Marlon Doll from Vireo Video helps businesses with both YouTube channels and YouTube ads. Today on the show Marlon give us 5 tips on how YouTube marketing can grow your business and increase sales.
Guest: Marlon Doll Vireo Video | 5 Ways Video Marketing Can Grow Your Business and Increase Sales | Marlon Doll Cooking Show | LinkedIn
HOSTS: The Video Marketing Value Podcast is hosted by:
– Dane Golden of VidiUp.tv and VidTarget.io | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube
SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.
PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
TRANSCRIPT
Dane Golden:
It’s time for The Video Marketing Value Podcast. This is the podcast where we help marketers and business owners just like you get more value out of your video marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden from VidiUp.tv, sounds like “giddy-up,” where we help you up your game on YouTube for business and transform your viewers into loyal customers, and from VidTarget.io, where we help you get higher return on your YouTube ad spend with targeted YouTube video placement lists. You, the listener, you should know that, as always, you can follow along in your podcast app with the transcript and the links. Today, we have a special guest Marlon Doll of Vireo Video. Welcome, Marlon.
Marlon Doll:
Thank you very much. Stoked to be here.
Dane Golden:
I’m excited to have you. We asked you on The Video Marketing Value Podcast today because at Vireo Video, you help businesses with both YouTube channels and YouTube Ads, is that correct?
Marlon Doll:
That’s correct.
Dane Golden:
Okay. You put out a video, it’s more than a year old now, but it was very interesting to me that I found the other day, Five Ways Video Marketing Can Grow Your Business and Increase Sales that we want to discuss and update it a bit. Does that sound good?
Marlon Doll:
That sounds great.
Dane Golden:
Okay. I’m a stickler for spelling of names so people can look you up. Could you spell both your name and the name of your business?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, sure. Marlon Doll, M-A-R-L-O-N, Doll, D-O-L-L, and Vireo Video, V-I-R-E-O video dot com.
Dane Golden:
Great. Give us just a real quick summary of what Vireo Video does.
Marlon Doll:
Sure. As you said, we support brands with their YouTube, the organic side, and also the paid advertising side, so you can think of us as a full-scale YouTube marketing agency, so we support with the strategy, coming up with video topics, supporting the optimizations, so designing thumbnails, doing split testing, optimizing tags, and YouTube advertising, so I’m helping you scale your ad spend and get generated results with YouTube Ads.
Dane Golden:
What countries do you do business in?
Marlon Doll:
Mainly North America, so Canada, US. We’re based in Vancouver, but most of our clients are in the States.
Dane Golden:
Okay, great. Getting back to our topic of the day, which I’m coming to in a second here, which is Five Ways Video Marketing Can Grow Your Business and Increase Sales. What is your first tip, Marlon?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, so the first tip was that videos can attract customers organically. Your videos, you put them on YouTube, they have the potential to rank within YouTube’s own ecosystem and on Google through the Google carousel, through the video carousel, and so as you know, most of the traffic that is on YouTube actually happens from within its own ecosystem, so it’s not a lot of external traffic. Usually, external traffic is less than 10%.
On my personal hobby channel, I have a YouTube channel called Bachelor on a Budget under my name, Marlon Doll, where it’s a cooking show, and about 45% of the traffic is search. Typically, we see channels have about 30% as YouTube search, but my channel, I have some videos that are three years old and they consistently get about 30,000 views a month, and that’s over the last two years, and so that’s been some nice passive income that I’ve been able to reap. In addition to that, it grows organically. There’s also a lot of longevity there, like if you think of Instagram or Facebook, it’s in the feed, it goes away, but with YouTube you have so much more longevity with evergreen videos.
Dane Golden:
Yeah, and you guys specialize mostly in YouTube?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, that’s our main focus.
Dane Golden:
When you talk about organically, and you were talking about how some of your videos were even getting 45% search, or maybe it was the channel, was that YouTube search or Google search?
Marlon Doll:
That’s YouTube search.
Dane Golden:
Let’s talk just a little bit about the Google search traffic for YouTube videos. That shows up under the external sources, and for some channels, it’s an increasing amount. I know particularly with certain types of businesses, like SaaS platforms that we work with a lot, you have people that coming from a business mindset which often can start with Google. Isn’t that right?
Marlon Doll:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, absolutely. For mine, I think it was about 10% of the channel.
Dane Golden:
Yeah, and so you were talking about there’s the carousel, Google is experimenting with little expandable lists, and then there’s… I always forget if it’s called “Featured Snippets” or some other thing, but it’s like it’s in some searches, the video can play. Essentially, it’s queued up right in Google search right at the top, right?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, with whatever timestamps that potentially have been marked, too, now.
Dane Golden:
Yeah, so that’s another way that that traffic can come in organically. What’s your tip number two?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, and I’ll quickly address that regarding the Google search. Not all search results have videos under them, as you’ve probably seen, so even when doing that research and you’re trying to get more Google traffic is finding what specific search terms that are, usually, it’s how-to videos where it makes sense for a video to show up there or cat videos. Any animal videos randomly show up, too, but typically, it’s around how-to, learning how to do something.
Dane Golden:
Yeah, yeah. I think that the reason for that is that people go to YouTube to learn how to do something, whereas on Google, they’re a little bit more emphasized on the what of something, but when they think of somebody doing a how-to, Google says, “Hey, we’ve got this whole platform where people are showing people how to do things. Let’s put those in the results.”
Marlon Doll:
Definitely.
Dane Golden:
What is your second tip?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, so the second tip was that video gives you much better data to grow than other forms of media, so on YouTube, for example, you can see what your click-through rate is, what percentage of your total impressions are actually clicking onto your videos so you have an idea of what your customers are actually interested in. That allows you to craft a better offering, better messaging for blog posts, for other content, for future videos. You can see how engaged your audience is, so what topics are most engaging to them? Where did they actually fall off? Looking at your audience retention graphs, you can see what things you’re saying that actually keep people there, or what things you might say that get people to click away, so you can see what resonates with them. You can also see what call to actions you make that actually drive people to either watch more videos or to go to your website to take an action and things like what search terms individual videos rank for, so it just gives you so much better data than other forms of media.
Dane Golden:
On the ad side too, right? You said you run some ads. What are some of the things that you look for with video YouTube ad metrics for either in-stream or discovery ads? Whichever.
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, so I mean, there’s lots of valuable metrics that YouTube Ads gives us, things like viewability, so what percentage of people are watching at 25%, 50%? What percentage of people don’t actually skip? That affects how much you actually pay for an ad because it depends on how interested people are in comparison to the audience that you’re targeting. That will affect your ad costs.
Of course, conversions and segmenting that out versus a lead versus an actual purchase, looking at conversion value versus the cost, the amount you’re spending, so being able to see if you have a positive return on ad spend, that’s really the most important for most brands and for most clients is seeing that it’s profitable. Some are going right for the actual direct sale and some are going for leads and some attribute a value to that lead because they know that every lead is worth $40 to them, and so anything under that is profitable. For some, it’s just kept as a lead is a lead is a lead and we only count conversion value, so those are some of the things. Click-through rate, another important metric with YouTube Ads, see how many people, what percentage are actually clicking. You want to make sure that ideally that your ads are having over 1% click-through rate. It might seem low in comparison to other ad platforms.
Dane Golden:
Why is that over 1%? What does that mean? I mean, what does that signify to you?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, it signifies that the video is actually engaging and that you’re getting people interested in the offer to actually take them somewhere. If it’s less than 1%, we just haven’t seen that it’s worth continuing on that video unless you’re getting a really cheap cost per view that’s targeting a relevant audience.
Dane Golden:
Yeah, and while you can run video on the other social platforms and it can be quite effective, if you’re someone who really cares about metrics and using numbers to quantify and predict results, there’s really nothing like YouTube, both on the paid side or the organic side to try to say here’s what’s working and here’s what’s not, am I right?
Marlon Doll:
Absolutely, and that data is just so valuable to make other strategies and other choices of how you’re going to create content and optimize it.
Dane Golden:
What is your third tip, Marlon?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, so the third tip is that videos increased conversions on your website and landing pages. There’s some stats, there was studies done, and by having a video on your landing page, it can increase your conversion rate by 80%. I wouldn’t necessarily take that number and say that that’s a hard rule-
Dane Golden:
80%?
Marlon Doll:
… but this is according to Iowa Digital and there was a couple others that did similar studies and found that rate, so that’s pretty significant increase, and we’ve seen that. But not only does having a video on the landing page like a video sales letter, increase those conversions, but we also see a higher conversion rate in Google Analytics for traffic coming from YouTube, and it makes sense because you’ve already warmed up the audience, they’ve maybe checked out some reviews, they’ve got a good sense of who you are, and so you’ve developed some trust, and so we see higher time spent on the website, higher conversion rate and greater transaction value for traffic coming from YouTube.
Dane Golden:
What kind of landing pages tools do you use?
Marlon Doll:
We personally use Unbounce or any native ones that the clients are using, so ClickFunnels, even just native WordPress landing pages. We don’t do landing page design ourselves, so are typically operating on whatever our client uses.
Dane Golden:
What about the videos that are on the landing pages? Do you take care of those, you help them with those?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, so we’re looking at optimizing some of these. Typically, we’re more focused on driving traffic to that landing page and making suggestions on individual videos, looking at that audience retention, but not a lot outside, like we’re not using Vidyard’s tools or other tools on the website itself.
Dane Golden:
Well, if you, if you have any tips on what those videos should say, we’re continuing to research and build our resources on there. Some people say it really depends on what the nature of the landing page is. Some people say that it really should just let them know that it’s okay to give your email and contact information, that it’s reassuring. There seems to be a lot of different ways people do that.
Marlon Doll:
Yeah. We prefer the format, it’s similar to an ad format and just classic sales letter, but hook, problem, solution, credibility, call to action. Hook the audience, captivate them to continue watching, address the problems that they might’ve been curious or want to learn more about, have your solution, so provide some value in that of how your product or service actually addresses some of those problems, convey some value, so show some testimonials there. Their value and credibility, rather. Testimonials, show where you have high claim somewhere, any PR that you’ve been given, and make that call to action to get people to sign up for that lead magnet, that offer, and that can actually work as an advertisement as a standalone, and then when you take people to the website, it might be like addressing some of those questions that you proposed and conveying more value on the other end when you get to the landing page of more insights, so those are some of the things.
Dane Golden:
That was interesting. You were talking about the structure, and it sounds like you’re telling me that that’s the structure you use for video ads on YouTube, but also, it can be very similar on the landing page itself, whether in text or in video, just in a slightly different format.
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, and if you run that as an ad, you don’t want to have the same video on your landing page, necessarily, unless it’s a longer-form video and you’re inspiring people to click early and then when they get to the landing page, they watch a fuller one, but generally, to answer some more of those questions or provide some of the value you might’ve talked about earlier on in the advertisement.
Dane Golden:
Okay, and what is your tip number four?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, so that videos can increase the desirability of your product. Video allows you to convey so much more than a blog post or an image can. It allows you to build trust, which we know is essential for making a sale. People can experience the personality of your brand and they’re going to see the host, what the host represents, how they interact with people, and so people can read if something’s a gimmick or a scam. People generally have that kind of intuition to be able to see if something’s off or just doesn’t relate, which is also important that your video production is considerate of that, that you want your videos to represent your brand’s personality, but viewers, they want to go to YouTube. They want to do some research. They’ll often go to YouTube and look up reviews of the product.
We also do some influencer marketing, and for this one company called HUM Nutrition, they’re a women’s supplement company, there was a review that wasn’t necessarily favorable that was ranking, and so what we did is got over a hundred videos created for this brand from different micro-influencers who reviewed the product, and then that just brought up the total search. When someone goes to search for HUM Nutrition, then people are going to see all these other videos that were reviewing the product, and so it conveys much more trust than this unfavorable review and also drives a lot more traffic to their YouTube channel.
Dane Golden:
When you had these influencers do videos, was it on their own channel or on the brand’s channel?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, it was on their own channel. That’s actually part of a strategy that we do for quite a few brands is taking that influencer content, getting an agreement for being able to use that in advertisements, because those work really well. Being able to leverage those influencer videos in an ad, it just conveys so much trust because they already have that credibility, so it’s kind of like a testimonial on steroids. You’re getting a testimonial from someone who has more influence than an average person.
Dane Golden:
Absolutely, and when you do those testimonial videos, I’m just going to guess here that you might say something like, “Here’s what people are saying about X, Y, Z,” and then you have the testimonial and then it’s clickable as an ad. Is that the structure of a testimonial ad?
Marlon Doll:
That’s certainly a format. We’ve used format like that, we do an influencer supercut, so we just take a lot of clips of people saying key phrases, addressing some of those problems that they had or why they really love the product and just have it like really tight editing where it’s important, valuable line after line from different creators, and that’s worked really well.
We’ve also done standalone ones where an influencer will be addressing their audience to their channel, like saying their channel’s name, what they call them. Also, it would have the promo code in there. We strip that out and the creator, it’s not just a straight testimonial, they’re actually providing value through the concept. Let’s say this was around hair care, it’s a tutorial for how to get a certain type of a curl in their hair, and then they incorporate the product into that and talk about the product, and so that natural integration then works as a great ad that also doesn’t get people to click away right away because they’re curious to learn more through the value that the creator’s providing.
Dane Golden:
I have two more questions about that. One of them is when you do a testimonial ad like that, is that to a totally cold audience, or do you do that to a remarketed audience?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, it depends on what’s being conveyed in the ad. Testimonials can work at all stages of the funnel, but if you are doing it from a completely cold audience and the video doesn’t give any context to what the product is, is just saying how great it is, that might not work as well versus remarketing where people have already been in there searching, as you’ve suggested, that people are just looking to learn a bit more about that, and so then when you hit them with a retargeting ad, they haven’t yet made that purchase, but maybe they went to the website, added to cart, or checked out a case study, and then those testimonials reach them in that right point in time.
Dane Golden:
This may be a hard question to answer, but when you’re working with a creator and you’re paying them to review your product in whatever way, and then they do a testimonial of it that you’re able to use in an ad, that’s generally a special part of the contract, and some contracts don’t do that and some do. Is there any rhyme or reason to how much more that should cost or how much more a creator should make or how much more a brand should pay for that, right, versus another thing, or is it just whatever is negotiated?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, it’s whatever is negotiated. Typically, that’s informed or requested. Some creators just aren’t okay with that. It doesn’t matter what the price is, they just don’t want that perpetuity of being able to be used whenever with their likeness, and some creators don’t care, there isn’t an increased cost, they’re actually happy with being associated with the brand. With the micro-influencers, we often will work in exchange for a product and that really only works if the product has great value to the person or if it makes for really engaging YouTube content.
Dane Golden:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). All right, and what is the big, huge final fifth tip, Marlon Doll?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, so we already started talking about it, but it’s being able to leverage videos that are already driving videos are already driving interest and conversions and scale the reach with video ads. Video ads, they could be your most profitable ad formats. For companies that we work with to have the greatest success with YouTube advertising, they’re also focused on the organic side, because then they’re able to retarget, remarket to people who have watched certain videos, who’ve liked, who have shared the content, who are subscribed, and of course, of people who go to your website.
You’re also able to run display ads to those YouTube audiences, and so you’re able to take existing content, and it’s something that we do is find existing content that a brand has already created and edit that into advertisements, or use that information from the videos that you’ve created to create ads that have a high likelihood of converting, test that, able to target people based on market intent, so if they’re in the market, they’re searching for certain things on Google, on YouTube, targeting keywords, so things that people are typing in Google and YouTube and having your video show up for that. Specific placement, so people are watching certain videos, maybe they are looking for a review on your product and it’s on someone else’s channel, use that as placement to give them an ad after they watch that video, and yeah, we market to people who’ve already shown interest, who are warm.
Dane Golden:
Excellent. Yeah, I’m really glad that you… This is something that we do as well, but most YouTube consultants don’t work on both the paid and the organic equally, but we do and I’m glad that you do, too, because they’re really different worlds, and yet being in both worlds is important to understand because what happens a lot with YouTube ads is somebody may hear about you and then they’re like, “I’m not going to click, but I’m going to do a search on YouTube for them,” and if you have that organic content already, that just affirms and makes the ad more valuable. Would you agree with that?
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, a hundred percent. If someone goes to your channel after and just sees that there’s not really any content there, it just doesn’t convey the same amount of professionalism or reassure their decision-making process.
Dane Golden:
Okay. Well, Marlon Doll, how can people find out more about you and Vireo Video? Please. You already spelled your name for us, so please tell us.
Marlon Doll:
Yeah, can go to our website, vireovideo.com, or if you’re interested to see my personal YouTube channel on how to cook healthy plant-based meals, you can just type in “Marlon Doll” or “Bachelor on a Budget” into YouTube, and yeah, you can always connect with me on LinkedIn as well.
Dane Golden:
Okay, and my name is Dane Golden, and I want to thank you, the listener, for joining us today. Also, I want to invite you to review us on Apple Podcasts, or you can tweet me at @danegolden. Thanks to our special guest, Marlon Doll. Thank you, Marlon.
Marlon Doll:
Hey, thank you, Dane. This was awesome. Appreciate it.
Dane Golden:
Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.