New YouTube Traffic Strategies For High Conversion, Cheap Clicks And Market Domination

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

Hey guys, welcome back to the show. This is Brad and we are going to talk about a topic that I've been wanting to cover for quite a while now. If you are doing anything online, if you do Internet marketing, digital e commerce or do anything to get traffic to your website, you want to pay close attention to this strategy that we're going to talk about today. It's you see a few weeks ago I was interviewing Mike Phil same and you can hear that interview if you haven't yet@baconratbusiness.com MikeF definitely recommend that you go check it out. And I was asking Mike a question around the end of the interview and I said, Mike, what do you think is an opportunity that most people are not exploiting right now? What do you think or what do you think is under exploited and that just people people aren't doing but that you believe they will going forward? And his answer was YouTube advertising. He said he's going to be spending a lot of time focusing on YouTube in 2015, which we're in January of 2015. Now the thing about YouTube advertising, I guarantee you've seen it, there's a lot of various types of advertising on YouTube. There's the ones in the upper right hand corner and there's the ones that show up on the videos like the little annoying things at the bottom of a video that you kind of got to click to get it off. And then there's the videos that the advertisements that play for, you know, several seconds or 30 seconds before you watch the video. And a lot of times if you're like me and most people, you're sitting there waiting for that little skip ad thing to appear. Well, like a lot of marketers, I have not really use those. I've just seen them as the annoying little videos that are in my way of watching what I want to watch. However, the folks that I've spoken with who have used YouTube in their advertising have said, man, this is like so cheap to get the clicks. And especially if you do it right. Now the one opinion that I've got that I always see the videos that come up before I'm about to watch Something a lot of times they come up by big Fortune 500 companies like Car companies, insurance companies. And it looks as if it's the exact same video that people throw out on the, you know, from their TV campaign. They put it on YouTube and it always strikes me as a marketer as missing the mark because there's a completely different mindset between me and the, you know, when I'm on YouTube and me when I'm on a television. So I've thought about this, but I've never done anything and I've never actually talked to a true expert about what the best practices are. And this is where my guest today comes in. So in speaking with Mike Filsaime about YouTube advertising, he said, you know, one of the guys you need to talk to about this is Tommy Powers. And Tommy, you know, works with us. We had him on stage, we had him speaking. He's an expert at this stuff. So I started to research Tommy. Mike made an introduction. And Tommy does YouTube advertising and a lot of other services, pay per click, digital marketing consultant. He's a specialist in these areas. But it seems as though he's really found a forte with YouTube. He's the author of the instant, or, I'm sorry, the in stream traffic system, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But he talks about getting 12 cents a click, 676 leads at 39 cents per lead. And he's like, whoa, what is my, what is my big secret? It's YouTube. So that's why I've asked Tommy to join us on bacon wrapped business today. Because I can't think of any other strategies that fit this than, you know, this show's profile than YouTube and some of the cool stuff you can do with it. So without any further ado, Tommy, are you on the line, brother?

I am here.

Cool. Thanks for joining us, man. I really appreciate this. I am, I'm really curious about this stuff and we are going to talk about some stuff. I'm going to assume for the listener's sake that they know a little bit about advertising and pay per click. I don't want to dumb this down to the absolute beginner level because your time and my time is too valuable. I want to get into the really, what I call bacon wrapped strategies. The stuff that are so good and sizzling hot that you're like, oh man, I need to be doing that right away or I need to find somebody to do that for me. So that's why I have you on the show. So let's talk about this, give me a quick background about YouTube advertising, how you kind of discovered it and what you've been able to do with it.

Well, actually thanks for the introduction and everything. Basically, YouTube really is something I've been looking at for quite some time. However, I didn't really dive into it till about 2012, late 2012. And really when I started tinkering around, what I realized is that it was a lot like what I, what I was used to. So my background, I kind of got started with traffic, the whole paid traffic stuff back in like 2007 with Google Display network. That was where I really made my bones. It's like. And I still, I'm still running, we still do very well running on Google Display. But what happened back then was nobody was really running Google Display. And I'm the kind of guy, it's like the, you know, when you zig Isaiah. Yeah, that Warren Buffett thing, it's like that. I was talking to John Lee Dumas and he was saying that, you know, he was telling me about the quote Warren Buffett talks about, you know, when others are fearful, be greedy. When others are greedy, be fearful. And that's the same, you know, approach is when everybody else is doing one thing, I'm doing something else. And so that's really how YouTube kind of, you know, I was like, I knew there was an opportunity there and finally when I got to tinkering around with it, I saw that my skills that I already possessed fit perfectly for. And that's kind of how I got into it and just kind of, you know, it just kind of took off from there.

Beautiful. So tell me about some of the results you've been able to see. I mean I mentioned a few of the stats that you posted on your website here. But you know, first let's talk about some of the results and then I want to talk about some of the strategies because there's a lot of folks out there, myself included, for me and my clients who are going to be focusing on this and I definitely want to jump into that. But first let's talk about some of the results you've seen as it compares to other types of advertising out there.

So YouTube is a couple different, you know, ways to kind of tackle it. The in stream traffic stuff that you're talking about, that's really specific to that. No, those pesky little pre roll ads that you got to skip the button in order to know. Skip ad button. Those, those are designed that where you drive you the way you drive traffic with those is someone Actually has to click on that video other than skipping the ad while it's playing. And you can actually send someone to a destination URL, which should be more than likely your website.

Okay. You know, and let's just, just so that I'm clear and anybody else is clear, this is. I want to go back to fundamentals a little bit. So the types of ads on YouTube, let's just kind of list them. There's the. The. Are they called in stream?

In stream.

Okay, so those are the ones that show up like you said that I'm about to watch a video and a video starts playing first and then after maybe about five seconds, the skip ad button shows up. Okay, so that's called in stream. I've also heard of something called is it in display? In display.

Well, TrueView is what is technically called TrueView in stream, I believe.

Okay, so the two are pretty much the same.

Well, they are different. Okay, so it used to be three types, but now they made it only two. So you have in Stream TrueView and then you have in display. But under the in display, there are two types of in display ads you can run.

Okay.

You can run one that is targeting people who are watching videos. And that ad will show in the upper right corner next to the video. Or. Or it will appear hovered above the video. Okay.

But not, not actually.

Not really a banner ad. But it'll hover over the video.

Okay, but it's not on the video, is it, Is it a hovering over the player? Right?

Yeah, it's like if it'll like pop up kind of like the banner ass. You see?

Gotcha.

Time to time that come above the video like the leaderboard looking. It's not exactly that, but it's similar. It's similar to that. Then the other in display type is where you can target people who are searching on YouTube. So someone's on YouTube search, they type in a phrase and you can show your ads above the YouTube search results.

Okay, and those are. Those are really similar to like the Google pay per click style. Right?

Right. Okay. But they call them in display. Targeting search is what the technical way to be able to run those.

Okay, perfect. So in display is either when people are searching or if people are watching. But it's more of a banner and it's not the actual automatic playing video.

Right, exactly. Okay, great.

So that's in display and then the other type you were talking about in stream.

Right.

And was there. Is the TrueView in stream or is that the. Is that kind of synonymous or is there A difference?

No, it's the same. I mean it's just different names. Some people call them pre roll ads, some people call them, you know. Well, in stream is a technical name word that they use for it. But the actual term is, I think it's true view in stream. But it's the same when you see the word in stream. That's what they're talking about.

Perfect. Okay. And those are the ones that I've seen where. Yeah, what there's a skip ad now there are some that I've seen which they give you the skip ad and there's some of them, you can't skip the ad. You gotta sit there through like 30 seconds or whatever. What's it, is there a difference? There is.

It just that that's a non skippable in stream ad.

Okay, cool.

You can run those, you have to run those through the Google display network inside of AdWords. So when you're setting up campaigns inside of AdWords, YouTube video ads have its own little. If you ever were to log in, once you run a video ad, you go to the far left hand corner at the very bottom. That's how you get to that. If you want to run a non skippable ad, you can actually set those up under the regular Google AdWords dashboard for normal Google campaigns to create an unskippable ad. So it's, it's kind of tricky the way they got it set up but, but you can run in, you can run skippable and as well as you can run remarketing like that, they're very powerful. Really for remarketing A lot of people that run them, in my opinion, like you mentioned at the top of the show, it's like they're kind of off the mark a lot of the brands and stuff like that.

Yeah.

But I, we found the most power in those with remarketing where someone already are familiar with your brand and hopefully your listeners probably know what remarketing or retargeting, it's the same thing. Which is a huge catchphrase in the industry.

Right. Let me, let me, let me stop you right there just in case there's somebody who doesn't remarketing is. If you ever go to a website and you all of a sudden start seeing those ads for those people everywhere.

Well.

There'S a pixel that is placed on a, it's a little piece of code that's placed on a website and it allows the advertiser kind of follow you around the web. Now you might think that's a Little bit intrusive, but it's really not. It simply shows up if you visited on that browser. If you go to other places like in the Google network or Facebook, it just follows you around. And you'll see this if you go to Amazon, you'll see this if you go to a bunch of different places. We're going to have an entire podcast just on remarketing here really soon. But for anybody who doesn't really know what that is. Very, very powerful strategy. And I want to get into how you use that. But you just said something about the most powerful strategy is which one?

With remarketing the. In the unskippable ads is what we were talking about.

Okay. Unskippable with remarkable.

Yes. So if you're remarketing to someone, you can hit them with a non skippable ad. That way you can get your message across. And they can't be more than 30 seconds. Right. The max that they can be is 30 seconds.

Can they be less than 30? Can I get it?

Yeah, they can be. They have to be at least 15, I believe. 15 to 30. Perfect. I'm trying to remember exactly. But what that allows you to do is make sure that you get your message across without them being able to skip, even if they don't want to. You know, because the reality is a lot of times 5 seconds is not enough time to really get.

Yeah.

Their attention. You know, so if you, you know, so that, that's what we found the most powerful with the non skippable.

Okay, now are they. What about price wise is. Are you going to be paying more? Is there a, is there kind of a hierarchy of the cost per click for these?

So you don't buy clicks on YouTube ads, you buy views. And that's where it gets tricky for a lot of people because it's a different metric that you're measuring in terms of how you, how you want to measure your performance. Okay, so what happens is with. In stream ads, you only pay when someone watches your video for a certain amount of time. And that really depends on the length of the video. So you actually can get a free impressions on your video when people click that skip ad button. You don't pay for that.

Nice. So this is one of the main things I wanted to talk to you about. I know Mike and I were talking about this and I keep. And I'm glad you say that the, that the time where you get the free view impression or not varies on the length of the video because I've heard people say it's 10, 15, 30 seconds. And I've been so confused. So let's dive into that. This is. Yeah, this to me, is like wrapped in bacon. So he was talking about. He was given an example of how Ryan Dice, another one of the founders of DigitalMarketer.com is using this for branding, where he said he would. Number one, he would remarket, or number two, he would put this on based upon what they're viewing and saying, hey, this is Ryan. If you want to come to the traffic and conversion summit, click right here. If not, click Skip Ad. You're getting that impression. You're getting that branding. And if people just go ahead and skip Ad, it's free. Right, Right.

Cool. It doesn't cost you.

Okay, so let's talk about the time, I guess variables there. So typically, you have about how long before you get charged.

So the way it works is you have a video that's less than 30 seconds and a video that's longer than 30 seconds.

Okay.

So when your video is less than 30 seconds, if someone doesn't click Skip ad, then they charge you for a view.

If they. I'm just kind of jotting this down. If they don't click Skip Ad and.

The video is less than 30 seconds, then you pay.

Then you pay. Okay.

Yes. If the video is longer than 30 seconds and they don't click Skip Ad, they only charge you when the person watches at least 30 seconds.

Oh, wow.

Yes.

So one of the things that I think I've also heard, and I think Mike was saying this once more about Ryan that he would put on there, you know, maybe a, let's say a minute ad, and then putting the message. The message can be, you know, 15 seconds long, and then it's just dead space for.

That's it.

See, that right there is YouTube strategy wrapped in really thick bacon. Peppered maple bacon, and yes, fried up.

See, that's crushing it with that method.

Love that.

Crushing it. Matter of fact, one of the guys, the video direct guy over there, Matt Coleman, he's actually, you know, he and I built a great relationship over. I was actually out there in Austin and met up with him and some other members of the team. But, yeah, you know, we shared a lot of strategies with what we working on and stuff with each other. So, yeah, man, that's a killer method.

That is. Yeah, that's beautiful. So I want to recap this for any listener. The. You know, if you're going for branding and you want to get your message across, you can put up. Let's just say A minute long video and. You get this opportunity to talk, let's just say for 15 seconds. And if the, you know, the person watches that after 15 seconds, hey, the, you know, the message is over, it just goes to black screen. What are they going to do? They're going to click skip ad. Well, when they do that, you don't get charged, but you still get your branding. You still get your impression and you don't pay a penny. I wanted to, like, that is one of the main, main things I wanted to talk about. And you surprised me with the fact that the most powerful is the unskippable with remarketing. And I definitely want to deep dive into that. But the. Give me one second. I got to put my Skype on Do not disturb. I kept on getting pinged there.

I do want to clarify something.

Please do.

So here's what I recommend. And on the remarketing thing, when I talk about unskippable, I'm talking about that particular style of ad is most powerful when used in conjunction with remarketing in stream ads. Is where it's at, man. What I recommend is it's not a minute, but maybe like 45 seconds.

Okay.

And then what I recommend is 20 to 25 seconds is your message. Because you want to try to, you know, the shorter your message is harder to really convey. But ultimately what you're trying to do within that message is sell the click.

Right.

Sell the click or just take an action.

Yes, right. Sell the click. Or if you're just going for branding, just continue.

Right.

But, but yeah, you're right. And if you can't sell the click in 20 to 25 seconds, you're not trying to sell a product.

Right, that's it. You're selling the click.

Yeah. That's amazing. God, I hope that YouTube does not yank this.

I don't think it's going anywhere. No time soon.

Under us. Yeah.

Never know.

Okay, so when you were, yeah, so when you were talking about the unskippable with remarketing, that's the most powerful for. Is it for.

So, so, so the technique of using an unskippable ad is most powerful in conjunction with remarketing.

Okay.

Because with unskippable ads, you pay when your ad run. You pay like there's no way to not pay. So that's why you run that. When you run it as remarketing, you're gonna get more bang for it because you guarantee paying because you're targeting people who already have. You know, been to your website, know your brand Know your name, what have you. Okay, that makes sense.

That makes perfect sense. Now, did we already talk about the type of ad that just shows up? Maybe this is in display, where it. Maybe 10 seconds in, it's just like a little translucent ad that shows up that you can. You can kill that off. Is that in display or is that something else?

Well, there's two ways to do that. You can run a banner there. That's not an actual. You don't set them up in the YouTube in the AdWords for video interface. So let's make that clear. You have AdWords, and then you have AdWords for video, and they're actually separate dashboards.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I was gonna ask you, where do you set all these up? You set these because some people may be familiar with the Google AdWords dashboard, which I'm familiar with before I was banned. Like a lot of folks, the. And then there. Is there a separate place that you go to operate YouTube ads? Where is that? Where do people find that?

It's the AdWords for video. You log into AdWords, but it's a separate dashboard when you create. So if your first time ever creating a YouTube ad, you won't see the ability to do that. You have to create an ad in the regular AdWords dashboard, like you create in a campaign and select online video. And then that will take you into the AdWords for video dashboard. And then anytime after that going forward, you just log into your AdWords account. You go all the way to the left at the very bottom and click on where it say video ad campaigns.

Nice. Nice. Okay, so are there. Of the. Of all these different types of places to advertise on YouTube, are there any of them that you typically don't even mess with?

You're like, I'm really. I'm really not a fan of search. YouTube targeting search.

Okay.

How come I have had dismal results. I've had a few decent results, but most. Most of the time, I don't know. I don't. It seems like they show. So what happens when I evaluate. My data is showing my ads on keywords that I did not say I wanted to target.

Interesting.

And so they don't have the ability to do exact match or phrase match. Like, you can try to put that in there, but it won't recognize.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

Like, you can put it in there, but it won't. It won't use that. And until they fix that, I just.

Not really. It's gonna.

I think, I think. Yeah, I mean, you can get ROI from it. It really depends on if you have a broad mass appeal type of offer, you know, and you're targeting a certain demographic you could get. I mean that's, that's how we were able to make it successful. But for most people who really need that targeted traffic, that very specific individual that they're going after, it doesn't, it hasn't, hasn't really produced a lot of good results for me.

Interesting. So do you use, is it mainly the unskippable ads with remarketing and then the in stream ones like we just talked about?

Actually we use both.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Are those your two like the two.

Big guns right there when it comes to remarketing? Specifically, we like to run in stream. I mean you can run in display with remarketing as well. But man, I mean in stream is. That's the biggest opportunity. That's where it's at, man.

I like.

I mean unless you. Again, if you have a broad mass appeal offer.

Yeah.

And display, like there's a, there's a thing I show where one of the clients I work with, we, they had, you know, we spent a quarter million dollars on those ads, paid like 6 cents per view. And the ROI on that was crazy. Wow. Without, without telling me what clients offer.

Without telling me what client that is or anything. Can you give me the general market diet weight loss.

Nice targeting. You know that, that typical demographic and they were getting.

How much was it per click?

$0.06 per view.

$0.06 per view. That's crazy.

So basically what we were doing and I can, I'll share this. Yeah. They have a VSL that they're the video sales letter which is their main method of selling their offer. Right. We take that and we host it on YouTube and then we'll just buy in YouTube ads buying views from Google to that particular hosted video on YouTube and then driving those people from that video to order the product.

Okay, so I've always wondered about that. Yeah, I've always wondered about that. But you're actually hosting and I did this years ago where I had a 20 minute video, a VSL in a, in a business that I owned and I don't own that anymore. But I was putting it up there and it literally just said yeah, if you want to buy this product now, blah blah, blah, go to. The call to action was simply to go to this website. You know, it was a very specific one that just went straight to the, to the order form. The only thing I didn't do is any marketing of it, Like, I'm sorry, any advertising, any paid. I just kind of threw it up there because, you know, why not. And I didn't do a real good job at tracking it. But that's interesting. Okay, so you. I want to recap that strategy. You took their vsl. Do you remember how long it was? Like one of these.

That specific one is. That was 34 minutes.

Okay, cool.

I had another one that's an hour and 10 minutes. That's still running.

Okay, so you put that up there, but then you were driving traffic inside YouTube to that.

Yep. Hmm.

So were you putting. And you were using the in stream?

No, we were using in display. So with. So here's the thing with in display, when someone clicks on your in display, it takes them to your YouTube video that you specify. So if I have a video that I want to get views with and I want to use in display to get those views, when they click my in display ad, that is when you pay and then it takes them to your YouTube video.

Nice. And you know, the nice part is it keeps them on YouTube. It keeps them on YouTube and just the ecosystem there. Yeah, they're. I think that guard is down.

Yep. I think that's one of the huge reasons why I work so well right now.

And is that against any like, YouTube terms and service that you're not supposed to.

We haven't had any issues yous know, a couple of my clients that I've worked with have air reps. So, you know, we pretty safe, you know, I haven't had any problems.

That's. That's beautiful. I love that.

But I wouldn't, I would. I would say that it's potentially. You could have some issues. One of the nuggets that I'll drop is use an unlisted video, don't set it to public.

Nice.

Turn off. Turn off comments on it, and then drive those views. Select what they call the channel page and then what that allows you to do. You ever been to a main YouTube channel on their main page and they have a trailer video?

Yes. Like the main one. Yeah.

Well, basically, with these ads, when you target. When you sending traffic to the channel page, basically what they're doing is they're taking the video you specify that you want to run ads to, and they're pulling that video inside of where that channel is. And it looks like they're on your main channel page.

Right. So that's where you can actually run the vsl. So that Bam. Mic drop.

Yes.

Drop the microphone how can I still hear you talking?

To be honest with you, most of the revenue I've generated To date with YouTube ads have been using that strategy. That was the first technique that I really just blew it up on like multiple six figure stuff with that technique. And then I got a whiff of in stream ads and ever since then.

I kind of just focused on those.

You know, just I would say focused. It's just a larger set of my client base and the people that I work with is a better fit for them. In display is really in display to me really is a method where A you have a broad mass appeal offer B, you scared that sending traffic to your website, Google is gonna slap your page or they're going to say we don't like your landing page. So in order to get around that, you just drive them to your video first and then you send them to your landing page.

Yeah, I love it.

If you can drive traffic directly to your landing page and it's Google.