out here, not based on theory, not based on ideas, it's based on stuff we're actually doing for clients on a daily basis. And so you can rest assured that this stuff actually works. So let's talk about YouTube just really briefly and set the stage. I'm talking like 30 seconds here then we're diving into the content.
Brett:
So 2 billion plus users. I started speaking about YouTube ads probably four or five years ago now. And at that time, it was not even a billion users. So YouTube has experienced tremendous growth. It is the world's second largest search engine. And it's not a search engine. It's a video sharing site, a social media site. But more searches are conducted every day on YouTube than on any search engine not named Google.
Brett:
It's also the world's second most visited site, again, right behind Google. So you want scale, Youtube absolutely has scale. And that's what I want to do. We want to help you scale on YouTube and reach your goals and really expand. Now, what's interesting is adults 26 to 35, 77% of them use YouTube on a regular basis. And 80% of parents of young children. I fit this category. We have a lot of kids at our house. My kids only watch YouTube. That is the social media platform that they want to get on.
Brett:
They love YouTube influencers. They always want to watch YouTube, whether it's on a tablet or on one of our TVs. They want to watch YouTube. And viewers 18 plus on YouTube, 42 minutes per day on the platform. That's huge. According to several studies, that's even a little bit more than what most people spend on Facebook. Now, I'm not going to just stop with YouTube ads because YouTube ads certainly it's super duper important, but you also need to have a good landing page.
Brett:
So I invited my friend, our buddy, Kurt Elster, the man. He runs The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. He also runs an agency called Ethercycle. He has a presentation here during the event, talking about how to optimize for ROAS with better landing pages. I love this presentation. It is absolutely good. It's amazing. And so it's going to be fantastic.
Brett:
Also, you're going hear from Vanessa Carvajal directly from Google. This presentation rocks as well. The ABCDs of creatives for YouTube, all based on research, all based on Google's data, show you exactly how to approach YouTube creatives. And then you're going to hear from our expert panel. We debated on whether we're going to do this or not because, hey, our experts are busy, man.
Brett:
They're out running campaigns, they're getting stuff done on a daily basis. And so, do we want to have them all free up their time to record? And we decided we did, one, because we want to showcase how awesome they are. And two, because they're going to deliver great value to you. But these are six of our best. These are OMG Commerce team members. And so I'm going to grill them with questions, all the burning questions you have about budgets and ads and what to do if things go wrong and all kinds of stuff, and they're going to lay it all out there.
Brett:
They're going to share with you their examples and lessons from their experiences on YouTube ads. Also, a big thank you to our sponsors. We could not have done this without our sponsors. A special thank you to Ethercycle. Kurt Elster, smart marketer, my friend and our friend at the agency Ezra Firestone and Smart Marketer, Molly Pittman, shout out. John Grimshaw, that place is awesome. eCommerceFuel and our buddy Andrew Youderian, thank you as well. And all of our sponsors, Gorgias, Spotlight Social, Wavebreak, Conversion Crimes. Awesome sponsors. Thank you so much.
Brett:
So let's dive in. So let's talk about step number one. Step number one of the formula to scale on YouTube, it's creative strategy. And I got to say, guys, this is the most important step in the formula. If you get this wrong, nothing else matters.If you nail this and do really, really well, you can actually do okay on the other elements and still be all right. But you get this wrong and you are toast.
Brett:
So this is a stat from Google and from a group called the Unskippable Labs. But they say, hey, 50% to 80% of the ROI of a YouTube campaign comes from the ad itself, comes from the creative. We've seen this over and over again, where we're really good with campaign structure. We're really good media buyers. But if you have a junkie ad, it's not going to work, right? Where you take the same structure with a mediocre ad, campaign limps along, you inject the right video and that structure takes off. So super important.
Brett:
Well, we found, and I believe this is the present of digital marketing, it's also the future, and that is the machine, Google's SmartBid algorithm and their AI and machine learning and Facebook's machine learning plus smart humans. That's where it's at. Bringing our creativity and our strategy, business savvy, combining that with AI and ML. And that's where you have a powerful combination.
Brett:
So I want to walk you through six must have elements of a winning YouTube ad, and this will help shape the way you think about creatives. I want to preface this by saying one thing to keep in mind, and there are multiple differences between YouTube ads and Facebook ads, but one is the video has to do all of the heavy lifting on YouTube. There isn't these blocks of copy around the ad like you have on Facebook. It's the video.
Brett:
The video has to do everything. Everything that you need to do to convince someone, the video itself has to do that. Okay. So let's talk about these six elements. The first one, it is the golden thread or your one thing. I went to this copywriting course years and years ago, and they talk about having a golden thread. What's the one thing you want to keep going back to again and again? It's a combination of what you do best and what your audience wants most. And then you highlight that.
Brett:
So let me give you a couple examples. So let's talk BOOM! by Cindy Joseph. Ezra's company, we've been the Google and YouTube ads partner for BOOM for about four or five years and I've seen tremendous success with YouTube. But their one thing is they're pro age. It's look your best, but embrace where you are. It's not anti-aging. Don't try to look like you're 20. No, you are a powerful woman.
Brett:
We want to make you look your absolute best, but embrace this stage in your life, right? Cindy Joseph, the founder, co-founder, silver hair, but absolutely stunningly beautiful. So look good how you are. Don't try to turn back the clock, just look great the way you are. Grammarly. Spelling and grammar errors can sabotage your success. We fix those errors for you automatically as you go.
Brett:
One of the examples I thought of earlier, and we talk about this at the panel, actually. But Volvo used to, and this is an old example, but Volvo would just talk about safety. Always they would go back to safety. These are safe vehicles. That was their one thing. So what is your one thing that should be weaved throughout the video? Number two, the hook. This is super duper important. Those first five seconds, that's magic moment.
Brett:
After the five second mark, the magic skip ad button appears and likely when your ad comes on, someone's hovering. They're hovering over that skip ad button and they're about to press it. And so you've got five seconds to convince them otherwise. You have five seconds to talk them off the ledge and get them to stay and watch your video. And so this is a screenshot, of course, from the Harmon Brothers class. Shout out to the Harmon Brothers.
Brett:
Poo-Pourri, you got get the petite, cute British ladies sitting on a public toilet, in a dress, and she's talking about bathrooms smells. Now, you don't have to use shock and awe and humor, but if it fits your brand and it fits your product, it can work really well. You see her on a toilet, you hear what she says, you're hooked, and you're likely paying attention from there.
Brett:
So the idea is we want to hook the right audience and repel the wrong audience, because there's actually a benefit if the wrong audience skips. If someone who's not going to buy your product anyway, if they skip, that's actually good for you because you don't pay unless someone sticks around for 30 seconds of your video or unless they click through to your ad. So you want unqualified prospects, you want people that are not likely to buy, you want them to skip. Move along, right? We're not going to pay for them anyway.
Brett:
So what else could you hook with? If you're not going to use bathroom humor, which you probably won't want to, what is your biggest benefit? Bring that right to the front. What is the reason someone buys your product? Highlight that right up front. This was the beginning of an ad for a leg bronzer. And so it opens with, "Hey, did you know you could get gorgeous, flawless legs in a matter of seconds?" Big promise, gorgeous legs, matter of seconds. Okay. If this was what I'm wanting, then I'm maybe going to stick around and watch.
Brett:
You could lead with the biggest problem. What's the biggest problem that your product helps overcome? This is actually the opening to the Flex Seal infomercial. It's a pretty great opening. Again, a New Jersey accent, "This repair would cost thousands of dollars to fix." And so it's like, hey, what is the biggest problem? Let's lead with that. Or it could be, what's the biggest question your prospects are asking?
Brett:
We're advertising for a percussive therapy device that has become all the rage over the last couple of years. But we started with a question. This was a question people ask if they're looking to buy this is, "Hey, have you seen one of these devices and wondered, do they actually work? And if they do, why do some cost $600? What's the difference?" So what are the biggest questions someone's asking related to your product and related to your industry? Lead with that.
Brett:
Lead with that question. Let someone know you're speaking directly to them and you're going to answer their questions. Number three, the supporting cast. We don't just have one benefit. There's not just one main benefit. You buy a product, you should focus on one thing, like make the one thing the thing that everybody remembers, but you can have supporting cast.
Brett:
What are the other cool things that support that one benefit and maybe tip the customer over the edge and cause them to say yes? So my buddies at William Painter sunglasses, the glasses are titanium and they're basically unbreakable and they look just cool, man. You wear William Painter sunglasses, it ups your cool factor big time. But they also have the hook. The hook helps you pop bottles and look like a model. And it's just fun. It's an extra thing and it's an added benefit. It's supporting cast. It makes the other stuff come to life and makes you want to say yes.
Brett:
Number four, objection busters. People are watching your videos and they've got their arms folded. They're saying, "Yeah, I don't know. I've seen this before. I've heard this before. And I don't know that I believe him. In fact, I probably don't believe him." I'm from Missouri. Missouri is the show me state. We're very skeptical people, I guess, in Missouri. But it's like, hey, you got to show me before I believe. You need to think like a Missourian as you're building your YouTube ads.
Brett:
But what resistance does your prospect have to buying your product? And you have to overcome those objections. So if you end your video and you haven't addressed properly the big objections in someone's mind, or at least indicated that you will overcome those objections, if they click through to your site, then you're going to really face them severe headwinds. You're going to have some headwinds facing your videos. So people are thinking, "I've seen this before. I've been let down before. I doubt it."
Brett:
You can say things like, "Hey, you may be thinking X, Y, Z. You may be thinking this is too good to be true. You may be thinking this will never work for you, but here's what we found." So address those objections head on. My buddy, Peter Goodwin at Groove Life, awesome rings. I'm wearing one right now. They talk about, hey, it's silicone wedding rings. You're worried it's going to snap, break, you're going to lose it, whatever. No BS, 94-year warranty. Just overcome that objection right out of the gate.
Brett:
Number five, proof. We want some proof that this is going to work. So credentials, testimonials, endorsements, reviews. We want to see these proof elements to make us confident, confident to at least say maybe, maybe I'm going to believe you. But this should be fun. This shouldn't be like a term paper. It shouldn't be like a legal case. It shouldn't read or feel like a term paper. It should be fun.
Brett:
Again, this was Harmon Brothers. But this was Purple Mattress. Goldilocks lowering the 300 pound sheet of glass onto the bed frame and there's raw eggs in between, but the eggs don't break because the mattress supports it. So think fun. Think visual. But we need proof. And then finally, number six, the offer. What is the offer? Why should I say maybe? Why should I say, "Okay, I'm going to look a little bit further?"
Brett:
So what is that offer going to be? You can think of bundles or discounts, especially if you got a product that people consume over and over again, supplement, skincare, beauty products, food. Anything that's consumable, think about bundles or discounts. But also think about, hey, just click here and see it in action. Learn more. See if this is right for you. Let's take that next step. But some kind of offer that's pretty irresistible, but tell someone to take action.
Brett:
If you don't tell someone to take action, guess what? They won't. They'll just keep watching. They'll stick around for the YouTube video they came to watch if you don't tell them to take action, if you don't make it compelling for them to take action. Now, I'm really just scratching the surface here on creative strategy. There's so much more we could talk about. Vanessa from Google is going to talk about creative strategy a little bit more.
Brett:
I also created this resource and I highly recommend you download it. It's totally free. On our website, under resources and guides, this is the top YouTube ad examples and templates. It's like 16, 18, something like that, of our favorite YouTube ads with links to them explaining why they work. So check out this guide. I think it'd be a huge help to you. And then also a serious X-Factor in your videos are testimonials and video testimonies from customers.
Brett:
I'll show you how to get those testimonials that they give us on the guide section of our site, a guide to authentic customer testimonials on video, whether you're remote or in person, eventually we'll be back in person again. But here's how you get them. That's free as well. I highly recommend you get it. Okay. Step two, audience strategy. Who are we speaking to? So the creative is super important.
Brett:
But let's face it, if you've got a brilliant video and you present it to the wrong people, you've got this boom video that's aimed at it's a pro age cosmetic and you're targeting teenage girls, they're not going to buy. The message doesn't line up. So audience strategy is really, really important. And audience strategy is also different. It's different on YouTube than it is on other platforms. And I think in a lot of ways, it's better on YouTube.
Brett:
You've got more options on YouTube. Really, the possible audience combinations are limitless on YouTube. So let's dive in. So I do recommend you start with remarketing. You need that foundation of remarketing. If you want to fill in a lot of people at the top of the funnel, you want to hit a broad, cold prospecting audience, it needs some remarketing there to help seal the deal, to help close the deal and get someone to take action.
Brett:
Because when you're reaching someone at top of the funnel, it's probably the first time they've ever heard of your brand. The first time they've ever seen your product. And so the likelihood is they're not going to buy it right then, but you want to get them back through your remarketing efforts. So I highly recommend you set up remarketing audiences first as a foundation.
Brett:
But then you want to go beyond that. That's what this event is about, it's about scaling on YouTube. So we recommend some of your first prospecting audiences to scale are intent-based audiences. So what does that mean? What does it mean by intent-based audiences? Well, YouTube really has the ability to tackle and target intent-based audiences like no other platform. And here's what Google has seen. So when you target an intent-based audience versus just a demographic based targeting, 40% higher purchase intent.
Brett:
Now, that 40%, that's going to maybe translate into hitting your CPA goals versus not hitting your CPA goals. So starting with custom intent or with intent-based audiences is huge. So what do these audiences look like? Really, two main audiences. The first is custom intent, based on someone's YouTube and/or Google search behavior. The second is keyword. Keyword is actually more of a contextual targeting, but at least indicates what people are watching on YouTube.
Brett:
And that's going to indicate, hey, if they're watching videos about this, then we know what they're interested in. We know what they're researching, we know what they're planning, we know what they're trying to do. And so now's the perfect time to sneak in our message and hopefully get them to click to our site and eventually become a customer. So customers intent. This really is the precision of search with the power of video.
Brett:
One thing that's really increased in recent years is people shopping on YouTube, people looking for product reviews on YouTube, or hey, I'm looking for best fill in the blank, best noise canceling headphones. That really shot up in the midst of the lockdowns and things like that. But best noise canceling headphones, best hypoallergenic pillow, best whatever. People are searching on YouTube. They want to see reviews. They want to see unboxed things. They want to see influencer content. They want to know what to buy. People are shopping on YouTube. So looking at keywords very, very powerful.
Brett:
So our advice is start with intent-based audiences. Start with people where you know what they're in the market for, what they're shopping for, what they're researching for. Start there and then go broad. And YouTube gives us all kinds of examples, all kinds of ways to go broad. They have kind of some off-the-shelf audiences. They'll auto create some audiences for you after you start getting conversions, you start to some data in your account.
Brett:
And then you can continue to build some other custom audiences. There's a type of audience called custom affinity, which is sort of like a lookalike audience. You give Google some inputs and then Google's going to say, "Ah, we know kind of who you're looking for. Here is a lookalike audience kind of based on those inputs." Once you have those intent-based audiences and you start to get conversions, that's when you can begin to open things up a little bit and go broad and really hopefully start getting some volume.
Brett:
All right. Let's spend some time on campaign strategy. So this is where we're putting structure around everything, right? We know we got to say the right thing. We got to be compelling. We know we have to reach the right person. But what's the structure we put around this thing so that we're hitting our targets, and so this makes financial sense, and so we're building our bottom line, and so we're actually growing?
Brett:
And so this is where we're looking at leveraging smart bidding. So again, we're using the machine. We've got our smart humans. We've got our machines learning and AI that we're leveraging. And it really comes down to three things: campaign structure, bids and budgets, and then measuring and optimizing. You do these three things and price is part of your campaign strategy, good things are going to happen.
Brett:
So we're going to kind of break that down. One thing I will mention, it is required. It's not a maybe, it's not a this was better. No. It's a must. It's a requirement. You need to use the Google Ads conversion code, just like on Facebook you use the Facebook Pixel. You're not using Google Analytics for Facebook. You're not using Google Analytics for YouTube either. Now, you may cross-reference with Google Analytics. You may look at some of the user metrics and on-site engagements, a few other things with Google Analytics.
Brett:
But tracking conversions and feeding your campaigns, you need the Google Ads conversion code. It's a must. You just absolutely have to use it. What's cool, though, here is now you can create different conversion actions, add to cart, purchases, other things, and then you can specify at the campaign level what you want that campaign to focus in on. That's really quite cool.
Brett:
Now, we've developed an approach that we call AMP. So this is our approach, is we've been thinking about, okay, how do we build the best YouTube and Google ad campaigns? And not thinking about campaigns as silos, but thinking about campaigns like a team, like a portfolio that work together to deliver amazing results. And that's what AMP is, Accelerated Marketing Portfolios. These are a portfolio of campaigns that work together to really grow your business.
Brett:
Because you're going to run into trouble if you think about YouTube the same way you think about Google search, or think about YouTube the same way you think about Google shopping, or if you think about top of funnel YouTube the same way you think about remarketing YouTube. They all serve a different purpose. They're all reaching someone at a different stage of the shopping journey.
Brett:
They work together and we got to hold them accountable, but they all are doing different things at different stages of the journey. So you need better ads. That's what we talk about it with our AMP approach. You need better measurement. You need better campaign structures. Let's talk about this. So we hear this a lot, right? Well, a lot of people come to us, D2C e-commerce brands, and they want to hit a portfolio ROAS of 200 to 350. Maybe it's higher. Sometimes it's higher.
Brett:
But that's what they want to hit as the return on ad spend as a whole. Now, when we come to them, and what a lot of people think is, okay, I need to be at 300% return on ad spend. So I need YouTube top of funnel to be at 300% return on ad spend. But that's not the right way to think about YouTube. That's faulty reasoning because 80% of people that say they watch a YouTube video in the shopping process say they do it first thing. They say they do it early in the process, not later in the process.
Brett:
So it's going to be very common for someone to click on a YouTube ad, watch a YouTube ad and then not buy for a few days. And maybe they're going to click another ad before they actually purchase. So the way we like to look at it is, hey, top of funnel YouTube, the ROAS there may be like a 0.5 to a 1.5, maybe even as high as a two. Mid-funnel ROAS, so that's like search and shopping, and there's maybe a couple of YouTube campaigns that are mid funnel, three to four ROAS.
Brett:
Bottom of funnels. So branded, remarketing, some real bottom of funnel campaigns, those are maybe going to convert at a 400% to 800% return on ad spend. So then when you put it all together, total money spent, total return, yeah, you're going to hit that 200% to 300% return on ad spend, and we would aim to hit whatever goal you have and that's what you should do as well, whether you're doing it yourself, from a media buyer, however you're doing it.
Brett:
But here's the difference. Do you want that portfolio to be big? Like, we're getting a big total return, right? We're getting a lot of volume at that 200% to 350%. Or do you want a little return? Still the same percentage, still hitting a 200% to 350%, but do you want it to be small or do you want to be large? And that's what YouTube can do. And that's what we see time and time again is when we inject YouTube at the top of the funnel of those early stages of the shopping journey, then we can blow that thing up.
Brett:
YouTube itself might not hit that 2X to 3X goal, but it's going to feed other campaigns. And collectively as a portfolio, they're going to hit that 2X to 3.5X or whatever your goal is. We can get there. And so one thing I will mention is your optimizing in the platform or you're optimizing in Google Ads, you're running your YouTube campaigns in Google Ads. So you're measuring there, you're optimizing there. You're optimizing there, so you need to measure there as well.
Brett:
But consider a little money in and total money out. And I'm about to talk about a topic that's a little bit too big for this event, and we could get super nerdy and it could take three hours and you don't have that kind of time for a virtual event. Attribution. Well, isn't YouTube and Facebook and maybe Google Shopping all taking credit for the same conversion? And the potential answer is, yeah, it's going to happen.
Brett:
So at a very simple level, we have to look at performance in the platform and we have to look at total money in and total money out. And that's how we can determine success. There are other tools, other ways to look at attribution, but at a base level, this is what you got to look at as well. So you need to know your KPIs in platform that translate into the total money in and total money out goal.
Brett:
So maybe you think your goal is a 2X return, but maybe it's like a 2.5 and that's going to get you to the global numbers that you want to be at. Now, let's talk about something. I geek out about this stuff. It's super fun and interesting for me. I'll try to not make this super nerdy. My wife's sometimes, when I'm talking to her and explaining what we did this today on YouTube and I'm explaining some of these concepts, she just looks at me and gets kind of sleepy and dozes off. Hopefully I won't do that for you, but I want to talk about brand lift, lag, and lifetime value.
Brett:
So let's dive in. This will be really helpful for you, I think. So brand lift first. This is a screenshot from an actual client who was doing a lot on YouTube. Now, prior to them starting with us, they were a six figure a month Facebook advertisers. They were doing a lot of volume on Facebook, multi, multi six figures a month on Facebook. This is a screenshot from Google Trends showing the number of people searching for their brand name.
Brett:
Okay. That little arrow, that's when we started YouTube. And we dialed up YouTube pretty fast for them. And you can see search volume for their brand almost doubled. And this was an established brand in the automotive space. And we helped really create some brand lift. So that's powerful because a lot of people will see that YouTube ad and think, "Hmm, that's interesting. I like that product. I like that brand, but I'm not ready to buy right now." And they're going to buy several days later, several weeks later, whatever.
Brett:
But this showed kind of this brand halo effect, brand lift effect for this company. All right. So that's brand lift. We get that. We get that that's going to happen. There are a few ways to measure it. One is by looking in your branded search campaigns and looking at Google Trends and things like that. But one of the other things I want to mention is lag. And so let's talk about the way Google Ads handles when they attribute a conversion.
Brett:
When does the conversion show up in Google Ads? Now, if you have an aversion to being nerdy, and this was like, "Man, I like talking ads. I want to see campaigns." Okay. You don't have to totally understand this, but I think you will. So let kind of use this as a scenario. Let's say that today is day one. So today's day one, a user is served an impression of your YouTube ad. Now, today, the prospect's busy, man. They see the ad, they're a little intrigued, but they move on because they're not quite ready.
Brett:
Day two, all right, now they're seeing it. They're hooked. They've maybe got time. Not only are they hooked with the ad and they watch it, but they click through to the site. But busy, they were doing other things, they don't purchase. Day three, they don't purchase. Day four, nothing, not purchasing. What's happening, then, if you're running these campaigns? You're starting to panic. You're starting to ring your hands a little bit. You're watching Google Ads. You're thinking, "Okay. Is anybody going to buy?"
Brett:
Finally, on day five, the person says, "You know what?" And then they're another impression. They're served to think, you know what? I do want that product. I do want that supplement skincare, product, device, whatever, new microphone, whatever the case may be. Okay. I want it, so buy it. All right. So then on what day does that campaign show up in the conversion column? For which day of campaigns will that conversion tracking show up?
Brett:
This is audience participation part. I can't actually hear you. But when does it show up? It actually shows up on day two. Day two is when the click happened. That's when Google's going to give credit. So click happened on day two. Conversion happened on day five. Credit is given back to the campaign on day two. So we're swimming along here. We're at day four. We're looking back at day two's performance and we're thinking, "Eh, not so great." But we just wait a day or two and the performance on day two looks way better.
Brett:
Let me show you a couple of other visuals to really help this come home for you. This is a view that's available now in Google Ads. So you look at any time window in Google ads and you can drill in and see this data. This is for an actual client. I won't show you who it is or what the vertical is. But looking at a couple of week window or so and Google will tell you, hey, for that window, we expect an additional 130 conversions to come in for the window you're looking at right now for a total of 505 conversions for that window, another way of saying it.
Brett:
You're looking today at this particular moment in time and we're saying only 74% of the conversions are in for that window. So we're looking for the last two weeks and Google's saying, yeah, that's only 74% of what we think is going to be attributed to that window. You wait another two or three weeks, it's going to be at the 90%. 29 days it's going to be at the 99%. We started creating these reports for our clients and they absolutely love them. Super helpful.
Brett:
This is for an actual automotive client. So if you look at their account today, direct conversions from YouTube, 97 conversions. You wait a day and look back at yesterday, in this case, you looked back at that day, 115 conversions. You wait seven days, now that 97 conversion day has now grown to 127. You wait 14 days now, 97 has turned into 129. The reverse is true for CPA. You look at the day of performance, $30. You go back in seven days and look at today, well, it's all the way down to 23. 14 days and it's all the way down to 22.
Brett:
So now maybe we were a little bit outside of our range initially, day of, but you wait a little bit of time and these numbers look fantastic. And think about it, this is the way people shop. It's the way people buy. It's the way you shop. We see an ad. We're intrigued. We don't buy it today. We buy in a few days. But Google gives credit back to when the click happened or when the view happens, depending on how you have view conversions set up. Okay.
Brett:
So as we look at our AMP approach, Accelerated Marketing Portfolios, we talk about these stages of the buying process. We talk about awareness, consideration, purchase, loyalty. Those first two stages, that awareness and consideration, that's prospecting, right? We're reaching new people. We're reaching people that have never been to our site. They've never joined our list. They've never bought our product. So those are prospecting audiences.
Brett:
Below that, at the purchase and the loyalty stage, a lot of that is brand traffic or remarketing traffic. So this is the type of traffic that something else had to trigger it. Something else had to introduce someone to your brand and now you're just sealing the deal. Now you're just closing that initial sale or you're closing that repeat purchase. So this remarketing and branded and the like.
Brett:
So what should the budget breakdown be? This is something that people ask us all the time. And there's not a one-size-fits-all answer here. It does depend on your brand. Let me just give you kind of a breakdown. Typically, if you look at a YouTube budget, whatever you're going to be able to spend on YouTube top of funnel or on YouTube in general, 70% to 85% of that YouTube budget should go to prospecting. That's where YouTube shines. 80% of people that they interact with YouTube on their purchase journey, they do it early in the purchase journey.
Brett:
So 70% to 85% of your total YouTube budget should be on that prospecting stage. And then depending on kind of the way your business works, if you look at your total Google budget, then maybe YouTube is 20% to 50% of that, right? Maybe higher. But 20% to 50% of your total Google budget is allocated to YouTube. Now, what about remarketing? Well, I think you can overspend on remarketing. I think remarketing is very important.
Brett:
If you sell multiple products, loyalty campaigns, cross-sell, upsell, bought X not Y, those campaigns are super important. But we say, hey, about 20%, maybe as low as 15% of your YouTube budget, on up to 30% of your YouTube budgets should be set aside for remarketing. And that's probably going to be about 10% to 15% of your total Google budget. When I say total Google budget, I'm talking search, shopping, display and YouTube, right? So looking at that total budget for the Google ecosystem. Okay?
Brett:
And then another thing to think about is, hey, if our goal is to grow, if our goal is to scale with YouTube, then 10% to 20% of your YouTube budget, it should be spent on experimenting. It should be spent on trying new things and going after new audiences and testing new creatives. You need to set aside some of that budget where you say this budget may fail. This budget may be a complete die or maybe a winner, and it's going to unlock scale for us.
Brett:
So one of things to keep in mind is that for any brand, for your brand, you have dozens, if not hundreds, it's almost always hundreds, of audience combinations to test. So as you launch, or if you work with an agency and as you launch, maybe the first few aren't going to be home runs. We're just looking for wins. We're looking for successes that we can build upon and really scale upon.
Brett:
So have dozens, more likely hundreds of audiences that you can scale with, and also you always have new creatives to test. So we have new prospecting creators we want to test. You want to build a manifesto. We try and outline that in that guide or an explainer plus UGC. Or maybe on the remarketing side, it's more user generated content or a longer explainer or quick reminders. There's more content that you need to test in the process as well.
Brett:
And so one thing we recommend is you should always be testing five ads per ad group, different CTAs and different headlines as part of those ads so you can always be optimizing and growing. And then as a bonus, we'll talk about this because it's a YouTube event. But people will watch your YouTube video and then if they don't buy, one of the next things they might do is search. And so then you want your search ads, your shopping ads to show up.
Brett:
And so one of the things you can do, and this is what we've done for BOOM! by Cindy Joseph, is we'll target people, specifically who've watched a YouTube ad, we'll target them in search and shopping. Just check this out super quick. This is a shopping campaign where we target only people that have viewed a YouTube video but have not purchased yet. $5.78 CPA, about a 863% return on ad spend.
Brett:
You can kind of see how this campaign can really bolster your portfolio performance and help you scale and reach those goals. So we do have Q&A in the chat. We're going to keep kind of moving right along because we have a lot to cover. And I know virtual events, it takes energy to listen. And I appreciate you listening and being so engaged. But do type in questions into the chat.
Brett:
We'll answer that now or we'll get to it very quickly. Or go check out the guide that I've mentioned. Or, hey, if you want to chat, like even if you just want second opinion, if you want to just see how our agency works or bounce some ideas off of us, if you go to the website, click on the 'let's talk' button, fill out that strategy session request form, and we'll be in touch.
Brett:
We'd love to look at your account, potentially do an audit, potentially take a closer look and see how YouTube could work for you. And as I mentioned, we actually handled this soup to nuts. So from creative strategy, building out, shooting new videos, editing existing videos, to audience, to campaign structure. We manage that all. So we'd love to chat with you.
Brett:
But we also want to provide great education. So if you do this yourself or do this with someone else, we want you to win too. We want you to succeed that way as well. And so with that, thank you so much for tuning into this session. But we are just getting started. And so just a really quick transition here, and then we're going to move into a session with my buddy, Kurt Elster, on landing pages that I think you're going to absolutely love. So let's get started and let's get...
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