Last updated on June 15th, 2024
GUEST: Jake Larsen of Video Power Marketing | YouTube | Twitter | LinkedIn | How to Get Thousands Of High-Quality Webinar Registrations with YouTube Ads Case Study
HOSTS: The VidAction Podcast is hosted by:
– Dane Golden of VidAction.tv and VidTarget.io | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube
– Renee Teeley of VideoExplained and ReneeTeeley.com | LinkedIn | Twitter |
Instagram | 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
Jake Larsen:
Webinars have been around for a long time and they’re still working. And so, a lot of the clients that we’re working with, they have webinars, which is a great way to build trust in their marketplace. And you can use it as an educational piece to train your audience and to teach them the valuable skill sets. And then, towards the end of the webinar, you can invite them to take further action to help grow your business. Whether they want to fill out an application to work with you, they can purchase your program. So it’s a great way to deliver value in the marketplace and also help grow your business too.
Dane Golden:
It’s time for the Video Marketing Value podcast. This is the podcast where we help marketers and business owners, just like you to get more value out of video marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden from VidAction.tv, where we help you up your game on YouTube for business and transform your viewers into loyal customers. And our new business also is VidTarget.io, where we help you get a higher return on your YouTube ad spend with targeted YouTube video placement lists. Along with my cohost, she’s the powerhouse video marketer from San Francisco. It’s R-E-N-E-E T-E-E-L-E-Y, Renee Teeley from VideoExplained. Hello, Renee.
Renee Teeley:
Hello Dane. Today, I’m happy as a chocolate bunny on the day after Easter to be co-hosting this podcast with you.
Dane Golden:
But are you thrilled?
Renee Teeley:
Thrilled? I’m delighted. I am all of the things.
Dane Golden:
And Renee, what do you do at VideoExplained?
Renee Teeley:
At VideoExplained, I offer video production and consulting services to help companies use video to build credibility, generate leads and convert those leads into paying customers.
Dane Golden:
Okay. And for you, the listener, you should know that as always, you can follow along in the podcast after listening to right now with the transcript and the links. And hey, let us know what you think and tweet us here on the show. I’m Dane Golden and she’s rteeley on Twitter. And today we have a special guest, it’s Jake Larsen of Video Power Marketing. Welcome Jake.
Jake Larsen:
Hey guys, it’s good to be here. I’m as happy as a chocolate bunny as well.
Renee Teeley:
On the day after Easter, we made it.
Jake Larsen:
We made it through.
Dane Golden:
Fantastic. Jake Larsen, we asked you on the Video Marketing Value podcast today because long time you’ve been running the Video Power Marketing company, and you now have the YouTube ads playbook course, which I am a very energetic participant in, which is great. You guys create ads, you manage campaigns for businesses of all kinds. And, I wanted to ask you, because you guys wrote a blog post recently about how to drive webinar registrations with YouTube ads. And this is very big for anyone’s who’s doing a B2B type of business, which we love helping people on with this podcast. Is this a good topic for today?
Jake Larsen:
Yeah, I mean, it’s really relevant. I think webinars have been around for a long time and they’re still working. And so, a lot of the clients that we’re working with, they have webinars, which is a great way to build trust in their marketplace. It’s like, you can use it as an educational piece to train your audience and to teach them the valuable skill sets. And then, towards the end of the webinar, you can invite them to take further action to help grow your business, whether they want to fill out an application to work with you, they can purchase your program. So it’s a great way to deliver value in the marketplace and also help grow your business too.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah. So I completely agree with you. I think webinars can be really effective for businesses. But I also think, sometimes people don’t really have a good understanding of the strategy behind their webinars and how to drive people to those webinars and how to get as much value out of them as possible. And so, I’m really excited about this topic. As we’ve mentioned, webinar registrations are key for many types of businesses, particularly high ticket items, such as, what most B2B companies will sell.
So they’re not selling a $10 subscription, they’re selling maybe their product’s worth $30,000 or $10,000 or whatever it might be. So it’s high ticket items. It’s also good for coaches promoting courses and other types of things. So how should we think about the structure of a webinar video ad on YouTube in a way that might be different than other types of ads?
Jake Larsen:
Yeah. So I always think whenever you’re advertising, especially if it’s for your webinar or your company’s webinar, it’s always good to come from a place of giving. Like you want to give service, you want to be able to provide value for people. So one, making sure that you’re starting in the right place of delivering value and come from a place of giving, I think, is a great place to start. And then after that, the goal of any ad is one, want to grab people’s attention, build trust, add value, and invite them to take further action.
And so, for the actual ad piece, we’re inviting them to register for your webinar where they can get additional training and potentially work with you. So when it comes to really any ad, not just webinars, but we follow a seven step framework, where the framework is basically what’s the hook. The hook is like who are you? Why should people continue watching this ad? How can you hook people to watching the rest of the video? To anyone who’s on YouTube is there to either solve a problem or to be entertained.
Jake Larsen:
So step number two is present the problem or challenge or opportunity that the audience is currently facing. Three, provide the solution for like, what’s the credibility? What gives you the right to be making this video? What’s the proof that your solution works? And then five is the product overview. And that’s where we can dive into more of, what will people be learning on this webinar? What are the three to five benefits that people will learn on the webinar? Six, the call to action, inviting people to take action.
Renee Teeley:
Sorry to interrupt. So back to the proof one, I think that’s actually a very key point. Do you have a recommendation on how to actually give some credibility building proof without sounding like you’re bragging or being super cheesy about it?
Jake Larsen:
No, that’s a great question. Again, I think it comes from a place [crosstalk 00:07:04]
Dane Golden:
What’s wrong with cheesy?
Renee Teeley:
Hey, you know what, sometimes it works. Dane, I think it works in your case.
Dane Golden:
That is me, all over.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah.
Jake Larsen:
Well, that’s a legit concern that a lot of clients have, it’s like they’re like hey, they have a great product or service, but they don’t want to come off. I use the term internet marketing.
Renee Teeley:
Yes, that’s perfect.
Jake Larsen:
It’s just internet marketing. And so, it can turn people off. And so, I think it depends on, what’s your reason for wanting to create this ad. If your reason is to genuinely help people and invite them to make an impact. I think naturally it comes out. As far as specific things that you can do. One, if you have a story of how you started your company or how you created a service or a product, tell that story. Tell that story of how you created your company or how you created the product and why you created it. Because there’s value in that.
Jake Larsen:
And then two, if it’s not your story that you want to share, share a story of one of your customers or clients that you’ve helped and tell their story. And when it comes down to a story, I follow, it’s called the SSSR framework. So it’s like, what’s the situation that that person was in before they worked with you? What was their struggle that they had before? And what was the solution? Like, what did they solve on their struggle? And then what were the results of the solution after working with you?
So you can basically go through that simple framework yourself or with one of your clients, and you can come up with a really concise, specific credibility section that can help build trust.
Renee Teeley:
That’s great. I love it. It’s a framework with inside of a framework. And I think I cut you off on number six out of your seven steps to the ad.
Jake Larsen:
And I can dive into each one of these further, but number five was, you discussed the product and in this case, the product would be the training or the webinar. What are the three to five things, takeaways that people will get from the webinar and how will that impact their lives. And then, after you discuss that, invite people to take action. Like, “Hey, if this sounds great to you, or if this speaks to you, click the link in this video and get registered now.” So just invited people both verbally and visually to click on the link in the video, that alone increase your click through rate by quite a bit.
Dane Golden:
Just these last few minutes, people listening right now should rewind and replay those last few minutes where you outlined your structure, which I have watched your videos on this multiple times, because it’s so valuable. And that SSSR, structure of a testimonial is extremely … This is almost like a webinar for your course, but they should go and get your course.
Jake Larsen:
Now that I think about it, it is a very similar to a webinar. A webinar you’re doing all of those things as well. You’re just doing it over the course of like 45 minutes to an hour. And now you have to take that and put it into like a 60 second, two-minute video.
Dane Golden:
That’s right. That’s right. But I want to move on because I want to ask you what type of YouTube ad campaign do you want to do when you have this webinar and does it depend on the cost of what your service is that you sell after the webinar with the webinar?
Jake Larsen:
So, as far as the type of campaign, and maybe this helps to break down the types of ads on YouTube, there’s really two different types of ads. There’s the in-stream ads that you can skip after five seconds. And then there’s the discovery ads that show up in search results. They show up in suggested videos. What we found to have the biggest impact are the in-stream ads, the ones that you could skip after five seconds. And I like those ones the best, because of the way that they’re priced. Like you pay for a view.
And a view is if the viewer watches 30 seconds of the ad or half, whichever comes first. So if you look a two minute video and you go through the framework, you hook people, you identified the problem with this ad that they have, and you start talking about the solution. And maybe that takes like 28, 29 seconds to get through. But if they’re interested, they’re going to keep watching and then you get charged for the view.
Jake Larsen:
But if they’re not interested at that point, they’ll skip the ad and then you don’t have to pay for it. And it’s actually a win-win situation because the viewer can skip it. They stop wasting their time. And you, as the advertiser, you don’t wish your ad spend on people who aren’t interested in what you have to say. So both people win. So, these would be in-stream ads, inviting people to take action on your webinar. And as far as the campaign structure, there’s two different audiences. There’s cold traffic, people who have never heard of you, or they’ve never seen your videos, they’ve never knew your website. So that type of ad is creating a lot of value upfront.
Jake Larsen:
And then people who hit your landing page, and maybe they’re just not interested at that time. Then you can create a remarketing campaign. So if that message A didn’t hit them enough to take action, then you create another video ad, video ad B, and you can remarket to those people. And maybe you create more value. You educate them a little bit more. You can share a story of one of your students or clients that you’ve worked with. And sometimes people need to see the message five or six times before they’re ready to take action. So, it’s like a series of different campaigns to make it all work.
Renee Teeley:
So that’s like the perfect segue into my next question, which is, how important is remarketing and do you just remark it on Google display networks or do you do a sequence of YouTube ads or even remark it on other platforms like Facebook?
Jake Larsen:
Yeah. It’s a great question. From marketing as a whole, there’s three types of audiences. There’s cold audiences, there’s warm audiences and there’s hot audiences. So a hot audience is people who have purchased your product, they’re customers. They already know, I can trust you. They’ve given you their money, like they’re hot. Then there’s warm audiences where they know you, but maybe they’re working on the trust aspect. They just maybe need some a little convincing to take action. And then there’s cold traffic. So, if you could think of those audiences like a dart board, you have your bulls-eye right, and then outside the bullseye, you have the next layer, which would be warm traffic. And the third one would be cold traffic.
Jake Larsen:
And I think on any platform, it’s always best to start with the bullseye or the innermost circle, which would be like your warm traffic, your remarketing traffic, these are people who have seen or heard from you. So I start with an ad geared towards them, and then start working on some cold ads as well. So, the remarketing traffic, if you have a huge YouTube channel or you get a ton of traffic to your website, go after that warm traffic. That’s going to get you the biggest bang for your buck in terms of ad spend and getting a return on ad spend.
And then from there, you can start to layer on cold audiences. I think YouTube in-stream ads would is the best place to be remarketing. That’s where I’d start from there. And if you can get that working, if you can get cold traffic working, then I would expand to like the Google Display Network. If you look at like, what has a greater influence, like seeing a display ad or watching a two-minute video? It’s a pretty stark contrast. If someone’s going to watch a two-minute video, they’re a lot more likely to take action rather than just like scrolling through and seeing the display on it. [crosstalk 00:15:45] display.
Renee Teeley:
I might be a little biased, but I think video wins every time. And I also think just thinking about my own experience as a consumer, I end up skipping a lot of ads. And so I think if I don’t skip an ad and I’m actually engaged in watching that ad, chances are, I’m very interested in whatever’s happening on the screen. So I think that’s a great way to actually really get people interested and measuring who might be interested in your products.
Jake Larsen:
For sure.
Dane Golden:
Let’s talk a little bit about your testing. So do you just create an ad and put a whole bunch of money behind it, or do you test it and compare different ads and types of campaigns. And exactly what would you call a test, for instance, if you’re running something for a couple of months, and then you tweak something, is that really a test or is that a tweak? How much is testing and how much is the real campaign, or does it not split up like that?
Jake Larsen:
I know for us, I feel like we’re always testing. I feel like there’s never like, “All right, we nailed it. We’re done. We don’t have to do anything now.” There’s always work to be done on these campaigns. But, I would approach it like I thought there’s four elements when it comes to testing. There’s the offer, like the webinar or the ebook or the free video class that you’re giving away, that’s the offer. And that’s going to have the biggest impact on their performance.
Jake Larsen:
And I’d start there. And if the campaign’s not working, maybe it isn’t the offer, maybe people aren’t interested in the topic of the webinar. So you start there and you want to make sure that the offer is good, that it’s relevant. I’ll start from that. The biggest impact of why a campaign would work or why it would not work would be the actual video ad itself. Does that follow that six step framework? Are you speaking to your audience? Are you providing value? Is there a clear call to action? If that video doesn’t work, it could be an audience. Maybe you’re showing it to the wrong people. And the fourth one is the campaign structure. Maybe your bid is too high or it’s too low, or your audience is too big, or maybe your audience is too narrow. The way you’ve searched your campaign could not be working. As far as the [crosstalk 00:18:24].
Dane Golden:
Is the landing page part of the offer? Would you say the [crosstalk 00:18:27]?
Jake Larsen:
Yeah.
Dane Golden:
Okay.
Jake Larsen:
I put that in the offer. Yeah. You could make the argument that they’re different. It could be the offer, the landing page, the video, the audience, or the campaign structure. As far as [crosstalk 00:18:42]. Go ahead.
Renee Teeley:
No, no. Go ahead.
Jake Larsen:
I was going to say, as far as the video testing itself, when we create video ads, we’re testing, like the two biggest parts, most important parts of the video are the intro and the outro. How do you start it? How do you end it? And so we’ll create an ad that maybe has two or three different variations for the hook, that hit on different pain points. And that’s a great place to start when it comes to testing your creative. The body, like the product, the solution, the credibility, and the product overview. That’s pretty much always going to be the same.
And then you could like AB test different call to actions, but the biggest one you’d want to test out are the intros. In fact, we’ve run one video. We basically ran it for like nine months, almost a year. And we started to notice ad fatigue. It was the same creative, the same audience. The click through rate started dropping. And the lead conversion rate started dropping. So those are signs of ad fatigue. So what we did is, we kept the same video, but we’d switched out the first 10 seconds of the video. That’s all we did to it.
Dane Golden:
Really?
Jake Larsen:
And then it flicked through it, went back to [inaudible 00:19:54]. Because it looked like a new ad the first part, but the way we structured it, it still worked. It still performed well.
Renee Teeley:
I think that’s a really great tip. The intro is really important regardless of the type of video that it is, whether it’s a regular YouTube video or it’s an ad. But that’s the thing that’s hooking someone’s attention. And so, if they don’t like the intro, they’re not going to watch the video or the ad. So that’s a really great point. In terms of the YouTube ad itself. So I often get this question of, how long should a video be? And I’m sure that you get the question, how long should an ad be? But do you have any advice for, what is the typical ad length that you think or duration that you think works well for webinars specifically,
Jake Larsen:
Your video ads should be like a mini skirt, as long as they cover the important parts, then short enough to keep it interesting.
Renee Teeley:
That is so good.
Jake Larsen:
I heard that for somewhere and I’m reusing it. To give a specific time, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s 30 seconds or 60 seconds. I think that’s pretty much irrelevant these days. I know on our biggest thing, it’s, do we have enough time to establish the hook and the problem and the solution and credibility. And then, when you write that, when you write your script out, can you read it and maintain people’s attention? I think that’s the biggest factor as far as how long a video should be.
That being said, I know we have ads that are between 60 seconds and then some of our ads are up to four minutes. But they’re able to maintain people’s attention. So I’d say anywhere between two and a half, three minutes to get an engaged webinar registration, works really well.
Renee Teeley:
I bet you, if you have someone who sticks around and watches a video ad for four minutes, there’s a higher likelihood that they will actually purchase whatever your offering is or just sign up for your webinar, than if it’s a 30 second ad. Because that’s a real commitment four minutes on an ad.
Jake Larsen:
Right. I have this theory and it’s validated in a couple of situations, but your length of your video should be equivalent to the length of the ask of what you’re asking people to do. So with a webinar, you’re asking people to invest like an hour of their time, and then possibly investing money after that webinar. And so, if you just show like a 15 second ad or 20, or even a 30 second ad to somebody, it doesn’t give them enough value and time to make that decision to join the webinar.
Jake Larsen:
Sure. You make it a really high click through rate and a high view rate on that short ad, but it’s not generating enough value and trust to get people to show up for that webinar and eventually purchasing your product. But like you said, if somebody is going to stick around for two and a half, three minutes to watch that, and you had kept their attention, that’s a pretty good signal that they’re going to move further down with you on the customer journey.
Dane Golden:
And, actually, could you segue here into, we understand about how discovery and in-stream works, but we don’t really understand, not everyone listening will understand how the brand or business businesses charged for those ads and clicks or views, and based on how long they watch.
Jake Larsen:
So on the in-stream ad, you get charged on the view. And the view is if they watch half of the ad or 30 seconds, whichever comes first. So again, if you have like a minute video and they watch 30 seconds, you’ll get charged for that view. A view could range between 2 cents or 25 cents, depending on the geographics, the targeting the time of year. Like right now, it’s come up on election. The CPMs are really expensive on all ad platforms. There’s a lot of people advertising right now. So the cost per view is higher than normal.
Jake Larsen:
That’s one an in-stream ad, on a discovery ad, you get charged on a view, but the view is really a click. So you’re clicking to watch the video, but you’re staying on YouTube. And that click or view could be 15, 20 cents too. Honestly, we don’t do a lot of discovery ads because we just haven’t seen them drive the same results as in-stream ads have.
Dane Golden:
But just to confirm, you watch more than 30 seconds, you get charged as an advertiser. You watch less than 30 seconds, if the viewer watches less, the advertiser does not get charged unless they’ve watched to the end of a video that’s shorter than 30 seconds, correct?
Jake Larsen:
Right. So if you have like a 30 second video, you get charged at half that time, should it be a 15 seconds.
Dane Golden:
And just one more follow up. Could you tell me, is it the same for the action, I’ve forgotten the name, the YouTube for action?
Jake Larsen:
TrueView for action.
Dane Golden:
TrueView for action. Is that 30 seconds or is it 10 seconds that you get charged that? Because I’ve heard 10, but I think it’s 30.
Jake Larsen:
You know what, it was 30 to start off with and then they send out an announcement, like a year and a half ago about 20 to 10 and then it was back to 30. From my knowledge it’s 30 seconds.
Dane Golden:
Okay. Because that confused me. Thank you.
Renee Teeley:
So you talked earlier about the landing page being part of the offer. And one of the things that you can test. Can you talk a little bit about what needs to be on that landing page to make sure that the viewer actually converts into becoming a customer?
Jake Larsen:
Yeah. I think the biggest thing is making sure that the video call to action and the headline on the landing page match. Like, what are you asking people to do on the video? Click to blank, blank and blank. And then when you go to the lining page, making sure that, that headline, that first thing that they see is aligned with what you were talking about previously. Now, you don’t want to have a lot of in congruence in those messages. And also making sure that the look and the feel of the video matches the look and feel of the landing page. I think those are just step number one. Aside from that, you have your headline of your landing page that has like a result and an audience like who is for and the benefit that they’ll get from that.
Jake Larsen:
Aside from that a little lower, you have like three to five bullet points of the things that they’re learning to learn on the webinar or the training or some of the results. You have your call to action, that’s above the fold. So people don’t have to scroll down. They’re very bonded to get to register for it. And then, beneath that customer testimonials or testimonials that people have of working with you or what they’ve learned from it, that’s just a huge indicator for trust and getting people enough confidence to sign up for that. So, all of that, the one thing I’d also add too, to be aware of that Google doesn’t like is making these huge claims.
In your video and also your landing page, just to avoid making a certain amount of money in a certain amount of time or losing a certain amount of weight in a certain amount of time. Any big claims like that are grounds to get your account flagged and possibly suspended from Google and Facebook.
Renee Teeley:
I also think that’s a good way to drive away people. Maybe it works for a subset of people, but for me, if I see those big claims, it does feel a little gimmicky.
Jake Larsen:
Internet marketing.
Renee Teeley:
Yes.
Dane Golden:
But I need to lose weight. Recently in your course, I was asking about how to know if each phase you had four different phases of things that needed to be tested, including the offer, the ad, the campaign, et cetera. But there was several milestones you had given me that I asked. And I totally was going to write them down. And I totally forgot to. But, something like what’s the view rate versus the click rate versus the conversion rate. And then, you even had a, how many people on the landing page, if you got them to that point should confer.
Jake Larsen:
Do you remember what we were discussing? Could you give those? Because I thought that was so valuable and I’ll tell the audience why I think they’re valuable. Because it’s easy to test a conversion costs if you’re in a B2C business. Either they bought or they didn’t. But if you’re trying to bring in leads B2B and the sales cycle may be months long, it’s very difficult for me helping B2Bs with this, to know exactly what the rates should be to know if I’m doing a good job or not. So what are those?
Jake Larsen:
It’s true. You’ve spent all this time creating a video ad and you’re spending your own money and you didn’t know, how do I know if this campaign is working or not? And I need to be careful because if you get too specific of numbers, the numbers vary from market and industry and geographics and even timelines. So I’d say the [crosstalk 00:30:01].
Dane Golden:
Range would be nice.
Jake Larsen:
Yeah. The range. A couple of things that we look out for is, the number one metric that we are after is RO ads. What’s the return on ad spend. And typically, some people want to break even on ad spend. Some people want a two to one return on ad spend. And sometimes with certain clients, you can knock it out of the park. You’re getting like a five X return on ad spend.
Dane Golden:
And that’s just the cost of the spending on the campaign doesn’t have anything to do with the production or any other costs. It’s just how much you’re spending to get someone to look at an ad. And how much are you selling based on that ad spent?
Jake Larsen:
Yes. So, if I have a product that I sell for a hundred bucks, can I spend 25 bucks to get a customer that’s worth a hundred bucks? So it’d be like a four X return on ad spend. Yeah, money in money out basically. [crosstalk 00:30:52].
Dane Golden:
But if you don’t know how much are you going to make over several months because it’s a longer sale.
Jake Larsen:
Right. So that’s a different conversion window. And so, the next step is okay, how do people get into our sales funnel? And maybe that’s, they have to watch a webinar. And so then you’re tracking what’s the cost per lead or the cost per webinar registration or the lead conversion rate. The lead conversion rates that what we’re going after and what’s our cost per lead, because that’s an indicator of what type of return we can get further on in the funnel.
Jake Larsen:
Let’s start from the very beginning. So somebody sees an ad, one of the first metrics is the view rate. How many people turn from an impression like the first five seconds and actually watch past that 30 second frame. That’s the view rate. And that can tell you how well your hook is and how well targeted the ad is, like how relevant the audience is. Typically we aim between at least a 20% view rate or a 30% view rate within that range is a great view rate.
Dane Golden:
That’s very high.
Jake Larsen:
Yeah. And then from there, you have a click through rate. So how many views does it take till they click, for people to click? If you’re going based off what you see in Google ads, from an impression they click, I’d say a minimum of having a 1% click through rate is a good place to start. If it’s less than that, then you may need to work on your creative a little bit.
Dane Golden:
I’m sorry to interrupt you again, but I just want to make sure I’m understanding the right number. Do you mean a view to a click or an impression to a click?
Jake Larsen:
So that last number was impression to a click. That’s the number you see in Google ads is impression to click and that would be around 1%. If you’re tracking the number of views to a click, we aim for at least a 3% click through rate.
Dane Golden:
Okay. All right.
Jake Larsen:
And then-
Dane Golden:
The landing page, what’s the conversion rate once you get onto the landing page?
Jake Larsen:
So for a webinar, we see anything anywhere between like 20% to 35% seems to be the range. And it really depends, like if you’re target if it’s B2B is probably going to be on the lower end of conversion rates. If it’s a more broad audience, like fitness or business opportunities, it could be around 30%. It depends on what you’re asking on landing page. Are you just asking for a name and email, if that’s the case it’s going to be a higher conversion rate because it’s not as big of an ask.
But if you’re asking for, what’s your name, email-
Dane Golden:
Company, phone number.
Jake Larsen:
… company, phone number, then your conversion rates are going to go down. So you need to take those factors into consideration.
Renee Teeley:
Yeah. I think a good general rule for marketing as the more that you ask of people, the more information that you’re requiring from them, the lower your conversion might end up being. In terms of long sales cycles, Dane was asking about companies that are potentially B2B and have long sales cycles and figuring out how to break out the conversion between different stages. Can you talk a little bit about, is there really a difference between an ad structure or should there be a difference between the ad structure for a YouTube ad for a B2B business versus a B2C business? And is it different if there’s a company that has a long sales cycle versus short sales cycle?
Jake Larsen:
So the first question, difference between B2C and B2B if it’s business, you tend to want to have more case studies, case studies of other businesses that have worked with you and the results that they’ve gotten. So I think I’d lean more on the case study section. In terms of the buyer conversion window, that’s one of the biggest challenges because if you have a long conversion window, it’s an attribution game and attribution is still pretty tricky online.
Jake Larsen:
Because a lot of people will maybe see the YouTube ad and they don’t take action. And then they’d go Google the name of the company of the YouTube ad. And then they go to the website. So that traffic source is getting referred to as like a Google organic or direct traffic. And then maybe they don’t do anything. And then they see a Facebook ad a week later, and then they sign up and go down that path. So there’s a lot of different ways that people can come on.
Jake Larsen:
And it’s really take in consideration that customer journey. I think the biggest thing is, if you can track what the costs … I recommend having two benchmarks. Maybe it’s a cost per lead or cost per application, before the actually turned into a sell. Another thing that we’ve done too, on the higher price longer sales too is, we had an e-commerce company that their product sold for like 150 bucks. Was the average order value.
And we didn’t really have a lead, but we also didn’t want to start off optimizing for a sell because we just would have to spend a lot of money to see. So in their Google analytics, we went in there and we say, “Hey, let’s look at all the buyers that purchased from this company.” And we found that the majority, almost 80% of the buyers spent at least six minutes on the website before they purchased.
Jake Larsen:
So we created a conversion fire. One of our “leads” or conversion code that we wanted to fire is, hey, we want to create an ad. And our goal is to have people spend longer than six minutes on the website. And if they spend longer than six minutes on the website, fire that code, because that’s a benchmark number that people will take before they purchase the product. Again, my advice would be pick two benchmark numbers that will have the biggest impact on the customer journey and measure those two.
For that example, I’m measuring what’s the cost to have somebody spend six minutes on the website and what’s the cost per buyer. Those are the two primary metrics. I really don’t care what the view rate is. I don’t care if it’s less than 15 seconds. If they’re spending more than six minutes on the website, there’s a hierarchy of values and those actions are more important than a view rate to me. So, make sure that you keep the big picture on the overall performance and the two most important objectives in these campaigns.
Dane Golden:
And I’ve even heard you guys say you sometimes optimize for only when someone opens the confirmation email, which blew my mind.
Jake Larsen:
Yes. A lot of people think, Oh yeah, we want to have a huge email list. And we want a ton of leads. But, it’s really the quality of the leads that matters too. So we had one account where we were running their campaigns and we were getting like a $2 cost per lead or a $3 cost per lead. So really cheap leads. And like, wow, this is crazy. Because these are really cheap leads. But the thing is, half of those people weren’t even getting the rest of the emails. They never confirmed their address in the funnel. Which means they would never show up to the webinar. And they’d never like take action further.
Jake Larsen: q
So it’s like, when you have that clarity, it’s like we’re optimizing for the wrong thing. A name and email isn’t important to us. We want somebody who actually opens her email and clicks on it. And then those people will see the webinar. So then we switched the conversion code to fire when somebody confirms their email address. It’s a higher quality lead, but it’s a qualified lead. And that’s what was more important.
Dane Golden:
Wow. This has been a real masterclass in YouTube ads. Jake Larsen, how can people find out more about Video Power Marketing and the great course that you’re offering?
Jake Larsen:
I invite people to go to videopower.com. We have a lot of great resources and blog posts up there. A lot of free resources too. Again, we’re a primarily a video advertising agency. We focused on YouTube, but we also do Google and Facebook as well. We had a lot of people that wanted to work with us that maybe which weren’t the right fit for our agency. So I created a YouTube ads playbook. This is the playbook that our agency uses to create YouTube ad strategies, to write the videos, to shoot the videos, to set up the campaigns, to optimize the campaign.
So it’s basically like the five modules that we do internally, and we just broken up based off, we have different resources and trainings and tools that we use for our clients so people can get access to it.
Dane Golden:
Wow.
Jake Larsen:
But that’s all on videopower.com.
Dane Golden:
Wow. Now, thanks. And I just want to make sure people know that my name is Dane Golden and my cohost name is R-E-N-E-E T-E-E-L-E-Y, say that 10 times fast. She’s Renee Teeley. And we want to thank you the listener for joining us today, right Renee?
Renee Teeley:
Yes, absolutely. And today I want to leave you with a quote, as I once told my good friend, Warren Buffett, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. So if you think about that, you might do things just a little bit differently.
Dane Golden:
Yes. And we will have on Warren Buffett next week.
Jake Larsen:
No we won’t.
Renee Teeley:
No promises.
Dane Golden:
I want to thank you, the listener and invite you to review us on the Apple podcast platform and share this as well. Renee and I do this podcast and our various other YouTube videos and other projects because we love helping marketers and businesses, just like you do YouTube and video marketing better. Thanks to our special guest, Jake Larsen of Video Power Marketing. Thank you, Jake.
Jake Larsen:
Hey, it’s so good to be here. It’s great talking to you guys.
Dane Golden:
We loved it. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.