YouTube Breakthroughs

Hidden amongst the excitement around the internet’s shiny new objects, such as TikTok, the changes at X and the AI revolution, a secret weapon has emerged for Entrepreneurs who want to engage in highly successful Direct Response Marketing.

It comes from YouTube. In my business, I’m now spending more on YouTube than on Google search — something I never thought would happen. So first, 3 important facts about YouTube.

Fact 1

It has 2.1 billion users. To put it simply, almost everyone watches at least one YouTube video every week. This means that your customers and prospects are all on YouTube every week. If you know what you’re doing, you can reach all of them.

Fact 2

We all think of YouTube as Online TV, which it is, but it’s also the world’s second-largest search engine. People actively search on YouTube in similar ways to how they search on Google. Potential customers are searching on YouTube either for information on specifically what you sell or for related subjects. You now have the ability to reach them directly.

Fact 3

YouTube is owned by Google, and you can run ads on YouTube through the Google Ads system. Because of this, you can use many of Google’s tools, capabilities and audiences. For example, you can remarket to website visitors on YouTube (see below). But the big one is that all of Google’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning that powers ads on the search engine can also be used, often incredibly effectively, on YouTube.

Most people aren’t aware of the array of options available to you on YouTube, so below is a partial list. Note, all of this comes under the heading of ‘advertising’ on YouTube through the Google Ads system. There are also the ‘Free’ marketing approaches on YouTube, which involve building audiences and followers for your videos and channel. That’s a legitimate approach, and when it works, it works very well. But it involves a huge amount of work, the production of multiple videos on an ongoing basis, and it takes time. With ads on YouTube, you can reach thousands of people tomorrow with laser focus. And those of us who engage in this don’t care about the cost as long as it brings a return on investment.

The ads you can run on YouTube are called ‘TrueView’. You’ll have seen them. You search for something or watch a YouTube video, and at the beginning of that video, an ad appears.

A ‘skip ad’ button appears, and if you don’t want to watch it, you go straight to the main video.

The beauty of this system is, if a viewer skips your ad before 30 seconds, you pay nothing for it.

It’s brilliant. The user is happy because they don’t have to watch too many ads. The advertiser is happy because they’re only paying to reach people who want to watch their ads. YouTube is happy because the cash keeps flowing in. In case you think everyone skips all the ads, they don’t. YouTube made $7.95 billion in the last advertising quarter.

About 25% of people don’t skip the ads. If you’re targeting a very precise audience who you know is likely to have an interest in what you sell, a proportion of them will want to watch your video ad, especially if it’s well produced. My YouTube ads start by saying to the audience that if they’re a business owner, they can get a Free copy of my book ’77 Ways to Get More Customers’. Why wouldn’t at least 25% of them want to stay for that?

So that’s how it works. Now layer on to that the very precise audience targeting. Here are some of the audiences you can reach on YouTube:

1. Remarketing: As mentioned, people who have been to your website or a more segmented audience who have been to specific pages on your site or completed various actions.
2. Interests: You can target people by their interests. If you sell beds, you can target people who Google knows are searching for a bed. If you sell B2B, there are numerous business categories, such as people looking for web developers or who have business merchant accounts.
3. Custom Intent Keyword Campaigns: This is one of the coolest categories. You can actually target people who searched for your keywords on Google but didn’t click to visit your site. Think about it. You can write the best Google ad in the world, but you still might only get 5% to click. 95% go elsewhere. Until now, you had lost that 95%. But now you can reach them through Custom Intent campaigns on YouTube.
4. Life Events: You can also target people based on significant life events, such as moving home or starting a business.

As mentioned, you have the full power of Google’s Artificial Intelligence powering these campaigns. It will learn who is more likely to watch your videos and convert and serve your videos to them.

You can use the same ‘Cost per Action’ AI bidding that you can use in search. This means you can give YouTube a target cost per lead if you’re doing lead generation or a target Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) if you’re in Ecommerce.

One word of caution. What you put in your video is absolutely vital to your success on YouTube. Despite the brilliance of the system outlined above, a bad video still won’t work. We take on clients all the time who’ve tried and failed at YouTube, and it was never going to work because their videos weren’t right.

The following 3 things MUST happen on your video:

1. You’ve got to get people's interest in the first few seconds to stop them skipping the ad. So the initial graphics and script with voiceover must do something in those few seconds to keep people watching.
2. The purpose of your video is to get people to click and go to your website (the videos are clickable). The purpose of the video is not to just sell what you do. My video does not mention that my agency manages people's Google and YouTube ads, or that I make my Private Clients millionaires. It just goes on and on about going to my website to claim the free book. There’s nothing wrong with promoting what you sell, but there needs to be a very, very good reason for people to go to your website.
3. You must have a strong call to action. One of the biggest mistakes made on YouTube videos is doing a good job of explaining the offer but not telling people forcefully and repeatedly what to do. If you want them to go to your website and call you, tell them. If you want people to go to your website and buy something, tell them.
4. It goes without saying that you also need very good landing pages.

Finally, as if the YouTube ads system wasn’t good enough, there’s also no limit on how long your video can be. 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 10 minutes. They don’t care, and they don’t charge you more for a longer video. So test what works best and go get YouTube making money for you and your business.