The Best SEO Podcast: Unlocking the Unknown Secrets of AI, Search Rankings & Digital Marketing

YouTube Ads: The Secret to Growing Your Brand Now featuring Aleric Heck

• MatthewBertram.com

Share episode

Everything is changing in digital marketing, with SEO becoming more dynamic and YouTube emerging as one of the biggest ways to build your brand. For those afraid of video marketing, now is the time to take the leap and establish a YouTube presence.

• YouTube content lives long-term, unlike other platforms where posts disappear within 48 hours
• The most effective YouTube ads follow a hook-educate-call to action structure
• Balance AI capabilities with human strategy to create marketing that stands out
• Create custom audiences by training Google's AI based on your ideal customers' behaviors
• Scale campaigns using the "tree method" rather than the "balloon method"
• Target specific users through custom intent, affinity, and URL-based audience creation
• Batch-film YouTube content monthly instead of trying to produce weekly videos
• Use AI tools like Opus Clip to transform long-form content into daily shorts

------

Guest Contact Information: 

https://adoutreach.com/gift/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alericheck/

—----------

More from EWR and Matt:

Leave a Review if it was content you enjoyed: https://g.page/r/CccGEk37CLosEB0/review

Free SEO Consultation: https://www.ewrdigital.com/discovery-call

One-on-One Consulting: https://www.ewrdigital.com/digital-strategy-consulting/private-consulting-session

—

The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business. 

Topics covered include keyword research, content optimization, link building, local SEO, and more. The show also features interviews with industry leaders and experts who share their experiences and tips. 

Additionally, Matt shares his own experiences and strategies, as well as his own successes and failures, to help listeners learn from his experiences and apply the same principles to their businesses. The show is designed to help entrepreneurs and business owners become successful online and get the most out of their digital marketing efforts.

Find more great episodes here: https://www.internetmarketingsecretspodcast.com/  

https://seo-podcast-the-unknown-secrets-of-internet-marketing.buzzsprout.com

Follow us on:
Facebook: @bestseopodcast
Instagram: @thebestseopodcast
Tiktok: @bestseopodcast
LinkedIn: @bestseopodcast

Powered by: ewrdigital.com

Hosts: Matt Bertram 

Disclaimer: For Educational and Entertainment purposes only.

Support the show

Speaker 1:

This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing, your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential, let's get started.

Speaker 2:

All right, welcome back to another episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your host, matt Bertram. Everything's changing and I know I've been saying that, but absolutely everything's been changing. I recently got back from a SEO conference in New York City and SEO is becoming so much more. Everything else is blending together. It's all about building the brand, and YouTube is one of the biggest ways you can do that.

Speaker 2:

So I thought I would bring on none other than our tech with ad outreach that specializes in YouTube, as well as a lot of other demand gen things, to kind of speak to how he sees everything happening. We can kind of bring that knowledge together and then go through for a lot of people that are afraid of video. Right, a lot of people are afraid of video, but now is the time. You know you've needed to do it, but now you need to take that leap and you need to get on YouTube and I am looking in the mirror also saying this, because this podcast, you are probably a hundred percent listening to it on iTunes or Spotify, but you're not listening to it, uh, on iTunes, uh, or Spotify, um, but you're not listening to it on YouTube. We do not have a YouTube presence.

Speaker 2:

So, um, I need to be there as well, and so, eric, I thought you could, uh, help paint the picture for everyone that knows they need to do it, and we've seen the rise of video, we've seen the rise of YouTube, uh, but it's now not you need to do it or you would like to do it. You need to do it Right, and so I think that's where we are today. So I'd love to hear from you kind of what's happening, ai, whatever's most topical to you, and kind of what's set the table for the conversation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, thank you so much for having me on, matt. I'm excited to be here and I'm definitely looking forward to diving into all things YouTube ads, but also how AI is affecting everything. Like you said, the same way, it's affecting a lot of things in the SEO world. It's affecting all forms of marketing, and embracing it is definitely an important thing, and knowing how to take advantage of it and combine your best skill set with what AI can do to create great things. So definitely going to dive into that. I can talk about how to craft winning YouTube ad scripts and there's some AI ways that you can actually be supportive of that as well. We'll talk about how to target your ads and how with ad targeting right now on YouTube. It's now about AI ad targeting and training the AI algorithm on exactly who you're looking to reach with your YouTube ads. So we're going to dive into that, and we're also going to talk a little bit about YouTube channels and how valuable that is.

Speaker 1:

I know you just brought that you know some of that up too, but you know, right now, if you post a piece of content really anywhere else other than YouTube, it's gone in 48 hours, a few days, but if you post on YouTube, you could have people watching your video a year, two years, three years in the future and it's a catalog of videos that live. It's very similar to you know, there's such a big power in SEO and I know that's changing and you're on the cutting edge of that but it's similar to that, like when you're building up your articles and links and all of that. It's similar. On YouTube it lives long term because, while Google's the largest search engine, youtube's the second largest. So people are going to YouTube to look to learn and creating that content so organic content and then, of course, reaching people with ads. So I'm excited to dive into all the above.

Speaker 2:

Well, fantastic. Why don't you just credentialize yourself really quick? I think we've set up for what we're going to talk about. But I want to hear, I want everybody to hear who you are. That doesn't know, and then we'll we'll just jump into it.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you, I appreciate that. So you know, I've helped thousands of businesses leverage the power of YouTube ads and video marketing. We train businesses and we also do it for clients as well agency style, so we have both sides of the business. But I've been on YouTube for almost 16 years. In July, to be 16 years on YouTube, I started back in 2009.

Speaker 1:

I started when I was pretty young, so I was doing app reviews, tech tutorials, teaching people how to use their iPhone for the first time, built that up to over 600,000 subscribers. I was doing that through high school and into college and then at that point, I discovered that there was a whole new world to YouTube, which is YouTube ads. So I figured out how to do the organic side. But I had all these apps that were sponsoring my videos and they would pay me some money. I'd post a video, they'd get a bunch of downloads and they were just doing it again and again. But one day, one of the apps said hey, how can we get more people to see this video? The video did really well for them and I thought about it for a second. We said what, if, what, if? And this was about a decade ago now and not a lot of people running YouTube ads. What if we run a YouTube ad? It's kind of, you know, long story short, the rest is history Did really good for for that app.

Speaker 1:

You know, that was kind of while I was still in college and then, you know, from there I ended up graduating and went, you know, full on into building out. You know what ad outreach is today. It's been a great journey. We've got a team of over 30 amazing people and you know, we've been on the Inc 5,000, uh, you know, we we hit it, you know, several years in a row, including number 60. Uh, and yeah, it's just been amazing. We've helped our clients generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, uh, using YouTube ads.

Speaker 2:

So, uh, definitely uh, where are you based for everybody listening?

Speaker 1:

Oh yes, I forgot that I was. I was talking else. I don't always love talking about all this, but I know it's important for a podcast. You got to know who's sharing, who's speaking.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm in Austin, texas, so you can see kind of a little bit of the downtown area, and, of course, if you're watching this on video, there's a rocket ship behind me and then there's downtown Austin behind me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because we are based in Houston, so we have a lot of Texas listeners, so I wanted to make sure that that was mentioned. So awesome. Well, where do you want to get started? What's changing? What's topical? How is? Everybody thinks AI is hot and it is, and I don't think we're going to have an AI crash like everybody thought with the dotcom boom. I think AI is real and I think it's impacting every aspect of every component of business across the board, and I would love to see, or hear from you how you see it affecting, where you see it going and how do people need to be thinking about it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think the big thing is looking at how you can utilize AI in all the different aspects of your business to complement what you do. There's things that you do really well, there's things that AI does well, and you combine them together. I think it's a mistake on either side to completely ignore AI, and I think we all know people like that although there's now less of them, but there's still some holdouts the people that completely ignore AI. I think the problem is they're just going to get out-competed by the people embracing AI. However, there are also these other people that are, you know, oh well, let's just do everything on AI. They don't have a human touch, they don't have a strategy behind it and it's just kind of empty, right, and I think that that's going to be more and more clear, because if everybody has access to AI right, you know, it's like in the Incredibles, right? If everybody's super, then no one is right. If everybody's super, then no one is right. If everybody has access to AI, then what's the differentiator?

Speaker 1:

The differentiator is those original things, but you can't have one without the other. Now you need to embrace both the strategies, the skillset, the human element and the power of AI to supercharge and turbocharge that. I think that really is where the future is right now, and that's what we're seeing on YouTube. I'm sure I'm curious if you're seeing the same thing, and then I'm happy to dive into more specific examples as well.

Speaker 2:

No, I love how you said that. Certainly, the faceless YouTube channels, right, where they're taking other people's content, they're spinning around, they're watching it. I find myself even watching some of them because the content's okay and it's pretty good, but they're looking for eyeballs and monetizing it. But I think that right now and maybe we'll see the shift that people are looking for a trusted voice and a human to follow and listen to, because there's just so much more noise and I'm seeing just everything so fractured and everything's so noisy that, like consistency, right, and getting really consistent, uh, that um part becomes part of their habit or their routine. Um, and uh, what was it?

Speaker 2:

Uh, EOS on entrepreneurs on fire, or uh, um, he, you know, he was one of the first to uh, every day, right, do a a podcast and I'm going to get them on.

Speaker 2:

Um, I, I ran into him at a conference, but, but, but, but, yeah, we, we gotta, we gotta, you gotta do that today.

Speaker 2:

Like there's, there's no, like cutting corners, right, like, okay, you can, you can do all kinds of fancy stuff, but these algorithms are getting smarter and and they're looking at how behaviors happening, what people are looking at, and everybody thinks that ads are listening to us Right, um, and I think it it has something to do with what you're doing on one platform to another and we can talk about the multi-channel, omni-channel retargeting and and how that works. Um, but, like, people think their, their phones are listening to them and I think probably in some of the terms of service, some of them are okay, but but as a marketer right now I don't have the ability to to tackle when clients ask me hey, like I want to just listen to people when they talk about it, show them an ad, and I'm like, well, that's not exactly how it works. Like, when you get that question, alec, how do you answer that? And you dive pretty deep into some omni channel retargeting solutions. Maybe you can speak to some of that to kind of open up the conversation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's the thing is. It's there's so, so much that AI is doing that people don't even realize all the different tracking points that these platforms of course, the big ones, google and Meta, but there's other platforms too. But it's interesting. And one thing I remind people to just think about the capabilities is there's a reason. Gmail is free, right? Gmail? And the billions of dollars they're spending on that. It's not fully out of the kindness of their hearts. Right, there's a lot of data they're collecting and the thing is it's not somebody going in and looking at your email. You don't have to worry about that, but the AI algorithms are understanding, okay, who's corresponding with who, what's happening here, and there's just so much information. And Google, you know, the largest search engine, but then YouTube, second largest. So Google owns YouTube. I know many people know that, but just to state that. And then you know and then also Google Chrome, one of the top browsers, although there's some, there's some stuff there that you know if you're following some legislation that maybe for us to divest from that.

Speaker 1:

But we'll see. And because of this reason, because of all the data that they have and all the information, and then Google Analytics is installed on over 52% of all websites online, so that means the visibility that Google has is just astronomical. So there's all these ways that you could go in and target people based on what they're looking for. So I'll get into some of you could go in and target people based on what they're looking for. So I'll get into some of the frameworks for an ad in a second. But when it comes to the actual targeting of an ad because I think it's actually a perfect segue, because we talked about the combination of human strategy and AI Google has a lot of these prebuilt audiences that you can already run on YouTube ads and those are good and they can get you some pretty solid results. But you can actually build your own. So everybody has access to the same audiences that they've built. So they built kind of these pre-built audiences, people interested there's actually one as a great example here people interested in SEO and SEM services. That's one of their buckets, but that's such a huge bucket. So, yes, you can reach some great people, but it's also a really big bucket. What could be better is you can actually create what are called custom audiences. So this is training Google's AI. So instead of just saying I want to reach this really broad audience, you could go in, and there's a few different ways to do it. So one is a custom affinity. That's where you can describe interests that people have. So you could have the interest be SEO, but it could also get even more granular, because that's pretty broad. Maybe it's SEO for XYZ types of businesses, right, or whatever it happens to be. Or local SEO, or how to improve SEO. So these are people that are interested in that. You can actually build an audience around that.

Speaker 1:

You can also take it one step further and this is one of my favorites is custom intent audiences. You can target people based on actual Google and YouTube searches that they've done in the past. So this custom intent, you could target people that are looking up you know the best SEO for. You know for plumbers or whatever happens to me.

Speaker 1:

Let's just use that as an example and you can get very granular and then, if you think about that, you can have an ad that maybe speaks to that specific type of client and you could target people based on their searches. You can even do what's called URL affinity audiences, which a lot of people don't even know. You can do this, but you can target people based on URLs and websites they're going on, so you can actually put in specific URLs and target people that are going to those sites or similar sites with your ads as well with a URL affinity audience. So there's all of these different audiences that are just really powerful. And tapping into Google's AI, but you're training the AI. It's a combination of a human strategy of knowing okay, these are what people are probably looking up and then combining it with uh, with the ai and what google knows, all the data that they have and bringing that together is what helps the results um be so powerful alec.

Speaker 2:

I love the user based intent.

Speaker 2:

So I have a question specifically on youtube.

Speaker 2:

When you're running ads, okay, uh, and you know if you're working with a client or you're doing it yourself and you're going to, you're going to turn the ads up or you're going to turn the ads down, right. So you're training the, the, the machine learning, and I know if you turn it off, it resets, right, um, but there's been some discussion that I've had in certain groups about if you change it by a certain amount it, it also affects it, right. But there's been some discussion that I've had in certain groups about if you change it by a certain amount it, it also affects it Right. And we see that with websites. When you launch a new website, if you change it by like roughly 20 percent, it goes through a or there used to be like a seven day audition period on YouTube and like if that video didn't do well organically, you know you, you might pull it down and relaunch it. I'm wondering how, on the ad side and on the YouTube side, how much they've changed the algorithm to to better serve users.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great question and it's there. There definitely is algorithm, or there's an? That's a great question and there definitely is algorithm. There's an algorithm that's happening in the background that's determining how people are actually interacting and reacting to the different types of ads that are appearing and also the targeting that's working and not working, and so the campaign is getting better over time based on the audiences you put in. Also the ad creatives. There's a new type of ad which I think we'll get into a little bit later, called Demand Gen. I know we were talking briefly about that before we hit record here, but there's a new ad type with Demand Gen that includes different types of ads together.

Speaker 1:

So in-stream YouTube short ads now are popular in-feed ads that appear in the feed, other ads that pop up in other places on Google all into one campaign and what it does is it allows Google to show ads to people at specific times based on what they think that individual user needs to see. So, for instance, somebody might need to see multiple short ads and then a long form ad to convert. For me, I don't quite use shorts as much, although we do make a lot of Shorts and I'll go in there. I'd like to see what's going on, but a long form ad or an in-feed ad. So for me, maybe a regular YouTube ad like an in-stream ad and then maybe a podcast with that person.

Speaker 1:

By the way you can do it's really interesting you can go and run long form videos in feed ads so you could take a short you know, two minute long regular YouTube ad that gets people interested. Then if you have a longer form piece of content, you can have that appear in the feed. Or if you have a 60 second short, you can have that appear in shorts and Google will know, based on that user's behavior and the way they've converted before, what ads to show the person, to take them on a buying journey, to get them to the destination. So I know that was a long way of kind of answering the question. I also want to make sure I fully answer the question, but there's a lot that's going on behind the scenes with ad optimization.

Speaker 2:

So to just put a point on it and however you want to answer it, but a lot of questions we get is like, okay, we're running, we're going to buy this this many impressions over this amount of time for a client, like we're going to do an ad flight, right, and then at the end of it I a lot of times recommend we really shouldn't turn it off Right, cause we we've trained the AI, we've learned a bunch of stuff and if we stop it to go launch another campaign, right, we're having to start all over again. And so I really recommend kind of trying to keep that spend. Or, if we are going to turn it down, have you seen any kind of thresholds? Or you know it might not be anything definitive, but just kind of how maybe even you do it because you know that you're going to run a new campaign or you're going to run another ad. I've seen people replace, like that ad right With with the new ad, which you know it. It changes how people interact with it. But you can build on that past data Like what are your best practices, I guess, around ad spend and launching new campaigns?

Speaker 2:

Once you have a campaign, let's say that's working Right and I think the biggest uh, I don't know detriment that that people have is, uh, they run something that's working and then it's working and then they want something shiny and new and then they change it and then that doesn't work as much as what was working before. It's like you, just if it's working, you might want to build on top of it, but you might not want to stop what it is you're doing that's currently working. So I would love some frameworks around that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I actually I've got a full framework, but, yes, I definitely want to dive into that side of things. So, in terms of making adjustments, it's all a part of the overall ecosystem of that ad, so you have to be intentional around it. What we've found is you want to keep those adjustments a little bit smaller, so like what you're saying, so a little less than maybe 25% adjustments. We've found that there's a lot of issues with scaling campaigns down.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if Google, if this is a conspiracy or anything, I won't comment on that, but increasing a campaign it's a lot. So where things mess up is more likely if you're decreasing the spend than increasing the spend. That said, if you increase it far too much, it doesn't get as, because sometimes when you decrease it, things just get out of whack. It's weird when you increase it, sometimes what you do is you accidentally increase it beyond diminishing returns. Or when you increase it, sometimes what you do is you accidentally increase it beyond diminishing returns. Or if you increase it all at once, it just goes back into a learning phase to try and figure out how to deal with that increase. So what I would say is, when you're increasing, you can be a little bit bigger on the increases, but still should keep it in a general range.

Speaker 1:

Maybe that might be like a 25% or something like that, but when you're decreasing, it's pretty tough to decrease a campaign and then have it perform. You're actually almost better off relaunching that campaign. Now we're seeing some different things with demand gen, so it might be a little bit different. But what I will say is the way I like to think about these campaigns is scaling them like a tree. Most people think about campaigns like a balloon, and this is the problem. They have one campaign that works really well. You know what I'm about to say with this. They have one campaign that works really well.

Speaker 1:

And they start, you know, just increasing it and increasing it, and increasing it and increasing it until eventually it pops. But they don't put all their eggs in that basket. What you should do instead is treat it like a tree. So you have all these little seedlings, some of them start to sprout. Okay, great, this tree is growing. Let's take care of it, let's water it, let's give it the attention it needs. It's going to grow and you want to do those incremental increases. Maybe it's a, you know, and again, you know, maybe it's less than this, but it could be maybe 25% increases. And you're doing that. You know that, every few days or every week, and you're increasing it, and that's exponential too. So it starts to grow more and more. But then what you do is you don't have to. Let's say, you really want to ramp up even more than that.

Speaker 1:

Well, what you can do is you can create tree branches, and so you can essentially duplicate that campaign and change something about it and create a split test, a different branch. So one of the things could be targeting some new audiences, similar to what you found work, but new, they're different. One of them could be testing new ad creatives, so different hooks, or a different call to action or landing page that you send people to, and so you create these different variations and so you have the base of the tree that you're growing. Then you have the branches, and some of them will perform well. Great, let's create more branches. Some of them might not perform as well, as you prune it off and you can just turn off that campaign, and so you essentially end up with a family tree of campaigns. That's far more stable, because if any one of these branches, or even the original trunk, isn't where it was before, then you still have these other variations that are holding up your overall account.

Speaker 2:

I love the tree analogy and I've heard a number of different tree analogies. It's a great one to consider, and also the watering of a plant and taking care of it. I think there's some real, real value in that. All right, so, based on kind of the, the arc of the, the, the podcast, where, where do you think you want to take the conversation next? I'll, I'll hand the baton to you.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I appreciate that. So I think you know what could be really valuable is just really quickly explaining what the components of a winning YouTube ad are. And then also, I'm happy to dive a little little bit deeper into demand gen or some of the other things that we're seeing, or any other more advanced questions that you have. But in terms of, I do think it's valuable, though, for everybody to know how to craft a winning YouTube ad. That's a big question that I get asked. Now, of course, there's new formats for that Right. So I'm going to start by talking about the standard in-stream ads. Those are the classic YouTube ads, and still a lot of the inventory is that that people know about.

Speaker 1:

Now, what I found is, unless you're a gigantic mega corporation which I don't think are the people listening to this what you want to do is you're likely looking for direct response, not branding. You're looking to actually have people take action and convert and become clients, and so what we found the best for that is a value ad. That's a little bit longer. It's about two to three minutes long. Google does like to see sub three minute ads, but we've actually found that sweet spot two minutes to two minutes 59 seconds. That's a really good area. Now, sometimes you have ads that are longer and they can still work. This might not be shown everywhere, but a two to three minute long ad. And this ad has three components as a hook that draws people in, it educates, it provides real, genuine value, and then it has a clear and concise call to action of where to go next, what the value is and why they should do that. The big thing that's different here and I'll give some breaks down to each of these is the educate section and the value, because that's the thing a lot of people leave out. We've all seen plenty of ads before where people kind of hook you a little bit and it's like, oh, you know what if you could solve this problem? Or do you have this problem? And then they say, okay, go buy my solution, but you're not actually providing value. We've been trained to tune that out On YouTube.

Speaker 1:

People are looking to learn, and so you want to, or they're either looking to be entertained or to learn, and we want to target the people looking to learn. So you know, and and when we target those people, we can get in front of them with an ad that actually educates. So let's you know if we use you as an example. You know, I know you do a lot of stuff in the SEO world. So imagine somebody is looking up and they're trying to figure out you know, okay, how do I do SEO, and they're looking that up on YouTube, or they're looking at that up recently on Google, or they've gone to a site. Now they're, or they're watching a video related to that. You get in front of them with an ad and in that ad you hook them in, so you pull them in with you know a way that you can really capture their attention right.

Speaker 1:

So the things that you know about SEO are all changing and what I want to do is I want to share some of the biggest things that are working right now in the world of AI. Just use it as an example. Then, if you say point number one, point number two, point number three and here's why this is so important, especially right now with the shift to AI and so now you're teaching, so the people that are actually watching that are building their know, like and trust of you, and then at the end you say and there's only so much we can cover in this, you know, two minute ad or three minute ad, and so I actually put together a full training or a PDF or a guide for free when you click the link right here on the screen and you can get access to that. Now, what are they going to believe about that training? That they're going to get more value, and you know you're going to deliver more value. But the reason they believe that is because you gave them value in the ad as well.

Speaker 2:

No, I, I, I totally agree with that. I think that we're in kind of a trust recession or a deficit right now. Um, because everybody knows what a funnel looks like and anytime anybody sees a funnel, they're just like oh, you know, and we've, we've fallen for it and we've bought in the thing and everybody's dangling this thing out there, that that's solving it. I can actually tell you, about five years ago, I wrote a book called a build your brand mania and it was almost kind of a play on how bad it was that everybody was offering these solutions on Instagram that were like you know, it was a bunch of 16 year olds, you know, and they're just like hey, I'm going to help you grow your business, like hire me, like I've done XYZ and I'm like I don't know about that and I was. So I mean, we've been going through this for a while.

Speaker 2:

I actually think, from what I've seen, a lot of the things that worked here really well five or six years ago work great outside the U S. Right, like, I think we're like the leader and uh, how people use online, and so a lot of these tactics are I'm seeing on a a multinational level. Uh, happen, right, and um, there we're. We're getting a lot of calls from Canada and Australia and I think Mexico is really interesting right now and a lot of these tactics that used to work work, but the things that used to work don't work anymore here. And I like what you're saying is, well, you've got to give value up front, they've got to know that they can have that. And then you're giving them a taste and you're saying, hey, would you like a little bit more? And you're, you're trying to create behaviors. Now let's flip it. That's from maybe like a consultant, coach or maybe, you know, let's talk a bigger business. How does a bigger business like? Give me a case study of how they should be, maybe using YouTube today, using YouTube today.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, see, that's a great question as well. And we work with different, you know, bigger business as well, especially, a lot of times we'll train internal teams of those types of businesses. So they have their own media buyers, they have their own ad teams, and it's actually one of the things that we've had the privilege of being able to work with some of those bigger companies, because we do the training as well. So we have some clients, we do the ads for them, and then we also have clients that will train, and so what I've seen with those companies is there's a lot more focus on how their overall brand is felt, both on the front end and the back end. So, you know, and even software companies it's really interesting where you would think, at a smaller scale, they're really focused on what's their conversion, you know how many new like trials or leads they're bringing in. But at a bigger scale, when they're at, you know, one of these bigger companies, what they're also thinking about is what's our overall brand perception and long-term use of the software to prevent churn.

Speaker 1:

So there's a whole different area, and so some of the big things that I would say and that YouTube is really good at is lifting up a brand, and so there's a couple examples of that, so I'll give a few. So one is just, in general, the standard YouTube ads. The video allows you to communicate a message more clearly. So getting that in front of people in the consideration phase is really good at elevating what you know Google will call brand lift and they run studies along those lines and we've had some clients that have done stuff like that as well. We haven't really done as many specific brand lift. That's more of a Google thing. They'll do these advanced studies.

Speaker 2:

Facebook does that a little bit too right. They do brand lift.

Speaker 1:

Yes, we do that too, Exactly, yeah, so yeah, Facebook is doing that as well and Google's doing that, so they'll basically be able to see, okay, how much are people you know increasing their search volume, you know for a particular business but it's the bigger businesses that usually care a little bit more about that versus, you know, smaller and mid sized businesses oftentimes are kind of targeted more towards their direct conversions or leads or sales or return on ad spend, but that's one area that you could do, because it's going to have people see your brand in a positive light.

Speaker 1:

The other thing that's really interesting, though, because some people know that, but what some people don't know is that some of these bigger companies are also looking at how people perceive them, even after they're a customer right, and so you know and that's actually something that we, as you know, smaller, midsize businesses can actually take into consideration in a more, maybe, budget conscious way, but looking at the people that come in, and there's a marketing journey that can happen to those people too, because at a certain point in a business like a software business, you're looking at churn. In an e-commerce business, you're looking at reorder rates, and so there's, I think, in a lot of smaller and mid-sized businesses, there is more and more people doing retargeting, which is awesome. So you got your cold traffic reaching new people retargeting, which is awesome. So you got your cold traffic reaching new people, retargeting, getting people to take that first action, but a lot of people stop once people convert and buy or become a client or do whatever or sign up for a software. But that's where there's a difference. There's more full funnel marketing on the back end of bigger companies, and that's actually something that we've been looking at and we've started implementing a little bit of that as well.

Speaker 1:

You know ourselves Now smaller budgets, but once somebody even becomes a client or has a strategy call because actually that was a big area you know, if people book a call with our team at one point, most of our campaigns all turned off at that point and but you know, maybe a couple of years, maybe a couple years ago, I realized, wait a second, these are our hottest potential people, especially if they haven't made a purchase decision yet, and so, um, and so that shift, uh, was positive.

Speaker 1:

But sometimes it's hard to see the direct roi. It's more anecdotal, right, because you can see, um, maybe sometimes campaigns you can see okay, they saw this campaign, they click this campaign. You can see, maybe sometimes campaigns you can see okay, they saw this campaign, they click this campaign you can get the tracking and then see a client come through. That being said, if you have a lot of campaigns in there, the other ones aren't all getting attributed, but it's a part of the journey and so that's really interesting thing. So I think the bigger you grow as a business, the more you can look at that. But there's still things that you can take away as a as a any size business from that type of strategy.

Speaker 2:

So I want to dig just a little bit deeper. Okay, so there I'm. I'm seeing YouTube as a great alternative, from a brand lift standpoint, to to billboards or terrestrial radio. Okay, cause, cause, you get the video component to it and it's a lot more targeted than a billboard. We're doing some digital billboards and stuff like that. Cause, cause, you get the video component to it and it's a lot more targeted than a billboard. We're doing some digital billboards and stuff like that and you can get some attribution, but it's much better when you got somebody on a device.

Speaker 2:

Right, when you're working with the bigger brands, have you seen specific KPIs that maybe, like, the CMO is looking to target or like, how are they framing it up of? Like, okay, we're looking at brand lift, we're doing a lot of different things top of the funnel. How do you present YouTube to them? And, like, if they're a bigger business and they're trying to, they're looking for just you know, do we put more money in or do we decrease the money? Like, what's the button we push? And that's the cool thing about ads versus SEO is you can track it a lot better. I'm curious what are those metrics if a bigger company was looking for it and they wanted to add a significant spend on YouTube. To break it down to the executive summary. Know, executive summary like what are the things they need to look for?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and just to clarify too, we we are working with more companies in the small and midsize. So we do have some that are in the bigger size and I'll speak to that, but I also just want to make sure I don't misrepresent that we're all day long working with these bigger. You know companies all the time. You know we definitely have have some that we've worked with and it's always a really great experience to be able to do that. What I would say is and actually it's interesting because we've worked with them over the, you know, over time and more and more they're a little more interested in the direct return, I think, especially over the last like couple years and as tracking has gotten better and things like that. That being said, they're looking at that.

Speaker 1:

They're also more they know their numbers better if they are looking for return, and so even if you look at companies that are software or e-commerce or even in the lead gen or expert in coaching space, oftentimes they're more willing to have a loss leader on the front end, like a low ticket offer or a e-commerce product where they want to scale.

Speaker 1:

They're not necessarily looking at how can I get the biggest return on product one? They're saying, okay, we can acquire this first product at breakeven, or sometimes even at a loss or at this margin, and then we know the long tail customer, here's what's going to happen. So they know their numbers a lot better, which makes it, you know, which allows them to make more informed decisions. And then, that said, it's actually kind of funny, it's a duality. So, in one degree, they know their numbers really well. On the other degree, they're also willing to spend on more branding and they also understand the the line item of that, and so that's where they might do more things like brand lift studies or things like that. And that's where they're going in and they're saying okay, our goal is to get in front of people like this.

Speaker 1:

they know who their ideal client is and then at that point they're looking at more of the metrics of the people that are watching those ads, the people that are then going into Google and searching for their brand afterwards. Are they able to spend a certain? They come with a budget in mind. Hey, I've got a budget we want to allocate to this. One other example is another company that we recently started working with in construction, so kind of like a bigger construction company. It was interesting because that's not necessarily a direct you know they're looking for I run this ad, I get this dollar amount tomorrow or this week or this book call, but what they're doing is they're expanding into another geographic region. So their goal so I think this actually very specifically answers your question their goal is they're moving into a new city and they want to blanket that new city.

Speaker 1:

Youtube ads instead of, because people aren't really watching the TV, as you know in the past, and they're also not really listening to the radio. So where are people going? Well, yes, there are people going on Facebook, but there's also a lot of people on YouTube, and YouTube, especially for TV, is like that new TV ad where Facebook's maybe the new newspaper ad Right, um and so on YouTube. Uh, we have the ability. And what one thing that was important to them is YouTube ads on the TV, because it's the old school branding style you can run YouTube ads on the TV. It's one of their fastest growing placement types.

Speaker 1:

Youtube watching, youtube videos and streaming and this is, by the way, any type of YouTube streaming. So it's YouTube has something called YouTube TV. We're not talking about that. We're talking about, like, streaming videos on YouTube is now one of the top few streaming platforms and I don't want to miss, because they kind of go back and forth between Netflix and, like I think it's Disney's the other one, and then and YouTube, and they're in that you know, top category for watch hours, actually streaming content, which is crazy to think about that. You know people are watching it right up there with with Netflix and and and a lot more than primetime TV viewing. And here's the thing Now Netflix is testing some limited ads, you know so, in fairness, Disney Plus too.

Speaker 2:

Disney Plus, you know, it's pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

They're doing more too. So they're doing more, but the targeting capabilities aren't as strong as what. Google and YouTube can do it's clunky.

Speaker 1:

Based on all of their Google searches and all of that. So that's where you know, for instance, that client is excited to get on YouTube TV of the people in that city to let them know that this new construction company is there, and they also they have specific people that they care about. So obviously there's going to be targeting, but they also just kind of want the city to know who they are, which is a different perspective than you know maybe. Maybe other people that might say okay, I really only want to get in front of and it's never perfectly, but I want to get in front of these ideal clients and generate this return.

Speaker 1:

They also have this kind of effect of saying well, you know, they want word of mouth to spread right. Oh, I'm, I'm, you know, and they'll, they'll work with more. They want word of mouth to spread right. Oh, I'm, you know, and they'll work with more. They do commercial and residential right, so they'll do construction projects. So if somebody's like, oh, hey, I'm getting like a pool, you know, put in or whatever, they want people to say, oh, did you hear about so and so. So it's interesting, it's an interesting perspective.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, I think. Let me ask you the brand lift studies. Those are like 20 grand, though, right, have they changed that? Do you have to spend, like to do you got to spend the 20 grand to do one of those?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so there's, and my team would know more of the specifics on that because they'll deal more on the day-to-day with that. Just for full disclosure. But there is a cost to it. But sometimes Google will do it for like it depends, like, because sometimes if they have a bigger client and you have like a rep, they might do it as well. But I'd have to get the specifics on that.

Speaker 1:

Like I said, we haven't done as many of those you know but, that is something that Google can do and they can say okay, what's the, what's the lift that? You know, that happened with the purchase To bring it back.

Speaker 2:

Everybody is knocking on Google right now and the share price is tanking. People don't understand. Youtube is the number one place that people are spending the most time and they have more data than anybody else. And Gemini, the LLM they have, is absolutely advancing at an accelerated pace, and so I just don't know how people are knocking on Google. And there is some antitrust stuff going on, and my mom was one of the first employees of Microsoft and so we went through like that when she was working there, and it could definitely change that.

Speaker 2:

Well, I know we have limited time here. I would love to cut to wherever you think we can create the most value for the listener. Where do you think we should take the conversation from here? You know there's a lot of things that you said that we could go over, and I would. I would love to have a little bit more time with you, but I know we're running close on time, so let's just dive into some real, I guess nuggets. You're talking about ad structure, how to set up campaigns, anything that you want to share. I'm going to kind of turn it over to you for, let's say, the next 10 minutes and just knock it out and then we'll wrap up really quickly at the end. How about that?

Speaker 1:

I love it and here's what I can do. I'm just going to give a full playbook on what I'd recommend for YouTube ads and YouTube channel growth and, even though it sounds like a limited amount of time, I think there's a lot. It would be like a challenge for me.

Speaker 1:

I can hit and then I'm also free gift as well that has a like a full, like 19 page PDF that maps out our YouTube ad strategies, like a checklist, and then there's like a training with that too. But basically what I would recommend is there's the YouTube ad side, the YouTube channel side. I'm gonna touch on the channel side in a second, but we'll start by talking about the ad side. So what I recommend doing is crafting a YouTube ad that has at least three different hooks. So you wanna test different hooks, two educate sections and one call to action, and so what that's going to give you is six different ad variations, which is a good amount to test in an individual campaign. You don't really want to have much more than that because it won't really and that's kind of on the higher side of the number that you want to put in there. But you can. You know, usually like three to six videos you can put in one campaign to test and see which angle is going to work the best, which educate section, and then you'll trim away what doesn't work as much like pruning the tree. But basically what we're going to do is the hook, educate, call to action, Three hooks. You just film the hooks back to back. What are the hooks? Think of something that's a big aha moment, a crazy statistic, something that your ideal clients need to know. They need to hear about, something that, when you say it, it stops people in their tracks. Think about your ad like an elevator pitch. This is a great way to depressurize the ad and actually start thinking. Oh, wait a second, you actually already know what to say in an ad. Think about it like an elevator pitch, which, by the way, also now AI can help you brainstorm this even better too. So there's strategies there, but basically, what you wanna do is think about that, that hook at the beginning as something that's gonna really capture their attention, a pattern, interrupt something that's interesting, a fact, a myth that you can bust about your industry, uh, and create three of them, Cause we're going to split test them.

Speaker 1:

Then, for the educate sections, there's two versions that you want to do. So you got three of these different hooks. You had to educate sections One teach briefly on three things, Like I said before so thing, number one, thing, number two, number three. The other, teach, uh, maybe for about a minute, a minute and a half, on one thing that you can go a little bit deeper into. That maybe is the biggest thing that you just find yourself just teaching people, right, Like you just find yourself sharing, um, you know, with people who aren't potential clients. If you're having a conversation like, what are you going to share, what do they need to know? And then the call to action at the end, that's going to be the same. That's where can they go, you know, into your funnel to learn more, to work with you, to take action, to purchase.

Speaker 1:

And this same strategy, by the way, applies to any type of business. When it comes to a product, it would be three things about the product, or one key demonstratable, you know, kind of demonstration. So the same thing applies whether you're doing products or services, or coaching or consulting. And so you film each of the hooks individually. You film the two educate sections individually and the one call to action. So you do all together six times. You film the hooks, the educate, the call to action. It feels like you filmed two videos, but you end up with six videos when you edit it all together. Then we take that video and you target the right people with your YouTube ads.

Speaker 1:

Now, how do you do that? You want to find what people are searching for on Google searching for on YouTube URLs are going to all of that. Now I actually created my own AI ad targeting software called keywordsearchcom that can actually do a lot of that for you and we'll talk a little bit about some of that stuff later. But there's a full seven day trial so you can even do for free some of the stuff I'm talking about just at the beginning, even in the trial, so you know. But basically that will find what people are searching for on YouTube, searching for on Google URLs, and it has a one click sync to Google ads so you can just choose which audiences you want and then sync it over to Google ads.

Speaker 1:

There's more details in the PDF that you know I'll share to kind of break some of these things down. But basically that's the way to think about targeting. You can, of course, build these audiences yourself. It's based around you know what people are searching for on YouTube, searching for on Google, you know affinity, so we describe them or websites or URLs that they're going on, and I'd recommend building out about five different types of audiences. Now, ideally you can launch multiple campaigns and have a few different like audiences together in a campaign, so you're not doing just all the different types, because sometimes the affinities get more spend than the custom intent. So I'd separate those.

Speaker 1:

This is getting a little advanced. The PDF talks about some of those advanced tactics, but basically let's just say you're launching like one core campaign. You would then have a few different audiences. So you have the few different videos, few different audiences. You launch that campaign, you treat it like a treat, You're nurturing it, you're taking care of it, you're pruning it. So if there's videos that aren't converting as well, turning those off, there's audiences that aren't working as well, turning those off. And then, once that's working and you trim it down, then you can start to scale up. And you scale it up more slowly, maybe 25% increases, like you're kind of sharing and similar in that I would say. And then what you can also do is create branches. So duplicate the campaign, create variations, new videos, new audiences. The audience is the easiest next step, because videos you'd film more, but new audiences is kind of the next easy step and you test a few variations and then from there you're gonna continue to refine and scale and test and iterate. So that's the recommendation of the YouTube ad side and I'll give that PDF that breaks that down.

Speaker 1:

When it comes to YouTube channel growth. There's a very simple YouTube channel strategy that can really help you see success long term. But it's a long game, so you got to commit. So the ad strategy is more investing a little bit less time but more money, Whereas the channel strategy is less money but more time, Right. And so you do kind of have to commit and I really recommend, if you're going to go into YouTube and you want the channel side to be the strategy as well, I would say commit yourself to a year of that and a video a week, but you don't have to film them a week. What I like to do and what I recommend to clients if they're going to go into YouTube channel which, by the way, you don't need to build a channel to see success with ads we have plenty of clients that never want to do a channel. They just run ads and it works. So that's a question a lot of people ask. But on the channel side, what you can go and do is pre-batch.

Speaker 1:

Either there's a monthly or a bi-monthly strategy.

Speaker 1:

So either once a month you spend about an hour or two brainstorming ideas for your videos and mapping that out and then writing outlines of a script. You don't have to write the whole thing, but just kind of an outline. And then you spend a half a day filming four videos, four or five videos, video, video, video, you know, and you film each of these and you're going to get the hang of it over time. To be confident on camera, you want to speak to it as if you're talking to a friend on Zoom or FaceTime. That's the trick and you film those videos and then you have an editor and they're so. Ai can now edit too. It's incredible, but you either use AI or have an editor create those videos and then you space them out once a week and then you also feed it into AI, a tool like Opus Clip.

Speaker 1:

That will turn it into short form content and you do daily shorts and at the bottom of the short you can link a related video. You link the related video to the long form video and that's your full YouTube strategy. It takes you maybe a little more than half a day, including the planning, or every other month you could just do a full day. So you do some planning and then you do kind of like a longer content shoot and you film eight or nine videos, however many you need for the next two months. Um and uh, and then then you just batch them out. So it is a time commitment, but it's not as crazy as people think and I also really encourage don't just try to do a video every week. You'll burn yourself out If you're filming a new video every week. I'd highly recommend having a film shoot every month or every other month.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Tons of value, massive value. Alec, heck everybody. Alec, I have one quick question before we go. You brought up Opus Clips. Have you done any testing on utilizing just a straight Opus Clip video versus DaVinci or any kind of like other editing software like? Or is it all about the content, or does you know the AI generated stuff that Opus clips do? Is that enough, or have you seen a differential? I'm just curious.

Speaker 1:

So that's a great question. We've tested Opus against some other platforms. I don't know if we've used DaVinci, so I'd have to look into that one, but I know we've used some other platforms as well and we found that Opus created some of the best, or at least they're top rated. One of the things we really like is it ranks the videos and then it says these are the ones that we think has a virality score. What I would say is videos that aren't edited like that, that are filmed just as regular shorts do, tend to perform better. However, it's better to have something than nothing and it's not going to harm you by having those shorts. We actually do both, so we'll do shorts that are filmed kind of the classic way just pick up the camera or pick up the iPhone and record and then we'll also do the AI generated shorts and we're not sorry.

Speaker 2:

AI enhanced? I don't know yeah.

Speaker 1:

Not generated. That's a very different thing. That's not what I'd recommend.

Speaker 2:

Sorry, AI enhanced.

Speaker 1:

I stopped myself saying that, yeah, where it pulls the clips and and so, and really I would say it's probably like 20 to 30% better when you don't use the AI, but you might as well get the result If you're not. If it's the difference between not doing daily shorts and doing it, just use the AI, map it out, link it back to the original video. It's free advertising. Those videos like almost always get hundreds of views. You know not if you post too many, but if you're posting like one a day, it's YouTube's going to send it out to people and then you include the related link to your long form video. You will get views on that video. So it's basically like a free ad.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Okay, everybody at outreachcom. I'm assuming they can find you by searching your name on YouTube. What is that the best way you want them to reach out to you? I know you have a downloadable. We'll put it in.

Speaker 1:

I've got the gift as well, which is pretty easy. So it's a 19 page YouTube ad strategy. Pdf also includes links to my software and all that. It's just adoutreachcom slash gift. That's A-D-O-U-T-R-E-A-C-Hcom slash G-I-F-T, adoutreachcom slash gift and you can download the PDF and there's also a training on the next page as well.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Thank you so much, Alec, for coming on. I really appreciate sharing all the value. Until the next time, everybody, my name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Matt Bertram

Host