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We’ve all seen business ads pop up in our Facebook feed every day, and you’ve probably scrolled right past a majority of them. But what about leveraging YouTube to advertise your business, products and services? Aleric Heck of AdOutreach has done just that, helping innumerable business reach over 8 figures in sales using the YouTube ads platform.
Best of all, you don’t have to be a pro with the best equipment. The big thing is just getting out there and getting the message across. YouTube already supplies the benefits for you to take advantage of such as a reach of 1.3 billion users, expansive targeting abilities to allow you to find just the right audience using specific keywords, placement, and categorizing by user interest. Also, consider that YouTube users spend more time on the platform. That’s just more opportunity for someone to see your face and products. And if you’re wondering how much a YouTube ad will cost you, well, no worries there because you won’t get charged unless your video as is viewed and not “skipped”. All of this proves that there’s no better time to start creating YouTube ad videos than right now!
Rich Brooks: My next guest started out on YouTube 10 years ago by building the largest app review channel on the platform, AppFind , with over 400,000 subscribers. He just got rid of the power of YouTube ads five years ago and ran highly profitable campaigns for dozens of companies all over the world.
Now he helps entrepreneurs and marketers harness the power YouTube ads to grow and scale their business through ad outreach, which is the name of his company. He’s also a member of the ClickFunnels Two Comma Club. Looking forward to jump into YouTube ads with Aleric Heck. Aleric, welcome to the show.
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on, Rich. I’m excited to dive into it.
Rich Brooks: So Alaric, what caused you to start AdOutreach? I mean, after all you had been on the content creation side, running a very successful channel on YouTube. What made you pivot?
Aleric Heck: That’s a great question. And so really what I found, and obviously I started at a young age, building out a YouTube channel. I had different sponsors, different people were coming through and it was making a good amount of money. I was actually kind of in that very low times six figure year marks. I was making a good amount of money, but I knew I could have such a bigger impact.
I knew I wanted to build a business. And obviously it’s not about the money, it’s about the business. I want to build a business that has 50 people working for me and is able to impact a lot more people. And I knew that with my YouTube channel it was a really interesting opportunity for me to really just have all of my life expenses kind of paid for on a business that, I still even have some team members that run it even to this day kind of in the background. And I turned it into a four hour work week, honestly. And then it became a four hour work month, which is kind of funny. And that kind of runs in the background. And I just kind of record by audio. I’m kind of the face of that but I knew that I wanted to build something bigger.
And so I just basically stumbled upon the world of YouTube ads. This was six years ago now, about four or five years into being on YouTube. I remember I had all of these different sponsors, people who are asking us to promote their applications. At the time we became the largest app review channel, so people were asking us to sponsor their apps, feature their apps on our channel. And I remember one particular sponsor that had us do a video. We get thousands of downloads for their app and they say, “This is great. Can you post the video again? We want a thousand more downloads.” I’m like, “Well…” And as you know, Rich, that’s not exactly how it works. You can’t just necessarily repost. Or if it’s a podcast you can’t necessarily just re-upload the same podcast twice. It’s organic content.
And so what I said though is this, because I had been doing some YouTube subscriber ads to build up the channel a little bit. I’m like, what if we ran an ad for your app to people who are similar to those people that have already seen the video, but they haven’t seen the video yet, they haven’t downloaded it yet, and then just drive that to the app store page? They were a little skeptical at first. So remember this is just like six years ago. But then they approved a $500 budget, and we take $500 and in one week we got over 11,000 users for their app.
Rich Brooks: Wow. That’s a nice ROI right there.
Aleric Heck: Yeah. I didn’t even know but they were getting paid $1.00 per user as a performance marketing company. It was kind of like the middleman that had hired me, as is usually the case. – if you’re on YouTube you have that kind of performance marketing, or at the time it’s called performance marketing, but now it’s known as influencer marketing – kind of company that that’s hiring you.
I remember I was in college at the time and the guy who is my contact with the company called me up, he said, “Listen, I’ve been talking to some of our managers and we actually want you to drop out of college, fly out here to Silicon Valley, join our company.” And obviously it’s tough, but I turned it down. I said, “You know what I want to be? And I didn’t say this to him obviously, but what I was thinking is, “I want to build my own castle instead of being the knight in somebody else’s castle.” I, probably like a lot of listeners, wanted to build my own thing and be the king of my own castle, even if it starts as a smaller castle. But I can grow it myself over time.
And so that’s when I realized I had something. So I realized I could do YouTube ads for mobile apps. And so I started leveraging my contacts. I was working with – because I was a very large app review channel – I was working with a lot of the top developers. And so then I started saying, “Hey, we can now promote your apps using YouTube ads”. And so that was going really well.
The pivot point came when I essentially started to research how I could reach more people to become these app clients. So at the time I was really thinking I could just do YouTube ads for mobile apps. Obviously today – and we’ll get to this in a second – I do YouTube ads for businesses to get leads and sales, I get people into their funnel, we’ll talk about that in a second. But how I was able to pivot is I then started running YouTube ads and I got introduced to the world of click funnels and coaches and consultants. Then I joined different programs and found different mentors for myself.
And then I was running YouTube ads to get app developers to watch a webinar, to then become a client of me helping them run their YouTube that’s for their mobile apps. And people started looking at it, they’d say, “No, no, no, no, not how you’re promoting apps, how are you doing that? How are you finding with cold traffic on YouTube high paying, at the time they were agency clients, but for consulting or coaching or whatever it is, how do you find these high ticket clients using YouTube ads? And that’s when I realized I had something big.
So about three years ago now, I made a pivot, I shifted. Yes, I still have my YouTube channel. It kind of runs in the background, but I shifted. My main business originally was app outreach, I shifted it to ad outreach. And now what we do is we help businesses, and a lot of them are kind of more independent businesses. So they might be people who are consultants, coaches, course creators, people who kind of are in that space. But then we also have a lot of other people too, who are looking for leads.
So we have people who could be, it’s funny, we have even local businesses, solar companies, real estate, mortgage, people who are looking for leads and sales whether it be for a high ticket coach consultant, course-based business, or for a more traditional business for leads and sales. And also some e-com clients of course as well mixed in. And that’s what we do today is work with YouTube ads. That’s what I’m excited to talk about.
Rich Brooks: You seem a little excited Aleric, for sure. So obviously when we’re recording this, COVID is still a thing. We don’t know how long it’s going to last. It’s changed the way that we live and that we work, and we’re spending a lot more time online. We’re doing more of our online research before we go out to a store, ordering online, curbside pickup, all this sort of stuff. Just kind of curious, how has this impacted your business? Are people more interested in advertising online or are they pulling back their advertising dollars?
Aleric Heck: Yeah, that’s a great question. And so, you know what I have seen, and obviously everything going on in the world, I feel for all of the different business. Especially the local businesses. Whenever I go out to eat I always make sure to tip more and to be appreciative of the people in the area as well. I think it’s just so important.
But what I’ve realized is, for our business we actually have more people who are coming to us. And obviously I didn’t want anything like what happened to happen, but I see it as a duty that I have. If we have people who they used to spend their budget on trade shows and on business travel to go to conferences or maybe they were doing different types of ads that just aren’t really performing as well anymore and they need customers. We actually have businesses in the e-comm space, a bunch of clients who sell individual products as well. These are people that are shifting from being able to sell in stores to needing to sell online. And so there’s a wide variety of different people that are now coming to us for help with YouTube ads. And so our business has been growing. But we’ve been seeing that we’ve actually been able to impact even more people.
And so I was actually just saying before we started the podcast, people all over the world, right now, there’s multiple people that we’re helping. There’s several different examples. Like one of them was somebody who works with recruiters and is in the staffing/hiring space, that’s obviously a really big in-person kind of space, and he scaled his business even in the midst of all of this to over $100,000/month in sales and independent kind of business.
But we also have another person, Luis, and he’s actually in Latin America and he used to rely on conferences and speaking and going to basically conferences and giving speeches. And he shifted over for the first time to a webinar model. And now he’s gotten thousands of people to register for his webinar and was actually able to get back up to pre-COVID levels in terms of his sales.
It’s that type of thing that is just so exciting when you’re able to work with these different business owners. And even in the midst of difficult times, being able to help them get back on track or at least be able to do the best that they can right now to continue to scale.
And we also have clients who are even doing better than before. There’s a whole range of people, but especially online businesses, now is the time to go in and advertise. Back at the beginning when we thought this was going to be a little bit shorter, people pulled their ad budget a little bit. I think now that people are realizing you need clients, that’s when YouTube comes in and we can help
Rich Brooks: Let’s talk a little bit about this because I think most people who listen to this podcast have run Facebook ads in the past. They may have run Google ads in the past, too. Some businesses have probably even run television ads. So what are the differences between maybe those ad platforms and YouTube? You’re obviously really big on YouTube, so talk to me a little bit about the differences and how we might approach this.
Aleric Heck: That’s actually a really, really good question. Because you know what we found with YouTube ads since they have one key thing – and there’s a bunch of things that make YouTube ads good – but the one key element that really just sets it far apart is intent. People are actively on YouTube looking to learn, looking to solve a problem. There’s a study that Google did. And obviously for those who don’t know, Google actually owns YouTube. There was a study that Google did on behalf of YouTube that found that 68% of people age 18 to 48 make purchase decisions based off of YouTube videos. And obviously it’ll go down a little bit with some of the higher age brackets, but it’s still a significant amount of people.
Think about it, some people might say, “Okay, that’s kind of crazy. How many people actually make purchase decisions?” But if you look at the last time you bought an iPhone or smartphone for that matter, because it might not have been an iPhone. The last time you bought a car, the last time you made one of these bigger purchases, even a SaaS software or something that you were looking for, you probably went to YouTube to research and see what does that look like. What’s the review, what are the specs that people are showing off? And it’s the exact same thing. Even with other businesses where people are going to YouTube to solve problems. If they’re looking up how to get leads or how to get sales, or if they’re looking up a solution to a problem that they have, whatever it happens to be in, it’s actually really interesting.
This has been a big one recently, we have people who used to be fitness professionals at gyms, and they’re taking everything online these days. And if you can get in front of a workout video with a YouTube ad that says, “Hey, you still need a trainer. We want to make sure that you’re doing the right exercise, you’re eating the right things.” You get in front of somebody with an ad like that, you have intent. Somebody watching a workout video right now looking up how to lose weight. They’re looking up the best workout routines at home. And if you get in front of them with a video saying, “We’re a trainer, we actually establish the best home workout. Click the link here, you can watch a free training.” And then obviously on there you can either sell a course or you would sell the personal training, or whatever the next step is. In most cases, actually, it’s to get on a phone call for personal training. It’s essentially the ability to have intent.
So looping back, I went on a little bit of a tangent there. But the big thing is intent. People are actually watching videos right now, looking to learn and looking for a solution. And if you get in front of those videos, and you also reach the right people, that’s what’s going to make it so much more powerful.
On Facebook, the problem is you’re targeting people based on who they are. But we’ve all done it. I’m sure you’ve done it too, Rich. You’re all just kind of scrolling through on Facebook, you’re like, “Oh, that’s interesting. Maybe I’ll do it later.” Even if you opt in to something like a training, you might look at it, but on YouTube if you’re actively watching a video. I like to use the personal training one as an example because it’s so easy for everybody to understand. If you’re actually watching a video on the best workout routines, you are in the prime mode right now to be offered personal coaching.
Rich Brooks: So keeping on this whole idea of similarities, differences, a lot of people might like Google ads because all you need to do is come up with a clever headline. But beyond all the budgeting, targeting sort of stuff on Facebook, you can do video but it’s going to be really short and you’re more likely to maybe do a photo with some text around it. Somehow this feels like now we’re all of a sudden in the commercial creation business. So what kind of videos can we create that aren’t going to break the bank that are actually still effective? Because I know you’ve run a lot of different ads, you see what works, what doesn’t work. So I think that may be a barrier for some people to even try this. So what might you say to those people or what advice do you give?
Aleric Heck: Yeah. And that’s one of the biggest misconceptions I think people have. And I’m so glad that you brought this up because people think that you need to create this really high production caliber video, you have to hire the videographers and do something really complex. But the fact of the matter is that actually we’ve been accustomed – and you’ve probably noticed this – to tune that out. Think about when you’re on TV. If you’re watching a sports game or whatever you’re doing on TV and you go into the other room to get snacks if the TV commercials come on. You’ve been ingrained your whole life that you have to tune out things that feel like commercials.
And this is what I stumbled on to even six years ago when I was doing this for apps. I was taking a video where I was actually showcasing something. It almost felt like a review. Now I can’t say it wasn’t technically a review because it was a sponsored video. But it’s like, here’s all the features of the apps, here’s how you can use it, here’s how it’s going to improve your life.
Rich Brooks: So you are recording these for, in this particular case, you were recording these for your clients, right?
Aleric Heck: At the time. But now what we have is, there’s two ways. So one way I’ll talk about is if you’re more an individual service expert, coaching, consulting-style business, where you’re the face of the business, there’s one main way.
And then also if you have a product or you’re selling something on e-commerce, you have to store or something like that, there’s actually a whole other direction that I love that really ties back to what I’ve been talking about. So we’ll start with the first route.
If you’re doing the video either yourself or you’re having somebody on your marketing team do the video and you are the face of your business or you have somebody who’s a spokesperson or the face of the business, what I recommend and doing is having a video that has a hook. So you capture people’s attention as three components.
Hook, so you capture people’s attention right people, and you also want to push the wrong people away. Then educate, this is where you’re actually providing value. This is what a lot of people get wrong and you actually want to teach people something, give people a little bit of value so that they can see that you have the answer to the problem that they’re trying to solve, you have the solution. And then you have a call to action to get them off of the video and into the next steps of your funnel or booking a call with you or your team or watching a webinar or whatever the next step is.
Rich Brooks: So you have a hook, you provide value, and then a call to action.
Aleric Heck: And then a call to action. The big thing people leave out is the educate, the value, right? They’ll just say, “Hey, do you have this problem? Okay. Go sign up for my webinar” or,” Oh, go sign up for my email list.” But the problem is there’s no substance there, especially in today’s age. People are just going to skip that ad there. They need something that pulls them in. And the thing that pulls them in and is actually providing value on the ad and getting people to see, “Okay, I’m actually going to get this value. Here’s what I’m going to learn.” And so if you hook, you capture their attention, you pull them in and you educate. So you give them some real value. And then you have a call to action to take them onto the next steps of your funnel.
And what I’ve found is a natural ad where you’re doing this is going to work the best. You can start even recording with a gimble or with an iPhone. So a gimbal is like a little tool, it’s like $100. You can look it up on Amazon. It stabilizes your phone and you can use that to make the video look a little bit better but it’s still a natural looking video. You don’t even need high grade production equipment and cameras. you can add that if you want, but you could take yourself and you can even film yourself. In general you could have anybody else there, or you could even film yourself though. In some of my early, early videos, we’ve had clients just walk outside or even in their office, record their own ad by holding the camera with a gimbal, kind of selfie style and recording the hook, the educate, the call to action.
The big thing is just getting your message across. And if you’re having a video that feels like a YouTube video, because think about it, that’s what YouTubers do is they record themselves. They record a video that is basically amateur level. It’s not complete beginner that you don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s also not super professional either. It’s like that good amateur level kind of video that has your iPhone or has a gimbal where you’re it’s stabilized a little bit, but it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Rich Brooks: It sounds like what you’re saying is make it feel very authentic and make it feel very native to the platform. Which is a good advice on every platform, but certainly you should be watching YouTube videos if you’re about to create your own YouTube ad, which is going to start before the videos.
Aleric Heck: Exactly.
Rich Brooks: Which brings up a good point. Because when I think about videos, I think about very often on YouTube we get the pre-roll, which is that ad that appears. Sometimes you can’t click it through it, sometimes you can click through it. These days all I get is politicians and woodworking, those are the two things that are coming to me right now. But you get that ad to click through, those are called ‘pre-rolls’. And that’s what we’ve talked about so far. Is there any other type of ad we should consider or do you really say the emphasis should be on the pre-roll?
Aleric Heck: Yes. So the pre-roll ad is the main type of conversion ad, but there is another type of ad, YouTube discovery ad. Now those are interesting because they actually pop up alongside videos in search results and alongside other videos as a thumbnail that has a little tag that says ‘add’, but it feels like you’re naturally finding it.
So you could click on that video, you get to the watch page on YouTube where you can actually start watching the video and going through it. And it feels like you actually naturally stumble upon a video that you’re now watching. There’s pros and cons.
So in terms of the main in-stream ads that we were talking about before, those are the ads that appear in front of another video on YouTube. Those we recommend for conversion based campaign so if you’re trying to get as many direct conversions as possible. So people registering for a training, a webinar, signing up for your email list, going to the next page in your funnel. Also if it’s like e-comm or something like that, you could have a purchase conversion so you’re sending to either a landing page or Shopify where you’re trying to get them to buy.
But this other type of ad serves a really strong purpose for growing your brand, either bottom of funnel or top of funnel, if you’re trying to grow a YouTube channel and a following.
So most people who are watching this, unless you’re looking to grow YouTube channel, you’re probably going to use this as a bottom of funnel. But top of funnel, examples are we’ve worked actually with some musicians who are trying to just get as many people watching their videos as possible. We’ve had some people who teach different things on Amazon, Amazon sellers, things like that, that have done this top of funnel. But most people that we use that are doing these discovery ads versus instream. Instream people do top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, getting cold traffic, people who’ve already been to the website, people who have already converted, getting them to either purchase or book a call.
But bottom of funnel, this works really well because it gets people to see you more. So now you’re popping up when they’re on their phone or they’re on their computer, they’re seeing a suggested video that feels like a natural video and that’s when you give them content. So you can give them full training value.
One of my favorite things is kind of funny, because we’re on a podcast right now, is actually using podcasts as that. So you could actually run a podcast video as a discovery YouTube ad. So that if they’re scrolling through they might say, “Okay, wait, there’s Aleric on this podcast”, or listen to an hour of this podcast, whatever. And you can click it and then you hear a full hour of me just talking. And so with somebody or with an interview or whatever, and that value is just going to build in somebody’s mind if you’re trying to really build your brand and push, especially if it’s like a high ticket sale or a high touch sale, or B2B. It’s incredibly valuable to add that to the bottom of the funnel. Hopefully that answers that. I can dive deeper.
Rich Brooks: No, no, I think that’s great. Yeah, I think part of where people might be interested in, so we know how to create these pre-rolls, and we know basically how to create the formula of a hook, a value CTA, but now we want to get in front of the right people. So like most of these platforms, there’s a bidding process, there’s a targeting process. What are some of the best options, most effective options, you’ve seen of getting in front of people who are going to be more likely to buy, more interested in our offerings?
Aleric Heck: That’s a great question. So the way that I recommend targeting is a concept… actually, I have it behind me on the whiteboard, it’s called “3-D YouTube ads targeting”. Most people, and this goes back to Facebook versus YouTube, most people who advertise on platforms are only targeting in two dimensions. Usually they’ll talk demographics, which is kind of loosely the types of people like age.
The interesting thing on Google is you can do income bracket really well, unlike on Facebook where it’s more zip code based for income. But you have demographics like age and different things like that, you could have income, that type of thing. Location is a big one.
And then usually what they’ll do on Facebook is they’ll combine it with interests and people who like certain pages. Maybe they like Tony Robbins or they like Gary V or whatever. You’re trying to target a business audience or something like that. But the problem with that is, there’s no third dimension of when somebody’s seeing your ad. So you have who they are and you also have the demographics that fit who you’re trying to reach, but you don’t have what they’re doing right now. So your ad could appear at the perfect time, but it could also appear at like at 1:00 AM. Somebody’s getting a midnight snack and they’re just checking their phone real quick.
And so what Facebook is left to do is the algorithm fills in when the ad shows up, you don’t control that. And so you’re beholden to the algorithm. So some days it works great, other days doesn’t work that well. That’s how you get that roller coaster effect on Facebook ads, where it just goes up and down, up and down, versus on YouTube.
What we found is people actually, if they try to do it without kind of hearing – and this is why I want to talk about this – most people on their own target two different dimensions. They’ll target again, the same demographics. We’ll talk about how there’s actually some really good household income targeting that you can do, too. Especially if you have high ticket or a B2B sale that needs to reach the right people.
And then they also target videos. And this is what we talked about. So specific videos, they’ll target placements. But the problem when they’re targeting just placements is there’s only so many of them. Especially with a lot of different people running different ads, everybody’s trying to target the same placement and so they realized that there’s only so much scalability if they’re selecting individual videos. So then they go into keywords, which is what you want to use. You know, you have keywords.
So to go back to the fitness example, how to lose weight, how to get fit, best workout routines, there are keywords that have a collection of videos that people are watching. So now you’re running your ads in front of all of these different videos. But the problem here is there’s nothing targeting who that person is. So you see the problem. It’s a different two dimensions. So you have the scalability, but they’re not necessarily getting all of the conversions that they want because is that the right person?
So what we’ve done is we take the best of both and we’ve combined to make a 3D/three dimensional YouTube ads targeting, where you have demographics. And we have an emphasis, especially if it’s a higher end product/service/program/offering, B2B, that type of thing. Then we’ll do higher income brackets, if not, then that, that matters a lot less obviously, but you have the demographics of who they are, location, income, brackets, things like that. That’s the basics.
And then you have two different types of targeting. One is you’re targeting people based on the videos that they’re watching. So typically placements are a little bit too narrow. We will do some of that, but usually we’ll do keywords with a collection of videos based on the keyword they’re tagged with, we’ll do topics, we’ll take these collections of videos and then we’ll layer that with what people don’t even know you could do on YouTube. A lot of people don’t know this. With audiences you can target people, you can create custom affinity audiences. So based on basically the customer affinity audiences, it’s based on who that person is. So different keywords that describe them. So you could even put in click funnels or funnel-based keywords.
Obviously for the weight loss, let’s say you’re trying to target somebody who’s a business professional. Maybe part of your branding is you want to be able to lose weight and get in shape so that you can be a better executive or business owner or whatever. We’ve had clients like that.
So maybe you’re trying to target a business owner. So you could label it as a business owner with customer affinity. There’s customer intent based on Google searches that people have done in the past. So now they’ve searched in the past on Google and they’re going to YouTube. You could do custom URL affinities based on websites they visited in the past.
Rich Brooks: So these custom affinities are based on Google’s insane knowledge of who we are. So if we’ve watched – and I’m going to go back to let’s do gardening – so you’re into gardening, you do a lot of gardening searches, and all of a sudden you’re on YouTube, maybe for a completely different topic, but Google knows that you actually are into gardening. So suddenly they’re seed companies or travel companies or wheelbarrow companies, and they’re showing me their YouTube pre-rolls before I was going to watch a music video because they know who I am.
Aleric Heck: Exactly. Exactly. And the benefit there is when you’re combining the two of these together – and yes, you can target the individual videos – you could also do the way you described where you’re targeting the person and you’re reaching them because you know who they are.
But the most powerful type of targeting that we recommend at the beginning, and again you can expand into different areas too, is imagine combining the two of those together. You’re watching a video on the best workout routines. And we’re just using this as a really easy example for everyone to understand. Best workout routines, best way to get in shape. And they also know because the type of person they want to reach is business professionals. So they’ve asked the type of person that they cater to and so they’re targeting people who in the past have shown there’s actually literally a targeting in the market for gym and weight loss. They like that, but there’s also a business owner affinities audiences, and you combine that with somebody who is trying to watch these videos. They’re in a demographic that can afford personal training. And now you have the perfect triangle. You have all three parts of the Venn diagram and right in the center that is your ideal client and ideal buyer.
Rich Brooks: So we’ve talked a lot about targeting. We’ve talked about the creative side of things. Can you talk to me for a few minutes just about what does the bidding process look like? And I know that there’s some misunderstanding about whether you get charged for the pre-rolls or when you actually do get charged. So if you can speak to that a little bit too, that’d be great.
Aleric Heck: Yeah, that’s a great question. So the way that it works and the way that the pre-roll ads work as well is you are bidding in different ways with CPV, which is cost per view. Those are kind of classic YouTube ads. Those have been around for a very long time, since, you know, when I was talking about doing these, five, six years ago. Those are you bid when somebody watches 30 seconds of your ad. You pay when somebody watches 30 seconds of your ad, so they can skip after five seconds and you only pay if somebody watches more than 30 seconds of your ad, which is incredibly valuable. I mean, that’s an incredibly valuable component to YouTube is paying for people genuinely interested, and that’s a CPV ad.
And so you’re literally only bidding a certain amount per view. So you might bid, let’s say 10 or 15 cents or 25 cents, depending on how valuable that view is for you per view. But that’s a 30 second view.
Rich Brooks: So if somebody stops at 29 seconds, that’s not a view?
Aleric Heck: It’s not a view. Exactly. They skip it. And the crazy thing too, by the way – we might get into this in a second – but the same rules apply for your retargeting ads. So if you’re running retargeting ads again and again and people skip those ads, they’ve still seen your face and are still being retargeted on.
Rich Brooks: And what happens if, so I’m sure somebody has already figured this out, they make a 29 second ad so nobody can skip to the end. YouTube must have a plan to protect themselves from that, right?
Aleric Heck: So, yes. So the technical, so I say the 30 seconds, but I just want to clarify that there are three main ways that you get charged.
So one is somebody watches more than 30 seconds of the ad. So if they skip between five and 29, then you don’t pay. If they’re just watching it, they also get paid if they click the link. So even if they click the link and it’s earlier on, or if the ad is less than 30 seconds, if they finished the ad. So if the ad runs all the way through, those are the three ways that YouTube gets paid. Usually what that means is that’s also why we want a longer than 30 second ad. You want to provide value after 30 seconds, it all costs the same. So you might as well have a three, four, five minute long ad that gives more educational value, has multiple calls to action, so if they’re ready to click the link early on you’re not delaying that process. But you’re giving people enough value that it’s a no brainer to click when you say ‘click the link’.
Rich Brooks: Is there an actual link that is being shown, or is it just they click anywhere in the video and that’s the equivalent of the link? When I hear the word ‘link’, I’m thinking of hypertext words. But that’s not what we’re talking about here, or are we?
Aleric Heck: So there is a link at the bottom left hand side of the screen if it’s in landscape mode on desktop or on your phone. So it’ll appear right at the bottom left and they’re able to click it. And so it’ll say something like, “sign up today, free reports, webinar, buy today, enroll today, book a call”, whatever it happens to be, whatever that next step is. And it’ll say that at the bottom and then that will go and link.
If it’s on mobile vertically, it might be underneath the video. Just for placement regularly, it would be too small.
Rich Brooks: Yeah. But if you click anywhere in that video, is that the equivalent of clicking on the link?
Aleric Heck: Yeah, it won’t. If you click anywhere on the video, it won’t necessarily link to the next step. It would highlight. If you click on the video it’s going to say, “Visit advertiser at top”. And it’ll also on the bottom side. Well, on mobile it’ll say that. I’m on the bottom side though is where the main link is, it’s the bottom left of the screen.
And then also on desktop, they also have a little banner along the right hand side of the screen that will also have, you could put a little banner ad with yourself or whatever, and then it’ll have the button again displayed on the side as well.
Rich Brooks: So you bring up an interesting point. I have actually been watching a lot of YouTube on TV lately as I’m learning new skills about woodworking. Could I mention that one more time please? But I just turn on the TV and I just watched like two hours of woodworking videos. And it’s not easy to click on an ad when you’re doing this. And I’ve also noticed that there’s a difference between whether I’m watching something on YouTube when that YouTube is through Roku, versus whether it’s my Samsung TV. Everything seems to have a slightly different experience. As an advertiser, can you control the platform that your ad shows on, too? So I can say I only want it on mobile and desktop and not on TV or vice versa.
Aleric Heck: Yeah. One of the things we recommend to most of our clients is to not run ads on TV. And if they do run ads on TV, really only having it be the retargeting branding style ads, just because it’s so hard to get actual conversions on the TV.
And so oftentimes because we have so many clients that run this, oftentimes the budget is wasted on top of funnel. Because most of the clients that we’re working with, although we have had some, we had a big bed in the box mattress kind of half a billion dollar kind of company or whatever, and they’re doing things a little bit differently as one of our clients.
But most of our clients are smaller businesses like consultants or they’re building things up on their own, or they have a course or they’re doing personal training, or they’re trying to get leads or phone calls, or a nutritional business or whatever. Obviously a wide array of people. But a lot of people in kind of more smaller businesses, and for that I just think that the TV ads of today right now are kind of not the best use of the ad dollars. Definitely top of funnel, possibly bottom of funnel. If you have some targeting ads that are testimonials, those can be pretty valuable to play on the TV. But we do a little bit of that, but for top of funnel, I don’t recommend it.
Rich Brooks: That makes a lot of sense. Because I think when we’re on our phones, tablets or desktops, we’re leaning in. And when we’re watching TV we’re leaning back, and that alone can make a big difference.
Aleric Heck: Exactly.
Rich Brooks: So I was perusing your LinkedIn profile before we jumped on the call today, and I saw that you have this YouTube video ads strategy session. How does that work if someone who’s listening now might want to work with you directly?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s a great question.
Rich Brooks: I’m sure you like that question. I totally came up with it because I was seeing that, but you must love this question, right?
Aleric Heck: It’s a softball, I love it.
Rich Brooks: And you did not ask me for it, by the way.
Aleric Heck: Exactly. Yeah. I didn’t know what you were going to ask next.
Rich Brooks: I’ve never met this man before in my life.
Aleric Heck: Exactly, exactly. But yeah, no. So basically the way that it works is I actually have an advising team of our YouTube ads advisors on my team – multiple of them – that are able to get on a strategy call for 45 minutes, actually dive into your business, learn how you’re marketing right now, exactly what your business is and then build out a roadmap and a strategy for YouTube ads and incorporating that. And if that’s a good fit, then from there we may also invite you to become a client and walk you through what that looks like and what our program looks like.
But what I want to do is have it be a value based call where we’re actually learning more about your business. Mapping out what things look like, consultative style call, and actually have it like a strategy session on how you can use YouTube ads to you get more leads and sales. So yeah, you’re can absolutely, if you’re a loving what you hear right now, you can go to adoutreach.com/apply. That’s A D O U T R E A C H Dot com slash apply. And then find a time with our team and we really want to dive in and map out what this looks like.
And the other thing too is, if there’s different things that you should do, even whether it’s working with us or not, we want to build out what that roadmap looks like, because I’m just such a huge believer in YouTube ads. And now is the time to really just get on the platform so you can get consistent leads, sales, and people seeing you that have intent. So that’s awesome.
Rich Brooks: Fantastic. Is there anything we didn’t talk about today that you feel like people really should know if they’re just getting started or excited about getting started with YouTube ads?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. I think we covered the big things that you need to know for sure. You started as having that natural video, actually making sure that you have a hook. Educate call to action, actually providing that value. So the educator value section of the ad actually providing value to somebody so that they know that you’re the person or you’re the business that can actually provide that solution that they need.
Then when it comes to the targeting, three dimensional YouTube ads targeting, making sure you’re reaching the right person at the right time with the right message. That’s the key. If you get all three of those things right, then those are your ideal buyers and customers and clients.
And the thing that we didn’t really mention as much was retargeting ads. Obviously we recommend kind of setting some of these things up. But retargeting on YouTube is so valuable because you can just show up again and again. Keep showing up every time somebody is on YouTube, they’re going to watch a video and now they’re seeing your face. But remember you’re only paying if they watch 30 seconds or more of the ad, which is just so valuable.
And so it’s the same thing with retargeting ads. If you have somebody, you could keep retargeting them again and again, that might not be the day that they’re ready to take action. But if they see you every time that they’re loading up YouTube, the day they are ready, they’ll see your face. And they’ll either book a call, or they’ll purchase, or they’ll do whatever that next step is.
Rich Brooks: This has been great. Aleric, thank you so much for sharing all your expertise with us today. One more time, where can we find you online?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on, Rich. And you guys can find me at adoutreach.com. We’ve got links to our webinar, we’ve got links to all the different resources that we have. And then obviously at outreach.com/apply, you can book a strategy call.
We also have a free Facebook group, YouTube Ads for Entrepreneurs. You can look that up. It’s got a picture of my face, so you shouldn’t be able to miss it, and you can go in there and join that group to get some additional free content and trainings.
Rich Brooks: Fantastic. Thanks again. Appreciate it, Aleric.
Aleric Heck: Thanks so much.
Show Notes:
Aleric Heck is a YouTube expert who has mastered the art of leveraging YouTube video ads to help his clients generate leads and accumulate over 8 figures in sales. Hurry over to his website to view his free training video, or consider joining his free Facebook group.
Rich Brooks is the President of flyte new media, a web design & digital marketing agency in Portland, Maine, and founder of the Agents of Change. He’s passionate about helping small businesses grow online and has put his 20+ years of experience into the book, The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing.