Last updated on July 27th, 2024
You know your customers are on YouTube. They’re watching something – but what are they watching? The question is, are they watching you? Are they finding you? And do they even know they need you? Today we talk about how to get your customers to find you, specifically.
HOSTS: The VidAction Podcast is hosted by:
– Dane Golden – VidAction.tv
– Shelly Saves The Day – ContentMinis
TRANSCRIPT
Dane Golden:
You know your customers are on YouTube and they’re watching something – but what are they watching? When are they watching it? And how are they watching it?
Shelly Saves The Day:
Your customers are on YouTube already. The question is, are they watching you? Are they finding you? Do they even know they need you?
Dane Golden:
And, and Shelly, there’s so many different ways to watch YouTube. You can be on your computer, you can be on your phone. What are the ways?
Shelly Saves The Day:
Well, when you’re watching YouTube as a viewer, there are so many. Like you said, different ways, different platforms, different interfaces, as we like to call it. Because some people are watching YouTube on their Apple TV, through an app on their televisions, on their laptops, of course, (and not as much as you would think).
The majority of traffic that is watching YouTube is usually driven on mobile sites and mobile devices. So the majority of that time is going to be on. Phones, but other handheld devices such as iPads, other tablets, there are a whole bunch of different surfaces that you can have it on.
Even now, you can get it on things like Kindle. There’s an entire app and ecosystem for that too.
Dane Golden:
Can you watch YouTube on Kindle?
Shelly Saves The Day:
Yeah.
Dane Golden:
I know you can watch it on your gaming console. There’s just a lot of different ways.
Shelly Saves The Day:
Like on Nintendo Switch.
Dane Golden:
Yeah, and, and that, I imagine that comes under the, when you’re looking at your YouTube analytics, that’s supposedly under the TV area, and I was talking with a client recently and they were saying they couldn’t figure out why some video had really blown up.
Right. They’re like, what is. What is going on? Why is that? And I said, you know what? It turns out people love watching your content on TV right before they go to bed. It’s something that’s very, very visual and enjoyable. It’s really supplanting, like late night television or whatever they used to watch, they’re just watching it on their tv.
They’re watching YouTube there, and people watch it on TV usually a lot longer.
Shelly Saves The Day:
Yes, absolutely. The statistics will show, even though there isn’t as much usage of it, the watch times are sometimes triple the amount that you might get in length and session duration than on other types of interfaces. Probably because you’re so distracted and a lot of the time with televisions, it’s going to be autoplay into the next thing, and for you to.
Get out of it. You physically have to pick up remote or do something, right? Just as the same. It’s the Netflix effect where they let you play a series and they’re like, are you still awake? Are you okay? Are you still watching?
Dane Golden:
Does it still do that? It, it used to do that for me. It used to say, Hey bro, are you asleep?
Shelly Saves The Day:
Are you? Are you still watching? Yeah, and I feel like YouTube has the same type of thing because with autoplay and going on to related type of content, a lot of the time people are interested and they’ll just keep watching it. Similar to, you know, when you would kind of zone out and just watch television, people are doing that, but with YouTube as their network cable provider, basically.
Dane Golden:
But let’s, let’s put ourself in the shoes of the customer. We’re, we’re all customers for something, right? We’re all customers for something. So when you find yourself on YouTube. Sometimes you don’t even go to YouTube, you might see it, you know, someone might send you a link. You might see it a link in, in an email embedded on a website, maybe from the business that owns that channel, maybe from an entirely different. Place. You might see it in YouTube. Now you found yourself, I’m sorry, in Facebook. Now you’ve found yourself on YouTube. You’re a customer for something. Maybe many things.
And when I say customer, I mean you potentially are going to buy something at some point, maybe today, maybe some other time. So I may be going out of my way. I may have the mission of searching for something. I’m actually actively shopping by looking for reviews or how to use a product. On the other hand, I may be just looking for entertainment or to inform myself about something.
I may be watching news, I may just be having fun. Right. So there’s a lot of different states that someone comes into when they come to YouTube, right Shelly?
Shelly Saves The Day:
Absolutely there are a lot of different phases for that customer in their sometimes purchasing journey. Sometimes the, I’ve purchased something and I dunno how to use it and I need to make the most of it, or else I’m going to return it journey. There’s a lot of that and when they’re doing investigation and it’s so interesting the waves and cycles that happen. So if you look at the consumer electronics world, a lot of the time there are going to be a lot of videos that surface and a lot of content that happens around certain things that happen in calendar times of the year. So not only is it going to coincide with Google I/O or WWDC or the Back to School phase or those types of things that are always kind of cyclical in their nature, but then it then also becomes in a calendar of dads and grads is happening. What are the best presents for Father’s Day? What are the best presents for, you know, for people for Valentine’s Day?
And so almost all of the time you’ll be inundated with these things and people, marketers, businesses all know. When these things are happening, and so they also, if they’re smart, are tending to create content around that so that people can be given and serve that content right when they would be in that mood to hopefully be influenced or purchased.
Dane Golden:
Right. The, the YouTube algorithm is looking for videos to serve you. They’ve approximated based on your own. Watching history and watching history of people that are similar to you. So some people have watched videos, like the videos you’re watched. So they’ll say, well, people like who? Who watch videos like Shelly does.
Shelly loves craft crafting with rubber bands. So let’s find someone else who likes crafting with rubber bands and we think that they’re going to both be interested in Harry Styles videos or whatever the case may be. Right. So let’s, let’s serve them more. And then when you don’t watch it, they make a partition in that algorithm for you and say, no, she’s not into Harry Styles.
Let’s move on. Send her something else. And so the algorithm is constantly searching for what you want, what they think. You’ll watch the longest. And, and there’s another algorithm, well, there’s multiple algorithms, but one of them is a free algorithm and one is a paid algorithm. So the algorithm is also looking for people to put ads in front of that, that share a particular interest and will watch a video and potentially click that they’re, we often, people in our industry are usually in one side or the other.
They’re in the organic. Side or the paid side, and usually not both. I happen to be in both. I think there’s a lot, not a lot of conversation between those two groups of marketers. What do you think?
Shelly Saves The Day:
Is there conversation between the two marketers?
Dane Golden:
I think that, I think that the, those two sides of the YouTube business, they don’t talk a lot. I think if, if you’re a person who works on YouTube ads, you, that’s just you and you’re not someone who’s into channel growth and vice versa.
Shelly Saves The Day:
I can agree with that to an extent because a lot of the time for marketers and people who are running those ads, it’s really so much more, not so much about. Audience growth and it’s about participation in the ad, longevity of the watch time or the conversion into the click and sale. So a lot of the time those two are in, in opposition to each other because success means different things to both of those of people.
So I could agree with that. I would say perhaps if you could. Find a channel or type of channel and content that kind of aligns with what you would want to have in market growth. And you can supplant it with all of your ads. That might be that match made in heaven where people are paying much more to beam in front of those tried and true type of, avenue and content or even channel.
So I could see that being the case. Yes.
Dane Golden:
So we come, we we’re, I’m a business. I want to, have people find out about me. I want them to buy from me. I want to create a relationship with them on YouTube, through me making videos that are entertaining and helpful. And they, they sort of say, I am a. You know, I’m a Kia car type of person. That’s my person because I love their videos and I feel okay because Dane is advertising Kia and I like Dane.
But here’s the thing, it’s, it’s not just a neutral medium. There is an arbiter there, a big arbiter, and their name is YouTube, and they’re deciding who sees what at any given time, but they are not impartial. They have a multi, multi-billion dollar motive. And how do they express their motive to your customers that you want?
Them all to rush from your video to your website, but what is really YouTube’s motivation that you have to take into account?
Shelly Saves The Day:
YouTube has the motivation these days to keep viewers on the platform for as long as possible to be able to serve them as many ads and keep them on the platform as possible their customer. If you think about it, is not always the viewer. Their customers are the people who are buying advertising and the way, you know, it’s like picking their show.
What they’re chasing is the advertising dollar, and they’re hoping to do it and have that balance between how much. A customer of, you know, the service of YouTube is actually willing to endure before clicking out, leaving the platform, you know, being angry, all of that kind of thing. So if you think about that, um,
Dane Golden:
And and that’s going to change. And that’s going to change. It’s not just one thing. It’s going to change depending on the time of day. We watch YouTube. I watch YouTube throughout the day, very differently.
Shelly Saves The Day:
Mm-hmm.
Dane Golden:
I watch it on different devices very differently, so, and I may, I may tend to click on ads more at one time of day or one type of device more than another.
If you, if you just, for myself, I tend to start the day looking at my phone, then I move on to my laptop where I spend a ton of time and my phone becomes secondary. But I sometimes flip back to my phone throughout the day in, you know, after my workday is done. I may be on my phone for a while, then myself, my own personal.
Habits tend to move to an iPad. I am. So as I talk this through, I realize just I am far too much on my devices. I am not a TV person, meaning, not that I don’t watch TV shows, I just don’t watch them on the tv. I generally watch them on an iPad. So that’s what that is for. And they could be on YouTube, but it could be some other streaming service as well.
So you can imagine. Different devices, different amount of time span. We’re willing to spend different ways we want to interact. You know, for when I’m on mobile, I per, I sometimes prefer the ads to be vertical. I, I prefer that. Sometimes I’ll watch that longer. It takes up the space better. I, how, how do you think that, Is that, do you think I’m typical?
Do you think I am unusual? What do you think?
Shelly Saves The Day:
I think that you would be in a very similar category to a lot of people. So based on. The device that they’re on, it can dictate how different their viewing patterns might be. So a lot of us, yeah, do tend to wake up or go to bed with sometimes a device in hand, which is not always great for our mental health.
that’s a whole other conversation. And then when we leisure, we have usually larger screens, right? We have iPads or we have other tablets, or we have televisions, or we have, you know, and we tend to be more relaxed and we tend to. Watch longer and have more patience for some of those things. And when you are, you know, in the morning you’re, you’re trying to get going, you’re trying to get as much, you know, caught up.
It always seems like you’re catching up and so you’re swiping onto the next thing. And you hit on something really interesting because you said, I will sit through a vertical ad and. Multiple reasons why. Absolutely. That would make sense. I mean, they’ve done tons of research already on the same ad spend between vertical and horizontal ad for the same product, and the spend is almost always a better return on investment when it’s actually a vertical.
Type of ad. And so not only do they convert higher, but they’re usually cheaper to gain more attention. So it, it’s just, it’s fascinating to me. And, and you just kind of said it right there too, so I’ll watch it on vertical and the fact that you have less distractions on screen at the same time because.
Of the, you know, wide ways. A lot of the time people still hold their phone in that portrait orientation, but if the video is wide, then you’re scrolling and you’re seeing the other thumbnails. You’re wa you’re reading the comments and with a vertical ad you don’t have that luxury. So you usually are more inclined to stay on that page and watch it for longer.
So, Honestly, if I were also advising a lot of companies because of the increased traffic with mobile devices and the better conversion and the cheaper acquisition, sometimes I think it might be more interesting to run more experiments with vertical ads.
Dane Golden:
I tell you, that’s what we’re doing for some clients now and we’re finding, and it really depends. I can tell you it vast is vastly different depending on the time of day. The time of day is super, super important. The early morning working period, not so good for six minute vertical ads, but in the evening we can do great.
And so I want to talk a little bit about types of customers, and let’s say you were deciding to run ads, but you only wanted to run them during that period, or you were deciding when’s the best time to release a video that where most of your. Audience is going to be on, maybe you want to release it a few hours earlier, so it’s, it’s uploaded and ready to go, and they’ve, they’re the first people to your number one type of audience is your first people to see it, and they’re excited about that.
Shelly Saves The Day:
I think you, you actually just mentioned something and maybe you didn’t realize, you went by it and you said when your peak audience is on and being on before them so that they have something watch, and I think a lot of people mistake that because they’ll go into their analytics and they’ll say, Hey, my audience is watching more at five o’clock, so let’s release this video at five o’clock.
And I’m like, no, no, no, no. It actually would’ve been better to do it, you know, an hour before then, or 45 minutes before then. So then, also one of the problems, if you release at five o’clock, let’s say tons of other channels are also releasing, At the exact same time. So I like to tell people to do it.
Even if you were going for that window, five or 10 minutes off of that mark, if you’re scheduling, because you don’t want to be in the sea of 50 other videos that all released at five o’clock because they all use the same scheduler. So I would do it even at like 4 55, 4 53, so that if you are trying to hit that, let’s say six o’clock wave, your video is still going to be in there a little bit sooner.
That’s just an inside thing for me
Dane Golden:
Yeah, you can. You can do it at an oddball time and that be your time, particularly if you feel everyone’s launching, for instance, at 9:00 AM every morning. Well, what if you were the person that launched at 8 47? Because, or what if your video was the lunchtime video? Everyone had a habit that they knew it was lunchtime and that was the thing they did.
Well, you know, people take a break during that time to eat lunch and maybe some people watch YouTube. Well, the great time to have that would be right before the lunchtime. Of course, you’d want to think about the different time zones across the country. So if you’re on the West coast, it’s noon, but it’s already 3:00 PM on the East Coast.
So you probably for lunchtime and you’re on the. West Coast, you’d want to do it at 9:00 AM because it’s already noon in the East.
Shelly Saves The Day:
And a lot of people don’t think about the fact that it’s not about what time is convenient for them personally to sometimes publish a video, but it might be best to think about what is the intended audience. That you’re hoping to reach, and when would they be online and when would they find the most benefit to watching your content?
So also it may be that it could be at very weird times of the day because you know, if you are located in Seattle, but your demographic is all located in Japan. Maybe releasing a video, you know, at in a great time for you is not great for them, or, you know, and if you’re someplace else in all of a sudden the Philippines and they’re already, it’s a day ahead of you.
You can’t be like talking about the day before. So, I mean, you really do have to keep that in mind as well if you’re also. The two biggest things, hardest things are always time and money, right? Trying to calculate time or trying to calculate, money across different currencies and, and time zones. But if you can figure out then your ideal customer, maybe when they’re going to be online and it’s going to be beneficial to them, that can be also a big feather in your cap for especially making conversions.
Dane Golden:
just as an example of different types of products and, and how people might be thinking of them differently. A few years ago we managed, a top girls’ clothing line, YouTube channel. And kids’ videos have changed a bit since then, but we taught girls how to do crafts and, you know, the, the latest dance, like back when the floss was big, remember the floss, stuff like that.
How to do, gymnastics and, you know, hey, look at this back flip, or whatever the case may be. So, I can tell you those kids were online right after school. That seems logical, right? They’re not going to be watching a lot of videos during school, so like 2:30, 1:30 on the West Coast is right around the time on the East Coast.
They’re also not going to be watching it very late. They might watch it early in the morning on Saturday. Now a B2B product, I can tell you those folks are watching them at work on laptops. The kids, they were watching it on phones. The, B2B folks, they’re watching during nine to five on laptops or desktops.
We, we helped an automotive product for people who fixed their own cars. It turns out a lot of, the big traffic for that was Thursday night, late Friday night, late Saturday morning. And Sunday morning, that’s when people think about their weekend projects and we could just visualize them outside of the auto parts stores trying to think about what they’re going to buy and watching a video about how to fix something using similar products. If it’s an entertainment or travel, people love watching that on t, their TVs, because they’re very visual. That’s going to be generally later at night. Now, over the past few years that people have started to work more at home? I think some people, I think we’ve seen a growth in TV because what I think is that people’s home office is in their TV room and so they’re using it as a second screen while they’re working.
We are not seeing it as much over the past year, but we did see that, 2020 and 2021 a lot.
Shelly Saves The Day:
I would fully believe that a lot of during the pandemic and shut down when people were working from home, that the TV usage would’ve been quite high because a lot of people probably also have, you know, they have 8, 9, 10 hour live stream or you know, recorded sessions of music. That sounds like. Cafe, coffee house vibes, you know, like this lo-fi music or that people like to work to this techno playlist.
And so people were probably getting, you know, tons and tons and tons of watch time from people just using it as that filler in the background for the music that they just needed to have something on in the background. So, absolutely, I, I would’ve seen that.
Dane Golden:
Now. If somebody’s watching a, you know, study time video or call, whatever that genre is called.
Shelly Saves The Day:
and the productive.
Dane Golden:
Yeah. Do we call it product productivity listening? Is that what we call
Shelly Saves The Day:
people do and some people really enjoy. So, The timed aspect, especially people who tend to sometimes get easily distracted or off, of course they’ll know like, Hey, just for, you know, the 15, 20 minutes until this timer for Pomodoro goes off, like we are just heads down working. But they also. Don’t feel alone.
Someone else is also studying or working or doing the same thing. And so they get to do that at the sa same time simultaneously with someone else. And then, you know, it’s like, okay, let’s stretch and let’s, you know, do this breathing exercise. And then it’s like heads down again and, and they, they kind of get their
Dane Golden:
So I’m lo I’m lost here. I’m lost. What I’m confused about is, are you saying that it’s a live stream, that’s broken up into 20 minute increments or something so that at five o’clock we are studying until five 20 and then we take a 10 minute break and everyone’s doing it at the same time. Is that what you’re saying?
Shelly Saves The Day:
Sometimes yes, there is simultaneous and sometimes, it’s already recorded or maybe it was live, but people follow along with it as if it’s live.
Dane Golden:
So, so, but what, what I hear you saying is that it’s music and they sort of have a signal or some sort of bong.
Shelly Saves The Day:
Sometimes there’s a timer or a ding, or sometimes there’ll just be a visual or like vocal type of cue that says, okay, you know, now everyone’s going to stretch for five minutes or whatever it is.
Dane Golden:
I didn’t know that. Well, if you were, you know, thinking of your customer, again, if you’re someone who’s selling productivity software, it may be a little bit disruptive to the poor people who are trying to focus, but great advertising on that live stream. It’s a very targeted market.
Shelly Saves The Day:
You know, even though something like that, what if they don’t have YouTube premiums? So they’re getting interrupted with ads and they’re like, I’m just trying to get into my study flow. Or imagine you’re in a meditation type of thing. Then all of a sudden it’s like, breathe deep, and then all of a sudden a loud.
Advertisement comes in and ruins it, or an ASMR channel. So then what you, you know, all of a sudden are selling, maybe it’s a service where it’s like the calm app where you have that and people are buying a subscription to it, and then they’ll be able to have that timed type of experience without the interruptions.
So, I mean, that could be your service, or you could have, you know, of course, something else. You could be leading the meditation or hypnosis or whatever for your clients, if that is your business as a service. And even though you could have a free version that’s online, you could have the uninterrupted ad free.
You know, kind of like, freemium type of content that you’re selling as a subscription as well. So even that example of that, you could still turn into a business.
Dane Golden:
Yeah. And so I think that the, the story today is for, for the audience is that really, really think about your ideal customer and what types of things they might be doing. On YouTube, what times of day, what devices, what types of content that they might be watching Here on YouTube, we generally call that the, your customer avatar.
What are they doing? You might even have a name for them elsewhere. In the marketing world, sometimes they call that your customer persona. It’s essentially the same thing. It’s clo they, they supposedly there’s some difference, but I don’t understand the difference. So persona or avatar.
Shelly Saves The Day:
Now when we think about the customer, and it’s so important as marketers, as business owners, and a lot of people stop at that demographic, and I’ve said this example before, but it really is then about the psychographics, which is really what we’re diving into as well. You know, where are they watching on what device, why, like what is influencing it?
Like, you know, the different times of day affecting their mood. That’s really getting into more than just, you know, it’s. This type of person and they live in this geographic area, right? And we talked about Ozzy Osbourne and Prince Charles, or now King Charles, let’s say. And they’re both, let’s say, you know, men, divorced, remarried, British, but they have very different wants, needs and lifestyles.
And so it’s very much the same. When we think about that in terms of then our advertising, how we target. Where we target, when we target. And if you don’t have those questions, if you don’t dig into more than just where do they live, but why are they doing this? What is motivating them? Why right now? You know, those are the questions that if you want to have either a successful campaign or a successful business, if you don’t understand your customer, you’re not going to be able to have that repeat customer be attracted to you and find your product desirable.
Dane Golden:
But if you do want to target within one kilometer of Buckingham Palace, you have a very targeted audience for your YouTube ads, and that is a possible thing to do. But that will cover that on another day. Shelley, how can people find you? Until next week.
Shelly Saves The Day:
You can hang out with me on YouTube under ShellySavesTheDay.
Dane Golden:
And I’m Dane Golden from VidAction. You can find me at TalkToDane.Today. Until next week, here’s the helping you help your customers through video.