Last updated on June 15th, 2024
Recently Dane Golden was on the SprocketTalk Strategy podcast with George B. Thomas:
George B. Thomas:Because here’s the deal, let’s be real. You can go into LinkedIn, there should be some type of mindset when you’re running ads. Google, it’s a different mindset. Facebook, totally different mindset. So what is the mindset when you go into run these ads or think about running ads on YouTube, that one should have?
Announcer:Ready to spend 15 minutes with the experts you admire? Need strategy sessions from thought leaders brought directly to your ears? Welcome to the Sprocket Talk 15-Minute Strategy Podcast where every week George B. Thomas uncovers the challenges that sales, marketing and service professionals face and of course the strategies to help them overcome their biggest hurdles. So sit back and set your sights on growth with these bite sized conversations filled with your strategy goals. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 15-Minute Strategy Podcast.
George B. Thomas:Hey Sprocketeers, it’s your boy George B. Thomas. And we are back again with another episode of the 15-Minute Strategy Podcast where we bring, well, a podcast in 15 minutes or a little bit more, to you with a strategy that your business can use. I’m super excited today because we have a friend, we have a man that I have broken bread with on the episode, Dane. Dane, why don’t you take a couple minutes to tell people who you are, what you do, where you do it before we dive into today’s topic.
Dane Golden:Real briefly name’s Dane Golden. Company is called VidAction. We used to be, VidAction.tv. VidAction, VidAction.tv. What we do is we help brands and businesses and business people grow their businesses on YouTube, simply put. We have an organic side, meaning we help people build their YouTube channels and that type of training. And we also have a paid ad side on YouTube. How to make sure you don’t waste views when you’re paying to get people to watch.
George B. Thomas:I love that Dane, and that is the deep end of the pool that we’re going to dive in today. So when you talk about YouTube ads, when the listeners, the viewers, the Sprocketeers are thinking about, “Should I run YouTube ads for my business or for a specific campaign?” Lay down the foundation of, first of all, what is YouTube ads? What kind of can you do? There’s different variables, all that good stuff to get them up to speed.
Dane Golden:Our approach is simply, we believe very strongly in YouTube ads, but often we believe in just the opposite of how YouTube wants you to use them. When you are a business, you may have a salesperson at Google and you’re like, “Wow, I’m connected. I’ve got a rep.” But a lot of what they’re geared to do is show you how to do what we might call awareness ads or brand ads and that’s great if you are a billion dollar auto company or whatever. A lot of the people who use HubSpot, et cetera, they need direct response ads, meaning they need an ad to sell something for them. A lot of YouTube originally came from the sort of agency world and television world. And a lot of advertisers still think, “Well YouTube is just like TV only smaller,” and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. And a lot of excellent top people in this industry, like the Harmon brothers, Tom Breeze, Travis Chambers, Jake Larson, they’ve developed methods of selling direct response on YouTube that worked very well. And you don’t waste millions and millions of dollars trying to find that one customer who might do something.
George B. Thomas:So Dane, it’s interesting because when I hear the word method and then when I hear you talk about people think it’s TV but smaller, I think of mindset. And so I start to go into this world, the method to the madness and the mindset that wants you to have. So tell the Sprocketeers what mindset when you go into… Because here’s the deal, let’s be real. You go into LinkedIn, there should be some type of mindset when you’re running ads. Google, it’s a different mindset. Facebook, totally different mindset. So what is the mindset when you go into run these ads or think about running ads on YouTube, that one should have?
Dane Golden:A lot of times on Facebook or Instagram, et cetera. You’ll run video, but it’s a sort of an interruptive video. It’s not a terrible imposition, but they didn’t come looking for what you’re talking about. Using Facebook and Instagram, you know a lot about them, what they’re looking for, but not what they’re looking for right now. And when you use YouTube, you know a lot more of what their intent is right now.
Dane Golden:For the Harmon brothers, for instance, they did the purple ads for the purple mattresses that were very famous, made millions of dollars. Well, if you’re doing a search on Google or YouTube for a mattress or mattress reviews, and this ad comes up right in front of a mattress review, well that’s very close to what you’re looking for and doing at the time. So that’s one of the key things about YouTube, which is very similar to Google, if you think about it. You can identify a type of ad to directly what the intent is at that moment for that user.
George B. Thomas:So it’s interesting because I do love the idea of intent. I love being able to connect things like that. But as I’m listening to you talk about this, Dane, and I’m going into my marketing brain. I actually have to maybe take what feels like a step back and ask you the question… Let’s go from this from a content creator thing and monetizing and actually allowing if purple mattress or if Sprocket talk, should they always allow ads or is there a time where it just doesn’t make sense to even have ads be allowed in the content that you’re creating? What say you with that side of this?
Dane Golden:So what I hear you saying, George, is that you’re saying from the creator or influencer perspective, and there are channels like this. There’s an influencer of mattresses or influencer of blenders. Should they allow ads? Well, there’s certain different of rules that YouTube has. And sometimes if you have a specific sponsor baked into the video, they may not want to identify it and they may not want to run ads. But there’s very little downside in running ads. You might think, “Well, I guess as an influencer, if I’m making money by selling my own blenders or my own mattresses or whatever, I don’t really need to run ads.” And that’s certainly true. It’s going to be a smaller portion. For most creators they run ads. And that doesn’t mean an ad shows up every time on every video, but they definitely enabled it.
George B. Thomas:All right, so let’s flip this back to the side that we truly started to talk about. When you think of these businesses that are listening or watching this episode, and we go back to that whole thing of context or the idea, how can you put a strategy together? What are the one, two or three things that you should be paying attention to to make sure that you’re putting your ads in the right place and therefore maybe not spending too much or making sure you’re spending enough to get the proper right audience on YouTube?
Dane Golden:Well, let’s think of four basic factors that go into a successful campaign. There’s the ad, there’s the targeting of that ad. Meaning if you’re selling mattresses in California, do you really want to run any views or do you want to just is gamers and Malaysia can you target them? Well you’re not selling there so the views aren’t really as important. So there’s the, again, target, the ad, the offer, was sort of what the product is and sort of the page conversion when you’re buying that. So those are the four factors you have to think of and each one can be… I said the offer and the product itself, sorry, offer and the product. So each one of those can be good. Like if you have three of them, good, but the product’s no good. It doesn’t really matter. So if you’re not confident in your product, don’t run ads. Maybe don’t be in business.
Dane Golden:But you have to have a good landing page and conversion website and that’s part of the offer part of it. And then there’s the targeting in ad and there’s a cadence to ads. A lot of businesses want to talk about themselves. The better ads talk about what the viewers needs are in a specific way. And then there’s targeting and that’s, “Do you want to target certain age groups or certain times of day?” With our company we really focus on placements, what types of videos exactly you should be targeting.
George B. Thomas:So what I hear you say, Dane, I think and you can agree or disagree with me, is that when it comes to YouTube ads, it’s about precision, it’s about scalpel marketing, not hammer or sledgehammer marketing. Being able to really understand here’s the offer, here’s the product and here is the place, the time, very segmented. Would you agree with that?
Dane Golden:We agree 100% with that and not everyone does. And there’s other approaches. And we’re okay with people doing other things, but we evangelize a targeted approach because we believe that 90% of views on YouTube ads are wasted. You’re paying for views you don’t need either because you’re targeting too broad. You don’t understand your market or you just don’t understand how to target.
George B. Thomas:I’m watching this or listening to this podcast, Dane, I’ve never ever in my life done a YouTube ad. I’m pretty much scared that I’m going to make a bunch of mistakes. Where the heck can I get started? What are the first steps, the first place, the first time people? Talk us through that. Speaker 2: Enjoying this podcast. Make sure you show the love. Go to Apple podcast, hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Help us become the strongest strategy podcast on the internet. Get access to hidden episodes and bonus content. Head over to Sprockettalk.com/strategy.
Dane Golden:It really depends on where you’re at. A lot of times when you’re a advertiser, you’re a business, you’re like, “I’m starting from square one, great. I’m going to hire a video production company. I’m going to upload it. It’s going to be all done,” but they spend 90%, 150% of their budget on the production. We don’t believe that that’s the right approach. Definitely have good production, but it’s not the most important thing. I think we’ve all seen many ads and videos that don’t have expensive, beautiful scenery and sound effects and music that sell or convince us to do something or move us in some way. I believe you should allow about 50% or more to the strategy and execution of your campaign. Depending on your approach, maybe 80% to the strategy, the paying for the views, the targeting, the managing of this. And if you can’t afford that, scale back your approach.
Dane Golden:So that’s what I would say first because I’ve seen this scenario where companies, they don’t ever talk about it, they, they whisper about it in back rooms. I call it the, I’ve been burnt by YouTube and it doesn’t work and I’m never going to try it again syndrome.
George B. Thomas:That’s a long name for a disease, Dane.
Dane Golden:Yes. Because when people say they’re going to do a video for their business, suddenly everyone wants to be on that team. You have a meeting with 14 people because deep inside I believe every single person wants to be Steven Spielberg. They want to create these beautiful, beautiful movies. I know that because I want to be Steven Spielberg, but over the years I’ve failed in a lot of these key ways and these failures I want to share with other people because it’s so easy to get discouraged and then you never really try. That’s not a strategy. Creating one single viral video, I’m putting air quotes here, is not a strategy. You want to do something that makes sales that you can try, that you can tweak. It’s really more about evolving and iterating than one big slam dunk. So I want to really emphasize that.
George B. Thomas:I’m wondering if it’s different or if it’s the same because when I think of advertising on LinkedIn, advertising on Facebook, advertising on Google, it’s all about being educational, it’s all about what our markers call about adding value. I’m curious though Dane, when it comes to these ads on YouTube, is it about being valuable or is it because it’s YouTube about being entertaining or is there some happy mix? What have you seen when you think about that part of your ad and what you’re creating?
Dane Golden:If you’re trying to program in entertainment and you’re talking about a production that’s entertaining, I think that’s great. Just make sure you’ve got a boatload of money to throw in there. There might be some people that can make an entertaining video cheap and I’d say go with those people. But if you don’t have a boatload of money to spend, I would say try to be helpful. We have a very short attention span for people that are not helping us.
George B. Thomas:Yes, I would agree with that without a doubt.
Dane Golden:And let me add to that because I want to add. A lot of times people are advertising for SAAS products. There’s a lot of SAAS services that are growing up now and people believe in these niche products. Sometimes they do just one thing and that’s a great service cause you need to have people coming back again and again, but you also need to get them to buy in and their informational. A lot of the things we sell have a lot of information. It’s not just, “Buy these Twizzlers,” we need to be educated. Not everyone’s going to buy it. Just even if you run an educational video, this is what it does, this is why you’ll like it. That type of thing. That still may not be enough. We believe in organic strategy, but if you’re starting from scratch, you may not have time to make 200 videos, 50 videos that help people through it. Tom breeze originated this called Ad UK. It’s an ad when which you educate.
George B. Thomas:With it being the 15-Minute Strategy Podcast, we’ve only begun to scratch the surface. So Dane, yes, believe it or not, it is like already that time, if people have more questions, if they want to reach out to you, where do you want to send them?
Dane Golden:Why don’t they connect with me on LinkedIn, LinkedIn.com/in/danegolden, D-A-N-E G-O-L-D-E-N.
George B. Thomas:And here’s the deal Sprocketeers, think about YouTube ads you may not have yet, you may have tried in the past. Maybe try it again and think about, I love that educational value together. Either way, we’ll see you in the next episode.
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