Growing a video marketing agency

[Andy Black]

I've been fiddling with videos for a bit now, and have been figuring out YouTube in this progress thread.

This week I signed up a new Google Ads client who is also our first paying YouTube Ads client (funny how we've got a client for something we're not "experts" at eh?).

The client had a great looking 53 second video created by an agency a while back.

There's a few issues with the video though:

• There's writing at the bottom at the beginning that's too long - no-one will read it or remember it.
• Their website name has changed so I wanted to edit it out.
• The end screen CTAs are waaay too complicated and too many of them.
• There's some other odd end screens.

I've used my newly improved Camtasia skillz to zoom in a bit to get rid of their wording at the beginning, to add some annotations, and to cover over those end screens.


Here's the original video (53 secs):

View: https://youtu.be/7_g0Qje9_ik




Here's my updated one (still 53 secs):

View: https://youtu.be/PMdrE1juCmc




We'll get this loaded into the client's YouTube channel and start running ads for them.

I think this video could do well on Facebook too so we'll look at creating a version for Facebook and putting some spend behind it.

 

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[John Clancy]

Nice - hope it works out!

Do you have a goal in mind for this video/campaign? E.g. bookings, views, website visits...

 

[Andy Black]

Nice - hope it works out!

Do you have a goal in mind for this video/campaign? E.g. bookings, views, website visits...

Website visits, word-of-mouth, and video shares are all good. Bookings are what the client is after.

We didn't have "Book Now" as the CTA as that's a bit forward. We want them to think of visiting the Aran Islands for their next holiday/getaway, and for them to know the domain "irelandglamping.ie".

We didn't choose the domain. aranglamping.ie might be more appropriate. However, if we can get this working for the client then he has the option to expand to other locations in Ireland.

 

[MattR82]

Cool, I don't remember seeing a youtube ads thread on here. Following with interest.

I will say one thing though, when I was getting youtube ads, NOTHING pissed me off more lol. Fb and IG ads don't bother me, but forcing me to watch one on youtube ENRAGED me haha.

Be interesting to hear what kind of return comes from youtube.

 

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[John Clancy]

Website visits, word-of-mouth, and video shares are all good. Bookings are what the client is after.

We didn't have "Book Now" as the CTA as that's a bit forward. We want them to think of visiting the Aran Islands for their next holiday/getaway, and for them to know the domain "irelandglamping.ie".

Irelandglamping.ie is almost like the domain a platform would secure (like booking.com) --> I know you've written in the past before about owning your own campaigns & other IP...

Interesting to wonder if the same thinking could apply here? Where you'd grow to earn the search terms businesses in a certain industry would want their videos to show for, then sell off ad space to them?

Probably doesn't translate over as neatly as that though.

 

[Andy Black]

Irelandglamping.ie is almost like the domain a platform would secure (like booking.com) --> I know you've written in the past before about owning your own campaigns & other IP...

Interesting to wonder if the same thinking could apply here? Where you'd grow to earn the search terms businesses in a certain industry would want their videos to show for, then sell off ad space to them?

Probably doesn't translate over as neatly as that though.

I could do that of course, but in this case I don’t mind/care if the client owns the assets. I’m getting paid to learn how to deliver results, using their ad spend. The business owner is a smart guy too, so if he sees this blowing up for him (as I want it to) then we’ll likely have a very interesting chat to see where it can lead.

 

[Andy Black]

Cool, I don't remember seeing a youtube ads thread on here. Following with interest.

I will say one thing though, when I was getting youtube ads, NOTHING pissed me off more lol. Fb and IG ads don't bother me, but forcing me to watch one on youtube ENRAGED me haha.

Be interesting to hear what kind of return comes from youtube.

How are you forced? The 6 second bumper ads that you can’t skip?

 

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[MattR82]

How are you forced? The 6 second bumper ads that you can’t skip?

Yeah lol. Although recently when I had to revert to an old mobile phone I'm sure I was made to sit through an occasional ad longer than that. Mid video was the worst.

 

[Invictus]

Website visits, word-of-mouth, and video shares are all good. Bookings are what the client is after.

We didn't have "Book Now" as the CTA as that's a bit forward. We want them to think of visiting the Aran Islands for their next holiday/getaway, and for them to know the domain "irelandglamping.ie".

We didn't choose the domain. aranglamping.ie might be more appropriate. However, if we can get this working for the client then he has the option to expand to other locations in Ireland.

I'm sure you're already thinking ahead, but I found success by retargeting Video viewers with a more direct ad. People don't tend to take action on a video, but if they watch it all the way through, they're interested. Those were good candidates to follow up with an offer or discount.

 

[MattR82]

I'm curious about the difference in price with ads on the homepage of youtube compared to before and during a video.

 

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[broswoodwork]

I have never looked into this, and I'm not sure if there's a quick answer, but what do ads on YouTube usually cost? Are they cpm or cpc?

Edit: Do they cost more if the eyeballs don't "skip"?

Double edit:

 

[Andy Black]

I'm sure you're already thinking ahead, but I found success by retargeting Video viewers with a more direct ad. People don't tend to take action on a video, but if they watch it all the way through, they're interested. Those were good candidates to follow up with an offer or discount.

Yes, I have that in mind. Thanks for reminding me @Invictus.

I’m looking forward to running non-skippable ads to @MattR82 for not watching my ads to the end.

 

[Andy Black]

I'm curious about the difference in price with ads on the homepage of youtube compared to before and during a video.

How do you mean “the home page of YouTube“? The search results? Can you show a screenshot?

 

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[Andy Black]

I have never looked into this, and I'm not sure if there's a quick answer, but what do ads on YouTube usually cost? Are they cpm or cpc?

Edit: Do they cost more if the eyeballs don't "skip"?

Double edit:
View attachment 30044

Off the top of my head we can specify:

1. A target CPV (cost per view) where a view is if they watch all the video or more than 30 seconds of the video.
2. A target CPA (cost-per-acquisition). This means we should have conversion tracking in place of course.

Hold on... let me get to my PC and drop in some stats we’ve got for a “free” client where we offered to run campaigns for free for them in exchange for them paying the ad spend and being a guinea pig...


EDIT: For some recent YouTube stats, check out this post and the one after.


My goodness... apologies for spinning out so many new threads!

That first one (Figuring Out YouTube) has spawned numerous new progress threads which in turn have spawned other individual threads. Good luck keeping up with them all!

• Growing an email list with Google Ads
• An Excel Course?
• How to validate and sell a course - my draft project plan (in Google Sheets)
• How to create NEAT Excel spreadsheets - that other people can understand and use!

And in case anyone asked "Why are you doing any of this Andy? You should be doing XYZ instead." (which to be fair no-one has done):

• I'm doing it anyway

 

[MitchC]

You might hate YouTube ads but no one has more hated YouTube ads than Tai Lopez and I guarantee he’s also made more money off YouTube ads than most people will ever need

 

[Andy Black]

You might hate YouTube ads but no one has more hated YouTube ads than Tai Lopez and I guarantee he’s also made more money off YouTube ads than most people will ever need

I must admit, I really like the YouTube ads. I prefer them to the Facebook video ads that seem to be more spammy (well the ones I see are at any rate). I study the video ads.

Some learnings:

• The good video ads are created as "commercials", they're not just ad spend put behind some random video (as I did here and got 7k views and no action because I didn't have a CTA - lol).
• I don't need to be in my own videos. (Duh. This was a facepalm moment. I'm looking at all the damn equipment I've been buying so I can make better talking head videos. It doesn't need to be me in the videos... I can hire an actor on Fiverr or Upwork if needs be.)
• Videos don't even need a person to be in them. (A second facepalm moment.)
• Commercial video ads have a goal in mind, and that's to get people to take an action ... not necessarily to educate people (very different from my normal videos which are to educate people).

So I'm attacking this with a direct response media buyers mindset. I'm taking my Google Ads mindset to YouTube Ads and will see how it goes. You can already see the difference in the two videos in the opening post. I'm not a video editor. I haven't studied it and have no intention of studying it. I expect I can create and run image and video ads that will give a better ROI than those created by degree qualified graphic designers and video producers - because my goals are different. Their goal is to create great videos, mine is to get the right people to take action - so that we can ultimately add value and get paid for doing so.

 

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[broswoodwork]

Good luck keeping up with them all! Haha.

Haha. It has been a bit of a white knuckle ride tying to keep up. I'm just trying to keep track of as many of the surface details of your current adventures as possible.

 

[Andy Black]

Haha. It has been a bit of a white knuckle ride tying to keep up. I'm just trying to keep track of as many of the surface details of your current adventures as possible.

Lol at “white knuckle ride”.

I’m just showing what I meant in this post:

• WEB SCHOOL - This landing page is converting like crazy and here's why

 

[Madame Peccato]

What do you mean by the home page of YouTube? The search results? Can you show a screenshot?

I only see ads on the homepage of the mobile app, while on desktop I see an "ad" but it's about a Youtube Originals series so I don't think it counts? Anyway here's a screenshot of what I see on YT mobile right after I open the app.

Spoiler: screenshot

A Netflix ad with a "Sign up" CTA.

Closing and reopening the app shows me a Google Pixel ad now. Third refresh and I get a "shopify free course". Clicking on the 1st and 3rd ad opened the related Youtube video (a Netflix trailer and a 45 minutes long video about dropshipping. I have not clicked on the Google Pixel ad, but it wasn't a video I think.

 

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[Andy Black]

I only see ads on the homepage of the mobile app, while on desktop I see an "ad" but it's about a Youtube Originals series so I don't think it counts? Anyway here's a screenshot of what I see on YT mobile right after I open the app.

Spoiler: screenshot

View attachment 30049

A Netflix ad with a "Sign up" CTA.

Closing and reopening the app shows me a Google Pixel ad now. Third refresh and I get a "shopify free course". Clicking on the 1st and 3rd ad opened the related Youtube video (a Netflix trailer and a 45 minutes long video about dropshipping. I have not clicked on the Google Pixel ad, but it wasn't a video I think.

Hmmm... Thanks. I hadn't thought about the mobile app. I use it on my phone and must pay more attention to it. We've not tested that many of the YouTube ad formats yet so I don't know what those ones are that you're referring to. I'm currently focused on the skippable in-stream ads (are these also called TrueView ads?).

 

[Andy Black]

Someone's PM'd to ask me the very important question below. I've been hoping someone would because it's one of the main reasons I've been firing up progress threads like crazy recently.

I wanted to "show, don't tell" what I mean when I say:

• You don't need to be an expert.
• Who have you helped?
• What if you already know enough?
• Learnings from 700+ PMs with fellow forum members
• Show don't tell & Putting the first things first

Below is the message. I'll answer it shortly.

I'm curious how you guys would answer it.

I'm curious how you guys think I'll answer it too.

...

I'm contacting you is asking about a specific post you've made, namely:

I could do that of course, but in this case I don’t mind/care if the client owns the assets. I’m getting paid to learn how to deliver results, using their ad spend. The business owner is a smart guy too, so if he sees this blowing up for him (as I want it to) then we’ll likely have a very interesting chat to see where it can lead.

I don't know why, but I just can't get myself to act this way. I know it's perfectly viable to take on work and learn along the way, but it feels wrong to me "figuring stuff out" on behalf of a client that's paying for a certain quality standard. If I know I'm not at least on a borderline expert level, how can I get myself to take on work that I'm not completely comfortable with? I feel like I have to know the in-and-outs of a service (for example Amazon PPC) before I would even consider offering it to someone else. How do you look at this in a way that you can justify the "learning as you go" approach?

I hope this doesn't come across too harshly, and I'm sure it's just a personal issue / wrong belief system, but I would be thrilled to hear your opinion on that.

 

[broswoodwork]

Someone's PM'd to ask me the very important question below. I've been hoping someone would because it's one of the main reasons I've been firing up progress threads like crazy recently.

I wanted to "show, don't tell" what I mean when I say:

• You don't need to be an expert.
• Who have you helped?
• What if you already know enough?
• Learnings from 700+ PMs with fellow forum members
• Show don't tell & Putting the first things first

Below is the message. I'll answer it shortly.

I'm curious how you guys would answer it.

I'm curious how you guys think I'll answer it too.

...

I'm contacting you is asking about a specific post you've made, namely:



I don't know why, but I just can't get myself to act this way. I know it's perfectly viable to take on work and learn along the way, but it feels wrong to me "figuring stuff out" on behalf of a client that's paying for a certain quality standard. If I know I'm not at least on a borderline expert level, how can I get myself to take on work that I'm not completely comfortable with? I feel like I have to know the in-and-outs of a service (for example Amazon PPC) before I would even consider offering it to someone else. How do you look at this in a way that you can justify the "learning as you go" approach?

I hope this doesn't come across too harshly, and I'm sure it's just a personal issue / wrong belief system, but I would be thrilled to hear your opinion on that.

Well, you're a subject matter expert on advertising in general, so it's reasonable to assume that the buyer is convinced you'll take it well beyond figuring it out, and they're basically buying what you'll come up with at a sharp bargain.

Building ever higher ground from what you already know, and all of that.

 

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[MHP368]

I have an entire trove of video "ad agency" software, allows you to do boutique videos with voiceovers / green screen (not trash) or 3d avatars (total trash)

right now a lot of shoddy stuff is out their, the big push is for videos stuffed with search terms to mess with SERP's, that one is...blaster suite (some of its good stuff actually)

Are you charging them separately for the videos andy or is this sort of included in the andy experience going forward?

 

[Andy Black]

Are you charging them separately for the videos andy or is this sort of included in the andy experience going forward?

This was a brand new client that signed up for Google Ads management. I explained how I thought YouTube Ads could work very well for them and proposed an additional fee on top of that.

 

[Andy Black]

Well, you're a subject matter expert on advertising in general, so it's reasonable to assume that the buyer is convinced you'll take it well beyond figuring it out, and they're basically buying what you'll come up with at a sharp bargain.

Building ever higher ground from what you already know, and all of that.

The prospect contacted me looking for Google Ads. They already had a great video on their home page and I explained that YouTube Ads would help them too. They went with it.

Yes, I’m stacking my skills to build an even higher ground. I’m an IT data guy, with Google Ads skills, and with reasonable video editing skills that I’ve picked up from creating videos for my own course and YouTube channel.

Since YouTube Ads are created in the Google Ads interface it‘s a no-brainier to add this as a service to clients.

Once videos are created it will then become a no-brainer to run video ads on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc for clients (hence the title of this thread not being YouTube specific).

 

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[Andy Black]

I have an entire trove of video "ad agency" software, allows you to do boutique videos with voiceovers / green screen (not trash) or 3d avatars (total trash)

right now a lot of shoddy stuff is out their, the big push is for videos stuffed with search terms to mess with SERP's, that one is...blaster suite (some of its good stuff actually)

It seems so accessible now for business owners and marketers to quickly create videos without video production skills. I’d say it’s still in the early adopter stage of a gold rush.

What’s letting people down is their weak marketing/sales thinking and execution.

People still need to think about the goal of their video, and then how to achieve it.

The first of the two short videos in the opening post is a video with great imagery, but poor call-to-actions. I’m not even going to split-test it against the version I created.

I’m sure I’ll be iterating our video based on feedback/results. I’m keen to get these campaigns started (we’re still waiting to get access to their YouTube and Google Analytics accounts).

 

[Andy Black]

# Converting a free client to a paid client:

We’d been running YouTube ads for an influencer/business coach in a specific industry and she’s been delighted with the growth in her YouTube subscribers. It’s her belief that some YouTube subscribers will trickle through to becoming clients.

Her squeeze page wasn’t great so I offered to get one created for her, that we’d iterate and optimise.

I suggested a low nominal fee for that plus the ongoing YouTube work. Now that she’s seeing the needle move (albeit not quite the right needle) she is more than happy to pay.

She already refers quite a few of her own clients to us for Google Ads, and I’m pretty sure she’ll be even more willing to refer them as she “sees” how we work with her, and especially if we can blow her business up.

And in case you didn’t spot it... we’re creating a win-win with her. We help her clients get even better results. We help her get more clients who she can refer to us.

Make that a win-win-win ... we collectively get better at helping her clients too.


# Getting more “free” clients:

I’ve arranged for the client above to pay my video editor direct so she knows 100% of that small fee is going to him. I think clients love this as they know they’re helping a technical specialist directly.

I’ve asked my video/graphics guy to look at my portfolio of clients and suggest three that we run YouTube ads for. I’ll pay him to get the videos created and to setup the YouTube Ads campaigns.

We’ve narrowed it down to three likely clients, and I’ll ask them next week if it’s ok for me to pay to get this setup for them if they pay the ad spend and let us know if it helps their business in any way. I won’t say that it will be a paid ongoing arrangement if they want it to continue because I’ll make it implicit by saying I’ll pay for the first month.

 

[Andy Black]

Just bought this for $10.99.

The reasons are usually twofold when I buy a course. I’d like to apply the content, and see how others design and deliver courses.

Online Courses - Learn Anything, On Your Schedule | Udemy

Udemy is an online learning and teaching marketplace with over 213,000 courses and 57 million students. Learn programming, marketing, data science and more.

www.udemy.com

 

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[John Clancy]

@Andy Black you might be interested in this, both for learning and critical appraisal: DigitalMarketer Opened It's Training Library...For Free Through (At LEAST) March

 

[ksiendzu]

Hmmm... Thanks. I hadn't thought about the mobile app. I use it on my phone and must pay more attention to it. We've not tested that many of the YouTube ad formats yet so I don't know what those ones are that you're referring to. I'm currently focused on the skippable in-stream ads (are these also called TrueView ads?).

Ads that are seen on screenshot from Madame Peccato are Discovery ads. You pay for CPV and view is counted each time someone click on those ads.

Yes, skippable in-stream ads are one type of trueview ads and there are couple types of YouTube trueview ads like:
-trueview in-stream,
-trueview for action (after ad is completed, youtube doesnt show video that you clicked for, but white screen with logo, headline and CTA - Netflix use it often when promoting their series),
-trueview for Shopping (for ecommerce, need to integrate Google Merchant Center to use) and
-trueview for reach (I dont know what they are for, despite being more expensive than trueview in-stream)

And you pay for CPV (cost per view) in trueview ads, not for CPA.
But you can choose target CPA in your campaign settings

Hope this makes youtube ads more clear for all of you guys!