Youtube Ads are DEAD...?

YouTube ads are dead. RIP YouTube ads. This was the headline I read last week inside a marketing Facebook group where this coach was complaining about how his YouTube ads have dropped in performance. Here's exactly what he said. Help wanted. How would you take it from here? His offer is $997. His funnel is YouTube ads lead magnet to VSL. His niche, his breakup. Getting your ex back, he said. One plus million in revenue in the past 2.5 years. This offer used to bring in 35 to $50,000 per month on average with 5k spent. It worked super awesome for two years until December 2022 since keyword targeting was removed. Now the funnel brings $12,000 per month on average with three 5k spent. Tried three different media buyers couldn't fix it. The Targeting is off. One says need to change the offer. One says need to completely change the angle. One says the niche has changed since 2020. Two leads are coming in not as much as before and the traffic is much less interested in the offer. Also, the number of don't have that kind of money leads us off the roof. The biggest issue is that the traffic is much less interested in the offer. It's nowhere near the right targeting we had. The targeting is off and what used to work doesn't work anymore. What I'm considering number one never ran Facebook ads. Maybe I'll try that. Number two new ads, different angle. Number three, changing the funnel completely will be a shot in the dark. Number four make a $97 offer and number five make keep looking for a media buyer who can find the same audience we used to get with keywords. How would you take it from here again, RIP YouTube ads. Now obviously you can imagine what kind of controversy this caused inside of this marketing Facebook group. And I saw this as an opportunity to help you with your YouTube ads if you're experiencing similar issues with your targeting, with your lead quality, with your campaigns and with your roas. So let's get into it. So what happened? Okay, his one successful YouTube ads campaign that scaled past over a million in 2.5 years and would bring in 30 to 50k per month suddenly stopped working. And by stopped working he really means it's not as profitable as it once was. I mean, he's still getting a 3.5x return on the front end according to his post. So what caused the drop in performance exactly? Well, he doesn't know, Right? That's why he posted about it. But he does know that he tried three different media buyers to fix this issue and that still didn't work. And he claims the targeting is off and that ever since YouTube ads removed keyword targeting, the traffic quality hasn't been the same. But then he also said the traffic is much less interested in the offer. So which one is it? Is it that YouTube ads are really dead or is it something else? Well, let's go back to first principles. The law of change says things do not stay the same. Okay? Things do not stay the same if they don't get better, they get worse. Tony Robbins, right, one of the most famous personal development coaches in the entire world, says if you are not growing, you are dying. So what does this mean for you and your ads? What does it have to do with his campaigns that are now not performing as well as they used to? Well, it means that if you continue to rely on what worked 2.5 years ago and expect it to work the same as today, you're only fooling yourself. The law of change clearly states that things don't stay the same if they don't get better, they get worse. My former mentor, a guy who's been selling info marketing for the last 20 plus years, once told me that whenever he got a new book funnel prompt profitable on television. Like infomercial ads, right? Not Facebook ads, not YouTube ads, not Google Ads, but actual infomercials on television. The ones where you see call this number right, order this today, those ads, whenever he got one of those profitable on television, he knew he'd only have about two to three years of Runway before he had to write and come out and release another book. Now, the reason I share that with you is to give you a little bit of perspective. This guy's been running the same offer for 2.5 years. It's now not getting the same performance. My mentor, a guy who's been doing this way longer, made way more money, way smarter, right? Way better marketer says he knows that every single time he gets an offer profitable on television, he has about two to three years before he has to do another book completely to make it fresh. So naturally, over time, this guy's YouTube ads ROAS dropped significantly once things changed. Number one, keyword targeting was removed. This definitely caused issues with the quality of traffic, for sure. I'm not disregarding that. Number two, the market became more sophisticated. What once worked in terms of the ads and the big idea might no longer be as appealing to the same audience who's already seen it for the last two and a half years. Number three, high ticket became the new normal, right? Low ticket seems to be making a Comeback, but mid ticket, right? $997. What used to work back in like 2016, 2017, 2018 is a bit harder to crack. Even the most sophisticated marketers have a hard time doing it. But he's still doing it successfully at a 3.5x ROAS even after 2.5 years. So it's still working. It's just not working as well. To be very clear now, after profitably spending over $60 million in YouTube ads traffic for info marketers specifically during the last four, five years, I can say with almost 100% certainty, the biggest problem he's facing right now isn't a targeting problem, okay? It's a lack of new creative problem. Remember, 80% of your success when running YouTube ads comes down to your creative and 80% of your creative success comes down to your hook. And almost 100% of the time when potential clients reach out to me and my team to to get help with their YouTube ads, after asking them what their creative strategy looks like, it's almost non existent. Meaning they've tried one or two video ads and when those didn't work, they tried fixing the lack of lead flow or profitability from their ads. With more media buying, testing, new audiences, new campaign types, new bidding types, new strategies, new tactics inside the actual ads manager. Now repeat after me, okay? You can't out media buy a shitty ad. You just can't. So the reason I share this with you is because here's why most people fail with YouTube ads. And again, this guy isn't failing with YouTube ads. But I want to be very clear for you watching this. When people say YouTube ads are dead, they're forgetting the basic principles of how YouTube ads work. And what is really the most important piece to creating and scaling profitable YouTube ad campaigns. The reason why most people fail with YouTube ads is because 80% of your results depends on these two things. Number one, offer packaging and positioning, okay? Offer packaging and positioning, the way you package and position your offer to the marketplace. Because again, what works on warm traffic will most definitely not really work on cold traffic. Cold traffic is a different beast. If you want to scale the cold traffic, you got to do cold traffic things, okay? You got to make your offer compelling and scalable. You got to design it in a way that makes it compelling and scalable. Not just from a marketing perspective, but also from a fulfillment perspective. Now, the second reason why most people fail with YouTube ads and what I believe is his problem right now, creative. Okay? Now most people blame it on this, the targeting. What did he Say the targeting change, the targeting is off.

Right.

Number two is the agency or in this case, the media buyer.

Right.

Again, I'm not saying that targeting is being removed, didn't affect his campaign's performance, and I'm not saying that the media buyers he hired weren't suitable to help him fix this either. But what I am saying is that if your ads are not working to cold traffic, it's usually because, and in this order, number one, your offer.

Right.

It's usually always the offer, but clearly he has a good offer. It's still working at a 3.5x ROAS 2.5 years later. So let's just rule that one out. Number two, your copy. Which again is my prescription to him based off what he said and just knowing what most people overlook hundreds percent of the time.

Right.

Number three, you're targeting. Okay? So if you're having trouble scaling cold traffic with your ads and your offer is not profitable, it's usually because these three things, and in this order, from order of priority. So now let's tackle number one together, your offer. So he's selling a mid ticket $997 offer. This isn't low ticket, okay, where someone can easily whip out a credit card and buy it without thinking twice. This is a decent sized investment for a course that might or might not help them with getting their ex back. But the majority of the market has already seen this offer, so the cream has already been scraped completely off the top. So what should he do? Well, assuming he hasn't already, number one, I would immediately add a high ticket backend coaching course hybrid. So that can be sold for 3,800 to $5,800 as well.

Right.

This will allow him to be okay with the 3.5x return on ad spend, which again is really, really good to cold traffic. Meaning he's spending 5,000, spending 5,000 and making, you know, close to about 17,500 back. Still pretty decent, right? A lot of people would take that every single day of the week. I would take that every single day of the week. Especially if I have something on the back end that can be sold for 3,800 to $5,800, which would allow me to increase my LTV per customer because of the number of customers who will eventually upgrade or ascend to this offer right here. Thus making my ads more profitable on the front end and me making me happy with a 3.5x return on ad spend. Does that make sense?

Right.

You add a high ticket back in to your mid ticket Offer to be able to ascend more people through and create more value for your, your customers and for your business in terms of profit. Now, assuming he hasn't done that, assuming he has done that, I would also add a low ticket front end offer for 27 to $97. Now this will allow him to capture more of the market since most people won't truly be ready to buy a $997 product or a high ticket coaching program and be able to help him build out a clear ascension ladder for for his business. Because, for example, right? YouTube ads to a $67 course, then to a $997 upsell or you know, pitched via a VSL or webinar and then to a $3,800 coaching offer right? Now that's just an example, right? But this can complete an ascension ladder here. He has a low ticket, he has a mid ticket and now he has a high ticket. He's serving all different types of the market. I only a specific amount of people are ready to buy a $3,800 coaching offer. Even more people are ready to buy a $997 offer, which is what he's selling right now. Even more people are ready to buy a $67 offer because it's just way cheaper, you see. So now here's a case study of exactly how we've done this for one of our clients, for example, Scott Jack, who sells a similar offer, he teaches men how to land more dates, right, with women and you know, go on high quality dates with them. He makes $3899 a day at his peak with YouTube ads while working with us from a $67 info product after we installed our YouTube ads client acquisition system in his business. Now this is not about us right now, this is about you. The only reason why I share this is because Scott Jack has proven this. He ran a $67 info product YouTube ad to a sales page with a simple VSL and a same order page on the VSL and the sales page to be able to check out and buy the product, right? This allowed him to feed the front end of his business and feed the back end of his business to more coaching clients, one on one clients that were higher ticket where he would charge 5,000, even $10,000 for his time to coach them one on one. So he had a front end self liquidating offer for $67 that was profitable where he'd be making 1k a day or $2653 a day where one person, right? Where multiple people per day would buy up to $702 worth of products from him on the front end offer and then he would have record breaking days, like $3,899 front end profitability again. This is way less profitable by the way, than like what this guy's doing. This guy's making 3.5x return on ad spend on the front end right now. Scott Jack and I were maybe making about 2.2.5x return on AD spend, so he's already doing better now. The key is, Scott Jack had the backend again. I don't know if he does or not. I'm just reading his post and sharing with you what I would do now. Number two, okay, assuming the offer is good, assuming he has all those things, then the obvious becomes the copy, aka your YouTube ad. Remember the former mentor I just talked about who told me that every two to three years he would have to write a new book before his old book got stale? All right, well, he also taught me that to profitably spend hundreds of thousands per month on YouTube ads, you need to be testing more ads, right? In fact, for just one of his low ticket offers, a free plus shipping book offer, which is only $7.95 to buy it.

Right?

So it's a low, low ticket. We tested over 127 different YouTube ads, 127 different YouTube ads for this one offer over a two to three year time frame, right? And out of those 127 different YouTube ads, only about 12 or so made us all the money. I'm talking about two to three million dollars on the front end, not including any back end sales whatsoever.

Okay?

Which means that if you are still here, and hopefully he's here watching this video as well, and again, no shame to him. And you're not getting the results that you're looking for from your YouTube ads. Let this be a wake up call and let this inspire you to go out today and start raising, writing new YouTube ad hooks, scripts and CTAs to test immediately. Now here's the cool part, all right? YouTube ads can live longer, fatigue slower and convert faster. He's probably experiencing this right now. The same ads that used to work are probably still working, but just not as profitable as they once were. On average, YouTube ads can last up to six months without ever experiencing any sort of ad fatigue, for example, right? Which means that when you find a winner, you can continue running it profitably for a very long time. But this is where most people get comfortable, right? Happens to the best of us. You get a winning campaign, you get a winning ad, and it's just printing you cash. Like, it's probably printing him, and it was before, where he's spending, you know, a lot less money to make a lot more. And he's like, well, I'm not going to touch anything. It's working, right? And of course, I would do the same thing. We would all do the same thing. Let's not touch anything. It's crushing. Just don't touch.

Right?

But what you should do, okay. If you truly want to stay ahead of your competitors, you must consistently be testing new creatives and flooding the marketplace with more ads. Because if you think about it, right, it's kind of like your favorite TV show. You can only see the same episode so many times before you realize exactly what's going to happen next. Or it's like, you know, expecting you to go on a first date with a girl you really like. This girl, you go on a first date with her, and it's amazing. You take her to this place, this place, and this place, and she. She loves it, right? The second date comes around, and then you take her to the same place you went on the first date, the same place you went on the first date again, and the same place you went to the first date again. She's probably not going to be as interested in you or what you have to offer because she's seeing the same offer every single time you're taking it to the same spots, right? If she didn't buy that first date, she's probably not going to buy the second date, especially because you're offering her the same thing you offered her on the first date. It's the same thing with your YouTube ads. So to help you with this, watch this next video. Okay? I'll put it here. You can click the link right there. In this video, I break down how we helped one of our clients, BRANDON Carter, make $636,000 in 90 days with this one YouTube ad.

Okay.

I break down the exact framework for the hook, the story, the clothes. I go through exactly how we scripted it, how we had them film it, how we edited it for the right conversions at the the right time for the right price. That's going to help you immediately kickstart your new creative process. Now, on top of that, number three, let's talk about targeting.

Okay.

YouTube ads have changed, so YouTube ads are becoming more and more simple for anyone and everyone to run. Now you can let Google's algorithm build custom audiences for you based on your audience's interests or their specific keywords, what they're actually typing into Google and YouTube as far as questions, comments, phrases or specific intents, right. Custom segments are the new way to get high quality leads, calls and customers from YouTube ads. Keyword targeting is no longer the thing anymore. Now it's custom segments, which means you can create custom audiences based on keywords, interests and websites. So for example, you can literally type in keywords that people have searched for on Google and YouTube. And the way you do it is you have 10 to 15 of them. So if I was this guy and I was typing in keywords around getting my ex back, I would simply go to Google, right? How to get my ex back. Boom, right there. How to get my ex back. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I would copy all of those and I'll put them into a custom audience. Easy, right there. 10 to 15. I would make multiple audiences of those. Now people who are interested in specific topics. So for example, if they're interested in dating relationships, game, right? Pickup all those keywords that most men who probably need to be better with women are typing into Google so they can learn how to get their ex back, would be interested in and then boom, his ad pops up before them before their next YouTube video.

Okay?

You can also type in people who have browsed similar websites to specific websites. So if there are dating forums, right? Or specific other funnels of competitors that are running traffic to a similar offer, dating coaches, offers, right. I would take all of their funnel pages and I would put them into another custom segment audience. These are all different audiences. He and his media buyer can immediately test to try to again find better quality audiences. Now, for example, when you use this, what happens is something like this. So this is a case study from one of our clients who before working with us was using interest based targeting, basically just saying, hey, I'm going to let the algorithm do its thing and just see what happens. Happens. Well, he was getting a $373 CPA on a 97 product. Okay. Before working with us, after we've used our specific intent based validation targeting strategies, we were able to reduce that back down to a 93.97 cost per acquisition for his business, which is a lot better than 373.

Right?

So $373. So you can see obviously why the targeting does matter. But, but his biggest problem is going to be the copy and the creative. So to help you with this, okay. Especially with the targeting side, because things have changed and because your ads need to be refreshed. I want you to watch this video next, where I show you exactly how to go about creating more high ROI audiences for your YouTube ads.

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This video will show you exactly how to set these up for today's YouTube ads targeting. All right, go watch it, and I'll see you there.