Scale, Longevity, and Control
The scale, longevity, and control that paid advertisers can find on YouTube is unmatched by any other platform.
Within the past year, Client Accelerators has been able to grow clients beyond the performance we’ve seen on Facebook and other commercial platforms. Primarily, we’ve been able to scale singular campaigns up to $40-50K of spend a day and consistently hit our key point indicators (KPIs) day after day for months at a time.
Whereas, campaigns tend to fatigue at a faster rate on Facebook. We’ve even launched winning creatives on YouTube that have lasted for up to 16 months at over $9M in spend.
Notably, Google gives us the control to efficiently optimize our working campaigns, where we can cut out low-performing demographics like income, gender, marriage status, age, etc.
Another major factor is that Google is much friendlier on compliance than Facebook.
As anyone who has run ads on Facebook for a significant time knows, it’s almost a guarantee that your ad accounts will get disabled. It doesn’t matter if you follow what has worked for other companies or even what should pass compliance without a doubt. Alternatively, we’ve never had a single Google Ads account shut down.
Therefore, we’re able to be more aggressive with our social proof, scripts, and video creatives that we design for our clients, which return higher click-through rates (CTRs) and higher conversion rates.
How to Scale YouTube
So, how do you scale on YouTube?
The first rule of thumb is great video creatives. Typically, these will solve your problems with YouTube Ads immediately.
Secondly, you want to utilize large audience targeting to really optimize your scale. In this case, small placements and keywords won’t help you. Finally, you want to be using the right tracking & analytics software, which could make or break your YouTube campaigns.
Eventually, Google is only going to be able to correctly fire tags for a limited number of customer relationship management (CRM) software, since there are so many different products that media buyers use on the platform. Obtaining a CRM that Google favors will help you return the most rigorous data, which could be used for the best optimization.
As an example of video creatives, one of our greatest videos spent about $4M a month on YouTube for a grand total of $3.01 billion. This ad linked to a book funnel that teaches people how to sell products on Amazon. In total, this ad sold 42,811 books with a cost per action (CPA) of $70.36.
Although, before we scaled our campaigns with this video, the average CPA was about $35. The video itself told a story, it used B Roll footage, tons of graphic pop-ups, and depicted beautiful locations that were central to the message of the script.
Testimonials are also a necessity for these types of creatives. A great campaign would be more likely to have a great creative run by an average media buyer than an average creative run by a great media buyer. At the end of the day, the creatives are going to be what sells on YouTube, since audiences are not reading any posts.
A great place to check out examples of fantastic video creatives is VidTao.com.
The metrics that you want to aim for when you run campaigns include a 1.25% CTR, which we consider to be good. This may fall below the 1% mark when you scale. However, a 2% CTR is great and allows you room to scale. 2.5-3% are really strong metrics to have out of the gate. We also like to look for a 25% view rate, but the CTRs are more vital.
There are a few different elements that make a great script. You want to immediately grab the attention of the viewer in the first 3 seconds or you will get skipped. You also need to establish credibility, whether you have placements, status, or supportive testimonials. Next, you want to add a screen share of the landing page people will see when they click. Show them where to click and enter their information to get your offer. Again, use strong testimonials! It’s always a good idea to show at least 3 testimonials in your video to show you have a wide base of satisfied customers. Finally, close with one last call to action (CTA) so they know the next step to take. One finishing touch that we like to add to our videos is to finish them with a 10-second countdown timer that further encourages the viewer to take action. You can also add an eye-catching intro like a “Breaking News!” slide. And remember, testimonials, testimonials, testimonials!
Setting Up Tracking
As you’re setting up your campaigns on YouTube Ads, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind. First, set up all of your tracking and conversions with Google Tag Manager. Then, hook up Google Analytics to your Google Ads account so you can pass all of the data through and analyze it. Make sure you set Goals in Analytics, so you can see which audiences and demographics are performing well. Integrate your YouTube account with Google Ads to retarget people who have watched an ad or video from your channel. Finally, use Hyros for full end-to-end tracking.
Google Tag Manager allows you to keep everything organized in one place. Setup Google Conversion Linker and Google Analytics to fire on all pages of your funnel so it tracks correctly. Set up your conversions using Google Tag Manager and Google Ads, whether you’re using Leads, Add to Carts, Purchases, Saw Offer, etc. After your conversions are set up, you need to save your custom columns in Google Ads, so that everything you need is displayed exactly as you like. When you’re setting up your Goals in Google Analytics, click on Admin, then look to the right to click on Goals. Setup these goals based on what someone would do in your funnel. If they have a lead gen page that goes to a sales letter, you would set up three goals: Lead, Add to Cart, & Purchase. That way, you can later go to the audiences section of Google Analytics, go to Interests and view the audiences that will most likely convert for your offer. This is a great way to find In-Market and Affinity Audiences for your campaigns. One of our clients in the weight loss space has a $5K consulting offer. With this correct setup, we were able to find “Home & Decor” as a crushing audience for this client. You can’t make this up!
The best tracking software you can use, hands down, is Hyros. We use this for 95% of our clients. It fully integrates into Google & Facebook Ads, so you can see your actual return on interest (ROI) without having to manually enter any data. This service tracks over 6 different ways: IP, email, phone, biometrics, click ID, etc. It will also fully integrate into your CRM so you can have someone opt-in as a lead today, then 5 months later, book a call, become a sale, and still see the ROI from the original ad.
Testing Different Ad Angles
For every client, Client Accelerators rolls out 3-5 different angles to initially run on YouTube. The first angle is a proof angle, which layers the social proof to establish credibility. One of our top videos opens with a table with about 40 checks spread out that total close to $2 million. Next, we use story-based angles, which detail either the clients’ story or a testimonial story that can quickly hook the prospect with emotion. Then, we seal the deal with social proof and CTAs. Finally, we like to use intrigue angles, which can be a somewhat blind ad that’s around 45 seconds to 1 minute long. These videos pre-sell the audience to an amazing new discovery about your product or service, without giving away the entire offer. Certain clients crush YouTube with intrigue angles.
Budgeting & Targeting
As far as budgeting the initial roll-out, we spend 50% on In-Market Audiences, 20% on Keyword Campaigns, 20% on Custom Intent, and 10% on Remarketing. We also use Maximize Conversions if our clients’ ad account doesn’t have any data yet. When we’re setting up the campaign, we choose “Leads” or “Sales” and optimize “Maximize Conversions” for our new clients. We choose “YouTube Videos” under the Network section. For Ad Groups, we will split them up into Desktop, Mobile, & Tablet to see which works best. Then, we test 3-4 video creatives for each ad group.
We essentially use 3 types of bidding. The first is Maximize Conversions, which we roll out for brand new campaigns to start to get data and feed Google’s algorithm. After 50-75 conversions, we launch Target CPA campaigns 90% of the time. The next type of bidding is Cost Per View, which we use maybe 3-5% of the time. It’s not taking advantage of Google’s algorithm and generally does poorly. Finally, there’s Target CPA, which is the best type of bidding to use after 50-75 conversions. You can also lower the Target CPA as the campaign regulates.
Google knows who is in the market for certain products and services. These are the people who actively research related solutions and issues on Google and YouTube. An example would be the Client Accelerators team getting targeted in the ‘Advertising & Marketing Services’ market. These audiences perform well for new accounts right out of the gate, so we roll these out first. For Keyword Campaigns, we use Tubesift.com to find 75-150 relevant keywords for each niche. If the campaign is Lead Generation, we optimize based on the rule of 3x CPA. So, if you’re looking for leads of $10, let a keyword run to $30 in spend. If it’s hitting Target CPA, keep it running. If not, pause it. If you’re selling a $47-97 product, you’re not going to want to wait that long on 3x Target CPA for purchases. Instead, you can move the optimization up the funnel. This may mean 3x Target CPA for Add to Carts.
Custom Intent campaigns give us some of our largest scale. We take 10-30 keywords or websites and build a custom intent audience off of them in Google. We build out themes for affiliate marketing, search engine optimization, and how to make money online. Then, we have to remarket on YouTube Ads. We set audiences for Viewed Any Ad from the channel in the past 30, 60, 90, 120, 180, 365, & 540 days. We also use the same timestamp groups for Viewed Any Video from the channel and All Website Visitors. You can launch each one of these as their own campaign with all of the different recency segments in each. If one isn’t hitting KPI, turn it off.
When optimizing demographics, check male versus female first. Next, check the household income. We run a lot of higher-end offers, all the way up to $50,000 for consulting. So, one of the first things we do is shut off the lower 70% of the income earners. As far as age, we usually start at 25+ for these offers.
So, when you want to start scaling from $500 days to $50,000, remember that Google’s algorithm is extremely smart. The more data you feed it, the easier it is to scale. We bump budgets 20% at a time to see if the CPA holds. The algorithm takes time to regulate new spends, so sometimes you have to wait 48-72 hours to know if it’s regulated. If you have any campaign doing well at $100 a day, you can bump it 20% per day to check the CPA. If you continue to bump the spend 5 or 6 times with the CPA staying strong, then you can be more aggressive with the campaign. That way, you could scale from $240 a day to $340, $500, $750, and above. The whole time you’re bumping up your budget, you go into the demographics section and turn off poorly performing ages, income levels, genders, and so on. After we find a winning offer and campaign, we use Analytics to find the best audiences for us to try next. We also drill down into certain demographics. For example, your data may say Males 35-44 that are In-Market for Financial Services are doing well in your broader campaign. That would be an opportunity to launch this demographic as a singular campaign.
Generally, this type of spend only works with 2-3 extremely strong creatives. They are the backbone of all the different audiences we scale out to, whether they be In-Market, Custom Intent, or Custom Affinity. Our best clients are giving us 4-5 brand new creatives every week for YouTube to try since one really good one could make millions in sales! YouTube Ads do not fatigue as fast as Facebook Ads. They can last for over a year at significant spend. Some of our campaigns from 2018 are still running for our biggest clients! We do not duplicate campaigns but add more spend to them or drill down on demographics. So, using these processes as described above are absolutely key to nailing your paid advertising and soaring above your goals.