This episode of eCommerce Evolution is one-of-a-kind!
Recently, I had the pleasure of joining Matt Edmundson on his show, the eCommerce Podcast, and let me tell you, it was an absolute blast! We had such a great time that I couldn't resist featuring it on eCommerce Evolution as well.
Matt Edmundson is an eCommerce expert and CEO at Auron Media. With over 20 years of experience, he has left a mark on the industry as both a successful business owner and a respected teacher.
His podcast serves as a valuable resource for entrepreneurs looking to level up their stores!
So take advantage of this opportunity to gain insights on what is working now with Google and YouTube Ads.
Here's a sneak peek at what we cover:
- Why you should consider running YouTube ads.
- How to use YouTube as an advertising channel.
- The importance of long-form content on YouTube.
- The differences between TikTok and YouTube advertising.
- The relationship between Google and YouTube ads.
- What Performance Max is, and how it works.
- Plus more!
P.S. If you are interested in the topic of “leadership,” I invite you to listen to our discussion on Matt’s other show Push To Be More, a podcast centered around what it takes to make life work!
Mentioned In This Episode:
Transcript:
Brett:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today's a special episode. Usually I'm the one grilling people with questions, but today I'm on the hot seat. I recently had the chance to appear on the eCommerce podcast with my buddy, the Man, the myth, the legend, Matt Edmundson, one of my favorite gents from across the pond. And we talked about what's working right now on Google and YouTube ads. So we talk about Performance Max, we talk about YouTube creatives, we talk about what makes Google the online advertising powerhouse that it is. It's the number one digital ad platform, and there's a good reason for that. And so we get into all the ins and outs, plus a little bit about what shaped my background as a marketer. So sit back and enjoy this perspective on what's working right now with Google and YouTube. Adss.
Matt:
Welcome to the eCommerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. The eCommerce podcast is all about helping you deliver eCommerce. Wow. And to help us do just that, I am chatting with the talented and all random amazing person, which is Brett Curry from OMG Commerce about what's working right now with Google and YouTube ads. But before Brett and I jump into this conversation, let me suggest a few other podcast episodes that I think you'll also enjoy listening to. Check out why you should stop using Facebook ads and start using Google advertising with John Horn. Great episode, that one, and how to grow your eCommerce brand using YouTube videos with OGI Johnston. You can find our entire archive of episodes as well as those two on our website for free, eCommerce podcast.net. And also, whilst you're there on our website, if you've not already done so, sign up for our newsletter and each week we will email to you these links along with the notes and the links and the transcript from today's conversation with Brett directly to your inbox, totally free.
It's totally amazing, and you get it each and every week after that. Now, this episode is brought to you by, you've guessed it, eCommerce cohort, which helps you deliver eCommerce Wow. To your customers. That's right. eCommerce Cohort is a longstanding sponsor of this show and for good reason, it helps you. It helps you if you're an eCommerce, if you are an eCommerce entrepreneur, if you're just starting out or if like me, you're a bit of a dinosaur and been around eCommerce for a fair few years, eCommerce cohort is something to check out. It is a lightweight membership group with guided monthly sprints that cycle through all the key areas of eCommerce. The sole purpose of cohort is basically to help you grow online and help you grow your online business. So do check it out. You can find out more information at eCommerce cohort.com, eCommerce cohort.com, me and the team in there every month.
Yes, we are. And it's great. We love it. So check it out. Also, just before I jump into the conversation, I want to give a bit of a shout out to our collective good friend Mr. Jared Mitchell, who connected myself and Brett today. Jared has actually been on the show. We've since become good friends. In fact, my daughter Zoe and I stayed with Jared and his beautiful family for a few days on a trip to the States earlier this year. It was great to see what they've got going up there saying, big up to Jared and Alana and everything that is happening@skincarebyalana.com. Check it out, especially if you're in the States and you need skincare. Go ahead. Anyway, let's talk about Brett. Brett is a seasoned entrepreneur, a digital marketer and podcast host. He leads an eight figure ad agency of Google, YouTube, and Amazon Marketing rock stars. I love that phrase. Now, the thing you don't know about Brett necessarily is the man is the father of eight kids and a basketball coach, and we now understand why he needs an eight figure agency. So Brett, hey kids, welcome to the podcast, but it's great to have you here. Great to be finally doing this. Thanks for joining me.
Brett:
Yeah, Matt, I'm, I'm so excited. And yeah, of course. Shout out to Jared Mitchell because he made this connection like that. That's how you and I met. We met a year ago or more and we're like, whoa. Really connection. We enjoyed it, but we just weren't able to make this happen until now. But it's happening. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for the invite and yeah, excited.
Matt:
Good, good. We were saying before we hit the record, but I actually host three different podcasts and you are on all three of them, and we're recording all That's right. That's right. Thanks. That's exactly it. And you are, we're recording all three this week. So I did say at the start, I'm really sorry because you're going to get really bored with dissent in my voice.
Brett:
Bernie's, you be tired of each other, but that's okay. Push the limit and we'll just see where it goes.
Matt:
See where it goes. We might be calling Jared up by the end of the week going, why did you
Brett:
Do that? Thank, I'll take back the Thank you.
Matt:
You never know, right? You never know. So Brett, listen, tell me you've got a podcast, right?
Brett:
I do, actually. I have two podcasts. One is a longstanding podcast called eCommerce Evolution started in 2017. Oh, once we talk about what's new, what's next in eCommerce, I have phenomenal guests on there, like Jared Mitchell, man, he's getting a lot of air time. You should probably charge him at spots. Yeah. But also as a Firestone, Mickey Agarwal from Tushy, Roland Frazier, lot, lots of big names. So talking about growth. And then I have a series based, kind of a mini-series podcast called Spicy Curry, and it's called that because my last name is Curry. Sure. And should we get spicy on that podcast? Talk about Hot Takes in eCommerce season. One's about eight episodes working on season two coming up. So couple of ways. If you getting done with this podcast and you're like, I'm sick of this guy. I totally get it, boy, you may be like,
Matt:
Then you
Brett:
Have twos, but end.
Matt:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Go ahead and go and subscribe to Brett's podcast, which will, of course, we will link in the show notes. Now, tell me OMG Commerce, what do you guys do?
Brett:
Yeah, so we're performance driven marketing agency, and we serve exclusively eCommerce brands. So we help eCommerce brands grow, give more customers scale, and we do that primarily through the Google Ads ecosystem. So Google search, shopping, YouTube, performance Max, which is noon, I think we're going to touch on a little bit today. And then Amazon. And so on the Amazon side, we're full channel management. So from optimization to inventory management to Amazon ads. And we do a lot with Amazon ads. So we're one of the fastest strong Amazon DSP agencies about four or five years ago. And then we run email. So yeah, we're a team of approaching 70 now. Good. And we'll with some great brands like Native deodorant and Boom, my city, Joseph and Overtone and a number of others. So yeah, that's what we do. We're all performance driven and help eCommerce brands scale.
Matt:
Fantastic. And how did you get into it mean? Did you just wake up one day, think I'll do paid media, or was there a good story,
Brett:
I want to help eCommerce brands? Yeah, I, one day I want to be on Matt Edmonton. How can I get, what's the clearest path? What's interesting, I have always loved advertising, which is really strange. I remember as a kid liking infomercials. So I don't know, I don't know how well this translates Matt, but do you know the GI GSU knives? The Ginsu knife infomercial?
Matt:
I know what an infomercial is. I'm not particularly, I'm not okay with that particular product. I
Brett:
Remember watching the Ginsu Kni, there was this, it was a single take cut where they use a Ginsu knife and they cut through a soda can and then it slices through a tomato and then it cuts through a rope. I just remember watching it being like, I got to have that knife. That's awesome. So then I remember thinking as a kid, who makes, but who makes the commercials? And so anyway, it's always been kind of Dr drawn to marketing and what makes people buy one brand versus another brand. But worked in radio for a little while, so did radio, tv. And then in 2004, learned SEO had had an opportunity to learn SEO and kind of understand, hey, why do people search the way they search and how do we get sites to rank on search engines? And that kind of started this path down, Hey, I kind of like Google.
I like what Google's up to. I like how they connect brands to shoppers. And so that's how it started. So we started over June in 2010 and grew from an SEO agency to primarily paid traffic because I'd done TV back in the day. Then when YouTube started to develop a performance element with True View or TrueView Ads, it was like my world's collided. They had some search components and understanding intent of a user, but then also video. The power of video vi video can make you a celebrity. Video is one of the best selling tools out there. And so it was really about 2016, they kind of went all in on YouTube ads and started growing the agency through YouTube. So it's been interesting when I first started talking from stage about YouTube in like 2016, 2017, and almost nobody was doing it. And now it's more popular, but barely. I think that's like YouTube's about to have its day. I think people are finally catching the vision. So anyway, I basically, I love good brands and I love telling good brands stories and love doing that through digital ads.
Matt:
It's interesting you say that YouTube's going to have its day and how actually not a lot of brands are using, a lot of eCommerce brands are using YouTube and I, I've done a lot of coaching and I can't remember one person going, man, we've got up our budget on YouTube ads. Everybody talked Facebook and Google. But of course Facebook is, it's got its issues now. And I think more than ever, it was even in the mainstream news. That's how we know it's going on over here in the uk. Facebook are struggling because people are going, well, what do we do instead of Facebook? And so I think we are now looking at these eCommerce entrepreneurs are now looking back at some of the things that maybe they're not doing where they were heavily reliant on Facebook. So why is it, do you think that we don't as eCommerce entrepreneurs use YouTube ads? And why do you think maybe we should?
Brett:
Yeah, so I, I'll answer the second part of that first. So the reason I think we should consider YouTube, and the reason I think YouTube is about to have its day is really a few things. One, it's got the users, so I think it's 2 billion active monthly users globally, which I know it's a huge number, kind of hard to wrap your mind around. But essentially everybody is on YouTube. We have brands that are targeting 50 plus year old women. We have brands targeting 20 year old people that want to color their hair and everything in between. And if Matt, you've got a teenager, right? Zoe? Zoe teenager, yeah. Is she actively using YouTube? And I'm just curious what her take is on Facebook. Oh
Matt:
Yeah, she's never been on Facebook. She doesn't have a Facebook account. If she does, I don't know about it, but she's on YouTube all the time. Mainly learning stuff like how to draw, how
Brett:
To, exactly. We see this in data too. But even just looking at your family, my family, so all of my teenagers, they all use YouTube. They want to learn something. My son just got a sales job and so he is learning how to close and how to do things. He's looking on YouTube. The only reason he has a Facebook account is when he sells stuff on marketplace. So long-lived Facebook, I think Facebook is going to be fine for the immediate future. We'll see long term, but I think the future's bright for YouTube. The users are there, the engagement is there, which is awesome. The other thing is the data is there. So when we want to look at behavioral data, how do we target someone based on shopping patterns, search behavior, things like that. Google has that. Google has more of that data than almost anybody else.
Amazon's maybe close, but Google can use that data because it's first party data. When you're typing a search into Google, that's you giving your data directly to Google. So we can use that for targeting on ads and stuff. So got the users, got the data, and then it's just such a powerful vehicle, powerful tar for targeting. And it's a visual medium. And we just tell a story really, really well through YouTube ads and we do it the right way. I think the reason most people have missed it is because they've tried to just take their Facebook video or their Instagram video and they put it on YouTube, but it's a different beast. And I really think hats off to Facebook. Facebook made it easy to start testing. The ad platform is a little newer, so it's easier to spin up campaigns and ad sets and you can test with a simple image and some copy where on YouTube, the video has to do all the work.
The video has to stop someone in their tracks. And so it's hook someone, it's got to keep them entertained and focus long enough to get the click. And so the creative is a little bit harder. So there's this real barrier to entry on YouTube. But then I think even more than that, there's like this perceived barrier to entry where it feels harder to test on YouTube. And so hopefully we can kind of demystify that a little bit. But I think that's the main reason. I think people just don't know how to approach YouTube. And if they did approach it, they went about it the wrong way. And so they've kind of stepped back. I think it's easier to get success on Facebook faster, but YouTube just has a ton of scale opportunity. And like I said, I think it's going to have its day.
Matt:
Yeah, I'm curious about this, Brett. I'm not going to lie. The reason why, again, most people who have eCommerce websites, I've used Facebook ads over the years and I'm seeing the falling response from Facebook ads and I'm thinking, how else do I go and get new customers? Are Google ads? They're good, they're strong. We'll touch on Google ads later. But Google Ads are great for people who are showing shopping intent. They're online, they're looking for something. Whereas Facebook was always, wow, I'm just going to try and see if I can gather. Do you know what I mean? I'm going to cast my nets and see what Phish I can gather kind of thing. And it strikes me that YouTube would be a good platform to do that type of stuff with. So the concept behind Facebook where you are interrupting people and maybe trying to find an audience you've not yet seen you. That's what you could use YouTube. Cause I'm not necessarily on YouTube. Well, maybe I am on YouTube to buy, cause I'm searching up the latest woodworking talk and how to use it. And maybe I could add that way. So is actually, therefore thinking this out loud, YouTube a brilliant platform for both of those things.
Brett:
Yeah, it really is. And so we like to talk about those two different sides of marketing demand generation where you're trying to stir up and create a little bit of demand. That's what you do with your Facebook ads where you're trying to just find a person who's likely to buy what you sell and you're interrupting them and saying, Hey, look how awesome this is. You should check it out. So you're trying to generate some demand on the Google side. If you're looking at search, whether it's search ads, text ads, or shopping, love, Google shopping, that's more demand capture. Someone's on Google, they're searching for break pads or they're searching for woodworking tools, whatever. And so you're capturing that demand. YouTube is good at both. Usually when someone encounters YouTube during a shopping process, it's early. It's one of the first things they do. So I think YouTube definitely can do what Facebook does in terms of interrupting that new likely customer, but the kind of that demand generation piece.
And so the way I always look at it is if you can run Facebook video ads to a cold audience and you've got a lander that converts them and that gets them on your email list so you can follow up with them or it's driving some direct sales. If you're doing that on Facebook, then you should be able to do the same thing on YouTube, maybe just with some tweaks, especially to the video, maybe to the lander tube, but mostly the video. But yes, it's great at demand generation. It's also good free marketing. So you can also use at the bottom of the funnel to remark to users, which is very, very powerful. And then it's kind of that in between too, where it's like there are people that go to YouTube, and I don't really use YouTube this way, but millions of people do where they go and they search for reviews or unboxings, I'm about to buy the new iPhone, see the unboxing, or I need to buy a new mattress, I'm going to look for reviews. So there are people that do product research on YouTube, so that's as I would say it. And so you can target those people and show your ad there as well. So it's pretty versatile
Matt:
And I am right then insane because it is this versatile, but you don't have this, it's going to have its day. It's not really prime. Facebook was maybe two years ago or Google Ads is right now. Is it there for quite a cost effective platform to launch onto?
Brett:
So this is where it gets tricky. I think you do have to have the right ad, and there's also some ways you structure campaigns that are getting easier. But in the early days, hey, to really be effective on YouTube, you probably needed about 15 to 30,000 a month to test. I believe that's largely changed because of some new bidding structures that YouTube has. So now I think you can test with like a five to 10 K month budget because you got to get enough frequency, you got to get enough impressions, enough views to really see if it's going to work or not. So I think that has become easier than it was say just a few years ago. But the real key is getting the video right, you get the structure of the video correct, and then you're going to be in a lot better shape. So there are people that are succeeding on YouTube now. So when I say it has its day, I think they're just more people that are kind of realizing, Hey, I can't just rely on Facebook and I think we can tweak our videos to work for YouTube. So I think it's just going to continue to build. We have several advertisers we work with that are spending three, four, 5 million a month on ads, and now YouTube is as big or bigger than their Facebook budget. So I think that's happening right now.
Matt:
So I mean, I've not got three to 4 million to spend a month financial. I wish I
Brett:
Did. You don't have to start there, but I'm just saying those are people that are spending a lot of money and they're finding success on YouTube.
Matt:
Yeah, no, totally. So you talk about having the right type of ads. So what do you mean when you say that? Because I think a lot of people at the moment when they think video are instantly thinking TikTok because everyone's telling them to advertise on TikTok. I'm assuming it's different.
Brett:
It is different. And I will say something about TikTok. One, I don't really like TikTok as a user, but that's beside the point. I know to be marketers, we got to do what our customers like now what we like, but I don't like it as a user. What's interesting though, I get to see a lot of big advertisers on what they're spending. I don't see anybody spending more than 10% of their budget on TikTok. I still think I should do it. I think you should be there. I think you should try organic TikTok as well. But we're not seeing TikTok explode usually what really moves the needle at scale, Facebook, YouTube, Google, and we're also seeing native ads, which that could be another podcast at some point, but native ads are pretty powerful. So ads that work though kind of depends on a couple things.
One, if you're just using YouTube as an awareness vehicle, which you can do that, it's the second most visited website on the planet, second largest search engine. It's got so many users, you can use it for an awareness plane. We have some bigger brands and p and g brands that do that. Proctor and Gamble brands that use YouTube for awareness. If you're doing that, then often shorter videos, 30 seconds can work. You're just trying to get engagement and maybe build a list of people that are engaged so you can follow up with search ads or more conversion driven ads. But if you want to drive conversions, and essentially all of our clients are performance based. They want to drive new customers an acceptable CPA or cac customer acquisition cost. So for that, we're seeing longer form videos work. And you got to think about it this way, if we're running Facebook ads, it could be a short 15 to 32nd ad.
A good friend of mine owns a coffee business and one of their top ads for a long time on Facebook was of this kind of sexy, tasty looking chocolate cake and pouring coffee next to the chocolate cake and it was just like eye candy, you know, look at it and you're like, oh, that looks delicious. But then the copy above the ad on Facebook is what really sold you right on the coffee and made you click. Well with YouTube all you have is the video, right? That's all you see. There's a call to action buttons and stuff, but not much text. So the video has to do all the work. It's got to interrupt somebody, it's got to overcome objections, it's got to show social proof, it's got to show the product in action. It's got to give a couple of offers, right? It's got to convince someone enough to say maybe, and hopefully they'll click on the ad and go a little bit further.
And so we're typically seeing minute and a half to three minute videos. Wow. Sometimes shorter work with a big automotive brand and they're winning ad for conversions with a 45 second ad. But typically we don't see 32nd ads. You usually don't convert nearly as well as a 45 or a 62nd ad. Usually just the longer someone engages with a video, the more likely they are to say, eh, maybe I'm going to check this out. I'm going to give this a shot, I'm going to check it out. And so that's what we're looking for and I'm happy to break down the structure of ads or whatever makes the most sense. But I'll pause there to see if you have any questions or thoughts.
Matt:
Yeah, I lots Brett, because everything is telling us at the moment, you've got to get shorter and shorter. I in it's not is to be seven seconds or whatever he is got to be on Instagram reels and all that sort of stuff. And you're like, oh geez man. But actually you're the second person this week I've heard say actually long form is making a bit of a comeback. Although how you define longform 90 seconds to three minutes is not how I define long form. But it's funny how 90 seconds is now long form ad copy, right? It's really interesting, isn't it? So why do you think then with YouTube you need this sort of 92nd to three minute video ish kind of range versus the ten second thing that works fine over there on TikTok?
Brett:
Yeah, so I think part of it is just the nature of the platform with on TikTok we're used to rapid fire. We're kind of moving on to the next thing very quickly. We're in a different head space and you kind of mentioned it when you were talking about YouTube for your daughter, for yourself, you're maybe going there to learn something, getting ready to engage a little bit. So you're kind of maybe settled in just a bit and you're going to enjoy this YouTube experience. Maybe it's only going to be a few minutes because you're just learning one specific thing, but you're focused. And I think that that's another thing to keep in mind. No one goes to YouTube to watch your ad. Someone goes to YouTube to learn or to be educated or to listen to music or whatever the case may be. So your ad is definitely interrupting them and it's not why they ain't.
So we also see a lot of people, and this kind of skips ahead a little bit, but to the measurement piece of YouTube, this is where a lot of people get it wrong. There's going to be a lot of people that see that YouTube app, they engage with it a little bit, they like it, they think this could be interesting, but they stick on YouTube, right? Because they're there to watch a video, they're on a mission. I got to figure out how to fix my washing machine, or I got to figure out how to fix my lawnmower or whatever. I got to figure out this answer to a test or know why I'm not on YouTube. But they might later than search for your product. So I think the longer you get someone to engage with you, the more likely they are to say, okay, okay, I'll just, I'll go check this out.
This is compelling enough, interesting enough to go check it out. And just to expand on what is long form and what is not, we do have some brands boom by Cindy Josif is one, shout out to Azure Firestone. It's cosmetics for women over the age of 50 primarily. They still have six and seven minute videos that work pretty well. We have an automotive brand that runs 15 minute videos. But one thing YouTube said recently within the last year is if you upload a video over three minutes, they will kind of tax you so to speak. So the cost per view is going to go up. That still may work out if that video really converts people that it may be just fine. But that's kind of where that under three minutes you're, that's probably enough time to convince someone and you're maybe in Google's good graces a little bit better to lower your cost per view.
Matt:
Wow. How does it work, I suppose with how they bill you? So if I put on a 92 second video versus a three minute video, am I paying more for the three minute video than I would be a 92 second video?
Brett:
So the type of ad we run, and there's a few ways to go about running ads on YouTube, but I prefer TrueView, which I'll explain that in a minute. And then specifically TrueView for action, which means we're trying giving Google the goal of conversion of some kind, email signup, add tocar purchase, things like that. So TrueView means that person has to watch either 30 seconds if the video's over 30 seconds or the whole video if it's less than 30 seconds. So if they hit skip, you do not pay for that. So it's a true view, you are paying a cost per view, so it's more impression based, but they actually bill you on a view. So that can be anywhere from 3 cents to 30 cents depending on how narrow and focused your audience is and how you're building or how you're bidding rather. So you're ping for view per view, but then you're, as you're giving Google kind of that goal of a conversion, then Google's going to be looking for people that convert, right?
Yeah. They're going to be looking for people that are likely to click and then to take that desired action. But we have seen for some videos that really people engage with that the view rate drops. So what Google looks for, so with search ads where you got quality score as your click through rate goes up on a search ad, so the percentage of people that see it click on it as that goes up, Google's like, Hey, this is a great ad, I'm going to show this more. And your CPCs go down on that similar thing on YouTube. If okay, the more people that see that ad, watch the ad, Google's like victory, people like this, we're going to keep showing it more. So your cost per view can actually go down in some cases because Google makes more money because just more people are watching it. So usually what happens then is if your video's a little bit longer, you'll just see that cost per view go up a little bit. But sometimes that's okay, maybe a video that's got an eight second cost per view, maybe the conversion rate is higher on add to cart and purchase. So it totally makes sense. And maybe that outperforms a vita that's got a 5 cent cost per view, right? So the cost per view is just one metric to pay attention to, but it is at least somewhat based on how much people are engaging with it.
Matt:
That's fascinating. So if I look at everyone likes to use return on investment, they, they're ROI or Roaz or whatever acronyms we can now throw into the pot. But if I say spend 10 grand on Google AdWords and spend 10 grand on YouTube, assuming I've got a good ad, of course, is the sort of return on that investment similar or does YouTube outperform Google shopping or is it actually we can't really tell at this point? It depends on everything else.
Brett:
Yeah, it's a great question. And then this is where I think a lot of people get tripped up. And I'll use a quick basketball analogy because as you said, I why not? Yeah, this way. I think so. And then we got an international audience. I'm going to use Michael Jordan and the Bulls from the na. Is that my era? And hopeful what people recognize. So on that team you got Jordan and Jordan was the soul of the team, the greatest player to ever play that type of thing. His stats are going to be much different than say Dennis Rodman, who if you don't know Dennis Rodman, he was a defensive player and he got more rebounds than anybody. He's just a rebounding machine. But every time you get a rebound, that's another possession for the offense. So if you looked at Jordan and Rodman and you said, Hey, Jordan scored 40 points tonight, Rodman scored two, we got a bench Rodman that that's not looking at the stats correctly.
What you should be saying is, Hey, Jordan scored 40 and Rodman rebounded the ball 25 times and got the offense 25 more possessions than we wouldn't have had. So what we look at at Google and YouTube, Google is the closer, right? Google is that that's closer to the purchase. If someone's searching and they click on a search ad or a shopping ad or a remarketing ad, they're close to purchasing. So that's more lower funnel. YouTube is typically higher in the phone. So if all we're looking at is ROAS return on ad spend, Google's going to do way better than YouTube often. And this is where a lot of people get tripped up often YouTube is a one roaz or lower. And so you're like, well how can anyone ever succeed on YouTube at that kind of ROAS? But here's what happens. You got to look at it as a team or we call it a portfolio.
So the way we look at it is, hey, you've got search and shopping and remarketing in Google ads working and say you're hitting a three to four row ads. Well, what you should be able to do is add in YouTube at the top of the funnel and YouTube is going to make everything bigger and better. YouTube is going to grow your branded search. YouTube's going to make shopping grow. And we've seen this. So once someone gets to say 30,000 a month in YouTube spend or higher, it's got a 30 to 40% lift on those other campaigns. So the way we have to look at it then is collectively what does YouTube do to our other campaigns? And so what we always talk about is say, let's figure out what is the right return on ad spend or what is the right customer acquisition cost for your brand?
And then we're going to look at YouTube collectively. Cause if all you do is look at YouTube and isolation it, it's going to be disappointing. And that is one shortcoming of Google and YouTube, I think to Facebook. Facebook pre iOS 14 anyway was better at tracking conversions. Now everybody kind of sucks at it, but if you just look at a YouTube campaign in isolation, it does not tell the full story. YouTube drives sales on Amazon, YouTube leads to more branded searches, YouTube grows the whole portfolio. So we still want to hold it accountable. We still want to really focus in on our CAC and our CPA or our ROAZ numbers, but just know YouTube is feeding the other campaigns that that's a large part of what it does.
Matt:
So do you think that's why it's not been as popular maybe as a platform, certainly with the smaller to medium enterprises that yeah, haven't got the bigger budgets. Is that one of the key reasons that's stopping this? I
Brett:
Believe it is. I believe it is, yeah. And listen, if you got a really killer offer and you got a really great landing page, we've got a client in the beard space, beard care, and they've got this great sample offer, try our best fragrances and it's a $10 offer. And direct conversions are really low or direct cost per conversions are really low. It's outperforming face. So with the right setup it can outperform Facebook as well. But just in general, YouTube is better at lifting all other campaigns than it is driving direct conversions. Okay,
Matt:
That's good to know. So let's run through quickly, Brett, a s stricture for a video. What sort of things do we need to think about in our sort of long format? I still love that phrase, long form ad, a long
Brett:
Form. 30 seconds, 90
Matt:
Seconds.
Brett:
90 seconds is long form in today's day and age. So first thing is you got to hook the right audience. So that first five seconds, that's the time when someone cannot skip. If we're running a true review ad, it's skippable lab, but first five seconds you're locked in. So that's when you are interrupting the right audience. So I want to do something to grab their attention. I want to ask a thought provoking question. I want to make a thought-provoking statement. I want to show something. So I want to hook the audience, but I like for that hook, not just to be random, not just like an explosion or a gorilla or something weird, but tie it into the product. And so that's where you can ask a question, Hey, do you want to have this TA bronzer product we worked with? That was like, Hey, do you want to have gorgeous, sexy legs in a matter of seconds?
And so then it talked about the bronzer and how it worked. So you got to hook the right audience. Then you really need some kind of product demo. So show the product in action, show some before and after, show what the product does and you want it to be really benefit oriented. So what are the benefits of this product? I really like social proof after that. So I think the winning ads that we see, either they're showing reviews or they're talking about millions sold, or ideally they've got some user generated content, some videos from actual customers talking about, Hey, I was skeptical, or Hey, I didn't believe this would work. Or Hey, I've tried other products and they didn't work, but this really worked and here's how it worked. So some kind of social proof is great. And then you need to start getting into the call to action.
So this is where we're saying, Hey, go here and watch this demo or go here and check out this video or check our exclusive offer. So you're trying to get the click, and really you want to have a couple of calls to action in that video to try to get someone to click. And so that's kind of the distilled version. We could double click on a couple of those or go a little bit deeper. But if you can do those things, then you're pretty likely to get the click. You want the pace to be pretty fast too, that that's one of the mistakes that a lot of people make is they're trying to do all those things and they realize they've got 90 seconds or three minutes or whatever, they just go kind of slow. But people's attention span is still quick, it's still low. We got to every six, seven seconds, we got to cut, we got something different. We're mixing it up a little bit. So the pace has to feel pretty fast or you'll lose people. But that, that's kind of a quick basic overview.
Matt:
Well, which makes sense. The hook at the start. That makes sense. Everyone's talking about hooks on there at the moment. You know, need a hook for reels, you need a hook for Instagram, you need a hook for YouTube, everybody. You need a hook for your sales page, you need a hook. So I've got my hook. And so the video is in effect encouraging the viewer to click the video that's in effect what you are selling. Like that's my call. I want you to click this video that then takes, the first
Brett:
Thing is I want you to watch this video, right? I'm promising you enough. We did an ad like, hey, three reasons why your YouTube ads aren't working. That was the opening. This will, okay, well I've tried YouTube, it's not working, I'm listening. So the first thing is get them to watch the video, but then the next thing is to drive that click.
Matt:
Yeah. Okay. So then you've got the click, you are sending them through to our specific landing page related to that ad, not necessarily in our topic of conversation, but what kind of things do I need to think about on that landing page?
Brett:
Yeah, this is really great. So the first thing is you want them to feel like they're in the right place. So whatever you led with in the hook, whatever was really the focus of that video. You want some kind of tie in with the headline of that lander. And we've worked with a couple of clients that have used the Harmon Brothers for video production or Raindrop Creative, and they've got paid actors to do a great job in the video. Sometimes you want them visible on the lander so that as soon as you land there, you're like, ah, I'm in the right place. But you want the headline to be congruent to what they just watched in the video, and then you really need to do more selling. Just because you got the click does not mean they're ready to purchase. So you still want to go through really specifying the benefits and laying out some of the features and seeing some video and seeing some social proof. So typically, and here's what we really recommend, if you've got a lander that works well for cold traffic on Facebook, it's probably going to work well for YouTube as well. We sometimes send people to a product detail page, but only if that product detail page is really well built out. Yeah, where it's got branding, it overcomes objections, it answers all the questions, and so usually a little longer form on the lander works a lot better as well.
Matt:
So I guess there, there's a strategy here which says, I'm going to build the landing page. I'm going to use Facebook ADSD to quickly and easily cheaply test this landing page and before I release the YouTube video. And
Brett:
100%, I think that's one of the real advantages of Facebook is it's easier to test at a lower budget. But once you say, okay, here's the landing page that works, or let's say you find a 32nd video that works on Facebook that could end up being your hook for your YouTube app, that could be the opening for your YouTube ad. So I do agree. We actually tell these people this all the time. It's not a bad idea to get things dialed in on Facebook first and then go YouTube because I think Facebook is easier to test with.
Matt:
Wow. Fantastic. Fantastic. Listen, you've obviously done this a fair amount over the recent years. Have you got any good stories, any examples that we could look at or maybe big wins or just really interesting case studies?
Brett:
Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of mentioned this client a few times and I mentioned them a lot because Ezra Firestone, the owner doesn't mind if we talk numbers and he likes to be a,
Matt:
Oh, he's puts it all up anyway. I mean does,
Brett:
She's like an open book cause he's got a marketing training company as well. And so boom by Cindy Joseph, it's a skincare for women over the age of 50 primarily. So they historically they grew on Facebook. Facebook was their number one engine for driving new customers. So we worked with them to get the right type of ad for YouTube. And over the course of about six months, we took YouTube from zero to now they're number two marketing channel, so it's behind Facebook. We also noticed we helped them launch on Amazon. So they were not on Amazon brand. We helped them launch there. When we're advertising on YouTube, we see a lift on Amazon as well. So that's one example. Another one is a hair care product. I can't mention the brand name, but hair care product for women. And again, we took, they got to where their YouTube spend was about half what they spent on Facebook, but the YouTube spend was still substantial.
It was still several hundred thousand a month on YouTube and noticed the same thing. We managed their Amazon and when we would have to fluctuate the YouTube spend, we could see it both in Amazon's sales but then also in Amazon's searches. Like the brand searches on Amazon would fluctuate as we had to fluctuate on YouTube. So those are a couple of examples. We also work with native deodorant. They're a Proctor and Gamble brand, natural deodorant. And so we've used YouTube in a variety of ways for Native, this is where I think YouTube can get really interesting if you're selling Instore and online, you can do some pretty fun things. So we created some campaigns and a couple of test markets to try to increase sell through in-store for native on YouTube and really create some great results there as well. You can do some fun things like brand lift studies where if you've ever been on YouTube and you see those questionnaires that pop up before the video you're wanting to watch, those are done by Google. And so you can also kind of see what is the brand lift that my YouTube ads created through looking at surveys. And so we've done that a number of times for supplement brands and food brands, and that's worked really well. So yeah, I think it, it's very doable to grow YouTube to be either your number two or potentially number one when you combine it with YouTube, new customer acquisition plan, new customer acquisition channel. And I think that's very doable for a lot of brands. Wow.
Matt:
Okay. So before I move on to a few questions about Google, because we should, given the title of the podcast, we should talk about Google at least a little bit. If someone's listening to this and they're going, Brett, I love the sound of YouTube, but realistically, is my business where it needs to to start on YouTube? Is YouTube ads something that everybody should look at, even if they're a startup? Or is it something where you go, actually guys, you need to probably be at X before you really start to think about YouTube and you need to have at least a minimum budget of Y to make sense of it? Yeah,
Brett:
Yeah, it's a great question. I really do recommend you get the foundational things in place. So you want search, you want shopping, you want remarketing. You kind of want the bottom of the funnel really well built out because if the bottom of the funnel is strong, then you can be more aggressive at the top of the funnel and you'll close more business. So I recommend search, shopping, remarketing on the Google side of things, build that out first. You want some landers that are converting cold traffic and probably start with Facebook first on for testing that. And so I don't know if there's a minimum amount of sales that you need before you do run YouTube, but you do want those other things built out first and you want a proven lander. But we've tested with some smaller skincare brands and a few others where we've tested with a five to $10,000 a month budget on YouTube and we saw some performance and we kind of isolated by saying, okay, this is a landing page we're only sending YouTube traffic to, so we can track what people do after they hit that landing page and it performed well.
So I think foundation first, five to 10 K, minimum budget, that's kind of where you need to start. And then usually you need to be able to handle a 50 to a hundred dollars customer acquisition cost before YouTube really makes sense for you. You can get it lower than that. We do have brands that get it lower than that, but that's like a good starting point, right? And that's also direct conversions. So knowing that, hey, we'll probably get some bleed over into Amazon, get some bleed over into our branded campaigns, but that's probably the direct conversion amount you'll see is kind of that 50 to a hundred dollars cpa.
Matt:
Fantastic. Thank you for that, Brett. Very helpful. So now let's talk about Google in the closing part of this show. Everybody is talking at the moment about Google Performance Max. Now, I appreciate the time that we are recording this and the time that it will be released there. There's a little bit of discrepancy between the two things, and so everything could have changed. So I'm just prefacing everything with the world could have changed once we record.
Brett:
It's going to all be outdated. That is actually true for the YouTube side, I don't think so. But for performance Max Man, who knows? Yeah.
Matt:
Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy world out there in the moment, which is fine. So if people haven't heard of Google Performance Max, what should they know?
Brett:
So actually, when I first heard about Performance Max, I hated the idea. I thought this was Google trying to just take over the world and again, make a campaign a total black box and take away every ounce of control that have. But as we've tested it, and Matt, we've spent now about 3 million in the just on performance Max on the last month, month and a half, something like that. And so we're seeing some really positive results. But what it is, basically it's all Google channels rolled into one singular campaign. So search shopping, display discovery, YouTube maps if you're a local business, and I let something else out. But anyway, it's all Google campaigns in one channel. So basically, I think what Google's doing here is they want to make it easier to launch campaigns. And we've seen actually some big Facebook advertisers lean into Performance Max.
Some Facebook agencies lean into Performance Max because with Performance Max, it really becomes more about the creative, do I have the right images? Do I have the right product listings in my feed for Google Shopping? Do I have the right videos? And we just talked about getting a video that's optimized for YouTube. So you put those in a campaign and basically what you're giving YouTube is, or what you're giving Google is a couple things, one asset or one audience signals. So you're not telling Google Target this audience specifically. They don't let you do that. But you can say, Google here is my ideal audience, and it's a signal. So start here and then kind of go wild after that. So you're really just giving Google a starting point, but it's an ideal spot for machine learning. And as the campaign gets more conversions, it gets smarter and better, and you actually do have ways we can control it.
It's probably a little more complex when we can get in the next few minutes, but basically Performance Max now replaces smart shopping. So if you're running smart shopping before Mochi, most eCommerce brands were, yeah, that's now Performance Max, but we've seen some Performance Max campaigns really lean into YouTube. So this may be a great place to test YouTube is just through Performance Max. We've seen some campaigns that as best as we can tell, 40, 50, 60% of the budget is going to YouTube inside of Performance Max. But I think what Google realized is that a lot of people don't understand how to use the Display Network ads or how to use YouTube ads. So okay, just give us your assets, tell us your audience signals, and we'll go from there. You can really set campaigns up to succeed or set them up to fail. But so far they've been pretty fantastic and really good at driving new customers. See, I think Smart Shopping leaned into remarketing a little bit more, right? Performance Max is really good at driving new customers, getting those, Nick,
Matt:
Because again, Google is smelling blood, aren't they? Where Facebook's
Brett:
Consent totally.
Matt:
They're like totally
Brett:
Dun, dun, dun, the one they're seeing, Hey, Facebook beat us and made it easier. So we're going to try to combat that. But also they're saying, yeah, Facebook's in a bad spot, and then Google's in a little bit better spot because Google owns all their data. You've given that data first party to Google. So it's a fantastic campaign type. I've got a free resources that we can talk about for Performance Max, but I'm bullish on it. As you said, a lot of things can change, but I think the core is going to be there, what we just talked about. But if Performance Max isn't one of your top campaigns, then something is one of your top Google campaigns, then something's probably wrong. It should be one of your top campaigns.
Matt:
Well, so we definitely need to check out on that. So again, I'm just trying to think of the different type of listeners that we have. We get people who are just starting out in eCommerce, Brett, and they're like, is Performance Max something that they should look at, or Yeah,
Brett:
I think so. Because one, Google, it's the future of Google. Google loves it, they're prioritizing it. So because Performance Max also has a strong shopping component. So product listing ads, Google Shopping ads, whatever you want to call it, because that's a central part of Performance Max, you can be really efficient with Performance Max. So if you need to hit a three x or four X or five x row ads or whatever performance, max can do that. It's probably going to lean in more to shopping and lean in more to search, and not so much YouTube, but it'll do that. And because it replaces smart shopping, I think you kind of have to test it. You can still run standard shopping too. But yeah, I think small advertisers should definitely still run Performance Max, just change the way you bit, right, bid a little more efficiently to try to focus that campaign and keep it from kind of going wild. But I think Performance Max is going to be central for essentially every e-com brand.
Matt:
Wow. And what were the free resources that you mentioned? Do you want to give that as a quick click?
Brett:
Yeah, so I'm trying to think of the best way to get, we did host a Performance Max webinar, and I can shoot you the link, cause I'm really drawing a blank here. It's a presentation that I did. And then some of the members of my team, we did like a traffic panel, so it's all free. And then I did a Performance Max Blueprint with Ezra Firestone and Smart Market. That's actually a paid resource, but you can check that out. I think there's some freebies that go with it. But I'll get you on link to that presentation that that's a great place to start. Fantastic. And then also have a free YouTube resource as well, because that getting the YouTube ad is so critical, but put together, it's a PDF of the top performing YouTube ads that we've seen and with links to those ads. So you can watch that. Oh, that's
Matt:
Cool.
Brett:
And I kind of break down, kind of categorize 'em, break 'em down, show you why I think they work. And so that's a good way to learn. And that is free. So you just go to omg commerce.com, click on resources, and then it's the YouTube add templates and examples, so that that's completely free. So check that app. Yeah, both those are a great resources.
Matt:
Fantastic. And we will of course have the links to that in the show notes. Brett, listen, I'm aware of time, and I've started asking this question to people at the end of the podcast going, listen, you are in this amazing place, right? You've got an amazing family excited about what's going on at work. You're a basketball coach. I'm kind of curious with, the way we put this to people is we say, listen, the eCommerce cohort sponsors the podcast. So imagine you're in a hotel room full of cohorts, you've just delivered your best keynote speech ever. They're all going crazy.
Brett:
Go break.
Matt:
Let's go break. Yeah. Yeah. Pompoms everything. Yeah. Yeah. You stand up, you take a bow and you go, I hate, listen. It wouldn't, I just would like to thank dot, dot, dot. Who were the people that you would like to thank and white?
Brett:
Oh, man, that is such a great question. So I think first of all, my parents. My dad was always a super hard worker in a totally different industry with his hands mechanic, but taught me the value of showing up every day, giving it all you got. And so that he's definitely worn. My uncle taught me sales and taught me persuasion, taught me how to connect with people. And so learned a lot from him. My first pastor at the church I attended really taught me leadership and taught me how to communicate effectively and authentically communicating to really cause change. And so all those weaved together and then, like I said, has always been fascinated by people. And so that's what kind of led me, I think, to marketing. But I would put those three at the top of my list. I've got some great business mentors as well, but those would be kind of top of my list.
Matt:
Fantastic. Well, thank you very much to all those people. Listen, Brett, love to the conversation, as I'm sure many of the listeners have. Great to finally get you on. How do people reach you? How do they connect with you if they want to?
Brett:
Sure. Best way to connect us through the website, omg commerce.com. You can click on the Let's Talk button and fill out a form there. You can email me Brett with two ts, omg commerce.com. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm trying, I'm, I'm going to say this publicly, a little pressure on myself.
Matt:
I'm
Brett:
Trying get into Twitter a little bit more. All my spreads are like Twitter, it's where it's at, so an Eon owns it now, whatever. But I'm working on getting more involved in Twitter. We'll see, I don't know, you may check it out and you may be like, wow, your last post was like five years ago. You may check it out and may be going while, but LinkedIn for sure, you can email may check out the website. So those are the best ways.
Matt:
Fantastic. I'm the same way on Twitter. I have a Twitter account and I can't remember how many people I'm connected to. Maybe 20,000 people on Twitter follow. And I just never use it. And I kind of think I probably should at some point stock. I've
Brett:
Few people say there's some of the best connections they're making now. There's like, there's just like this explosion of direct to consumer and marketing people on Twitter is what I'm understanding. And so I'm going to give it a go. I'm going to
Matt:
I Well, I'll tell you. I'll be in it with you. Well, we'll, Twitter. Twitter, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Brilliant. Fantastic. Thanks Brett, so much for coming on the show, man. Absolute legend. And I'll see you in Twitter. I'll see you on Twitter. Thanks, brother. Really appreciate it. Absolutely. So what a great conversation. Huge. Thanks again to Brett Ford joining me today. What a legend. A big shout out to today's show sponsor, which is eCommerce cohort. You can find out more information about them at eCommerce cohort.com. Do check out this new type of community you can join. Be sure to follow the eCommerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got even more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them. And just in case no one has told you yet today, dear listener, you are awesome. Yes you are.
It's just a burden we've all got to bear. I've got a bear, Brad Scott's spirit exception. The eCommerce podcast is produced by Oria Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Bein on Josh Catchpole, Estella Robin and Tim Johnson. Our theme song was written by Josh Edmundson and My Good Self. And as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the website, eCommerce podcast.net, where coincidentally you can also sign up for our weekly newsletter and get all of this good stuff directly to your inbox totally free. Totally amazing. So that's it from me. That's it from Brad. Thank you so much for joining us. Hope you enjoyed the conversation, make sure you connect with him, get you freebies, and then I'll see you next week. Have a fantastic week. Bye for now.
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