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Tips on how to use video ads to increase leads and sales with Aleric Heck
- Our clients that are adding YouTube video ads to their sphere of marketing and advertising, is they’re seeing that’s what’s currently providing the biggest return on ad spend because of the fact that it has that rich media that people can watch.
- But when you start out with YouTube, we’ve done a lot of testing, natural actually works better.
- We found the best ads on YouTube, especially for people that are the face of a business, if you’re a coach, consultant, course, something like that, is to have a two to a five-minute-long ad.
- If you want your clients to succeed the best, I really, genuinely believe this, you have to give a holistic view of what they need to do to succeed because people don’t know what they don’t know. You can’t just promise somebody that it’s a silver bullet if you to do just this one thing.
- The difference-maker between a campaign that can do good, or a campaign can do phenomenal, is how deep you go with your targeting.
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Share this episode: HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
YouTube video ads: If a picture’s worth 1000, or 100 words, what is a video worth? A million?
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Doug: Well, welcome back listeners to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today, we’re going to talk about all things YouTube advertising, and how to get the highest ROI from your online advertising.
Doug: Our guest in the studio today is Aleric Heck. He was a teenager when he first started his YouTube channel, and fast forward 10 years, he’s now a leading expert in YouTube ads and runs Ad Outreach, which is a leading firm in the space. Aleric not only teaches the strategy, but he does it himself, generating over $2 million a year in his own YouTube ads. He is a member of the coveted ClickFunnels Two Comma Club, and his YouTube programs and ads help coaches, consultants, and course creators generate leads and sales from YouTube ads.
Doug: If you listen later in the episode, he’s going to talk about the 3D approach, and why most people who are running YouTube ads fail because they’re only using one particular channel. He’s helped his clients generate over eight figures in sales from YouTube. Today, Aleric is here to pull back the curtain, and we’re going to have a great discussion, I think you’ll enjoy it, and show you how we crack the code with YouTube ads, and how you can do the same. So, welcome Aleric to the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast today.
Doug: Hey Aleric, super excited to have you on the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast today.
Aleric Heck: Excellent. Well, thank you for having me on, Doug, I really appreciate it.
Doug: Here we are, having an audio interview in, as you discussed before we started recording, in the year of … or, the decade of video.
Aleric Heck: Absolutely, absolutely.
Doug: Do you want to just share what your vision is for 2020, and this next few years moving forward, as you guys focus, extremely, with intent, in the video sector?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely, thanks, Doug.
Aleric Heck: I would say that my main area of focus and expertise is with YouTube ads, but it’s not just YouTube that is going to be the focus going into 2020. It’s a total change in the advertising that breaks through to people and breaks through the noise and clutter. Right now, there’s a lot of people relying on image ads, even text ads on Google, but image ads on Facebook and people are just seeing the marketplace get more and more crowded. One swipe and you’ve gone on Facebook. One image, you’re scrolling through a feed.
Aleric Heck: What we’re seeing as a shift in 2020 is to video advertising. It’s essentially the same as taking the power of video ads, which in the past, used to be just relegated to TV commercials, right? Taking the power of video ads, and having it be a targeted platform so you can reach, specifically, your target market, with a video, so people can actually become educated in what your solution is, what you provide. Actually ingraining yourself in their brain, instead of just an image that’s one and done.
Aleric Heck: If a picture’s worth 1000, or 100 words, what is a video worth? A million.
Doug: Sure, yeah.
Aleric Heck: Video is really what’s going to break through the noise.
Doug: For our listeners, when you say running advertising, or ads on YouTube, how does that compare if they’re already running ads, let’s say, with Google AdWords?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. It plugs right into the Google AdWords platform, so that’s where you would run your YouTube ads. I’m also not saying that you want to replace, necessarily, your search, or display, or Facebook ads completely with video, and with YouTube. But, what we’re seeing is, the clients that we have, that are adding YouTube to their sphere of marketing and advertising, is they’re seeing that’s what’s currently providing the biggest return on ad spend, because of the fact that it has that rich media that people can watch. They actually get excited, they learn, they’re educated from the ad itself.
Aleric Heck: So, you’re not just getting traffic, you’re warming people on the ad and you’re actually getting people who are more likely to buy, further down your funnel.
Doug: What’s the strategy in terms of moving into video? I mean, do you take a different approach? You talked a little bit, I’ve heard, and I’ve been through your website, and I’ve been talking to some of your team, about education. Can you walk us through a content strategy?
Doug: If somebody’s listening going okay, that sounds interesting, I’ve never done a video before. I’ve been doing image ads or text ads. What’s the different strategy you would take with creating video ads?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. I’m glad that you asked that, as well, Doug, because it’s one of those things that we’ve actually figured out the formula for a video ad that can [inaudible 00:04:21], so we can touch on that in a second. There are three main components.
Aleric Heck: On a broader level, one of the biggest misconceptions that people have is they think that they need a big production studio, really fancy, hiring videographers, all of this. You can do that, especially as you see success on the platform, you might want to increase the production value. But when you start out with YouTube, we’ve done a lot of testing, natural actually works better. You could take an iPhone, and Gimbal, and record a video of yourself, walking through your solution. Especially if you’re on the Internet or online marketing space, where you might be the face of your brand, your product, your service, whatever you’re selling. You can really get in front of people in a natural way, and paint yourself as the expert.
Aleric Heck: One of the big things people get wrong when they start advertising on YouTube is they either try to really build out a huge production so that it almost turns out a little bit corny if you don’t do it right. But on the other side, they just create a 30-second ad, and it doesn’t actually teach anybody anything. It’s more like, okay, go opt-in here. We found the best ads on YouTube, especially for people that are the face of a business, if you’re a coach, consultant, course, something like that is to have a two to a five-minute-long ad, that has three components.
Aleric Heck: It has a hook, so you capture people’s attention. You want to actually pull the right person in, but also push the wrong person away. You have 30-seconds on YouTube … and some of your listeners may not know this, but you have 30-seconds on YouTube before you even pay a single thing. You only pay on YouTube if somebody watches 30-seconds of ad, so you want to pull the right person in. But if you could get the wrong person to skip your ad, you don’t pay for them.
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Share this episode: HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
YouTube video ads: If a picture’s worth 1000, or 100 words, what is a video worth? A million?
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Doug: Sure, that’s a great plan.
Aleric Heck: Exactly, exactly. You want to pull the right person in but push the wrong person away so you don’t pay for them. That’s the hook.
Aleric Heck: Then, what a lot of people miss out on is education. You actually want to provide value, get them excited about what you have to offer. This is where, instead of waiting until somebody opts into your funnel, you provide value on the ad, then you’re going to make it irresistible for them to sign up for whatever that next step is. Whether it’s a webinar, VSL, even purchasing a product itself.
Aleric Heck: Then, you have a call-to-action, that’s fairly simple. That’s to get them off the video, take the next steps.
Doug: Yeah. That totally makes sense. I mean, I’ve been following a number of people that are going down the video trail, and you can tell the difference between the guys who are doing overproduced and scripted, and it’s just a two to a five-minute ad, as opposed to adding value.
Doug: I think it was Frank Kern that said, “Hey, what if we actually provided value to people in our advertising?” So they actually got something, and I guess that’s what you were talking about here. By educating people, they actually get value. So if they never came back ever again, you will have enriched their lives, and made their life better.
Aleric Heck: Absolutely, that’s exactly right. I’m a huge fan of Frank Kern and everything that’s he’s done. He’s applied that very well to Facebook advertising and including a lot of that in the value that you have, and the ad copy, and the text.
Aleric Heck: So, what we’re doing is we’re taking those same principles, and we’re applying it to the video itself, on YouTube. That’s what we’ve found works really well.
Doug: Is there an industry that is ripe for the picking, if you will, or low-hanging fruit to use video ads, or is there a price point or a product? Like, is there a sweet spot right now in the industry?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. There is … Obviously, we work with a wide range of different clients and have a lot of success across the board. But really, the sweet spot that I’ve found is in the course, coaching, consulting, service provider, higher ticket space. Also, courses as well, being included in there.
Aleric Heck: Oftentimes, what we’ve found is the business owner is a big part of the brand. You have some type of coaching, maybe you have some type of service that you’re providing, or you have a course that you’ve built out … Especially for courses, that’s video content already. Maybe you’re trying to get people to go to a webinar, or a VSL, or something along those lines. Having video at the front, that you as the face of your business can be a big part of, being a part of that video in a natural way, is really not just going to build you direct conversions, it’s going to build up your brand, but it’s also going to get the people that come into your funnel much more likely to opt-in, and even purchase, down the line, because you get that initial touchpoint from the ad, you don’t have to wait until they opt-in.
Aleric Heck: You’re providing value, and showing who you are as a person, and business, from the ad point itself.
Doug: When you’re saying high ticket sales, what do you consider, what are your parameters for a high ticket sale?
Aleric Heck: Yeah, traditionally on the high ticket end, anything more than $3000. Usually, people talking high ticket are talking $5000 and up, we’ve seen some $15000 and $20000. Usually, between $5000 and $10000.
Doug: Yeah.
Aleric Heck: You can also fall into the same range if you do $3000 to $5000. But courses themselves, and there’s a lot of people, $997. We’ve had clients sell millions of dollars in $997 courses. It’s a different type of business model, because it doesn’t require a phone call or things like that, but you get those ads dialed in … We have clients, with the row ads, with YouTube, a lot higher than what they were seeing on Facebook, essentially.
Doug: So you brought up an interesting point, in terms of the two price points and a call-to-action. Walk us through the direction that you take somebody, just the call-to-action? You’ve got the video, you’ve got it targeted properly, we’ll come back and you can share some tips on targeting. But, with a high-value item, $5000 or up, or $10000, as you said, it’s going to require a phone call?
Aleric Heck: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Doug: What are the calls to action you’d generally recommend? Say, less than $3000, and more than $3000? Within the video piece itself.
Aleric Heck: Absolutely.
Aleric Heck: Less than $3000, obviously I would recommend people would sell a course, or obviously we can get into products as well if we’d like. Let’s say it’s a course or some type of package that’s less than $3000, it’s automated, there’s not a lot of fulfillment going into that. Then, what you’re able to do is sell an automated course, either off the back of a VSL or a webinar.
Doug: Okay.
Aleric Heck: If it’s automated, we’ve found an ever-webinar, or an evergreen webinar, works best because that way, you can actually have the full … not just an hour, usually we’d even recommend a little bit longer than an hour, to sell, answer questions, build all of that out, build out the value stack, following the Russel Bronson “perfect webinar” model.
Aleric Heck: Running the YouTube ad to the webinar. Obviously, on the back end, you have emails. Obviously, you’re very big with emails and opting in, and going into that. You have emails being a big part of your strategy, but then you also have retargeting YouTube ads, closing the loop, bringing people back to that sales page, consistently. We can talk about retargeting ads soon, too. I’ll tease that a little bit, that’s one of the biggest deals in marketing right now, is YouTube retargeting.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s a great thing for pretty much all your marketing. I noticed that you’re a member of the ClickFunnels Two Comma Club.
Aleric Heck: Yes.
Doug: Yeah, I’m a huge Russel Brunson fan, love the perfect webinar model. You’re saying okay, use the video ads, the hook, get them to listen, educate them, call-to-action, get them into a sales funnel of some sort, into a webinar, but done automated.
Doug: For somebody that’s doing a higher-end product, you mentioned phone calls. How does that flow work?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. What I would recommend with that is … Now, this is where you can test between a VSL and a webinar. I recommend webinar for the course side of things, but for a higher ticket, it’s kind of like a pendulum that swings back and forth. Sometimes, a webinar is a little bit hotter, sometimes VSLs are a little bit hotter.
Aleric Heck: For us, we actually have both, and we’re constantly split testing that. We see different things, with traffic that comes in through a VSL. That’s a video sales letter, of course, which is a 15, 20-minute no-fluff version of a webinar. Instead of having all the build-up, countless case studies, it’s more of getting right down to brass tacks. Here are the principles, here’s how it works and then inviting people to book a call. On the webinar, obviously you have a little bit more fluff, it has advantages. The disadvantage, of course, is if they have less time, they’re more so going to want to watch a VSL style. Sending them from that YouTube ad to either a VSL or a webinar.
Aleric Heck: We’ve found what works best is if the market is a little bit less sophisticated, sending them to a webinar. Because the people that are a little bit less sophisticated in the market, and it doesn’t pertain to that person, it’s just how sophisticated is the market.
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Share this episode: HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
YouTube video ads: If a picture’s worth 1000, or 100 words, what is a video worth? A million?
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Doug: Sure.
Aleric Heck: They’re going to actually spend time, and watch a longer webinar, really sink in, and webinars will convert better, at the end of the day.
Aleric Heck: But, if the market’s really saturated … We have a lot of clients who, for instance, they have high ticket programs teaching people how to sell on Amazon, or how to build up their own businesses. We also have people who the teaching in the health and fitness space, super-saturated market. They’ll do a little bit better by sending people from a YouTube ad, to an instant-access, 15 to 20 minute no fluff video training that then invites them to book a phone call.
Doug: Being that you’re helping your clients to develop this strategy, this video strategy on YouTube, do you provide any assistance or guidance on the backend, to make sure that the … we call it the cookie crumb trail. They see the video ad, they go to a VSL. Do you help them with the VSL, or give them some guidance in that so it matches? So people don’t feel disconnected from the brand?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. We give guidance on that side of things. The VSL, the webinar, the way to set up the funnel, the retargeting, we even have recommendations of certain types of emails that you want to send, and things along those lines. It really is all-encompassing, in terms of there’s a holistic approach.
Aleric Heck: So if you just focus on one thing, especially if you have … If you want your clients to succeed the best, I really, genuinely believe this, you have to give a holistic view of what they need to succeed because people don’t know what they don’t know. You can’t just promise somebody that it’s a silver bullet if you to do this one thing.
Aleric Heck: You need to say, hey, YouTube ads, this is going to be 80% of the solution. Right now, your Facebook ads maybe aren’t working as well, they’re less scalable, whatever it happens to be. But YouTube ads are going to be that 80%, but then helping them with the other pieces. Like adjusting a VSL, like actually making sure you have the right emails that go in sequence. Even offer help, too. We have people who come in and we tell them, “Listen, you should be doubling your prices, because it’s worth that, and also you’re going to have more money to invest back into ads, and to scale and grow.”
Aleric Heck: I genuinely believe in the holistic approach. We take that with clients. Also, when we have clients who have their own clients, I recommend that they always take a holistic approach to help other business owners.
Doug: Let’s go back and talk about retargeting ads. You said you were going to dangle it out there, that you wanted to talk about it. Just share with us what you guys are doing, and what you’re excited about in the retargeting space for videos?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. This is one of my favorite things to talk about as well because it really is one of the biggest deals in advertising and marketing right now, are YouTube retargeting ads.
Aleric Heck: I actually did the math. Between us and our clients, we don’t pay for over 90% of the impressions our retargeting ads get on YouTube. Over 90%! Those of you listening right now, you might be thinking, how is that possible, that you don’t pay for these retargeting impressions? The secret is, remember how we talked about, on YouTube, you only pay if somebody watches 30 seconds of your ad?
Doug: Yeah.
Aleric Heck: The same rules apply for your retargeting ads. Think about what that means. That means that, if you have people who come into your ecosystem, they opt-in, whether they came from a YouTube ad, or even a Facebook ad, Google search, whatever it happens to be, even a podcast, whatever it happens to be, wherever people come from, you can target them again and again on YouTube. If they skip your retargeting ad before 30 seconds, you don’t even pay for a single penny.
Doug: Yeah. In what other mediums do you have that opportunity? Obviously, you do with Google search, they can see your ad, see your ad, and not click.
Aleric Heck: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Doug: But if you think of traditional space, even the stuff I do with email, if you’re sending internal stuff, that’s fine. But, if you’re buying ads, or you’re running ads any place else, you pay for … Well, if you’re doing a CPC, you’re not. Yeah, that totally makes sense.
Aleric Heck: Exactly, exactly.
Aleric Heck: The other benefit, too … and this is the benefit over CPC because obviously CPC is the other area where you can get those, especially, impressions for free. The benefit though, too, with YouTube is you’re actually getting your face in front of people. Again, as I said, the low-hanging fruit. This is not the only thing that’s worked well, obviously, we have a lot of products that are scaling really well. But if you’re the face of a business, imagine the power of getting your face to a pop-up in front of people again, and again, and again, every time they open up YouTube. Even if they’re skipping that ad, those could be the touchpoints that you need, right?
Aleric Heck: Everybody talks about, you need that seven to 10 touchpoints before people ultimately purchase. You’re getting those touchpoints, even when people skip an ad because they’re still seeing your face.
Aleric Heck: One thing I found interesting … I was talking with some people who do a lot of advertising on Facebook, spend vast amounts of money a month. They were asking, “How long is your retargeting buckets, or your audiences, on YouTube?” I told them, I use the max. It’s 540 days, we don’t stop retargeting people. On Facebook, you’ll find 30 days, 90 days. People come into our system, we’ll just keep retargeting them. We had, just a couple weeks ago, somebody who had been on our retargeting sequence, they said they had been seeing us every week for over a year. You have that ability when you’re only paying for people that actually view the ad. You can keep popping up, again and again.
Aleric Heck: It’s funny, I have so many stories. People hop on and they’re like, “My girlfriend was asking who you are because every time we try to watch YouTube together your face pops up.” It’s funny, right? You just keep showing up, again and again, until they’re ready to buy.
Doug: That’s funny. Is there a client story you’d like to share, where you helped somebody walk through this process? Maybe they came from, somebody that you’re working with who was already spending money on advertising but on a different platform?
Aleric Heck: Mm-hmm (affirmative), absolutely. Absolutely.
Aleric Heck: I’ve got a really, really good example of that. Obviously, I have a few examples that I can dive into. One I’d like to give, and this particularly is a course creator. David Edmonds, a fantastic person. He is in a very specific niche. The reason I give this is, a lot of people, you might be listening right now and you’re like, would it work for my niche? Maybe it’s a smaller niche, or whatever it happens to be. David Edmonds literally sells to artists who are selling at craft fairs, and he teaches them how to sell their art online. Talk about a small niche. It’s also people who, typically, might not have as much money for programs and things like that, so it’s a small niche, what some would consider a very hard market to tap into.
Aleric Heck: What we were able to do is get him to create his YouTube ad. He’d already been doing some, obviously, Facebook ads, selling his course. His YouTube ads, we were able to scale up to over $2000 a day of ad spend, at over a 3.1X ROS.
Doug: There you go. Yeah, spend $2, get $6. I would send you money all day long, with those numbers.
Aleric Heck: Exactly.
Aleric Heck: Another good example as well, and this is for the higher ticket, too. I don’t want to just talk about courses. Obviously the reason I said David is just because of how niche his market is. But, we have another client, a MOD, and he is just absolutely incredible. He helps people who are in consulting, basically, build up their own consulting companies, versus being a part of McKinsey, or one of the bigger consulting companies, going out on their own.
Doug: Yeah.
Aleric Heck: He had been doing a lot with Facebook, Facebook kept shutting him down. I mean, I know a lot of you listening might be aware of that, Facebook has a big ban hammer.
Aleric Heck: He came to us because he had a problem, Facebook was shutting him down. He really only wanted to replace his traffic, or just have the ability to not get shut down anymore. Obviously, that was the catalyst, but what he ended up getting was a platform that far surpassed what Facebook was doing.
Aleric Heck: Nowadays, he’s spending 80% … We just did 2020 planning with him, he’s one of our longer-standing clients. He’s spending 80% of his budget on YouTube, he’s really only spending the 20% on Facebook to get the very low-hanging fruit. He actually just had his first $100,000 month, which had alluded him for a very long period of time. He went from $50K a month on Facebook, to two months after launched YouTube ads, to $100K a month. We’re going to scale him up even further.
Aleric Heck: Funniest story, too. He was in Best Buy, for Black Friday, so this was a little bit ago. He was in Best Buy after he started running some of his ads. Somebody tapped him on the shoulder, and they…
Doug: They recognized him.
Aleric Heck: Yeah, they recognized him. They’re like, “Are you the guy from YouTube?” He’s like-
Doug: That’s funny.
Aleric Heck: “Maybe, who do you think I am?” They said, “Ahmad.” He’s like, “Wow.”
Doug: That’s cool.
Aleric Heck: It just really shows, and illustrates, the power that has.
Doug: So you brought up advertising bans. I’m super excited about the advertising bans because obviously I help a lot of my clients reach huge audiences through email, which hasn’t been affected. It’s dependent on the publisher.
Doug: How do Facebook ads work? Or, how do the advertising bans, rather, affect YouTube, being that Google controls that? Google’s come out and said, anything that’s financially related is super scrutinized, weight loss is super scrutinized, you can’t run ads for CBD, you can’t run ads for cryptocurrency. Are those same bans in effect on YouTube ads?
Aleric Heck: It’s very different on YouTube ads. I will say that, again, this could change, and I’m not saying it’s not going to change in any way.
Aleric Heck: But, with the way that it’s done, it’s a lot fairer on YouTube and Google, in that Facebook ads … You hear almost every day nowadays if you’re in a Mastermind, or a Facebook group with hundreds of people, at least every week, somebody is getting banned on Facebook.
Doug: Yeah.
Aleric Heck: It’s like, every week, it’s like clockwork.
Aleric Heck: On YouTube, what you have as a benefit is sometimes an ad might get disapproved, but I haven’t had … Obviously, we’ve had hundreds of clients. I think we had one person who has ever gotten suspended because of any policy violation.
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Share this episode: HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
YouTube video ads: If a picture’s worth 1000, or 100 words, what is a video worth? A million?
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Doug: Okay.
Aleric Heck: We’ve had people who, they didn’t pay off their credits cards so things bounced, and we were able to get those back or whatever. Sometimes, Google has some issues with the finance side of things. On an actual policy violation, they don’t shut your whole account down, as Facebook does.
Doug: Oh. Yeah, Facebook does that for sure. You listen to Frank Kern talk about it, and he says he doesn’t even bother. We’ve had that experience with clients, have a handful of credit cards, and if one gets shut down … They don’t tell you what you’ve violated, they just said, “Hey, out of this 500-page document, you’ve done something wrong.”
Aleric Heck: Yeah.
Doug: It’s like, can you give me a hint? What I’m seeing now, I just saw it this week, I think I published it on Twitter, was that Spotify is saying no to political ads. A lot of these guys are trying to reach an audience, and the rules keep shifting as you said. At this point, YouTube, you said, is a little bit more generous, is that a fair?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. I’ll give an example, as well. I’m not condoning using this type of verbiage in an ad, obviously. We actually advise against being too out there, in your claims and what you say. We’ll always advise a little bit more of a conservative approach, just because we don’t want to run into issues.
Aleric Heck: We’ve got clients, one of them, his hook for his ad is, “How would you like to make $1000 a day on ClickBank?” We have another one, who does, “How would you like to make $997 commissions on every sale?” We have one who talks about how your weight is affecting your love life. I mean, these are things … Again, I don’t say that you should use that hook, there are probably ones that are a little more conservative to use, but those are running right now, in some cases thousands of dollars a day, on YouTube. You couldn’t touch that with a 10-foot pole on Facebook. So, that just shows what that difference is.
Doug: Yeah.
Aleric Heck: Yeah.
Doug: Let’s go back, and circle back to something that we talked about really early on, and that was targeting. We talked about retargeting. So let’s talk about the opportunities that exist for marketers to go in there and say, okay, I know who my customer avatar is, I know who I want to target. They come to you and say, let’s go get these guys. How does that look?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. In terms of going out and building out your targeting for your YouTube ad strategy, we take a 3D targeting approach. This is one of the biggest misconceptions, the biggest things people get wrong when they start going into ads, they think the only way to advertise is through placements. Unfortunately … I’m not going to say specific names or anything like that, but there’re some courses, all they talk about is running placement ads, they don’t touch on anything else. That’s clouded a lot of people’s minds in how YouTube ads work because they buy the wrong course, they do the wrong thing, and they’re not actually learning about these strategies.
Aleric Heck: What we’ve found is the best way to run an ad is to take a three-dimensional approach. Most people on YouTube, they just target demographics, and then what I would call videos, intent, what somebody’s actually watching. That can be powerful, and you can get really good results with that. But the best way to get results, the highest return on ad spend, especially in a higher ticket space, is to add in the third dimension, and that is affinities and interests.
Aleric Heck: Facebook, you really have affinities and demographics. Most people, on YouTube, they’ll do demographics and intent, videos. We do all three, we want to take a 3D approach. So demographics, who this person is, where they are, we like to target higher-income earners. Then, you layer that with intent, the videos’ somebody’s watching. You can do that with topics, keywords, specific placements. What video are they watching right now that shows they’re in the market for what you have to offer? Then, you add the third layer, and this is what people leave out. This is the secret sauce I want to share with everybody who is listening here, are the affinity and interest targeting.
Aleric Heck: Imagine being able to target somebody whose watching a video right now that, let’s say, has to do with weight loss, or watching a fitness video. But then you layer on top of it the fact that you have the demographics, so they’re in a higher income bracket, and you get the interesting and affinity, they’ve been on other fitness workout websites before. They’ve done certain Google searches, Google has put them in the bucket of somebody who’s in the market for fitness programs, in the market for a gym, whatever it happens to be. You’re now layering, you’re building, essentially, a triangle of who is this perfect, ideal customer, that is not only looking something up right now, they have the interest and the in-market intent to buy, and they fit the demographics that you want. That’s the person that you want to target and reach with your ads, that’s a 3D targeting approach that we have to the marketing.
Doug: How deep can you go with the affinities? I know on Facebook, for example, that it’s very easy to say, okay … Let’s go back to talking about Frank Kern. He’s getting lots of PR here today. I can run ads to people who like Frank Kern, on Facebook.
Aleric Heck: Yeah.
Doug: So that’s super specific, so if they like his aggressive, in your face approach, then I’ll work well with them because that’s my approach, as opposed to somebody whose more conservative. How deep can you go with affinities targeting on YouTube?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. You can go very deep, and this is what people don’t know. This is what we help our clients with, to be honest. This is the difference-maker between a campaign that can do good, or a campaign can do phenomenal, is how deep you go with your targeting.
Aleric Heck: There are a few different ways to do it a base level way is to build what’s called a custom affinity, where you can actually put in names. Google, with their machine learning, if you put in the word, the keywords Frank Kern, it’ll know based on tags that somebody’s watched on other YouTube videos, maybe by Frank Kern, websites, Google searches. But, you can go another layer deeper. That’s on the surface.
Aleric Heck: You can actually target what’s called a Custom URL audience on YouTube, where you can target people based on websites they’ve visited in the past, or are most likely to have visited. It’s either a look-alike, or the websites they themselves have visited, so it’s kind of a hybrid. When you build this out, you can actually put Frank Kern’s website, Sam Ovens’ website. We do that, right? You put the websites that they could have been visiting, consulting.com, whatever it is, and you can build out a profile of the people that have either gone to that site or have gone to similar sites.
Aleric Heck: Google Analytics covers the vast majority of websites on the Internet. If it’s plugged into Google Analytics, you can use this targeting method.
Doug: Yeah. That’s amazing. In terms of scalability … I shared a little bit with you, that we’ve had challenges scaling in the social space, the paid social space like Facebook, in the past, where we can get to a certain threshold. We’ve used very deep, custom audiences, we’ve imported data that’s deeply rich with demographics and that sort of information. What’s the ability to scale?
Doug: Let’s say, one of our listeners comes to you and says, “Hey, let’s get started.” You start with a budget, whatever the budget might be. Maybe, it’s $500 a day, whatever it is. What’s the end limit on YouTube?
Aleric Heck: Yeah. YouTube, you can really scale up. What we call it, and I tell this to people on the phone … I call it effortless YouTube scaling. I always say, I would not just throw that word around because I know, from our clients, from experiences I’ve even had in the past, how hard it is to scale Facebook ads. There are that duplicate and relaunch, 15% every other day, there’s a whole laundry list of things, and sometimes it doesn’t even work.
Aleric Heck: What we have found on YouTube ads is you can scale a lot more efficiently. We have people that not only double their budgets in a day, but we’ve also had people quadruple. I don’t recommend that. We had somebody, I remember he called me up, I was about to get on a flight. He’s like, “Hey, I want to scale up 4X. I’ve been spending $250 a day on this one campaign, I want to scale up to $1000 a day.” He was getting $90 applications, phone call applications. I said, “Let’s go to $500 first, then go to $1000.” Anyways, on Facebook, you wouldn’t even have that conversation, people would be talking about 15%. I was saying, “Let’s double, and then we’ll double again in a few more days.” He said, “I just got a new sales team, I really want to scale this up now, I’ll take responsibility if this doesn’t work.” I wasn’t sure, because I hadn’t quadrupled a campaign like that before.
Doug: Yeah, yeah.
Aleric Heck: We quadrupled it. I remember, by the time we touched down, it was still tracking within KPI. I was like, “Yes!” Then, at the end of the day, he had gotten nine applications for that $1000, so a little bit more expensive, about $105. Then, by the next day, it was right back down to $90 applications, like clockwork, at $1000 a day, scaling that one campaign. There’s a reason that it’s scalable like this.
Aleric Heck: I’m actually going to back this up with the science, or the facts behind why it works. On Facebook, when you want to scale a campaign, you’re putting all your trust in an algorithm. Because you don’t have an intent or a specific thing that you’re targeting, it’s all in the News Feed, it’s all the algorithm. If you want to double, you’re basically throwing double the money at the algorithm, and praying it’ll work. Praying that the algorithm will give you that return, versus on YouTube … Let’s say you want to double a campaign if you’re getting 1000 views of a certain video, and then you’re also layering with other things, like the affinity and the interests, like we talked about, the URL. But, you’re actually targeting specific videos, or keywords that pertain to videos or topics, you’re basically doing media buying. If that works for 1000 views, why not buy 2000, or buy 5000?
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Share this episode: HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
YouTube video ads: If a picture’s worth 1000, or 100 words, what is a video worth? A million?
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Aleric Heck: You know the inventory Google has available, because it’ll tell you, and you can literally scale up what is working, versus on Facebook, because you’re not buying anything in particular, it’s all the algorithm, it might not scale. With this, if you have a certain set of videos that’s working, or let’s say, a certain channel you’re targeting, just to make it simple. A channel that’s working, then you can scale up spend on that channel, and you can see your results scale, linear to that because you’re buying more of a known quantity.
Doug: Yeah. That’s what we’ve seen on Google Ads, for sure, and that’s what we’ve seen on email list rental, for sure. If the list is 500,000 names, you buy 100,000. It converts well, it’s easy to go buy the other 400,000 names. Just put your credit card down and go …
Aleric Heck: Exactly, exactly. It’s exactly like that.
Doug: What are you most excited about in the next six to 12 months, in your space?
Aleric Heck: Yeah.
Doug: Stuff is changing so fast. I mean, I feel so fortunate that I get to spend all my days looking at tech, talking about tech and marketing, and implementing programs. What gets you just so excited?
Aleric Heck: Oh, I am incredibly excited about the wave of YouTube that’s coming right now. I’m very excited about that, because … I’ve been on YouTube for the past 10 years. I started out with a YouTube channel, I built that up, 400,000 subscribers. I went to the other side of the table, with the advertising.
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Share this episode: HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
YouTube video ads: If a picture’s worth 1000, or 100 words, what is a video worth? A million?
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Doug: Yeah.
Aleric Heck: And been doing that for the past five years. I’ve just seen this wave growing, right now we’re at the breaking point. Facebook is breaking for a lot of people.
Doug: Yeah.
Aleric Heck: People are realizing, hey, I really should be on YouTube, I really should be doing video. They’re seeing that benefit. We’re one of the drivers, at least in the online course, coaching, consulting space, one of the drivers of that change. I’m just excited, this year, to be building out these YouTube ads, building this out. Really, once people taste it … Like Ahmad, he told me, he joined because Facebook ads shut him down, right?
Aleric Heck: I remember he told me, “I guess I’m going to paying [inaudible 00:34:50],” because we were in the Mastermind together. He’s like, “I guess I’m going to do that for YouTube because Facebook shuts me down.” One month later, he was already transitioning the majority of his budget. Two months later, he hits his first $100K month, now he’s got 80% of his budget on his YouTube. That’s what I think a lot of people are going to be experiencing and seeing this year.
Aleric Heck: Not only do I believe … I know, right now, YouTube is low-hanging fruit, because it’s a blue ocean. You can capitalize on first-mover ad costs, right now.
Doug: Yeah.
Aleric Heck: Not only that, I genuinely believe, even once it’s an even playing field, in terms of the volume people are spending on Facebook and YouTube, YouTube will still be better and beat Facebook, because of the video content, and that 30-seconds, you only pay if somebody is genuinely interested. Those two things, obviously now combined with first-mover advantage, is what makes YouTube so powerful.
Doug: I just wanted to ask you to go back to a different question. In terms of remarketing, if we’ve got listeners that are running a whole variety of advertising right now and doing media buys, and they’re going to add YouTube, which based on our conversation, the research that I’ve done, makes sense. Like I disclosed to you, and not to our listeners, that I’m going to move into this space because I think it’s a great space to be to help our clients.
Aleric Heck: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Doug: What about remarketing using video, off of somebody’s website? Instead of running just regular retargeting ads, are you doing any work with video? We already cookie people that come to the website, or come to a landing page, or respond through an email campaign.
Aleric Heck: 100%. YouTube retargeting, and this is what we were talking about before, only paying if somebody watches 30-seconds, it is the lowest hanging fruit, with retargeting ads. We literally retarget pp, virtually forever, once they come into our ecosystem and them opt-in to something. If they’re an actual conversion and they’re on our list, that’s what we’re doing, we’re just consistently reaching them on YouTube.
Aleric Heck: Because not only can you get people to opt-in, but you can also paint a story and educate them. I have over … I’ve created an advanced YouTube retargeting strategy that we help our clients with. I have over 20 different retargeting ads on YouTube that run at various intervals, various points of time, to the people that have opted in. It’s all designed to bring people back to booking a call, in our sense. Obviously, if you’re selling-
Doug: Yeah, totally makes sense.
Aleric Heck: You don’t even need something that advanced. Early-stage for us, obviously early stage for clients, you set up one retargeting ad on YouTube, and you just see the power of what that does. In the space I’m in a lot, applications, $30, $40 apps, sometimes even $20, $25 apps, depending on the space. People are getting 10, 20X ROAS on $997 courses, just throwing up YouTube retargeting ads. On the retargeting ads, is what I’m saying, because it’s such low hanging fruit, and you’re only paying when they’re watching 30-seconds.
Doug: Right. That’s what I was thinking, I just wanted to make it clear to the listeners that you don’t have to be running YouTube ads to be able to use YouTube for retargeting off of your existing media. It’s a great way to prove the point, and do some testing and say, hey, is this converting better than my regular retargeting ads?
Aleric Heck: Exactly, exactly. We’re going to be, in the new year as well … Actually, this is a “You heard it here first” moment. We’re actually building out a lower level retargeting only program that we’re going to be providing in the coming year, as well, to people who want to dip their toes in the water.
Aleric Heck: Obviously, the cold traffic, if you’re in the position to get into that side of things, that’s where the magic happens, that’s where you can really scale. But, retargeting, at the very least, is really important, to just dip your toes in the water.
Doug: Excellent. What’s the bad advice you hear about this in the industry?
Aleric Heck: Yeah, okay.
Doug: You must go to marketing events as I do, and you’re speaking at events, you’re talking to people, and you’re thinking, hm, that person shouldn’t say that?
Aleric Heck: Yeah, yeah. The worst advice, honestly, that I hear is people who are just talking about placement ads.
Aleric Heck: There’s actually technically things that are worse than that, but the reason this is the worst is that this is what people believe because they don’t know any better. They don’t know that there’re other ways to target. I’m not going to say specific people, but there are people in the industry right now who have software that helps you find placements on YouTube, and they only talk about placement ads because that’s what they sell, is the placement targeting software. YouTube ads are so much more than just placements. If you just run placements, you’re not going to be able to scale, because you’re going to be constantly using that software to find new videos to target, which I think is what they’re looking for.
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YouTube video ads: If a picture’s worth 1000, or 100 words, what is a video worth? A million?
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Doug: Tell us what placement ads are, for those that don’t understand?
Aleric Heck: So placement ads are where you put a specific video URL in, and it’s like you’re saying, “I want to target this video.” The way that works, and it can be very low-hanging fruit, by the way, it does work. It’s just hard to scale because you have to put in hundreds of videos. There are tools, and the tools do a good job at what they do, I’m not saying they’re bad. They’re tools that help you scrape hundreds or thousands of these videos.
Doug: But as you said, they’re one of three?
Aleric Heck: Yeah.
Doug: Your strategy is 3D, and that’s one?
Aleric Heck: Exactly. What we rely on more is keywords, topics, also placements, of course. Collections of videos, combined with interests and affinity, and then also demographic targeting. It’s basically who just scratched the surface, and then think that’s the only way to run YouTube ads.
Aleric Heck: The reason that’s the worse piece of advice is that it’s partially going to work for people, but it’s not going to give them the full picture of what works on YouTube.
Doug: Just a different direction, we talked about the opportunities that are there for people to sell high ticket items, where they’re the face of the brand.
Aleric Heck: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Doug: Do you work with, or do you have any comments for people who aren’t the face of the brand? Maybe it’s somebody that’s in sales and marketing, and they’ve got some liberty at their company, but they’re clearly not the face of the brand. Or, it’s a big company, and the CEO is just not going to do customer-facing video. What advice would you give them?
Aleric Heck: Okay. This is one of the things … I love this question because this is one of the things that I’ve developed, and I’ve found works incredibly well for a business like that. This is something I haven’t really seen other people talking about this, or doing this in any capacity, and this is hiring an influencer to produce your YouTube ad for you, at rock bottom prices for a high-quality, native feel, YouTube ad. This is one of the best things you can do if you’re not the face of the company, or you don’t want to be the face of this ad.
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Share this episode: HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
YouTube video ads: If a picture’s worth 1000, or 100 words, what is a video worth? A million?
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Aleric Heck: We help our clients with this, we’ve done a lot like this. There are platforms, and there’re ways … We have our connections, right? I’ve got a lot of influencers, I used to be an influencer as well. You can get an influencer on YouTube, in your space, or somebody who would work well for your space, to create a video. Often times, these videos might be just $1000. Whereas if you were to hire a production studio, not only will you be paying $5000, $10,000 plus dollars …
Doug: Yeah.
Aleric Heck: It’ll also turn out kind of corny. Or, you’ll find to find a spokesperson, they might not be that good.
Aleric Heck: You can find a natural person who … Let’s say you’re selling an eComm product, let’s say it’s a makeup product because there’s a lot of makeup YouTubers. You hire a native makeup YouTuber, and there’s a lot of them, so there’s a lot of picking to do. You can even hire two or three to split test. You ship them out your product, you obviously pay them their fee, which oftentimes is a lot lower than one may think. You send them their fee, they produce a video for you. Now, you’re running that ad. The cherry on top is they’ll also post it to their YouTube channel.
Doug: Sure, absolutely.
Aleric Heck: So you get some organic, as well, some organic. Then, you’re running that as an ad, you can split test that with multiple influencers. That is a strategy I haven’t heard really anybody else talking about, but it works really, really well, especially for eCommerce.
Doug: Well, cool. I know we went a little over time, I just wanted to ask that question. Lots of times, we work with clients, some clients are like, “Hey, I don’t want to do video,” or, “Hey, I don’t want to do podcasts.” They’re just not the CEO or the leader of the company, they’re just not comfortable. There’s a way to tackle that problem.
Doug: I want to say, thanks so much for sharing with us today, I really appreciate you taking the time.
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. Thank you for having me on, Doug. This was great.
Doug: Two questions, two easy questions. The first one is, who is one guest I absolutely have to have on my podcast?
Aleric Heck: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I would say one guest that you should have on the podcast would be Mike Mark. He is a sales trainer, he builds up sales teams, he’s a recruiter and a headhunter. He has been instrumental for us in bringing on new advisors in growing our business, and he is something that I have found has a lot of synergy with what we do.
Aleric Heck: We literally just had a client who goes 26X ROAS in their first month, which is just insane. Obviously, I’m not saying everyone would get that, right?
Doug: That’s amazing, yeah.
Aleric Heck: Which is just ludicrous, right? Their biggest problem was that they were booked two weeks out in advance, they had found one closer, and they were doing calls. Their closer was doing calls, their calendar was completely full. We’ve done a lot of work, sending people to Mike, and he does a great job building out and advising sales teams. He’s got a lot of great ideas, so I would definitely recommend him.
Doug: That’s awesome. I’d ask you if you’d make an email introduction to us, that’d be great?
Aleric Heck: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Doug: Now, where’s the best place for people to connect with you, learn more about you, your company, what you’re doing, and how you’re helping people?
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. I actually put together a page just for those of you who are listening to this podcast here. It’s from AdOutreach.com/Gift. A-D-O-U-T-R-E-A-C-H, AdOutreach.com/Gift. Actually, there are three different gifts that I have for you. We’ve got, obviously, our webinar that dives into how all of this works, we have our YouTube ads for high ticket sales training, which is specifically for people, we kind of alluded to this, who are in the high ticket space, that’s a no-fluff video like I talked about. And then we also have some access to some case studies and even our free YouTube Ads for Entrepreneurs Facebook group. So, go to AdOutreach.com/Gift, and I’ve got a few gifts for all of you, listeners.
Doug: There you go. Well thanks, Aleric, thanks again. Looking forward to working with you and your team. Just listeners, I hope that you learned something new today. We’ve been looking at the video for a while, I’ve been telling you on my email newsletter that we’re moving to video for a few months. Now, we’ll be adding video advertising. Reach out to Aleric, take a look at their website, there’s a ton of content there, there’s a lot of information. They’ll follow up with you by email, as well.
Doug: We’re just wishing you the very best, as we kicked off this new year with a great episode, and I look forward to serving you on our next episode.
Aleric Heck: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Doug.
Doug: Thanks. Take care.
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Share this episode: HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
HOW TO USE VIDEO ADS TO INCREASE LEADS AND SALES
YouTube video ads: If a picture’s worth 1000, or 100 words, what is a video worth? A million?
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Get in touch with Aleric:
- Web – AdOutreach
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Find out more about Aleric:
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Links to other related podcasts and or blog posts:
VIDEO TACTICS TO IMPROVE SALES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
HOW TO CREATE AUTHENTIC ENGAGEMENT WITH BRANDED VIDEO CONTENT
