The Secrets To YouTube Advertising with John Belcher

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Hi and welcome back to Feed you'd Brand. This is Tom and Tracy and as promised, at the end of our last episode, we are going to take a deeper dive in this episode again with our same guest, John Belcher from adskills. And I know after that last one some of you are probably waiting, when's that next one going to come out? Well, I hope we didn't make you wait too long.

Right. And if you're joining this episode for the very first time and you're just joining our podcast for the first time and you missed that last episode, I'm going to strongly suggest you pause this one, go back and do that one first because it gives you such a broad principles on advertising in general media buying, making sure that you're cost effective. And John is a Google AdWords guy. That's how he cut his teeth. He knows how it works and everything. And remember, YouTube is owned by Google. So this is critically important in the process of things. We personally have our own experience of having many of our podcasts and blog posts from those podcasts for us and for our clients being boosted when the video is inputted in it. And usually it's a fast start boost. And when I say boosted, meaning they're joining on the first page of Google, Right? So they're Google ranked quickly. So that's one aspect of why we've been a big advocate of inserting videos into your blog post for your podcast and doing all of that. But John has a brilliant strategy here because what we've not been so successful with is getting people to subscribe to your channel and just watch it on YouTube. Right? And so we haven't really seen a lot of that going. We get people to subscribe on itunes and Stitcher and other places to our podcast and come to our websites and listen to the podcast and do all of those things. But we've not been able to get that successfully happening with either our videocasters or our podcasters in and of itself. And he's got a brilliant plan for how you might advertise to get more subscribers to your channel. Because what we have to remember Is we're going to YouTube because we have a plan. We want to learn something. We're going at how to. It's not all that different from how we search on podcasts. It has a very similar synergy. So do we really want to derail people from listening or watching? So got to listen to John's plan here.

All right, well, let's go to that interview, and then we'll talk some more after.

All.

Right, John, we're very excited to speak with you again, and this time in more detail about YouTube, that there are a lot of question marks in people's minds about YouTube and advertising on YouTube, and I think we're in that camp ourselves right now if we don't know what we don't know. So I don't even know exactly what to ask you. So. Well, why don't you start sharing what you think are some of the most important things people should know about YouTube, and then maybe we'll have some questions along the way as things emerge.

Yeah. So to start with, YouTube is an amazing advertising platform. It's my absolute favorite. It's the only one that I actually do still run traffic for people because I love it, and I love the opportunity to scale and how engaged people are. Video consumption is incredible. Just watching people consume how much they love it and how they really appreciate the products that you're putting in front of them. I recently had someone describe YouTube advertising. We asked them if they mind YouTube ads, and if you see 100 of them and you can't skip them, everyone says we don't like them. But the answer I've gotten from a lot of people is, if I see a good one, I really enjoy it. Versus and we asked them if they feel the same way about Facebook ads, and they say no. I say, why, is there a difference? They say, well, Facebook, it's my feed, but on YouTube, I know I'm going to someone else's yard and I'm playing around. And so I don't mind if there's something over there, because it's not in my personal space. And so that was a really interesting thing for me because usually when I describe what I do to people, I say, you know, the ads you don't like on YouTube, that's what I do. But we help put together really good ones and make sure that your ads show up to the right people. And so it's cool to hear when it's done well, people actually really appreciate it. And you can see there's been some mega companies built off YouTube advertising. I know it's hard for the small business person to relate, but Dollar Shave Club literally was just razors. Like in a warehouse with a killer video. They had a great video, right? Yeah, they had a great problem they were solving. And so it may be hard for someone that's running a barber shop or a law firm or something to relate to that you may not have the amount of scale that Dollar Shave Club did or that Poo Pourri has the best ads. I love watching their ads. I will watch them for fun. But it's one of those things of it may not feel the same to you, but if you have a great problem that you can solve and you can communicate it through video, you have a great opportunity on YouTube and you don't have to spend $10 million to make it work. You just need to think about your market. And as we talked about in the last episode, doing customer research, understanding their problems. One of the really big exercises we do in our customer research course is talking about an empathy map. So that's talking about what are people thinking, hearing, feeling and saying. Those are really important to understand. And then what you do is you formulate their hell island. So currently, what's their hell, what are they dealing with and where would they like to get to? And they may not know where they like to get to. So with Dollar Shave Club, you knew that you're paying a lot for razors, but there wasn't really another option. They were just telling you there's another option they could help you get to of you're only paying $3 a month for razors, whatever that is. Right. And so that was the piece of like, what's your service that's going to help people get from where they're at to where they want to go. And so it's really important as long as your video conveys this is how you can help someone get there. And always having proof is great. Proof is a great thing that you can build into videos. But you don't have to spend a million dollars to be successful on YouTube. You just need to think about. And I love that last time we talked about, you do your keyword research and you really understand what people are looking for. So what's amazing about any Google advertising platform, so Google search, display or YouTube, you have the ability to use the keywords that people are searching for to target your ads. So from the wanting to start a podcast, do you have an example of a keyword that you try and SEO for?

We do a lot with podcast hosting. So, like Best podcast hosting. Podcast hosting, Money making or monetization is typically one because we combine podcast hosting and money essentially. So there's a bunch of words that circulate around that Beautiful example.

Podcast monetization. Yep. That may or may not. You know, there's a lot of people have podcasts, so I'm not sure the search volume on that. It's not massive, but I imagine it's a really good niche, right? Yeah. And if people are trying to monetize, that means they're interested in generating money. There may be a decent chance they're willing to invest in something in order to get a return on that. So what we would look to do is create a video ad that just calls out their problem. Hey, struggling to monetize your podcast? You'll want to watch this video. And so all you're doing in those first five seconds, we call it the punch. You're just trying to make sure that the people that you're targeting are just going to stay and listen to what you have to say. And so we say you're competing against the skip button. But the really good thing is if someone skips your ad, you don't pay for it. So you're only talking to people who are actually interested in what you're talking about. That's a really amazing thing about YouTube. I think people don't understand. They're like, oh, I'm paying. And all those people are skipping. They skip, you don't pay. So it's really important to understand that you want to call out the people that you're trying to talk to, whatever their hell is the problem that you're trying to help them solve, it's a great way to do that. So podcast monetization, you're struggling to monetize your podcast. You'll want to watch this video. Then you kind of talking about the problem. A lot of people struggle to monetize their podcast for XYZ reasons. It's really great to get emotional there and you can say, hey, we understood, we went through it ourselves, and it was really difficult. You're trying to figure out a way to create freedom for yourself and build this podcast and blah, blah, blah. And here's all the reasons that you're struggling with it, and here's what you used to have to do to monetize it, but luckily you don't have to anymore. That's what we've invented our solution. Here's what we do. And we've helped X, Y and Z people accomplish this. So if you want to learn more, click here. Something very basic and as I said before, With YouTube, you're not going to get clicks the same way. So what we often do because people have come there to consume. So last time when I was on the show, we talked about people are there to be educated or to be entertained. The chances they're clicking on things are not as likely because they want to be there to consume that content. So what they'll do, what we often do is say, hey, go visit us at this website. Or we can do a text opt in. So we use leadpages. There's a tool called lead digits where it's like text this particular term to this number in order to get your free lead magnet or whatever that is. And so you've got different ways to have call to actions to get people to your site. But if you've done a good job calling out those people and using the keywords that they've typed in, Google knows what those keywords are. So it doesn't matter what the actual video is that you're serving ads on. You can just serve to people who recently searched for that, which makes a huge difference. And so it's a really great way to go through and do that. Now a lot of people at this point say, hey John, that's all great and I'd love to do that, but it's really hard to go through and create video content. And until recently I would have agreed with you. See, that's what I just said. Problem. Right, problem. And then like the big hook.

I was listening to that.

We were listening for that. Yeah, absolutely.

The big hook. Well, I don't have a product to sell you, but Google's done a really, really nice job recently. They just came up with a program called YouTube Director on Site, which is if you commit to spending $350 on YouTube, they will have a professional filmmaker get together with you and make a 30 second video ad for free. I am just dumbfounded at how Google went through and came up with this program.

All right, I'm totally doing that just to try it out.

All right, stop for a second. So you're telling me that you agree to spend $350 in YouTube advertising. Spend. They will send someone to you, to your location who's a professional and help you record a 30 second video.

Yes. All right.

That is worth everybody who listens to this podcast. That's worth everything right there. Because I guarantee you, if anybody who has gone out to hire somebody to help them record a video, they've each spent more than $350 getting someone to just show up, show up and forget all the other things that it costs. What I mean, so you're saying show up and record it. They're going to edit it and give you a final cut of a video. And is this a one time, the first time you do it thing or just to get your foot in the door or can you do that repeatedly?

It's a one time thing from my understanding. It's a very new program, so we'll see. But I would imagine it's a one time thing because they've got their approved filmmakers. What I would do if I was one of those filmmakers, say, hey, this works. Do you want to shoot another one? Here's a coupon. So I'll come back and do it with you again.

Yeah. So we're sitting here going, our son in law is a filmmaker. He's done a killer. I mean, it's killing it on YouTube right now. Music video. It's awesome. And this is a deal. This is a huge deal.

This is a real deal.

I pay him more and he's my son in law.

No, but that's just a great value for people that want to get started in this. I would think that's such a great offer.

Wow.

Absolutely. It's a huge deal. And so what the biggest thing that I would say is, while these filmmakers, I guarantee you are great because Google does a very good job vetting people. They're filmmakers, they're not salespeople. So I wouldn't imagine that most of these filmmakers are people that do a great job selling. So they're going to help you put together a script. But I don't know if it's going to sell you very well and if it's going to contain what it really takes to have a successful offer. So what I did is I shared with you guys our scripts. This is how we put together a 30 second script and the different pieces that we have of it. I put together an example of how I would put an ad together and then give you the template so you can go through and do it yourself. Because what I would hate to see is, is that you go through and do everything to get your ad produced. It's an ad that doesn't have a very good call to action, doesn't tell people where to go and doesn't really have an offer. That for me is kind of a bummer. That would be something that would be bad. So I wanted to make sure people have something that is useful to Help them go through and put together their ad. And then the last thing is you have to spend $350 on advertising. Right. It's important that you're making that commitment. The last thing I would want to see people do is go through and just waste that because they don't know how to advertise on TikTok. Right. And so that's the biggest thing. So I put in there resource, our bulletproof YouTube ads course. That was the first course I ever created for AdSkills. It's our number one selling course because so many people struggle with YouTube advertising. And so everything we talk about today I talk about in that course. And we'll help you go through and set up your ads so you don't waste that $350. I would hate to see that happen. So that's kind of what we put together in there. Go through and review it. If you decide not to get the course and you just use the template, that's great. I just want to see you be successful.

Oh, John, that's such a great thing you did to offer that resource. I think, because that's the thing. So many people that seek to advertise on YouTube are not experts in what it takes to do it effectively. So we're sort of taking some steps here to help ensure that they don't just throw away $350 on an experiment.

Right? That's right, exactly. I just want to see people be successful. And you know, this is something that I've gotten the privilege. I get to have a business that I love to do and I get to teach people. And so all I want to do is just make sure that people have the chance to succeed with this. Because like I said in the last episode, the two things we talked about are confidence and cash flow. You have to have confidence in what you're doing. You have to be able to make a return on it. Once you do that, you're going to start investing more and more in your business. So back to the fun part. On YouTube, I'll just talk quickly about the different types of how you can get your ads out in front of people so we know what a lot of times people are like, okay, well, great. I put together that one thirty second ads. Professional filmmaker. Do I have to do that every time? Absolutely not. A lot of our YouTube ads are me sitting in front of my computer. I use a tool called Camtasia when I film stuff. And I'll just sit here and it's just talking to our audience. I actually have a list right here. So I put together all of the YouTube tutorials that I'm going to be doing this year. Wow. There's like three pages. Took me like two hours to put this together. And so I just created a YouTube remarketing video that said, hey, what's cool about AdWords is you can say if people have watched one of your videos or visited your site but are not subscribed to your YouTube channel, you can serve an ad to those people. There's a million different ways you can cut things up, but I said, I just spent two hours putting together a list of 300 YouTube tutorials I'm going to put together. Excited to teach you, but the problem is that you're not subscribed to our channel. So what we're going to do here is in three seconds, I'll have a button pop up. You click on it, you'll be subscribed. You'll be notified whenever I put these out. Cut. 3, 2, 1 video shows, the little button pops up, you can subscribe to the video and on to the next one. And so we've been able to get subscribers for like 8 cents just to make sure that our channel continues to grow. Because people are going through and doing this. And so.

And it's great because they don't leave YouTube so that they didn't really derail what they were doing.

Exactly. It's simple, it's clean. Click on it, onto the next one. They can still watch the video that they came there for. So it doesn't have to be the super professionally produced commercial. Whenever you're talking to what we call cold traffic. So people who've never met you before, that's a very helpful thing. That's what that 30 second video would be great for. You can shoot something on your iPhone. Just make sure you guys, people know who you are at your podcast. And maybe they don't get to see your face all the time, but if you just called out, it's like, hey, Hazards, just wanted to say we really appreciate you following us. We're gonna start putting up some more content on our YouTube channel. Click here to subscribe. Bam. Easy, simple. You don't have to spend a lot of money to do that. What you're typically paying for a view is somewhere between 3 and 5 cents. Now, if you're doing advertising on Facebook and you're like, man, that's really expensive compared to Facebook. You only get charged with YouTube, a, when people don't skip, and B, they have to watch 30 seconds or the entire length of your video, whichever one is shorter. And so I think it's that piece YouTube or Facebook, you get charged at three to ten second mark. So you're getting a much more qualified view with YouTube. And so that's why I really tell people, do not compare apples to apples. You're going to be very upset.

Yeah.

So do you think it's very important for people advertising on YouTube to have their own YouTube channel and to be creating videos like this for them to engage to the point where they subscribe to you? Is that a key aspect of it?

So you have to have a YouTube channel to advertise on Google. You don't have to have any subscribers or any content, but you have to have a YouTube channel because the videos, the ads have to be loaded onto YouTube in order to utilize. So that's number one when it comes to the content piece. If you're not trying to build a following on YouTube, you don't have to do it. I do not work with companies any longer that do not have YouTube libraries because I want people to be engaging on YouTube because it has a lift effect where if you're running ads, it will continue to drive more people to your organic site or your organic YouTube channel. And if you've got conversions set up through there, it works really well. But that's just kind of the business models of the businesses that I work with. You don't have to have a YouTube channel, you don't have to have content on your channel. It's not what you have to have. The biggest thing is just having the videos and then thinking about who you're talking to. So in the last episode, we talked about the five stages of awareness. Really important to think about that. And that's the one thing I love about YouTube is YouTube is one of the very few networks. So the other thing we talked about the last session is don't think about an ad network like a Swiss army knife. Think about it like a fork or a spoon or a knife. It has a unique purpose. It can't do everything. Well, YouTube is one of the networks that can actually do everything. It can cover people all the way from the top stage, the totally unaware, down to being really good at remarketing. That's because you've got what I call Google data. So Google knows what it is that you do on a daily basis online. It can see what you're searching for, what blogs you're reading, if you're visiting sites like ESPN. If you're watching stuff on YouTube, it can. It's Gmail, there's, I think a billion 500. I can't remember. There's a lot of people that use Gmail. So those are all Google properties. And so the extent that Google, there's a big privacy concern about everything right now. Like, if you think Facebook knows a lot about you, Google knows way more about.

Oh, I bet you.

Oh, believe me.

And they know way more from the day you enter third grade, is what we've discovered as well.

Exactly. Yep. And it's because Google doesn't have an age range. Facebook has a demographic. Snapchat has a demographic. Google is everything. Everybody goes to Google to search for stuff or to go to YouTube. Like you talk to kids between the ages of 8 and 12 right now, they may know about Snapchat, that Facebook's not a thing. YouTube is everything for them. And so you cannot advertise to people below the age of 18. It's not one of those things that you can do. But I'm just saying, like, Google is a universally adopted ecosphere, and so it's really good at understanding about you. And so where I was getting with that is there's two types of data that it really looks for. So affinity audiences or interest targeting is everything that you do on a daily basis. So I played football in college. I absolutely love football. I look at football stuff all the time. I search for football scores, I watch football highlights on YouTube, I read blogs about football. It knows that I'm a football fanatic. And so from the affinity audience side, I would fall into football fanatic, I would fall into marketer, I would fall into business person. It's got these little buckets that it puts me into and says, if you want to target people who are football fanatics, John's going to be in that bucket with millions of other people. If you want to target business people, you can do that. And then anytime you break your normal habits. So let's say I look at football stuff and all of a sudden I want to get a new car because my car broke down. I start searching for new cars. Google knows that I broke my habit and I'm now in the market to buy something. And so what's incredible about this is that's one step down. So affinity audience is that totally unaware. It's just kind of like, hey, you're interested in this stuff and we're going to disrupt your normal daily routine and tell you there's an opportunity that's totally unaware. Same thing with problem aware is kind of that stage of you're not really Looking for anything yet, but you may be in this kind of area. You have a car, and if check engine light came on, we have a product that solves that. So it's kind of like that still. Like, I'm either not aware of my problem or I just became aware of it and I'm not actively looking for a solution. YouTube can cover both of those extremely well. But then when it really starts to get exciting, is that in market piece where you're actively searching for something. So whether it be how to start a podcast that's high, and then moving down into podcast hosting, or podcast this or podcast that, and then it's how to monetize a podcast that's all lower and lower into the funnel of the search words. Right. It gets more and more long tail, more and more unique, more and more specific. YouTube allows you to target people. So if you fall into one of the major categories, like you're in the market for mortgages or cars or life insurance or baby supplies, you can advertise to people who are actively going through that. That's really cool. And then you start to get into things where if you're in a little bit more of a micro niche, you can start to put together. Google just recently released a tool, it's called a custom intent audience. So you can actually take keywords that people are actively searching for that deal with your niche markets and turn it into your own little in market audience and advertise to those people. I actually have a YouTube video, a tutorial I'll send over to you. It talks about how we do this when we build top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom funnel, keywords say this is kind of where people are at and we could advertise. We can build ads based on what they're searching for. If you're looking at podcast hosting, I think that was one of the terms you gave me earlier, right?

It was, yeah.

So it's like, if you're interested in podcast hosting, make sure you watch this video, dive in, talk about a lot of the challenges, and here's the solution that we created to help you solve that problem. Or if it's further down on monetization, you can go back to the ad that we talked about earlier. And so it really covers all the way from didn't know anything, there was no problem, all the way down to actively looking for a solution. And then once they've got there and they already know about you, then you can retarget them. And so it truly covers that whole spectrum. Google's data is Incredible. And allows you to reach people truly at every stage, which I just think is incredible. Wow.

Mind blown.

Seriously, we could just let you educate us all day long here. Wow.

It actually. Yeah. I want to thank you for that, being so open and free with your information. I think that's very helpful to us as hosts, to us as business people, and I think to all of our listeners as well. I think certainly they now know that adskills is a heck of a resource.

We're lucky. This is something that Justin and Shawna. So Justin and Shawna Brooke are my business partners, and we've been really blessed. We found that there's an opportunity to sell people stuff. But just doing good and helping people get to that point, they feel that confidence, they can start to generate a return for themselves. We judge our success not by how well we do. It's by how well our customers do, our students do. That's how we judge it. And so we just love to be out and share and make sure people aren't making the mistakes that are costing other people money. So we appreciate the opportunity to be on here.

Wow.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, John.

Tracy. That was such a revelation to me because we even have some video ads running in the front of YouTube videos right now on YouTube that are related to podcasting and people looking into learning how to start a podcast and stuff like that and our video strategy. It remains to be seen whether it's going to completely work, and it's too early in our ad campaign process to determine that. But I think by the end of August, we'll know. And I know you're going to go. You mentioned the previous episode. Going to go. Start taking the course. I'm taking this class, and we'll report back. But I think we should also report back on what kind of success we're having with our own ad campaign, because we have like a dozen video ads that are running in front of different YouTube ads. But what they're doing is people that are going to watch certain videos on YouTube are going to be served our ad first. And the idea with these ads is that you would click on the ad and immediately go to an offer taking you away from this video that you.

Were planning on watching, which never made sense to me. Right. Because it's not human nature to derail you from doing it. That's why we ignore commercials all the time. That's why we prefer Netflix instead of tv.

Right.

I mean, we just don't like it. Like you and I were watching a TV show on demand on DirecTV. Right. That's what we have here. And we were watching, we'd been watching the show on Netflix, right.

And well, we ran through all, we.

Ran through all of the episodes. But the current season we had to.

Catch up, I think on ABC Go or something.

Yeah, ABC go. And so we had to watch it and you can't fast forward through the commercials. And we were so annoyed. And it wasn't just so annoyed because there were commercials, it was so annoyed because they were the same commercials over and over and over. Yeah. And so when you get annoyed with something that's not working for you, that's not helping your brand. So it's not even leaving a good brand impression, if that was your goal, was just sort of advertising to get sort of brand awareness. You're getting negative brand awareness. And it's leading off from their annoyance of how ads are served.

So I really think this strategy of not necessarily intending to take people away from the video they were going to watch in the first place, but getting them to instead subscribe to your YouTube channel. Because once they subscribe to your YouTube channel now you've got all their data and you know who they are and you can retarget them later. It's pretty brilliant.

It's really brilliant. And so the other thing about this is that we're going to be bringing you an episode upcoming as we keep doing, getting more and more information about Google podcasts. And so now we have a connection between YouTube, Google Podcasts, your Google search and your blog post. And those three things together could be creating really powerful cross subscriber understanding, which means better advertising, more relevant, a more targeted audience overall. So really having a YouTube strategy, whether it's just having the ads going to a subscribe channel and it's just you're playing, we have some clients who will do just the words, right? It'll just be the words. And over an image of oh, you're talking about, you'll just hear the audio.

Track, the audio version of the podcast.

Yeah, sure. And it's just a standard image and just the audio track, but it's there. We have others who record video, actually record video and play that with product launch hazards. That's what I do is we put all of our videos up from. Because we're actually doing a zoom, a live zoom. And so we record that. So we have the videos, but we also then put it out in podcasts. So we have both things going on. So whether you're doing that, but having some kind of YouTube strategy and having A channel there is important. So make sure that you're putting that practice in place. So, because this is going to be powerful overall in sort of your ranking strategy, which is should be the ultimate goal, getting people to stay tuned into you no matter where they want to listen to you, and then being able to follow them and make them offers that they are ready for and that are relevant to them. So I'm super excited about this and I'm so glad he was able to give us extra time. I really appreciate John's expertise and his openness and willingness to share with us.

Absolutely. You know, while we can't speak from experience from taking the courses on adskills.com yet, I think it's a fantastic resource. We'll give you our experience in the coming months. But I was very impressed and I think it's worth at least exploring for sure.

Right. And I do want to say we didn't have no relationship with adskills at all in terms of an alliance here. So, like, we don't make money. When you go to adskills.com and do this. Right.

This isn't a selfish thing.

Yeah. I just want you to be clear on that.

It's just the best resource that we've found so far to provide real informed information on this. And that's really what everybody's looking for, is to sort sift through and separate fact from fantasy here.

That's right. Absolutely. And when you have such deep depth in knowledge like John has, I want you guys to hear that. So that's why we're so passionate and excited about it. So anyway, thank you all for listening to Featurebrand today. And we want to remind you that there are links and all kinds of resources, usually in the blog posts@feedyourbrand.co. and also, of course, we post things out on social media, little pieces of brilliance and other things. And we'd love to hear from you on social media. Edyourbrand.

Yeah, please. If any of you have had experience and taken some of these courses, reach out to us and let us know anywhere on social media or comment on the blog post or send us an email. There's lots of ways to contact us you'll find on the website.

Yeah, we'd love to hear your success stories.

Absolutely. Well, thanks so much, everybody. Hope you enjoyed this episode. We will talk to you next time.

This has been Tracy and Tom on feed. You'd brand.

Sam.