Last updated on June 15th, 2024
Jake Larsen from Video Power Marketing talks about how to avoid making mistakes with YouTube ads.
GUEST: Jake Larsen from Video Power Marketing. Check out Video Power Marketing on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Linkedin, and Jake Larsen on LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram.
HOST: The VidAction Podcast is hosted by Dane Golden of VidAction | LinkedIn | | YouTube
SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.
PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
TRANSCRIPT:
Dane Golden:
It’s time for the VidAction Podcast from HEY.com. This is the podcast where we help marketers and business owners just like you get more value out of your video marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden, and today we have a special guest, Jake Larsen from Video Power Marketing.
I spoke to Jake a few weeks ago at the VidCon conference in Anaheim, California, but we record a number of episodes in advance, so I’m finally getting to share this great episode with you today. Jake Larsen is an expert at YouTube ads, so I asked him what are some of the big mistakes businesses make with YouTube ads and how to avoid them. Here’s that conversation.
I’m here at VidCon with Jake Larsen of Video Power Marketing. Jake, welcome. Thanks for coming on the podcast.
Jake Larsen:
Happy to be here, Dane. Thanks for having me.
Dane Golden:
Could you tell me what Video Power Marketing does?
Jake Larsen:
Yeah. Video Power Marketing, we’re an agency that we help people expand their influence, their companies, and we use YouTube ads to do that. We help create video ads, we place them in front of the right audience, and we help drive traffic to their websites.
Dane Golden:
We were talking earlier about the several different ways a campaign can fault or go south. Could you talk about those?
Jake Larsen:
Yeah. Just a little bit of background, we’ve launched hundreds of almost nearly thousands of campaigns. We spent millions of dollars, and all these different video ads. Some of them work really well, about 20% of them worked really well, 80% of them don’t. It’s like, why don’t they? So you start to dive deeper into the campaign structure.
Every video campaign has, there’s four parts. There’s the offer that you’re sending people to, there’s the actual creative itself, there’s the audience that you’re targeting, and then there’s the technology you’re using, it’s how you structure campaign in Google ads, or Facebook or whatnot.
Dane Golden:
How do you know which part is breaking?
Jake Larsen:
Yup. Most of the time we’ve attributed … Most of the time, like 50% of the time it’s usually the creative. If you have an offer that’s already converting, then people are opting in, they’re already buying it, and you launch a campaign, and you’re driving traffic there, if it’s not the offer, 50% of the time it’s the creative. That’s what we look at first, is the actual creative, make sure that it follows a good video ad structure.
Dane Golden:
What would that structure be?
Jake Larsen:
The two most important parts of the video ad are the intro or the hook, and then the the outro or the call to action. You start off with the hook. Are you calling out to your demographic, your target audience? Are you speaking to their pains and desires in the first five to 10 seconds, and building that up? You can track that by the view rate. That’s the metric you can use.
Dane Golden:
The Google ads view rate.
Jake Larsen:
Yup, the view rate. That measures impressions to views. How many of those impressions turn into views.
Dane Golden:
That means somebody is watching over 30 seconds, or if it’s a true view for action over 10 seconds. Is that right?
Jake Larsen:
Yup, exactly. That’s the first metric that we look at and determine, it is a good hook? Is it capturing the right attention?
Then from there, you can build the … There’s six parts to it. It’s building the problem or the desire, and then you have the solution. What is that … Every person on YouTube or Facebook has a problem or a challenge they try to deal with, so address that. Then what’s the solution to that challenge or that problem have a better they’re experiencing?Usually that’s where you can start to talk about your offer, or your product, or your service that you have.
Dane Golden:
There’s a lot of other pieces to it. We could go into this for hours.
Jake Larsen:
Yeah, we could. We could.
Dane Golden:
I do want to know, since you touched on the offer, since that was also a major pain point, what if somebody walks in and says, “Hey, Jake. Listen, you’re not selling for me. Your ad is terrible.” You’re saying, “Listen, I know that, but it’s really your offer.” How do we know, there’s a million products in the world, a million ways to offer them. How do we know if that’s a good offer or not?
Jake Larsen:
That’s a great question. The creative is determined by the the click-through rate. If we’re getting above a 3% click-through rate on an ad, for an in-stream ad, like, “Hey, you’re getting clicks. People are on your website and you should be able to turn those clicks into a lead.”
Dane Golden:
If you talk about the offer, and then they’re watching the video, and they get 3% clicks or something north of that, that’s really good. Thus you’ve represented that the ad is good.
Jake Larsen:
Yup. For example, let’s say we launch a campaign and we’re getting them clicks to the website, and let’s say there’s a thousand clicks, well there should be, depending on what the offer is, if it’s a lead, like a 30% conversion rate. You should be able to get 300 leads from that landing page. Or if you’re selling a product, maybe it’s a 2% conversion. You should start to see customers or leads coming through after they’ve watched the ad.
Dane Golden:
Those are secret numbers, by the way. I’ve never heard him say that 30% and 2% before, so pay attention to that. But then let’s say you’re not getting that, let’s say you have a ClickFunnels page, or just a regular transaction page on your website, what do you do? There must be a lot of things people can do, but do you participate in that or is that the client’s job?
Jake Larsen:
Yeah. There’s a couple of things. We help them learn faster. There’s a thousand clicks, but maybe only get like 10 people opted-in, all right, well now we need to work on maybe it’s the headline on the landing page, is the headline addressing the audience, is your offer what they’re opting in for? Is that something that people actually want? Do they want that free consultation, or do they want that download or that script, or whatever that they’re opting in for?
Dane Golden:
When they change that, then you have to change the ad, right?
Jake Larsen:
Yeah. Yup. Yeah. If you’re changing the offer, it’s a different ballgame.
Dane Golden:
It goes on, and on, and on for there, and that’s where you have a professional like Jake Larsen. Jake, tell us about Video Power Marketing and where people can find it.
Jake Larsen:
Go to our website is videopower.com. We have a bunch of resources there, tools that can help you create the videos and launch your video ads
Dane Golden:
Fantastic. That’s Jake Larsen, videopower.org. Thank you, Jake.
Jake Larsen:
Thank you.
Dane Golden:
I am so glad to have been able to speak with Jake Larsen about his expertise in YouTube ads, and what mistakes to avoid. You will be able to find this episode by searching for ‘hey’ and ‘Jake Larsen’. That’s L-A-R-S-E-N.
Dane Golden:
My name is Dane Golden, and I want to thank you, the listener, joining us today. I do this podcast, the VidAction Podcast from HEY.com, and I do the videos on the YouTube channel because I love helping marketers and
business owners like you grow your customer community through helpful how-to videos, because when you share your expertise in a way that helps your customers live their lives better, or do their jobs better, you will earn their loyalty, and their trust and their business.
Thanks to our special guest, Jake Larsen from Video Power Marketing. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.