Tom Breeze, CEO of Viewability and author of “Viewability: Harness the Power of YouTube Ads and Be There for Your Customer — When It Really Counts” tells us how to advertise on YouTube the right way.
GUEST: Tom Breeze of Viewability
HOST: 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.
CO-PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
TRANSCRIPT
Dane Golden:
It’s time for HEY.com. This is the podcast where we help you grow your customer community through helpful how-to videos. My name is Dane Golden and today we have Tom Breeze of Viewability in the UK. Tom runs the agency Viewability, and also, he’s just written the book “Viewability: Harness the Power of YouTube Ads and Be There For Your Customer When It Really Counts.” Welcome, Tom.
Tom Breeze:
Thank you so much, Dane. It’s great to be here. Thank you.
Dane Golden:
It’s great to have you. So Tom, let’s get right to it. Why did you write this book, Viewability?
Tom Breeze:
Great question. I think YouTube ads escapes a lot of people. I think that they realize that there’s this powerful platform that they could be advertising on, they could be getting in front of their customers and something goes wrong. They don’t create videos, they don’t know how to run AdWords, and sometimes the whole thing can seem a bit scary and daunting, and I wanted to just almost demystify the complications, because video doesn’t need to be that difficult. Anyone can create good video as long as they’re shown how. The AdWords interface doesn’t need to be as daunting as it sometimes looks, and as long as you know what you’re doing and you’re shown what to do, then it’s actually a lot easier than it needs to be.
Tom Breeze:
But also, I think there’s this disconnect for a lot of people between advertising traditionally with text and image ads and using video. Video carries a lot more weight, carries a lot more meaning behind the video as well, and so it needs a different approach. Understanding that advertising and the creative mix gives you a unique perspective. I think YouTube is such a powerful platform, and when people aren’t taking advantage of it or they’re not getting in front of their customers when their customers are looking for them, it’s a hugely missed opportunity, and that’s why I wanted to write this book, so people could understand how to advertise on YouTube and get great results by understanding the fundamentals.
Tom Breeze:
That’s why I wrote the book, and it’s written in such a way where people can pick it up and read it on a flight and not get bogged down in the data, but more a case of understand the strategy and then feel like at the end of that book, they have a much better understanding of what’s needed and how to make YouTube ads work for their business.
Dane Golden:
Absolutely. Absolutely, and I’m certainly enjoying reading it. I read it through quick, and I’m going to read it again and probably a third time, because you’re so knowledgeable and you’ve had such success. But I am going to take the opposite viewpoint and say, “YouTube ads don’t work,” because sometimes you hear this and someone says, “I tried advertising on YouTube. Yes, I got a million views, but somehow no business came from it.” And they think, “Well, YouTube just doesn’t work, so I’m going to try Facebook or TV or Instagram.” What do you say to that person? Are they a good client for you?
Tom Breeze:
Well, let’s move the client opportunity to the side for just a second. I think that when it comes to the advertising in general, no matter what you do, be it YouTube, Facebook, Google, Tabula, any other ad network that you might think of, it’s difficult. It’s not easy. It’s never been easy to advertise and it’s not a situation where you-
Dane Golden:
Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. Is getting a million views on your video that you ran as a pre-roll ad a success?
Tom Breeze:
If it turns into money. It depends on what you think success is I suppose. If you’re looking at brand awareness and it’s in front of the right people and you didn’t make sales but you weren’t looking for that, then yeah, you could deem it as a success.
If you’re more in the direct response market and you have a million views and no sales, then I would deem that not a successful campaign; a lot of good money gone to waste when you probably could have done it in a slightly different way and got much better results.
But, yeah, I would say that a million views with no sales isn’t great from my perspective.
Dane Golden:
But what you’re focused on with YouTube ads is actually getting sales, actually driving business, not one of these car ads that just runs in front of everything and you always see it, but you’re not actually buying that car.
Tom Breeze:
Precisely, yeah. We are very much direct response. We want to spend $1 and get $2 back, and do that as many times as we can, or if not better than that. That’s kind of the focus that we want to have.
Yeah, so there’s people that are kind of trying to advertise on YouTube and don’t get results. It’s sometimes because people go into YouTube and their audience isn’t there for them, so it’s always going to be difficult. And sometimes they take the wrong approach to YouTube ads as well. When you try and create a one-size-fits-all ad, like a car advert where a beautiful car is driving down the mountainside and you’re trying to get in front of a mass audience and expect really good results, that’s really tough to do that. It’s much easier to say, “When my customer types in this search term, I’m going to be there with the most relevant ad and I’m going to give them exactly what they want in the video and I’m going to give them an offer that’s perfectly relevant for their search term, so it’s almost like they can’t say no. I’m going to just be there, be really relevant, be really useful, give them what they want,” and then the ad campaigns tend to work pretty well.
You just build it out like that and you start doing that, rinse and repeat, creating more ads that are relevant to the viewer and offers that go with those ads as well. And if you get that piece done, it works well.
Dane Golden:
Let me dive into that word, “direct response”, because that has a traditional meaning in marketing that usually has to do with mailers and so forth. I frankly haven’t heard too many people other than you use it in terms of YouTube ads. Could you describe what you mean by direct response?
Tom Breeze:
Yeah, what I’m wanting from the viewer is a response directly off that ad. So if I run an ad, I want people to click, take some sort of action on my website. I want to respond directly from the video ad itself. Most direct response ad campaigns you’re looking to get a return on ad spend, or what some people call a ROAS.
People are looking to say, “If I spend $1, from that ad I want to push them to a landing page, get someone to buy something or sign up for something,” and you’re asking for that immediate action from people. That’s the direct response nature that we’re looking for.
Dane Golden:
Do you have campaigns where you just show someone one ad and that’s the entire campaign, they are sold on the product, they buy the product after seeing one ad one time?
Tom Breeze:
Yeah, a lot of our campaigns are just like that.
Dane Golden:
That’s amazing.
Tom Breeze:
Yeah, well, the whole approach is pretty much that every single time. It’s not this big brand awareness buildup and then sell people. If you create a 90-second video that’s really powerful and it’s really relevant to the viewer, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t take action. They’re going to YouTube in the first place because they’re looking for answers. They want to know something, or do something, or buy something. If you turn up at that time with a 90-second video that pitches the perfect thing for them and they know it’s, like, “Ah, that’s what I’ve been looking for, great. Let’s sign up to that webinar. Let’s go and buy that product,” whatever it is you’re pitching at that point. If you’re being super relevant, it’s actually very easy to make the sales, as long as your offer is really compelling.
Dane Golden:
Well, I want to ask about that relevance in a second, but I also want to first compare, just briefly, how are YouTube ads different than let’s say TV ads or maybe something on the social media end like Facebook or Instagram, but in relation to video ads on those platforms? Is video video no matter where you are?
Tom Breeze:
No, it’s very different. Your viewing experience, let’s say for example you class together social media for a second and put YouTube into that category. I don’t feel it does fit into that category, but if we compare online versus TV for example, TV tends to be very, very much … if you’re going to advertise on TV it’s very much information-based. It’s difficult to make it direct response unless you ask people to phone a number or visit a website, and still that’s difficult to get people to do that, because they’ve typically walked out of the room when the adverts come on or they’re not paying attention. So they’re not there to watch your ads, and it’s not on their own device, there’s no clickable link. It’s a different type of approach with TV.
Whereas when you look at the social media platforms, then if you were to do a comparison between Facebook and YouTube for example, you pick up your phone typically to go to Facebook and you might want to connect, see what notifications you have, see if there’s anything you need to respond to, start a conversation, that type of thing. So you’re engaged, but until someone engages with you, the social platform is [inaudible 00:09:26] it’s passive until you get into something and you scroll through your newsfeed.
With YouTube, it’s a different platform again, because with YouTube it’s more of a … kind of like a search engine. You’re going there to look for information. Most people go there because they want to know something, do something, or buy something, as they say. As a result, it’s a platform where you’re leaning in. You’re looking for information. You’re already motivated. So your psychology when you get to the platform of YouTube is very much like you’re wanting information.
So as an advertiser, if you’re getting in front of those users that are going to YouTube looking for information, you already know they’re motivated. You’re not having to interrupt them and grab their attention and do some crazy stuff to motivate them to listen to what you have to say. With YouTube you’re getting in front of them and you already know their motivation, so you can be-
Dane Golden:
Could I-
Tom Breeze:
Your ad could be different.
Dane Golden:
Well, I will say absolutely, and I always agree with you. But I wanted to also add that some people are looking to come on YouTube and just see something funny. But a lot of people do come for research.
Tom Breeze:
Yes, I must say that. So, yeah, 53% of people apparently, according to Google, are going to YouTube for entertainment reasons. They’re looking for inspiration, they are into their extreme sports, they want to watch Justin Bieber, those types of searches. Those are more inspiration or entertainment type searches.
The 47% of people that aren’t doing that are typically using it as a search-based platform. They’re looking to learn something, do something, buy something. So we all love an unboxing video, we all love a tutorial video, we all love an educational piece on YouTube when we need more information. That’s why we’re going to YouTube when you want to advertise. If you’re advertising, those are the sorts of people you want to be getting in front of, because they’re already motivated, and if they’re typing in things that are relevant to your business or things that you can help them with that are relevant to your offers, then you definitely want to be there.
Dane Golden:
So what you were talking about is people asking questions and you’re responding to their questions at the right time. This is what you talk about in your book, at the right time … what do you say exactly, “At the right moment.”? Could you please say that?
Tom Breeze:
Yeah. So we tend to look at it as a moment, a customer moment. What is that going on from that customer in that moment? Now, we might know their search term. We might know what they’re typing in. That’s one thing. But we need to start to think about the context behind that as well. Like, have they been doing some searches before? Are they in … what’s going on psychologically for them? Are they male? Are they female? What age range are they? Are they at home? Are they on a mobile? Are they on their desktop?
If you get really clear with the visuals of what’s going on, if you can paint that picture in your own mind, then it makes your message so much easier to present, because immediately you think, “Okay, I’m going to be speaking to a 45-year-old male who’s on his mobile device looking up this keyword. Now what am I going to say to them?”
Now, when you know that, let’s say for example they’re looking for “best guitar tips”, for example, then you might say, “Okay, cool. They’re typing in “best guitar tips”. Now, it’s probably likely that they’re okay at guitar already, but now they’re wanting to improve in some way.” Now, if we get in front of them and we give them a couple of tips and then say, “Hey, look, if you like this stuff, we’ve got so much more in our library for you which you’re going to absolutely love. Click here, go and register and you can get instant access,” you’re likely to generate good quality leads very quickly and for a good price as well.
Tom Breeze:
If someone’s going to YouTube and they’re typing in “Which stroller is right for my kid?”, “What’s the best stroller 2019”, or 2018 depending on what year you’re in of course. Then, if they’re looking for that information, and then they might even refine it further to say “The McLaren X140, best places to buy”, or whatever it could be, they’re going to YouTube, they’re looking for this information, they’re looking for parents to give other parents good information. But you can put your ad there to say, “Hey, we’re doing a sale right now.” Or, “Hey, this is the product you’ve been looking for. If you want to come and try it out you can do it down in our store this week at some point.” Or it could be anything. Just think about what you’re offering and make sure it feels right for the viewer and make it really easy for them to say yes to.
Dane Golden:
So on this podcast we emphasize the opportunities with marketing on YouTube via how-to videos. Now, if someone’s doing a lot of organic how-to videos, meaning they’re not using them for paid on their channel, should they amplify many of those videos by either doing discovery, which is the search, or suggested video ads, or in stream? Or should it be more of a custom video? When they’re doing ads, should they make them custom for sales?
Tom Breeze:
Yeah, I would customize them. You can take very similar content and turn it into an ad. Let’s say for example you did the three best SEO strategies for video, for example, I don’t know, something along those lines. So someone’s typing in “video SEO”, you’re thinking, “Right, this is going to be my audience.”
Now, if you get a video ranked there for this content, fantastic, that’s amazing. And you’ll probably want to provide really good content, because then you get lots of comments, likes, subscribes, everything that goes with SEO juice, so to speak.
Now, if you were to run that content as an ad, you would want to tweak it slightly. And you could probably create the same video, the same shoot time, and just do another version of the same content. But what you’re doing instead is you would say … you would kind of present to them a framework or an action plan and say, “Look, there’s three things you need to do to really improve your SEO of your videos, and I’m giving one of them to you right now. Let me just go into it in more detail.”
So you give that one tip, and then you can kind of frame this action plan around, like, if it’s one, two, three, people love things in threes, but you can say, “Right, here’s the three things you need to do,” and you might name them something so it’s easy for the viewer to understand, dive into one of those and teach it and say, “Okay, so here’s what you need to do when it comes to this first step,” like, it might be deciding your keywords. Give them really good value and say, “So hopefully that makes a lot of sense to you. Now, if you want to go and get the second and third and also get 10 more tips I’ve got for you, I’ve got a webinar coming up. Click the link, go and register. You’re going to love it.”
Dane Golden:
Got it.
Tom Breeze:
So you just don’t give away everything. You give away some really, really good content so people believe you and trust you and see that credibility in the fact that you’ve got great content. But then you’re going to have to tease them for the next part. But yeah.
Dane Golden:
But let me ask this though. So let’s say I have a particular topic that I know I want to target people. Could you give me a little bit more information? So am I targeting based on search query but not targeting them in the searches, I’m targeting people who have searched on that, except in the pre-roll before the video they watch? Is that what you’re talking about?
Tom Breeze:
Yes, that can be a way to do it. Let’s get some context though. Do you have an idea of what you want to be promoting?
Dane Golden:
Let’s say it’s an online service of some sort. It’s a SaaS platform and they make a lot of videos, not just about … let’s say it’s accounting software. So they make a lot of videos, not just about accounting, but good business practices that bring people in organically via search. So, I mean, you can certainly target anyone who’s looked at their channel. But how else should we target if it’s going to be a pre-roll, which is an in-stream ad on YouTube?
Tom Breeze:
Yeah, okay, cool, perfect. So what I would suggest is that for that accountancy platform company, to start writing down all the different points at which their ideal customers might be going to YouTube. So it might be something like creating a business plan, or, “How do I do bookkeeping?” Or, “What is the best platform for bookkeeping?” Or maybe it’s like, “Zero versus QuickBooks”, or something along those lines.
They’re going to start to see a lot of searches that have a lot of reach; there’s a lot of videos out there, and have a lot of views out there. And they’re thinking, “Right, okay. Well, if someone types in “Zero versus QuickBooks” as an example, those people are looking to do a comparison between those two platforms, so give them content around, “Okay, the benefits of Zero and the benefits of QuickBooks.” Then, if they’re selling their own software they might say, “But here’s where this other software that we want to propose to you beats these two softwares in our opinion.” And you can … if that’s what they’re selling.
So you want to try and be as relevant as possible to the viewer. Give them … kind of tackle what they were looking for and then have a reason to talk about what it is you want to sell to those people as well.
Now, if it’s something that’s … let’s say for example you’re selling software and they’re typing in, let’s say it might be “bookkeeping tips” for example. You would have a look around that and you would look at some of the key phrases. I would actually type in “bookkeeping tips” and then see what sort of video titles come up, but also [inaudible 00:18:46] autosuggest, keep an eye on what’s coming up there as well, because that’s what a lot of other people are typing in.
If you type in “bookkeeping tips” you might say, “Right, that now becomes one of our keywords that we want to target. We might be able to generate some placements from that as well. We might advertise on all the videos that rank for that key phrase.” Then you can say, “Great. Well, we understand how we’re going to get in front of that customer, but now the message to that needs to be, “Hey, here’s a three-step plan on how to create the best [crosstalk 00:19:14] how to keep on top of your bookkeeping. Step one is this, step two is this, step three is download our software.”.” It’s just kind of like, that’s the sort of approach to go for.
Dane Golden:
Got it. And could you give us some quick pointers about, in the video itself, the cadence, the speed of getting to the point or the length of the video? What should you talk about first? You’ve created this whole science on this. Maybe you could just give us a quick overview, not the whole thing?
Tom Breeze:
Yeah. So we use a system called ADUCATE. It’s an acronym, so there’s seven letters of ADUCATE. And it stands for Aim, so the Aim is the viewer, tackle that one first; then the Difficulty, the thing that’s standing in the way from achieving their goal; Understanding, make sure you connect with them emotionally to let them know that you understand what it feels like. So if it’s accountancy, it’s probably complete confusion about your books and things like that. Then it’s going to be … so that’s the A-D-U of ADUCATE.
Then you’ve got C, which is the credibility. Why should they be interested in what you have to say? Then, A is for Action Plan, like trying to make a three-step plan so people can buy into it and just realize, “Okay, that makes sense. I can understand there’s a three-step plan to great bookkeeping.” Then, the T of ADUCATE is Teach, so you’d extrapolate one of those parts of the plan and give them some really good nuggets of information that makes them go, “Wow, that was cool. I didn’t realize you could do that.” Then, the final part would be E for Exit of ADUCATE. That’s the point where you’re giving a call to action and you’re saying, “Okay, here’s what you need to do next. If you like the stuff you learnt in this video, you’re going to love what I’ve got next.”
So that’s the ADUCATE model. But I also would recommend that at the start of the video, you want to let people know that this is an actual ad. All of our data that we’ve taken from millions and millions of views for many clients, when we looked at all the data that we’ve got, we noticed that the very best results come from when we say quite early in the ad, “Hey,” you would say, like, “Hey, we’re going to cover so much more in our webinar, which you can click here to go and register for right now, but let me go into a little bit more detail about exactly what we’re going to be covering on the webinar.” So you-
Dane Golden:
Let me stop you there. Let me stop … so what you’re saying is that you’re telling them you’re promoting something and you’re not waiting until the end of the ad to have something, you ask them at the beginning of the video ad or near the beginning to take the action?
Tom Breeze:
Precisely. So I’m telling them, “This is an ad,” as quickly as I can. I want viewers to know this is an ad. I don’t want them to get engaged in the story, or engaged in the content, and engaged in anything else, like entertainment or anything like that. That ruins results typically.
What we want to do instead is, like, “Hey, this is an ad. This is where you can go and register for this webinar.” It doesn’t have to be hard sell, it can be soft sell. It could just be like, “Hey, I’m going to teach you the three things you need to know about video SEO. And by the way, I’m actually running a webinar on this, so you can click this link and go and register for it when you’re ready, but let me just go into a little bit more detail about this right now.” So you’re kind of just a soft sell, you’re just informing them this is an ad. But you still can provide really good content. Because then what you’re doing is you’re doing two things. One, you’re making sure that if people don’t want to carry on watching because they know it’s an ad, they can skip the ad and it won’t cost you anything, which is the one thing, so you get that out of the way before 30 seconds is up.
But the second thing you do is you frame things psychologically so it changes the viewer’s perspective. So no longer are they just watching the video thinking, “This is cool. This is really good content,” they’re sitting there almost thinking to themselves, “All right, convince me. Why should I join this webinar? Why should I go and do that?”
Dane Golden:
And you said it really fast, but you don’t pay until someone’s watched 30 seconds. Is that right? Or they’ve clicked?
Tom Breeze:
Exactly, yeah. So the curse of YouTube ads is when you have someone watch past 30 seconds and then press Skip Ad button, because you end up having a lot of people that are engaged and then don’t go and click to go and register for your thing.
So you want to get all those people that are unlikely to click and go and register out of the way before 30 seconds is up. So if they press Skip Ad before 30 seconds, it doesn’t cost you anything.
Now, just as a heads up, about two weeks ago YouTube changed the financial model on that, and now it’s changed to 10 seconds. So it’s starting to change and-
Dane Golden:
I didn’t know this. This is news. I wasn’t paying attention.
Tom Breeze:
Yeah. So, actually, one of my buddies sent it to me, in fact. So I was like, “Ah, new information for me too.”
So we’ve not seen a huge amount of change in the pricing model, but we have noticed that engagement rates are now getting closely aligned with performance of ads. So our way of doing it might now need to be, like, telling people this is an ad before 10 seconds is up.
Dane Golden:
Got it.
Tom Breeze:
Which is a bit more challenging, but it can still be done.
Dane Golden:
Got it.
Tom Breeze:
It just needs to be done elegantly. When people think about their ad and think about their scripting, they normally work out a way where it can be done before 10 seconds is up.
Dane Golden:
And I think you’ve normally done video ads about 90 seconds long, and that may change with the new process. Is that correct?
Tom Breeze:
Yeah, exactly. So when it comes to YouTube ads, we don’t tend to worry too much about how long it goes. Sometimes we have ads that are like 45 seconds at length. Sometimes some of our ads are … we’ve done one which has been … I think the longest one was, like, 12 minutes. I think we had some really good success with an eight-minute one before. So all the videos can be different lengths, but it’s just the structure of it that’s really important, like just telling people that this is an ad before 10 or 30 seconds is up is important. But then, after that if you want to teach them stuff that’s going to be super relevant for 10 minutes and then get them straight to go and buy something from you, that’s fine too.
Tom Breeze:
It’s all about the way you want to engage people. Whether you want to do that on the website, whether you want to do it on YouTube, it doesn’t really matter too much, as long as you get the same results.
Dane Golden:
Got it.
Tom Breeze:
If you want to send people to watch a YouTube ad and then go and buy something immediately with no opt-in, versus quick ad, onto landing page, then they take the next action and then they go and buy something, great, that’s two different ways of doing it. But just have a look at the numbers and see what happens, because sometimes you can run some really effective campaigns when you don’t even ask for opt-in and you just go straight to sale.
Dane Golden:
Tom, I think it’s amazing that you’ve given away some of your most closely held secrets. I’m going to read the name of the book again, Viewability: Harness the Power of YouTube Ads and Be There For Your Customer When it Really Counts. Where can people get this book?
Tom Breeze:
So it’s on Amazon. They can go and download and also go and buy the physical copy on Amazon if they wish to. Just search “Viewability” and it should come up, hopefully.
Tom Breeze:
And the other place to go to is viewability.co.uk. The book is there, we’ve got some training courses. We’ve recently released a new training course, which is cool, and the agency contact is there as well. So everything in my world is all on viewability.co.uk. Yeah, that’s me.
Dane Golden:
Excellent. Thank you, Tom Breeze. My name is Dane Golden, and I want to thank you the listener for joining us today. HEY.com is about helping you grow your customer community through helpful how-to videos. How do you do this? By sharing your expertise. Because when you share your expertise in a way that helps your customers live their lives better or do their jobs better, you’ll earn their loyalty and their trust and their business. Thanks to our special guest Tom Breeze. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and on YouTube and wherever you watch social video, and please follow me on LinkedIn, Dane Golden.
Dane Golden:
Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.