From Views to Leads: YouTube for Serious Marketers

[00:00:00] YouTube. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know it is not just for kids or creators anymore. In today's world of AI, shrinking website traffic, and lower email open rates, YouTube is quickly becoming the place where smart digital marketers are finding real results. Whether you're in B2B, SaaS, a nonprofit, or really any type of business, this episode dives into why YouTube may be the most overlooked and most powerful channel in your digital strategy.

[00:00:31] Plus, we'll break down how to use YouTube the right way both organically and through ads. So make sure you stay tuned to this next episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.

[00:01:02] If you're a business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neal on your side. Because Neal Schaffer is your Digital Marketing Coach. Helping you grow your business with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your Digital Marketing Coach and this is Neal Schaffer.

[00:01:30] Hey everybody, this is Neal Schaffer. Welcome to episode number 423 of the Your Digital Marketing Coach Podcast. If you're new here, well, as your Digital Marketing Coach, it's really my responsibility to help keep you informed, inspired, and provide insightful information around all things digital marketing for your business. On some episodes, we talk about content marketing, others influencer marketing, we talk social media.

[00:01:56] And yes, we talk video and we talk YouTube as well because there are a lot of bases to cover. So today I have a special interview with Dane Golden. Dane had a video marketing podcast that I was an avid listener to. He often co-hosted it with someone named Shelly Saves the Day. Maybe you listen to that podcast too.

[00:02:17] But I was in a period where I was looking to get educated on YouTube and like many others, I went into Apple Podcasts, I did some searches, and I really enjoyed listening to his podcast. We've been connected forever on LinkedIn. So when he reached out to me, I was like, of course, I would love to have you on my podcast.

[00:02:36] So today we're taking a deep dive into a platform that's often overlooked in digital marketing, YouTube. With so much talk around LinkedIn, and I know I'm part of that, and it's still a great platform, but you got LinkedIn, you got TikTok, AI-driven search. It's really easy to forget that YouTube still is the second largest search engine.

[00:02:58] It seems to appear more and more on the search results in Google, and we know that transcripts are being ingested into large language models like ChatGPT, and thus it is still a massive opportunity for both B2C and B2B marketers.

[00:03:14] So Dane, who is a bonafide YouTube expert, shares why YouTube is more than just a place to post videos. It is a powerful engine for growing trust, building relationships, and driving real business results. If you're not using YouTube strategically yet, now's the time to rethink how it fits into your digital marketing mix, and it begins now with my interview with Dane Golden. You're listening to Your Digital Marketing Coach. This is Neil Schaefer.

[00:03:47] Hey, everybody. Welcome to another live stream edition of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Well, today we're going to be talking all about YouTube, and as I was prepping for this call with my guest, I was explaining how I think a lot of businesses, when they think of digital marketing, yes, we have the SES framework, hopefully from those of you that read Digital Threads, search email social. And when we get to social, we talk about TikTok or LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram.

[00:04:15] And when we get to search, we talk about Google more and more. We talk about ChatGPT and generative AI search. Maybe recently with Gen Z, we talk about TikTok, right? But what about YouTube? And it's something that I have been investing more and more in. To me, I've always told people video is the final frontier. Started with a blog, then a podcast, doing more short-form video. But for me, long-form video on YouTube has so much potential. And I've seen people that just started in a year or two down the road.

[00:04:44] They've hit six-figure subscribers, and YouTube has built their business. So today, my special guest is actually someone whose podcast I have personally been listening to for several years. The podcast name is at several iterations. I'm going to have him tell us what the latest iteration is. But he has been one of my sources of YouTube education over the years. I've learned a ton from him. So I reached out to him and said, look, it would be an honor to have you on my show. And he accepted. Now, he does a lot with YouTube.

[00:05:12] And if you're a consumer-focused brand or a B2B brand or a nonprofit, he has a YouTube strategy for you. He can help you be successful. And he can give you a lot of great education. Recently, he's been doing a lot with YouTube ads and specifically with B2B and more specifically with SaaS companies. So we're going to go broad. We're going to go deep. But I think whatever we talk about, it's going to be really, really applicable. And really, at the end of this conversation, yes, you definitely should reach out to Dane. He's a great guy. Subscribe to his podcast newsletter.

[00:05:42] Learn a lot from him. But more than that, really see YouTube in a different light and begin to make YouTube a more central part of your digital marketing strategy. So with that said, let's bring on today's special guest, Dane Golden. Dane, welcome. Hey, what's up, Neil? How's it going? It's awesome when, you know, I really haven't seen you speak. I've only listened to your podcast. So it's this, what do they call it? Parasocial when you think you know someone really well from their voice. I see you on video. So it's an awesome moment.

[00:06:11] This is what I look like in human form. Indeed. Indeed. So, well, thank you so much for taking me up on my invitation. I know this is going to be a great show. So I could have read some script that you gave me that introduced you, but I like to allow my guests to introduce themselves in the way they want to be introduced. So I'm going to hand the mic over to you. So, Dane, tell us. I mean, I sort of gave my spin on what I think you do and how you help businesses. But I'd love to hear your own spin on it.

[00:06:37] Well, you know, a lot of people spend a lot of time talking about a lot of history. And frankly, I've been doing digital marketing and startups for a while. And I actually forget so many of the different things that I've done. And I forget, oh, yeah, that startup didn't work. That startup didn't work. And some do. So I've been doing it a lot, a lot related to YouTube video and some podcasting.

[00:07:04] But what we're focused on now is YouTube ads because we feel that's sort of an underappreciated area that really any business can learn to do. There's some nuances to do it in a way that can be effective to bringing in leads and sales and members. And that's what we focus on. VidAction is my company and the YouTube ads podcast from VidAction.

[00:07:32] And my name is Dane Golden, and I'm ready to talk about our agenda today. Awesome. So I need to ask you, and I've had Daryl Eves on the podcast. I'm a big fan of him and the YouTube formula. And he has a story of how he got into YouTube. So I'm curious, how did you start to see YouTube as something bigger than most people see it as? Well, as I tell my stories, a lot of them are from a long time ago. Daryl Eves is one of my gurus and just a really great guy.

[00:08:02] But I helped run a very early podcast network, and we started to do YouTube. And then I left there, and I started something for a big ad agency related partly to YouTube. And I realized I didn't know it very well, and I didn't understand YouTube ads, and I knew it was very powerful. And I made it my mission to educate myself and educate others on how to use it. Great. So interesting.

[00:08:31] This started with a podcast network. And it was me listening to someone else's podcast and hearing him say, yeah, I got 10,000 downloads last month. And I'm like, there's no way that his podcast got 10,000 downloads. And then he's like, yeah, I got 1,000 on the podcast. And then I got 9,000 views on YouTube. And looking at a YouTube view of a podcast live stream like here as a metric of a listen, I thought was brilliant. And that really flipped my switch as to why I do these live streams and archive the videos. But hey, let's get on to today's topic.

[00:09:00] So YouTube, B2B, SaaS. I think before we even get into YouTube ads, there's a lot of B2B companies that have not nearly leveraged the way they should. Or if they're leveraging it, it's just like an archive of corporate videos or just random things. So let me stop you there. I'm going to stop you there.

[00:09:22] If I ever hear somebody say we need it as a place to archive our videos, I may not be working with those people. Because YouTube, it's a content programming, not in the way developers program and not in the way TV programmers program. It is a way of programming. You need to have a release method. It is never a place to house your videos.

[00:09:47] In the same way as just because somebody in your company wrote something up as an email, that doesn't mean they get to put it on the company blog. Same with just because somebody shot a video on their iPhone or paid somebody this does not mean it should go on your YouTube channel. Take it down. Have somebody monitoring. Have a gatekeeper who actually understands YouTube who can say yes or no, this should be on our YouTube channel or not.

[00:10:17] I'm going to stop. Yeah. So I couldn't let that pass. Thank you. Because it's funny. Most marketers take their social media really seriously. We need to have a strategy. When we post on social media, we need approvals. But when it comes to YouTube, it's been treated like a flicker, to give a really bad example. So yes, that's right. And they'll have exactly as much success as flicker if anyone remembers that platform that died. Yeah, we are really aging ourselves here, my friend.

[00:10:46] But let's get back to YouTube B2B. And, you know, most B2B companies are looking at their digital marketing. They're saying, okay, we need to go heavy on content marketing, heavy on blogs, white papers, ebooks, webinars, LinkedIn, marketing automation. And that's the end. Right? And they're sort of missing this whole YouTube cloud next to it. So for those B2B listeners, I think the B2C get it more than the B2B.

[00:11:10] But for the B2B listeners, give them an introduction as to what they're missing out on and why they should be on YouTube to begin with before we get to the YouTube ads. Well, and I want to give a context too, because you have a lot of different kinds of listeners. And they may not all understand our abbreviations and jargon and things like that.

[00:11:30] But for business to business, as opposed to business to consumer, business to consumer, you know, things that have a broader audience, business to business, you're looking for a smaller group of people, but potentially a much greater sale. And we hear those ads on the podcast. I don't know if you hear them. LinkedIn is the place to B2B, right? It's a great ad, but YouTube is also a fantastic place. YouTube ads in particular, but YouTube organic and YouTube ads should be used together.

[00:12:00] And when we see organic, I just want to make sure your audience knows when we see organic, we mean that's just the normal videos that you upload, right? For whatever reason to your channel. But the environment is changing. And you've been talking about this because I listened to a few of your episodes. You've been talking about how AI is changing, how websites are changing, how traffic is not going to your website anymore.

[00:12:25] So this whole concept of content marketing, at least on your blog, is not doing as well because people are, they're going through that AI overview on Google, or maybe they're not even going to Google. They're going to chat GBT. And Dan, I'll stop you there real quick because we're also seeing a heck of a lot more YouTube thumbnails on the first page of search results as well. I wanted to throw that out as well. And I'm sure you're going to get to that as well, but just wanted to. Depending on the topic. Yes. On Google.

[00:12:54] And remember, if it goes from Google to YouTube, that's all within the Google slash alphabet business. They're not taking any money away from themselves when they go from one of their platforms to another. And there's certainly incentive there. But what are the three things that are, well, four maybe, four main things that are changing dramatically with how we're doing online media? One, people are just not going down to whatever your content marketing blog is.

[00:13:24] So that thing that we've been doing for the last 10 or 15 years with content marketing is dramatically changing. So much less traffic is coming from Google just because you have a great article. No matter how helpful it is, even people with email, you know, sophisticated email marketing, which is a core content marketing, digital marketing factor. Some of those people are seeing less and less conversion from them.

[00:13:52] It's being sorted in the wrong way. And that's on the big platforms. The Microsoft platforms, the Google platforms of email management. They're not getting through. And then you have, you know, just general. Are you ranking for AI? Social media is harder to make a quick change in and make a quick bump if you're a new company or trying to create traction. So you have to pay there.

[00:14:19] And all these things are happening in the context that companies need to make or break faster, we believe, because it's a changing environment. And the needs with AI, a product you had three months ago may no longer be needed because it's a new feature in some other product. So you need to make or break things faster. And that was definitely true for venture-backed companies, meaning somebody who has some major investments from somewhere.

[00:14:50] Now, most small companies, B2Bs or whatever, they are bootstrapped, right? That means you put your own money in or close friends or whatever, family. So neither of those has as much time as they used to, right? Would you agree? Yeah, I think the environment has just really changed. And it's a culmination of a number of things.

[00:15:14] But definitely just, I mean, the emergence of generative AI and chat GBT in so many ways, whether it's search or just the way that we do our marketing or do business. But yeah, it's funny. If you listen to Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, I listened to his AI Explain. I think it's called AI Explain. Anyway, his AI podcast is excellent. Yes, that's right. And he's like, yeah, our emails are not getting through. They're going to the promotions tab. Social media content not getting through. Google traffic is dropping. What do we do?

[00:15:42] So I do think that if you have been, especially if you've been getting traffic from Google, the latest updates over the last two years has definitely been a wake-up call. And I think even in social email, I always say businesses need to think like content creators. And maybe when it comes to YouTube, maybe it's easier for businesses to do that than on a TikTok or LinkedIn. And I'll be really curious to hear your spin on that. Okay.

[00:16:04] So with YouTube, you have a chance in a more long-form nature to make a real personal connection. Because with the other social video, we definitely can make a connection. But with YouTube, people sometimes will watch longer, which creates more familiarity and trust and so forth. Well, that's fine.

[00:16:29] And yes, businesses do need to think like creators in some ways, but not entirely. Because the goal, if you think about it, what a creator does, the goal is grow videos, get attention. And then they have this term, right, which is go full time. I got to go full time. No more side hustle. Yes. What that really means is let's say what full time is and let's just drop a number.

[00:16:58] And let's say full time, we'll just put a pin at $100,000 a year. Okay. Right. That means you're making sponsorships. You're making ads. If you are a venture-backed or even a bootstrap company and you're only making $100,000 a year, you're in trouble. So you're not really using YouTube in the same way. You want to have a personal connection and use types of topics that will get attention and so forth.

[00:17:27] But particularly for B2B, which is even smaller than when you're trying to attract general consumers, you're actually looking for a smaller group. You actually aren't trying to get those big numbers. You're trying to get the right people is what I say. Indeed. Because if you think about it, you get 100 views. If they're the right views, that could mean $100,000 for your company.

[00:17:51] If you answer the questions that because if you think about as opposed to a creator that's looking for sponsorships, you may earn $5,000 a month from a company. And that's times 12 is what? $60,000. So if you get that one view and then that turns into some sort of lead, that's helpful. Maybe two. Now you're at $120,000.

[00:18:14] You've already gone over what the creator was trying to do by going full-time, which may take them two or three years. So you're trying to do this. Now, there's a couple of complaints that people have when they think about YouTube. And one of them is from creator gurus, of which I think of myself as one if you want to use the guru word, coach, whatever. We'll use the guru word. Okay. Yes. Then you can call me the guru if you like. It's not true, but I'll take it. All caps.

[00:18:43] So running ads can harm a organic, meaning how the algorithm works normally. It can harm how that works because if you're essentially getting artificial views, if somebody shows up at your channel and even subscribes or watches a video, but then doesn't watch future videos because they weren't presented with an ad or whatever it was, that actually reflects negatively on your channel.

[00:19:10] And it down ranks it instead of up ranks it, which is the opposite of what you want. So that's why people who want to grow YouTube channels do that. Now, our goal is actually to generate sales from YouTube. Use some of the creator techniques and that helps you grow organically. And I assume that your audience knows when we say organically, it's a weird word to some. They know what that means? Yeah, yeah, they do.

[00:19:36] And I want to say, Dan, I want to sort of move forward because I'm sure that there's some B2B companies out there or, you know, specifically SaaS companies thinking, well, where do I start in the organic side? And I always think just from a user perspective, when there is a B2B SaaS tool and as marketers, we use lots of different tools that we subscribe to. If I find on YouTube, they have tons of FAQs. They have tons of add-on videos that, you know, show us how to use the product, get the most out of it. And there are people, people's faces.

[00:20:06] It could be the same person. It could be multiple people. I find that is huge. When I find some that already have a few hundred views, a few thousand views, a hundred likes, that is immediate social proof that this company has lots of users. They're very supportive. I don't want to have to wait for an email reply. They don't want to have to deal with more customer support questions when they have the answers. So I always think that if I was a B2B company, that would be the place to start is start to create this library of content of these videos. But, Dane, you're the guru in all caps.

[00:20:34] I want to get your opinion on, for those that have never done this, like from an organic, before we get to the ads, where would they start organically? So most people who work on the YouTube platform, they work in either the free or the paid, right? I happen to do both. I believe in both. And one of the complaints people have is that, hey, I've got YouTube premium. I don't see any ads. Thus, I'm a marketer. If I don't see any ads, no one sees any ads. Well, let me just give you some numbers just from America.

[00:21:04] Now, Google won't say this, but this is a chat GPT research I did. So take it at what it's worth. 90% of Americans will watch YouTube every week. Okay. At least one video. All right. 10% of those are using YouTube premium, which means they will never see an ad. Which means 80, roughly 80%, 81, 82% of people will see at least one YouTube ad per week in America.

[00:21:33] If you are a marketer and you're using YouTube premium, you should not advertise on YouTube because you don't understand it. You don't realize how powerful it is. You also, as a marketer should get off YouTube premium. Even though it's a wonderful experience for a viewer, you should stop using it because you're missing out on understanding the full potential of that platform. And it is.

[00:21:57] I mean, if Facebook, you know, offered me $20 to not see ads on it or Instagram, et cetera. I might also not. I might pay that and say, fine. But then I would be missing out on understanding how those platforms work for advertising. So let's talk about topics. Okay. On YouTube. And this is true, whether it's paid or free videos that you're uploading. So what is a business?

[00:22:22] You know, those same 10 questions that your new customers are always asking you when you first begin to talk. Right. Those new questions. I'm not talking about those deep questions. I'm talking about those beginner questions. We might call them dumb questions, but the people are not dumb. They're just new. And the same way, you know, people always ask me, how do I get more views? How do I get more subscribers?

[00:22:51] And as a YouTube consultant, I guess is the better term than guru. I always say that's the wrong question. It's an interesting question, but it's not the most important one. The most important one is how do you get the right people to watch longer? I can get you a million views by tomorrow as long as you don't mind that they're teenage viewers of gaming content in the developing world. And that may not be your audience.

[00:23:19] But if you want a million views and that's all you want, I can get them for you. It's $10,000. That's the fee because they're one penny per view times a million equals $10,000. So what you really want as a business is you want customers. So you want to answer the questions that they are asking. And again, those are the introductory non-jargon questions.

[00:23:43] Now, as we go into B2B, some of these phrases, and I don't know why, but I'm just thinking of trucks today because I saw this movie with truckers last night. So they have B2B, right? B2B truckers. And then you have people who are just sort of interested in watching movies about trucks or kids who like trucks. There's a whole world of people who like trucks.

[00:24:08] What types of things, though, do you target in B2B that might have a little more jargon, that might have more things like that? And so find out what they want that the regular consumer does not want. And that's how you find and answer those questions. And then further, if you want to rank first on search, which is really only going to be 10% of your YouTube traffic.

[00:24:39] Ranking is not the only way we target, but it is one way. And there's no reason you shouldn't rank first in YouTube search as one component of your plan. Find out what those top terms are that people want to know about your business and answer their questions and pin that to the top of YouTube search because you've answered it and you paid for them to see it there.

[00:25:05] There's other ways of combining organic and paid so that you can amplify the right questions to the right people. But that does not mean getting a million views. Maybe you just want to pay to get 100 or 200 views to just the right people at just the time that they're shopping for a service like yours. Does that make sense? Yeah. Is that good stuff? Yeah. So I don't know if you've heard of the book Content Fortress, but I interviewed. No. Yeah. I interviewed the authors.

[00:25:33] It's the idea that you actually want to repel the wrong people with your content to invite the right people in. And it's a similar concept with your YouTube videos that by you focusing on, you know, let's do the example of trucks. By you focusing on aspects of the trucks that's only going to be pertinent or important or relevant to those that are actually going to be purchasing trucks, you are hopefully weeding out the irrelevance. Obviously, as you do more of these videos, the algorithm sees that as well and better understand your audience and services to the right people.

[00:26:02] So that makes a lot of sense. And then, you know, Marcus Sheridan, they ask you answer another classic, you know, content marketing book literally is the same process you talked about, right? Well, where do you think I got it? Yeah. Where do you think I got it from Marcus Sheridan? He's a smart man. Yeah, indeed. And we love to look back and, you know, sort of cite all these sources that have made us who we are today and how we've added value on top of that. So, yeah. So I think that's all great. So you're, I was going to ask you because as we were prepping, you're like, there's no reason why you shouldn't rank number one on YouTube.

[00:26:30] But so you're saying the number one rank is through that ad, which is okay because people do this with Google ads all the time, right? That they often will buy that Google ad to rank number one. Why aren't they doing that on YouTube is the question. Is it we feel dishonest? Is it dirty? Is it dirty to pay people to watch your video? I don't think it is. It's the real only problem is does it create a problem for your channel? And if you do it right, that's not an issue.

[00:26:59] But your goal, again, is not to get views and subs. I just made a video recently about the 13 or 14 people who should not advertise on YouTube. And that is people who are primarily looking for views and subs should not advertise. That was number one. If your goal is to build your channel by views and subs, don't advertise on YouTube. That's number one. So if that's your goal, then don't do this. It's not worth it.

[00:27:28] And it's expensive. That doesn't mean you can't get some viewers and subs. But the goal is really to get people to be interested in your business and ideally make a sale. And so there's a couple of types of ads that people should know about. There's the kind that sort of show up in search and related videos. And then there's the kind that show up before your other video that you wanted to watch. And that's the one where there's often a skip button.

[00:27:58] These can be very annoying if they're poorly targeted. And that's what's driving so many people to say, A, I hate YouTube ads. B, they don't work. And C, can I just pay somebody to not watch them? However, if these are relevant to you and you tell people about why it's relevant, that's really helpful information. Just because somebody is selling you something does not make it irrelevant or annoying information.

[00:28:27] People sell me things all the time. I go to the same coffee shop. They ask me how much I want, whatever I want. That's a salesperson. And I definitely want the product. So selling is not a negative in my view. It's only irrelevant selling is a negative. So I want to ask you, Dane, I spoke at a conference called Digimarkhan yesterday. And there's a guy named Dennis Yu. I don't know if you ever heard about him. He's sort of big in the... Oh, he's very well known. Yeah, yeah.

[00:28:54] So Dennis, so he wrote an endorsement for my latest book. And he also spoke. Oh. And we had a chance to talk. So he has his dollar a day thing. And so I want to get next to what videos should we be advertising? What should they look like? Scripted, non-scripted? Should we boost in organics? And his whole thing is, hey, take your most engaging content on any given social network, including YouTube. And if you get... His number was over 10% engagement. So with YouTube, it's a little weird because most views do not come from your subscribers,

[00:29:23] as you know, and as you've taught me as well over the years. But take that most engaging thing. And if you promote the ad, and he was saying that this actually will positively impact your search results on Google if your ads on any network, because Google is seeing all of social media as well, if it gets a lot of engagement, it actually can help lift your search engine ranking. So I don't know if you have any comments on that because this is something that Dennis is like, yeah, I heard this from a friend that works at Google. He told me never to tell anybody.

[00:29:53] And here I am telling you. So I don't know. But getting back to, hey, what videos should we create videos just for ads or boost normal ones? Or what's your take on that? Once we're sold on, okay, we get the organic. They ask you answer. We're going to start creating videos. We want to get into YouTube ads. Where do we start in terms of that content? Well, the answers to those questions are yes, yes, yes, no, maybe, and depends. I was waiting for the it depends. So I'll go through them one at a time. Your co-host always said that.

[00:30:20] So with Dennis Yu, who's when you say his dollar a day, what I think you mean is the idea that you run the smallest campaign possible. It's a dollar to get this video promoted, which may mean 10 views. And you really should try to bid for these real small campaigns. Try to bid the highest instead of the lowest. Try to be the most expensive person because you're going to get actually the best viewers.

[00:30:48] And this is something that Tom Breeze, another top person in YouTube ad space, will talk about is you want to spend more instead of spend less because you have greater value, better viewers and customers because your goal, again, is not the view. It's the conversion, the sale, the member or the lead if you're a B2B person. So that's what he's talking about. Does it get you ranked higher in Google or YouTube?

[00:31:16] Yeah, sometimes, but it may be of limited value. But if you get people who are interested in your videos in an organic way and they are helpful videos, meaning usually that means it's a tutorial that answers a question in depth that's common and frequent among your customers, your normal types of customers. They will actually start to watch more of your videos. They might binge watch them. We hear that a lot.

[00:31:44] And sometimes that started with an ad. So that being said, where would we get started? What sort of content should we start with our first YouTube ad campaign? Okay. So you think of it as a YouTube tutorial and you want to start a lot of the structure of the video is very important. So you talked about the exclusionary before. We tried to both include and exclude people right away.

[00:32:13] And there's a couple of words like, if you state problem here. So if you don't have that, then you're going to leave. And you actually, by the way, don't pay for that ad if someone leaves right away. Or did you know that XYZ? If I'm not interested in that topic, I'm going to leave. And leaving is a benefit for you and the viewer because you don't pay. You don't waste anyone's time. They don't get a negative experience about you.

[00:32:43] And you save their time and they're grateful. Is it three seconds that you pay for if they view for that? What is the current parameter on YouTube? On YouTube, pre-roll ads. We mean the in-stream, the things that show up before the videos. 30 seconds. Oh, wow. So what you have until 30 seconds is you have a branding experience that you don't pay for, essentially. That's amazing, actually, when you think about it. Which may help or not for you.

[00:33:13] Those also don't count as views, by the way. Anyway, so you're trying to encourage them. And then you use a little storytelling like the and, but, so, which is the core format of storytelling. This thing happened and this thing happened, but this thing happened, so, or therefore, this thing happened. So you do that and then you empathize with them. Hey, this is a common problem.

[00:33:40] We see this all the time because what's happening is this and I'm going to give you four steps. And then you do a call to action, a soft call to action. And if you want to know more about this or download my guide, you get it below. Anyway, here's the steps. Then you go through the steps. Now, the steps can be anywhere between 30 more seconds after you've already gone through 20 seconds, 30 more seconds to 10 minutes long.

[00:34:07] And it really depends on, you know, what you're trying to accomplish. Now, these can be organic, non-paid videos or they're paid and the structure is the same, but you've added value. You've introduced yourself. You made a connection because you're on screen and it's something you know that they're interested in. Now you've targeted it on YouTube very narrowly based on what someone's searching for on

[00:34:33] YouTube or importantly, what they're searching for on Google. Did you know, Neil Schaefer, did you know that you could target YouTube ads based on someone's Google experience? I have like boosted my own YouTube ads, my own YouTube dashboard, you know, like a Facebook boost before. I've never really gone deep into the YouTube ads platform, but it would not surprise me because it's the same parent company that you'd be able to do that. That's right.

[00:35:00] And so you can take these phrases that you think people are looking for on Google. Now people look for things differently on Google and YouTube and chat GPT for that matter. We expect something different. So we look for things different or Instagram. We might look for a hashtag on Instagram. Our question in chat GPT, maybe a paragraph long. YouTube is a more how to platform, but sometimes and Google is more of a what platform.

[00:35:28] But sometimes we ask Google how to and what questions in the same. So the point being is that you can find out what people are looking for and those phrases can move over to YouTube. What I do is I use a four quadrant strategy. So there's two main kinds of ads. There's the in-stream and in-feed. Okay. In-feed is the ones that come up in search. In-stream is the one that comes up before videos.

[00:35:55] I work very hard with companies to find out what are those key phrases. This is where we begin our testing. So we have two different. We have you're searching for it on YouTube. You have it searching for it on Google. And then also the two different types of ads. Now the in-feed, the search is generally only going to get you 10% as much traffic as the in-stream. So it's going to be a much smaller part of your budget, but you can learn a lot about it.

[00:36:24] In each of these, you're learning what words people are looking for and you're looking for how long people are watching and so forth. But YouTube ads do not give you data on which of the Google phrases were the ones that people clicked on. Does that make sense? Is that I don't know if that makes sense. Okay, but they tell you which YouTube words they were clicked on. Okay.

[00:36:49] So what we do is we take those YouTube phrases and we decide what the Google phrases are based on what people are looking for on YouTube. Because you don't want to put too many phrases in and you want to sort of be sort of be there. And so this is how we begin our research. But you have to iterate.

[00:37:11] So I'm not going to go over to all my very fine notes because we had some streaming issues for some reason when I switch apps. But the key is you have to begin. You have a theory of what's going to work. Then you test. Then you iterate. And you are continually looking at your numbers. And you have to sort of know where in Google ads to look. Any business person can learn to do this.

[00:37:39] You just have to know what your goals are, what you're trying to do. Do you have the right ad? Do you have the right targeting? And sometimes the idea is to spend less. Now, with someone like me, the maintenance and the expertise is going to sometimes cost more than actually what you're spending. But you sort of have to figure that into the results. Is that worth it for this niche thing just to get it right? Or do I just want to try it myself? And either way is fine.

[00:38:09] It really depends on how fast you want to have success and how much time you want to put into learning. So the short answer to the question as far as the type of, and that was all great information. Just want to get back to that, the original point of you were recommending a formula for creating a video ad, which is almost like a formula for creating a great YouTube video to begin with. So, yeah, you might want to create it for ads, but it could be for organic.

[00:38:36] Or if all of your organic content was in a similar way to that formula, then any one of those could be used as an ad. Is that sort of what you were getting out there indirectly as well? If it is indeed relevant, if you're picking good topics and structures. And a lot of that is trial and error. You think you know what people want and what's going to convert.

[00:38:54] Now, if you're really pro, you can actually track the different ads and the different versions because you may have 10 different hooks or intros on the same copy. You may have the call to action or the hook is slightly different. So, if you're really with it, you can change and track the UTM code that's coming into your website, which is the goal of the conversion.

[00:39:21] And whether you put that in the description of the ad or in the end screen or in the call to action part of an in-stream ad, you can see which ones actually deliver better. Because a lot of people say, getting great conversions from people who come from YouTube to my website and they're watching, they're staying on longer, they're looking at more pages, they're actually converting more. But which ones? So, that's the next level up.

[00:39:50] You don't have to do that at first because that takes a lot of work, but you can. What are some other areas that people might have? You know, you had a question when you did a promo of this for the enterprise. Should I answer that? Sure. Question? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[00:40:07] So, when someone's dealing with enterprise, and it gets in the weeds for some businesses, but if you're dealing with very, very large software purchases and very large companies, and these are a whole bunch of moving parts in this. A lot of people think of it, say, listen, whatever the piece of content is, I need to get them to my webpage and I need to get them to fill out 10 pieces of information. What's your company? What's your role? What's your name?

[00:40:37] What's your email? What's your phone number? You know, what's your mother's maiden name? All these different pieces. And it's really a barrier to getting leads. And I would encourage people, unless they're totally happy with the way things are going, to try things a little differently. Maybe the goal is just to get an email. Maybe the goal is to remarket to that person until they, because they've already come to your website based on the ad, maybe don't get their information right away.

[00:41:07] The other thing people think about is something called ABM, which is account-based marketing. And this is when you essentially, working with a company that's 10,000 people and you have 10,000 of their emails and you find a way to target them. I've thought, and this is something that LinkedIn can do well. I've tried sort of a million little tactics to try to get this happening on YouTube. It's a little difficult, but you can sort of approximate things.

[00:41:37] And what, the way you do it is you sort of say, well, if you have those emails and you have that list, you can just run ads to those people. So you can do that. It has to be a certain threshold and you have to spend a certain amount. One of the other things you can do, and this works for B2B too, you can find those types of websites.

[00:41:59] Sometimes they're industry websites that people visit that are in your sort of niche at a level of your niche, but the other people don't. So sometimes a B2B conference or an enterprise-based conference or something like that where people would go to. Now you can target people who just visited that conference website and run ads only to those people. That's super niche.

[00:42:28] You may only get a few views, but what great views they would be. Hyper relevant, yeah. But those views might cost $10 or $20 each, right? And you may only get three. Now the question of whether that should be a public video or an unlisted video or if it's growing your channel, who cares? You pay the right people to get and watch one of your videos.

[00:42:54] Now, you still don't know who they are, but if you're answering their question well, I think that you start to find another point of entry where they can be interested in your business. Again, we are not talking about going circling back to the beginning. We're not talking about YouTube as a place to house your videos. It's not Dropbox. Yeah. It's a lot more like Instagram. And what you recommend is hyper strategic.

[00:43:23] And, you know, a lot of companies are already doing their ABM on a LinkedIn or with Google ads. But how many are doing it with YouTube ads? Probably very few, if any. So I think that's a strategic advantage to figure it out for everyone else does. And I do know, you know, one thing anecdotally I did not talk about, but with the whole helpful content update and the reduction of search, the idea of digital PR, of having to be seen on more channels, of the fact that the chat GPTs are, you know, looking at and indexing transcripts from YouTube.

[00:43:49] So there's a lot more businesses are looking to do more on YouTube, at least organically. But, hey, there's a way to use, you know, pay to play as well. So, Dane, this has been awesome. And, you know, it's funny. I met with a CEO yesterday and he's like, Neil, I'm not going to read your book. I just need to know you can help me. Right. So I almost and I said, yes, you know, another great book. If not how, then who? So I love to help companies DIY their digital marketing. And but at some point, it's like, you know what, if you need to bring in the top gun, the experts, then for YouTube ads, Dane is your guy.

[00:44:19] So, Dane, I want to thank you for all the advice. You know, no matter what direction people want to take the options there is. But if they do want to reach out to you and learn more and at least consume more of your content and maybe have a consultation call with you, where should we direct them? Well, I think they should get on my vidaction.tv newsletter because you're going to get a lot of great tips about YouTube ads and you don't have to hire me. So why not start there? I'm on all the socials. LinkedIn's another good place.

[00:44:47] Dane, golden, D-A-N-E-G-O-L-D-E-N, vidaction, V-I-D-A-C-T-I-O-N.tv. Well, there you go. You heard it from the source. Dane, thank you so much for taking the time out. And, you know, literally decades of YouTube expertise you've heard in this condensed 45 minutes. Even with the technical difficulties, the value you offered was way, way surpassed that. So no worries on that. And yeah, I hope if you're interested, you reach out to Dane. And thank you again, my friend. Thanks, Neil. All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview.

[00:45:17] Dane is just a really cool, low-key guy. Very chill, very mellow, but extremely, extremely knowledgeable about YouTube. And if you are doing paid social, have you considered paid ads on YouTube? He gave a lot of really compelling advice on how to yield some pretty amazing results. So I hope that you will be challenged by him. And once again, do feel free to reach out to him if you want to get more information about YouTube, YouTube ads.

[00:45:45] And definitely listen to the YouTube ads podcast that is being sponsored by his company, VidAction. All right. Hey, I hope if you haven't yet, you'll hit that subscribe button so you don't miss future episodes and interviews. 50% of episodes are me going solo. 50% are interviews with subject matter experts like Dane. So hopefully you subscribe. If you've been an active listener, hey, it's never too late to jump into your favorite podcast playing app and write that review.

[00:46:15] Give a five-star review. Those really are the – it's the fuel that fires me to keep creating content like this to serve you. And that's it for another episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, Neil Schafer, signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast.neilschafer.com.

[00:46:40] Get the show notes to this and 200-plus podcast episodes at neilschafer.com to tap in to the 400-plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's Digital First Group Coaching Membership Community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on Your Digital Marketing Coach.