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Generate Over 100 Leads A Week With YouTube Ads | Case Study

June 1, 2018 by Jake Larsen

WE WENT YARD RIGHT OFF THE BAT (THAT’S A BASEBALL REFERENCE TO ANY CANADIANS READING THIS). SCROLL DOWN THE PAGE AND LOOK AT THE NUMBERS.

Rock Star Real Estate is a real estate brokerage located in Toronto, Canada. When they approached us looking to start a campaign we were excited, but also a bit hesitant. The purpose of their campaign was to generate leads. We believed a YouTube advertising campaign would be successful for a number of reasons, which I will discuss later, so keep reading.

However, there was also a great unknown that made us hesitate to take them on. The main reason for our hesitation was because they did not want to run a national campaign. They only wanted the campaign to run to people in the Toronto area.

We had run local campaigns before, but never for more than a week or two. We were entering the great unknown of the localized campaign. The results were better than anything we could have hoped for.

What Made This YouTube Ad Campaign Successful?

Their Side

There was one very important factor to this campaign that made it so successful and it’s the reason that I mentioned in the first paragraph. They had a proven sales funnel. Their funnel begins by giving away a free e-book. Doing so established trust and allows people to see they are experts. From there they have 3 more steps that allow them to gain more information about the lead, continually follow up with these people and convert them into a customer.

This system weeds out those that were not serious and allowed them to close the people who are. You can drive traffic to your site all day, but unless you can convert that traffic to sales, your YouTube ads are meaningless. Check out this blog if you want to know the three things we look for to judge if a campaign will be successful…

Why Are Rock Star Real Estates Videos So Effective?

They use our Video Ad Formula when creating
new ads for their YouTube Campaigns

Get Access To Our Video Ad Formula

Here are a few quick tips we have learned about online sales funnels from this campaign…

Give people an initial offering. People love free stuff and will gladly give you an email for something free. And if we know anything it’s that email converts.
Have a way to follow up after each step. People are busy and their day does not revolve around you. Have the structure in place to always follow up.
Have a final step to maximize profits. You can make someone a customer once, or have steps in place to make them a lifetime customer.

Our Side

Rock Star Real Estate is able to convert. Its proven. That meant it was up to us to be able to generate leads for them. As we have seen from the numbers that is something we have been accomplishing. The most important piece for us when we start a campaign—and it should be for you too—is defining your metrics of success. Rock Star knew what they were willing to spend to generate a lead. By knowing their numbers, we had a goal. We were able to optimize everything including the video, the targeting groups, and the landing pages towards that goal because we knew what success looked like. Oh and by the way, we hit it by week 2.

Their Video

Rock Star Real Estate went out and followed our strategy to make their video. It is optimized to get conversions & gets people’s attention quickly, shows value, and has a strong call to action. This is everything your video should be. Don’t take my word for it though, see for yourself…

Can You Find The Same Success With YouTube Ads?

Yes, you can! I would very much recommend finalizing your sales funnels and defining your metrics before you dump heavy sums of money into advertising. Remember you always want to test small and scale. That is our motto every time we take on a new client. Once you have your funnels proven and you know your CPA then you too can generate leads with YouTube advertising!

Is Your Business Ready For YouTube Advertising

If you’re ready to generate leads with YouTube, fill out an Opportunity Brief to see how we can help you.

Get Started Now

Here is what Tom Kardaza from Rock Star Real Estate said about working with us and their success about YouTube Advertising…

“It’s rare to find people who actually know what they’re talking about. Over the years we’ve spent countless hours and thousands of dollars on marketing so we wouldn’t consider ourselves new to online advertising and at this point it’s hard to impress us … but that’s what Jake and his team have done. We’re impressed with these guys – they act quickly, follow through on their promises and deliver results. We would highly recommend them to our closest friends.”

How To Come Up With New Video Ideas

April 27, 2017 by Jake Larsen

Do you ever wonder how to come up with new video ideas for a YouTube Channel? This could be a personal Channel or one that you manage for a business. Either way, we’re all familiar with the looming thought: “Crap. I need to come up with a new video for my YouTube Channel to post by tomorrow”.

Trying to be creative & original all of the time can be hard, & even lead to major burnout if you don’t find a way to lighten the load. You don’t always have to pull ideas out of thin air. We’re going to share a secret of how to come up with good video ideas for YouTube. This one simple hack will not only save you from creative burnout, but it will also take your video marketing skills to the next level!

YouTube Search Hack

To get started, open up YouTube and a text document to write down the video ideas that you come up with during this process. At the top of your text document, write a general search term that you’d like to find new ideas for. If you were an accountant maybe you would write something like “do your taxes” or “business taxes”. If you have Channel that teaches video production tips and techniques maybe you could write something like “Premiere Pro” or “how to make video”. For this example we’re going to use the term “how to come up with video”.

Take the term you just came up with and start typing it into the Search bar in YouTube. As you start to type, it will start to autofill suggestions. These are the most popular search terms with that search term on YouTube right now. Take the terms on this list that you think you can make a video of and write them down on your text document.

If you create a video for any or all of these terms, you’re going to have a much better chance of getting your videos seen. Another benefit of creating videos with these terms is that you’ll have a more recent version than all the ones that are out there right now. As long as your video is good quality and has good audience retention, YouTube will favor your video because it has the newest information.

New Video Ideas (Remix)

It’s been said that we live in the Remix Generation. Take this to heart when you’re trying to come up with new video ideas. We’re not necessarily talking about ripping off someone’s video and auto-tuning it into a song. To “remix” means to produce a different version by altering the original product. In this case, consider the “original product” as the video idea, not the video itself. You can get ideas from other people and then make your own version. Challenges are great examples of this technique. How many different “Mannequin Challenge” videos do you remember seeing?

While you’re looking up search terms, click on some of the autofill results. Once you do that, look at the kinds of titles people are using for each search term and add your own spin to it. For example, take “how to come up with video” and change it to “how to come up with video in 5 minutes or less”. If you have a plugin like TubeBuddy or VidIQ that will allow you to see the tags that people use on their videos, you can also use some of those terms to help you brainstorm new video ideas or search topics.

Make Great YouTube Videos

Using these methods you’ll be able to come up with a month’s worth of content in less than 30 minutes. Not only that but you’ll also dominate your search terms and rank better on YouTube overall. Another benefit of building a strong organic presence is that it will do wonders to help with your paid traffic.

If you’d like some help with making great videos for paid traffic, download our FREE Video Ad Formula. This powerful tool will teach you how to create a successful video ad that converts strangers into loyal fans and paying customers.

The Timeline of a High Converting YouTube In-Stream Ad

April 19, 2017 by Jake Larsen

The sequence and formula of your In-Stream ad are critical to the success of your YouTube ad campaign. If you get this wrong, you’re going to be wasting your time and money. It doesn’t matter how much you spend on ads, or how accurate your targeting is. If you’re promoting a bad video, it will fail every time.

It’s kind of like the saying: “You can polish a turd all you want, but in the end, it’s still a turd.” We don’t want you advertising a turd video.

If your video follows the correct sequence and formula, it will be able to accomplish 3 things:

Capture the attention of a complete stranger… stop them dead in their tracks.
Change the relationship of a stranger into a warm acquaintance.
Get them to take action by clicking on the video.

We’ve launched hundreds of video ad campaigns in all sorts of industries; Real Estate, eCommerce, Auto, Life Coaching, Business Development, Beauty, Health & Wellness, Electronics, Investing, etc. Although the message changes across industries, the video structure and sequence stay the same.

After years of consulting, we’ve seen people make the same mistakes made over and over. Finally, we created a simple graph so you can clearly see the timeline of the perfect YouTube in-stream ad.

In-Stream Ad Timeline

Capture Attention

The very first thing your video needs to do is capture the attention of the viewer. We’ve all experienced “the longest 5 seconds on the internet”. You’re about to watch a YouTube video that you’re really excited about, but when you click on it, an ad starts playing! You hover your mouse over to where you know the “Skip Ad” button is about to appear and start your countdown. “Five, four, three, two, one…”*click*.

As an advertiser, those 5 seconds are absolutely critical to maximize in order to capture your viewers attention. If you’re wasting time showing your logo or rolling a fancy intro you will lose them. However, if you address your target audience directly, they might pause for just enough time to allow you to hook them in.

Build The Problem

Now that you have their attention, you need to build the problem. They’re giving you their time, what are you going to do for them? What problem are they having that you are going to solve for them? If you just jump right into your sale here, you’ll probably lose them. This will probably take another 5-10 seconds.

Make A Connection

At this point you’ve basically said to your audience “Hey! Are you a [kind of person] looking to [solve X kind of problem]?”. In order to make a connection with your viewer, you basically want to let them know that you know how they feel. Relate to them. Tell them what makes you a credible source to solve their problem. This should usually take about 10-15 seconds.

Offer The Solution

Here you go. This is what you wanted to do right from the beginning. Now that your viewer knows that you understand their problem, they’re ready to hear the solution. Tell them. This is where you can talk about your product or service and all of its benefits.

Don’t drag this part on too long though. It should take about 15-20 seconds. Remember, they still have a video that they’re waiting to watch. The second you start boring them, they’ll be gone at the click of a button. Literally.

Give A Call To Action

The call to action is the goal of the whole video. Without a call to action, your video loses SO much value. We always say that if you don’t tell people what you want them to do at the end of the video, then that’s exactly what they’re going to do…nothing.

Most of the time you should use YouTube End Screens for your call to action. You can only put these in the last :20 of your video but they are clickable on both mobile and desktop.

Things to Remember

There are some key elements that you need to understand that lay the foundation of a great in-stream ad:

You only get charged per view. A view is counted when a viewer watches the ad for at least 30 seconds or to the end of the video (whichever is shorter) or clicks on a card or other elements of your in-stream creative.
The whole purpose of the video ad, is to get people to click. Period. You need to build the whole video around the click. The “click” could be a Card, CTA overlay, or End Screen.

Ninja Tactics & More

TELL PEOPLE TO SKIP YOUR AD: Invite the viewer to skip the ad if they’re not your target audience looking for specific guidance. This way you won’t waste your ad spend on people who aren’t interested.

SHOW & TELL: Make sure to give a verbal call to action as well as point to where you want your viewers to click. This will drastically improve your click through rates.

When you follow these guidelines on your video ad, it will have a bigger impact on the viewer. If you have a bigger impact on your viewers, you’ll be able to generate more leads and sales at a lower cost. And if you don’t want that, you probably shouldn’t be in business.

Keep this In-Stream Ad Timeline in mind when you create your next YouTube ad.

If you want to take your YouTube ads to the next level, download our “Video Ad Formula”. This free resource includes more useful tips, tools, and examples of how to make effective YouTube ads. You can download it for free by clicking the link below.

Writing A YouTube Ad Script

April 6, 2017 by Jake Larsen

If you’re a savvy marketer who’s way ahead of the curve, then you’ve already dabbled in advertising on YouTube. You probably also know the feeling of getting your video shoot set up, hitting record, and having no idea what to say.

When Video Power first started, we hated recording new ads for ourselves because they were so disjointed and rambling. It took us forever to shoot an ad and get it to a polished final product.

Finally, we came up with a YouTube ad script outline that would help us avoid being in that spot ever again. We’re going to teach you this outline so that you can write an awesome YouTube ad script every time.

Using our YouTube Ad Script Template, you’ll be able to pump out ad scripts in minutes. These ads will not only be easy to create, but will be setup in a way that will grab and keep your viewers attention and get them to act on your offer at the end of your video.

Know Your Audience

First, you need to know who your audience is. The more you know the better. Basic demographics are a must, but if you know what they love, hate, do, think, etc. you’ll really be able to catch their attention.

Next, think about what your call to action is going to be. What do you want your audience to do? If you don’t ask, chances are they won’t do anything at all.

Finally, think about your audiences challenges and desires. What are they trying to accomplish? What’s standing in their way? What frustrations have they experienced in trying to reach their goals?

Grab Attention

Once you know your audience, you can use our YouTube Ad Script Template to help you structure your answers into a script.

Start by grabbing people’s attention! We like to do this by calling out our exact audience. “Hey are you {insert your target audience here} looking for {insert one of their desires/goals}?”.

This serves a double purpose. Not only does it catch the attention of your target audience, but it turns away people who aren’t. Because YouTube charges advertisers based on views (if they watch 30 seconds or half of the ad), you aren’t charged for people who skip early.

Build Emotion

Once you’ve caught the attention of your audience, you’ll start to build emotion. Talk to your viewers about the pains and/or desires that they’re experiencing.

The pain is what your customers experience without your product or service. The desire is accomplishing their goal in an easier/faster/better way.

Emotional Connection

Imagine you were struggling to learn how to golf. Two people approached you and offered to help. The first had read every book in the library on how to golf, but he hadn’t actually picked up a club for himself. The other was a pro who had never read a book about golf, but had been playing for years.

There should be little question in your mind as to which one you would rather get advice from. The pro had been in your shoes at some point and had overcome the difficulties that you were experiencing. The other guy might know a lot about golf, but he couldn’t say “I know how you feel. I’ve been there.”

It’s much more effective to be able to relate to your audience than it is to tell them how much you know. One tool that we like to use to help us do this is called the feel, felt, found technique. We actually used this in the opening of this blog post.

Feel, Felt, Found

Feel – Explain to your audience how you think they feel about their situation (Ex: “You probably know the feeling of getting your video shoot set up, hitting record, and having no idea what to say”)

Felt – Relate to your audience so that they know you felt the same way that they do at some point (Ex: ”When Video Power first started, we hated recording new ads for ourselves because they were so disjointed and rambling. It took us forever to shoot an ad and get it to a polished final product.”)

Found – Tell your listeners how you found a solution to the problem that you both experienced (Ex: “Finally, we came up with a YouTube ad script outline that would help us avoid being in that spot ever again.”)

Solution

If you follow all of the previous steps, you’ve created a perfect bridge to present your viewers with the solution to their problem. If this solution isn’t your product or service, then you have lead the audience the wrong direction.

This is where you can talk about product features, service benefits, etc. Show your audience how the solution that works for you (or your other customers) can work for them.

Timeout

Before we get to the most important part of writing a script for an ad, here are a few quick pointers:

When writing your script make it conversational. When you’re talking to the camera visualize that you’re talking with someone. You don’t want to look like you’re reading a script or come off robotic.

Feel free to add little notes or indicators within the script to help with editing. Do you need to point to a link for people to click on? Will you be adding a lower-third? Or will b-roll be covering you up? These notes will help you when shooting the video so you know how to adjust your video while recording.

Finally, make sure you add plenty of keywords into your script. For instance, the video for this post is teaching you how to write a YouTube ad script. When we transcribe the video the keywords in the metadata will match up with the title, description, and tags.

Call To Action

Back to the script now. To finish things off, end the script by writing a call to action that states an offer and benefit. You should ALWAYS have some sort of call to action in any video you make, whether it’s an ad, a how-to, or just a fun shareable video.

Here’s our call to action: If you want access to our easy YouTube Ad Script Template, you can click the button below to download it for free.

This resource will help you craft the script for a successful video ad that converts in just minutes.

The 3 Kinds of Videos To Make On YouTube

March 23, 2017 by Jake Larsen

You’re most likely hoping to grow your business by putting videos on YouTube. Or maybe you’re a YouTube Creator trying to make YouTube your career. Either way, at some point, you’ve probably wondered what kind of videos to make on YouTube.

Do either of these situations sound familiar to you:

You keep hearing that every business should be using video in their marketing. You don’t really know much about YouTube but you know your company has a few videos lying around somewhere, so you upload those. Weeks later, your video views finally break into double digits…
You have a YouTube Channel that you’re trying to make new videos for all the time. You’ve done every online video trend from the Harlem Shake to the Mannequin Challenge and are just hoping for some of them to catch on.

The Model T.E.A.

Most companies use their YouTube Channel as a junk drawer for crappy corporate videos, and too many Creators run around chasing every online trend they can find in hopes of going viral.

Everyone wants to go viral, but if you look at some of the most successful Channels on YouTube they didn’t get there by creating one viral video, they did it by creating very specific regular content for their audience.

Coming up with ideas for regular new content is not always easy. Luckily, we know what kind of videos YouTube likes to see and we’ve created a content plan for you. The type of content a successful channel should have include teachable videos, entertaining videos, and videos that advertise what you’re all about.

We call this the Model T.E.A. which stands for Teach, Entertain, and Advertise.

Teaching Videos

The first type of videos you need to lay the foundation of your channel are teaching videos. It’s sharing what you know in How To, or DIY videos; even testimonials, reviews, overviews, or FAQ’s. Anything that informs and gives information in your field should be found on your channel especially if you’re a business.

According to Google, 91% of smartphone users turn to their phones to get ideas while completing tasks. They also shared that in the first 4 months of 2015 more than 100M hours of how to content had already been watched in North America alone. Searches related to “how to” on YouTube are growing 70% year over year. People are coming to YouTube to learn, so teach them.

These should make up about 60% of your videos. Ideally, that would mean posting anywhere from 2-3 times a week, but if you can only manage one of these a week, start there. This type of content is fairly easy to make and we’ll go over that in a future video so make sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel.

Entertaining Videos

Next you need to create content that is entertaining and lets people know who you are and what you’re all about. This is your weekly content or series, and should make up about 30% of your video content. It’s what people come for when visiting your channel.

This can be an interview series, a vlog, a rant video, or an epic rap battle! Look at it as your regularly scheduled content or your own TV Show.

This could also be a good category to put your videos about the latest trend in. Most of this content won’t be relevant for as long as your teaching videos. Because of that, it might be a good idea to do some keyword research on what’s currently trending before creating these videos.

Advertising Videos

The final type of video you should create on a monthly basis is video for advertising! These videos are meant to convert your audience into subscribers, leads, or customers. They should make up about 10% of your content and can be promoted as In-Stream or Discovery Ads.

If you’re a YouTube Creator thinking “oh that one’s just for businesses”, break out of your box and think again! You need to be looking at your Channel as a business. You can run ads to your Channel to get more subscribers. I used ads to take my family vlog from 0 to 4,000 subscribers in six weeks.

In order for your business or channel to grow you need to build a loyal following. These videos are specific to that purpose. If you need some help with this kind of video, check out our free Video Ad Formula. It will teach you exactly what to say to make the perfect YouTube ad.

Benefits of the Model T.E.A.

Teaching videos will help you establish yourself as an authority figure in your space. Entertaining videos will help you develop a relationship with your followers and keep them coming back regularly to your Channel. Advertising videos will increase your reach to attract new followers.

The Model T.E.A. will help you overcome that stressful feeling of having no idea what kind of videos to make on YouTube. You’ll be able to bring in more subscribers, provide them constant value, and eventually they’ll turn into customers.

Get Ideas For Video Content By Doing Keyword Research

March 17, 2017 by Jake Larsen

If you’re creating any content for your YouTube Channel, you know that it’s not always easy to come up with ideas for new videos. We want to show you how to use keyword research to create more videos & grow your presence on YouTube.

We all have our favorite creators who put out great content consistently and if you’re like me, you probably wonder:

“How do they do it? How are they coming up with these great ideas?”

Take BuzzFeed for example. They’re putting out multiple videos for multiple channels on a daily basis!

Not only that, but their videos get tons of views and subscribers. Any savvy marketer looks at this kind of audience as an opportunity that can turn viewers & subscribers into leads and sales.

Let me show you the secret to coming up with video ideas and creating videos that people want to see and are searching for.

What Are Keywords

Let’s start from the very beginning. Keywords are basically what Google and other search engines use to find information you’re looking for (for the sake of simplicity we’re just going to avoid other SEO ranking factors right now). When you do a search on Google or YouTube they are basically showing you webpages and videos that are associated with those keywords.

If you make your video content about things that people are already searching for, you’re more likely to get more people watching your videos. Doing keyword research is like reading the mind of the internet so that you can know what people are wanting to see.

Doing Keyword Research

So how do you use Keyword research to generate video concepts and ideas for awesome, searchable video content? We’re going to show you 4 different ways to do this:

YouTube Search Suggestions

The YouTube Search bar is your fastest and easiest way to get ideas for what videos to create. All you need to do is start typing in the YouTube search bar and look at the suggested search terms that pop up.
For example, if you run a channel about video production, start typing in something like “how to make awesome videos”. Here are some of the results you might see:

That alone gives you 5-10 good ideas for new videos that you can create. Not only this, but it will also help you know specifically how you should be titling your videos, which is also important.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner

In order to use the AdWords Keyword Planner, you’ll first need a Google AdWords account. Don’t worry, it’s free and you can just use your current Google account to sign up. Plus, if you’re not already running YouTube Ads–which you should be–you’re going to need AdWords to run those for your business anyway.

Once you’ve logged into the Keyword Planner, you just need to type in one or more keywords into the search box. Not only will this show you how many people are searching for that specific keyword each month, but it will also show you at what time of year it’s searched the most and give you other similar keyword ideas.

Even all of that information is still just the tip of the iceberg with the Keyword Planner. For more in depth information you can check out this article.

Google Trends

This is yet another free and easy resource provided by Google. All you need to do to access it is go to www.trends.google.com.

When you first load the page, you’ll see what’s trending on the internet for that day. This can already give you some ideas if you’re going to be making a video right away. You can change the dates, search by category, compare multiple keywords, or even see what’s specifically trending on YouTube.

Google Trends is a fun and easy tool to dig around in and can give you more useful insights than you might be able to take advantage of.

Plugins & Third Party Tools

We’re not going to dive into specifics with how to use each of these, but we do want to tell you about some of the other tools that we use to help us with Keyword Research.

TubeBuddy is probably one of the most widely used and robust plugins out there when it comes to YouTube management. It provides you with anything from batch thumbnail editing, to analytics, to (of course) keyword research. It will show you where your videos rank on YouTube for certain keywords, give you suggestions for other keywords you could be using, and allow you to see what keywords your competitors are using.

VidIQ is very similar to TubeBuddy but it leans more heavily towards the analytics side of things. It is also very robust and has many of the same features as TubeBuddy. It allows you to see competitor keywords and where your videos rank for specific keywords. There is a free plugin and also paid premium accounts available.

Veeroll is a really cool software that leans specifically towards helping users easily run YouTube ads. With it, you can do crank out keyword lists, neatly organised by the amount of competition, search volume, expected costs and even trending information. It also provides easy video templates that you can use as YouTube ads.

After the Click…

Coming up with great video ideas and videos that are searchable is essential to the success of your YouTube channel, but you also need to learn how to get and keep their attention and build trust..

This resource will dive into the specifics of how to create a successful video ad that converts and show you how to turn strangers into loyal fans and paying customers.

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