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Originally Posted On: https://blog.tubesift.com/2022/02/the-fastest-lead-generation-strategy-for-youtube-ads/

The importance of a good placement list

Brady Snow: Hey, everyone. This is Brady from TubeSift and I’m on a call today with Derek Viveiros who has been doing some cool things with YouTube ads for his agency, and a course that he’s working on. Derek, thanks for coming on the call with us. How you doing today?

 

Derek Viveiros: Good, man. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Brady Snow: Of course. Yeah. Just to start, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself, and what you’re working on, and how you got into using YouTube ads?

Derek Viveiros: Yeah. I’ve been doing marketing full-time for 13 years and got into it about 16 years ago. I’ve gone through the whole radio ad scripting, and direct mail, and all these crazy old-school stuff. Then I got into all the online stuff as things became way more online. Google ads, Facebook ads, I’ve been doing that for six or seven years. Then this summer, I decided that I really should catch up on the YouTube stuff, with all the new opportunity that they had with opening up the content, or opening up the amount of placements that you can have.

I took a course and learned as much as I could about it. The first experience I had was in December, and I launched a campaign for my own course that I’m trying to launch, and then also for a client. I was able to do $1,000 spend on my little course, and then I did a $15,000 spend for my client. So, yeah, that’s all in the last two months. I dove extremely deep, almost all my time, focusing on this. It’s really fresh for me. It’s been a ton of fun. Do you want me to get into some of the results?

Brady Snow: Yeah, actually, yeah, that was going to be my next question, so go on.

Derek Viveiros: Yeah, so the ads for my course, they performed really well. They just didn’t… I need to figure out the funnel part, but the ads themselves, they really did well as far as getting people to the site for a good low cost per click. I didn’t really have a lot of time to really master it, and then with the client, we were able to get 6,600 leads for the almost $15,000 spend. That was like a 2.2, or something like that, cost per lead. I created eight ads, created eight scripts, got him to record those, and using the placements that I was able to get through TubeSift, that really helped get a really strong targeted market. From there, as we got some data, we were able to duplicate, or whatever it’s called, similar audience kind of thing. Without TubeSift, to be able to get hundreds and hundreds of video ads, I don’t know how I would’ve done it, to be honest.

Brady Snow: Awesome. Yeah. Good to hear. You can just generate those placement lists really quick and then deploy your ad to people where you know they’re going to be watching content that’s going to be of interest to them. Then if they see your ad before, it’s the right target audience.

Learn how to get massive leads using YouTube Ads. Image by Stephen Dawson, Unsplash License

Gain time and organization with TubeSift

Derek Viveiros: Yeah. The other cool thing is once you start scaling it a little bit, and you need more, you can get into channels. I have a bunch already that are just waiting to be tested. We did so well with the other placements that we didn’t have a chance to get into it, but then you got the channels, so it’s really cool. I’ve got a hundred channels under each category, probably like five or six different categories. That’s 500 different channels. There’s no way I would’ve been able to do that on my own, at least within a timeframe that was reasonable.

Brady Snow: Awesome. Yeah. It definitely saves you time, for sure. You can deploy your ad in minutes to all the channels that you want.

Derek Viveiros: What I loved about it was just the organization within TubeSift, just being able to just label, “Okay, this group here,” and you got all of the stuff in there, all of the channels, or all the placements. All the sudden, after a few days of some work, I’m like, “Oh, shoot. I’ve got eight different categories.” And everything was just nice and tidy. As a marketer, I need to see that. Then I used the titles of those for the nomenclature of the ads and the campaigns. That really helped. There was this seamless organization that if I didn’t have that, it would’ve been just a mess. I don’t know. That’s definitely a point I wanted to make there.

Brady Snow: Awesome. Yeah. Was there any advice that you’d give to people who are maybe considering running YouTube ads, or maybe they are running some ads, but they haven’t made it a priority as far as an ad platform. Do you have anything that you’d want to share with them about your experience?

Derek Viveiros: Yeah. Well, this is my approach to any advertising, any platform, you got to test a bunch of stuff in the beginning. I found a lot of success by just getting eight. I did eight. There’s no magic number to that, but I just ended up making eight different ads. I think it was like four ads, as far as YouTube goes, I did four different scripts that were related to just kind of different topics based around some common, either misconceptions or something that really they needed to know about, the prospect, but they were different. Then I would take each one of those, and then I would just take out the intro, like the first 5 to 10 seconds, and I would just replace that with another, testing another hook.

I’d had eight, four main messages and then two versions of each. I just ran that. Of course, also, a bunch of different targeting categories, but just launching it like that was quickly I was able to go, “Okay, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Here are the ones that work.” I would say that, and then the other big one is just to keep your sales cycle shorter. Shorter the better, so that you can get that purchase conversion data quickly because you’re making a bunch of bets, if you drag it out too long, i.e. like a launch of some sort, like some of these launch styles that we have in the marketing world where it’s like, “Oh, four weeks,” or, “Two weeks of something.”

You’ve got to be prepared that you won’t know the actual purchase data until the end. Meaning, I have to decide, “Well, what is the other metric that I want to optimize for?” I think for a first go, I think it’s better to keep it shorter than longer. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Brady Snow: Yeah, no, that definitely makes sense.

Have different hooks so you can attract different kinds of audiences. Image by James Wheeler, Unsplash License

Create different hooks to resonate with your audience

Derek Viveiros: Yeah. That’s a huge thing. What else? Yeah. Those are some big things. It’s funny, because when we’re in it, sometimes we don’t realize the easy… The things we just take for granted and then we go, “Oh, shoot, everyone knows that, but maybe not.” I don’t know if there’s a specific question around that, maybe that you’re familiar with people getting hung up on, and I can give feedback on.

Brady Snow: Yeah, that’s good. No, I like how you did the eight different ads, and so, it was two versions of each one, so four total, but that’s really good. I’ve heard of a lot of people having success that way, because sometimes certain hooks will resonate with a different kind of person, right?

Derek Viveiros: Yeah.

Brady Snow: If you just had one hook for one message, there might be some people that just disregard the ad, right? They’re not interested. But if you try different hooks, it might resonate with different kinds of people. Like we’re all different learning styles, so that might play into it.

Derek Viveiros: Yeah, and like the core message too. I mean, you got to make sure your core message is right before we worry about all the little things. So, it’s like three parts, the way I see it, and I’m sure most people do. It’s that first intro, the view rate, and then you’ve got the click-through rate. The click-through rate obviously tells you like, “Hey, there’s something there,” and then of course you got to go to the page and see how they’re performing there. If the click-through rate’s low, and your view rate’s really high, then you’ve lost them in the message. You did a great job capturing their attention, but then the message didn’t resonate with them, and so you got to go back, and you got to tweak that script, or whatever it is that you’re… You got to tweak the ad, the messaging. Just to really pay attention to those two parts, the view rate and the click-through rate. Yeah.

Brady Snow: Awesome. Yeah. That’s really solid advice. That’s good. It’s great to see you had good experience with YouTube ads in such a short amount of time, and it sounds like you learned a lot really fast, so that’s cool.

Derek Viveiros: I have nothing else to compare to, so I don’t know. Thanks for the feedback.

Brady Snow: Yeah, no problem.

Derek Viveiros: I know I worked my butt off, like crazy, 10 to 15 hour days for six weeks at least.

Brady Snow: Okay. Yeah, that’s a lot. It seems like just getting started with two ads upfront it might be more time, but once you get the systems down, and you get the experience, it probably gets faster, I’m sure, for most people.

Build your strategy for the ad scripts

Derek Viveiros: Oh yeah, 100%, I wasn’t just doing YouTube the whole time. I’m throwing in like the whole time with a client, and it was a new client as well. There was a lot of other stuff. I was putting a ton of time in landing pages and stuff like that, which isn’t really having anything to do with YouTube per se. I’m throwing those numbers out, but it’s the actual YouTube, frankly, the first using TubeSift, I remember those first couple days before Christmas and I spent two, three hour sessions or something like that, really setting up a bunch of placements and channels. Like hundreds of channels.

I don’t know if it was a thousand or something place. Like probably more. I don’t even know. I could look it up, but I’ve got a cell sheet and I’ve got it all organized there. It’s all there for me. I can always just go back and test it, test them, there’s a bunch that I haven’t even tested. I just did that. I just brainstormed with the different categories I wanted, it took me two days, three hours each, six hours altogether. I was kind of ready to go. Right? As far as, “Okay, I know what my targeting is going to be like.” Then the ads themselves, of course I wrote the script, and for the client I didn’t record them. He did that, and he’s got his process, so there’s that.

Yeah. I don’t know if that’s helpful, but just to kind of get a sense of how much time it takes. But yeah, I think with most ads and most ad platforms, there’s a short learning curve, a lot of time in the beginning. Then after it becomes pretty simple, then it’s just looking at it every day for like a half an hour. If you decide to make a new campaign, because of some of the data that you see, then you take some of the assets, and then you just change whatever it is. Assuming you’re not changing the video itself, then it’s just, making the tweaks to the targeting, or whatever. Different types of bid strategies that stuff’s easy. I think it’s the creative part that, of course like, “Ah, shoot, I got to record again.” But that’s why you really want to make sure you learn how to write an ad. Because, I was fortunate to have eight ads that four of them did really, really well. The other ones did pretty good too. I never had to create a new ad. They all worked well enough.

Brady Snow: Was there a specific formula, or strategy, used when you wrote your ad scripts?

Derek Viveiros: Yeah, basically the hook and then the call to action at the end. Off the top of my head, I’ve got formulas in all my notes, but you know, and just … Do you guys have that in the … I haven’t gone through some of the training that you guys have, but do you guys have some of that?

Brady Snow: Yeah, we go over ad scripts too. Yeah, another big one that we’ve been telling people about is using our newer software video ad vault to see what other ads are running in your niche. That way you can see the ads that are running and then the landing page too. Then you can kind of study the messaging. You can also see what ads are working by the view count, and if the views have been going up, you can then watch that ad instantly, and just see what kind of messaging that they’re using.

Derek Viveiros: Yeah.

Brady Snow: You don’t want to steal from it, but you can kind of put your own messaging into that structure and-

Derek Viveiros: Yeah, and if it’s your first time

Brady Snow: Yeah.

Derek Viveiros: Yeah, if it’s your first time doing this, I’m just trying to think of what it’s like. There’s probably so many different variations of, or degrees, of skill level that are of the guys listening girls listening. You really got to get a sense for how to get that hook. What does it look like to get someone’s attention? You’ve really got to understand who you’re talking to and really get into their … It’s basic kind of stuff, marketing, you got to really know who they are, know what their pain points are, and speak to the pain point. What’s a headline that you would normally write for something? It’s like, okay, that could be a hook. You practice that. Then you lead them into delivering on that hook through the body of ad.

Then near the end, you make a strong call to action. I mean, it’s probably simplifying it, but it starts with, “Okay, what are the pain points of my client?” Or, “What are the dreams and aspirations? What are the things that they’re thinking about?” You know? What’s their dialogue in their mind around this thing that you’re offering? Then maybe use one of those. What’s a misconception? That was one that really worked well. Like this is the biggest mistake people are making. It’s like, “What’s the number one biggest mistake.” Everyone wants to hear that. “Oh, shoot. Yeah. I want to make sure I’m not doing that.” Things like that, I could look up the scripts if you’d like.

Brady Snow: Oh yeah. If you want to share some of your hooks or calls to action, that’d be great.

Derek Viveiros: Sure, sure, sure. All right, let’s see. Some of the … Pardon of me?

Write a good script for your ads and use an attractive call to action. Image by Julia Taubitz, Unsplash License

Use the Video Ad Scripting Guide

Brady Snow: I was just going to say we offer a scripting guide for people that kind of help them when they’re getting started, that talks about how you qualify the viewer, to make sure it’s the right audience, and then talk about the problem, relate to the pain points, like you were talking about.

Derek Viveiros: My suggestion, honestly, to anyone who’s listening is if you trust the training, you guys know what you’re doing, just read the freaking thing, listen to it and follow it to a T because you really want to get the video as dialed in as you can. Obviously, there’s going to be a learning curve to everything. If you have the training available, just make use of it and just take it seriously, because you really want to just follow everything step by step. Because can get the ads, the messaging, right.

Then you can put your time more into the optimizing of the campaign itself. To be honest, that’s the hardest thing, is really just getting the messaging right. If you don’t have that right, it doesn’t matter how good on all the other stuff you are. You really got to get that script dialed in, not to put too much pressure on yourself, but just if you have the course, just follow it as best you can. Don’t try to be creative. You know what I mean? As far as going off the way that you guys, TubeSift, is teaching it. Just do it the way that it is. Be creative within the guidelines.

Let me see if I’ve got … Here we go. This one’s for my course.

Brady Snow: Okay.

Derek Viveiros: It was around helping people with finding out what their next big thing is in their business, or in their life, like around, “Do I want to start a new business?” You know, “What kind of business would I start?” It was something like, okay, “Hey, real quick, listen. If you’ve been on a … ” Sorry, that’s a different one. Let think. Okay. “Hey, real quick. If you’ve been hearing that voice inside saying, ‘we need to change,’ for what feels like months now, even years, it’s getting louder and louder, and you’ve been slaving away, your job thinking of quitting and start something new. And you know that there must be a better way to a great living. Everyone else is doing it. Well, listen, there actually is. I was in a similar situation as you not that long ago, I remember that icky feeling welling up inside.”

Okay. I could keep going, but basically this intro is like, “We need to change.” This was something that I experienced. I kind of just intuitively felt like this is probably something that a lot of people, I just hear people talking like that, so I’m like, “I bet you, people are really thinking this in their lives.” So I’m just speaking to that, asking them question, if you’ve been hearing that voice. That got a really great view rate. Then the messaging was good, because the click through rates were good. They were up to 1.5, 2.5% on a click through rate. That’s pretty good, right? I shared my story, it depends what you’re selling of course, but I got into my story. The whole strategy of that is really just building rapport so that they know that you know what they’re going through.

Brady Snow: Yeah.

Derek Viveiros: Is this helpful?

Brady Snow: Yeah, definitely.

Derek Viveiros: Okay, good.

Brady Snow: Because, right? Your hook speaks to their pain point right away, so they’re going to keep listening. Then you tell them why you’re a good resource to listen to about this and then you get into your story.

Derek Viveiros: Yeah, I get into when I was in the exact same situation, it’s a pretty simple tested formula. I remember that achy feeling welling up inside of me, every Sunday evening, at the thought of going into war work Monday morning. They’re like, “Oh yeah, me too. He gets me.” I would go into work dreading it. I was constantly thinking of not being at work. I remember hearing about all these other people, so I went on about that. It’s just reinforcing, I get where you’re at. Then goes on and on, all in a way that provides value in a world, supports my lifestyle. Then I start selling the dream, right? Then I started selling a little bit of benefits. Then I paint the picture of where I’m at now. I went through this journey that, so was that where you were? Then I figured something out. Yeah, and then I figured something out, and I’d love to share with you my findings.

Brady Snow: That’s that’s really good. I like that. Because it opens a loop, because they want to know what you figured out, because you’ve been talking about this problem that they’re also experiencing. They want to know the solution. At this point they trust you, they believe you, that you have the answer, but then they want to know.

Have an engaging call to action

Derek Viveiros: Then at that point is when the call to action is. Right?

Brady Snow: Yeah, exactly.

Derek Viveiros: Do you want to hear?

Brady Snow: Yeah. Yeah. Go on. Let’s finish. Yeah.

Derek Viveiros: It’s like, “Listen, if you’d like …” I use words like, “Hey, real quick,” in the beginning, and like, “Listen.” Those are just trying to be conversational and trying to trigger my own energy in the video. Because it’s kind of reminder, like just be real, chill, and just talk naturally. It’s like, “Listen, if you’d like to learn more about this, I’d love to help you.”

That makes me think of another point, which is just being sincere. If this is the style of the ad you’re doing, if it’s just you talking. Especially for a first time, I found it was awesome to be able to do that because there was no cost. There was, I guess I got a prompter.

Brady Snow: Yeah. That’s was interesting.

Derek Viveiros: For like 200 bucks. It took a little bit to understand how it works, and get through the little pieces of that, but it made my delivery so much better than just trying to kind of wing it. That would’ve been crazy. I really recommend getting a prompter.

Anyway, so it’s, “Listen, if you’d like to learn more about this, I’d love to help you. I’ve made a video where I’m going to walk you through the five of keys of going from hating your job to actually creating your dream business that’s so unique to you that when you tell your friends about it, they’ll say of course, without the frustration of indecision and wasting months, even years, just thinking about what you really want. But actually, feeling great about what you’re doing in your work life. So I can’t wait to share this with you, click the link on or somewhere around the video.” That’s like, “If you want more, I really want to help you, and this is what I’ve done to help you. I’ve got this thing for you.” Then reiterating what it’s going to do for them.

Someone could just be like, “Oh, I did this thing for you, so click the link.” Okay, but you got to like drive and drive, drive the benefit home. It’s like this is what it’ll do so that when, you know, and then you just kind of continue on. Just like really hammering in what that thing is going to do for them. Then what it’s going to avoid, like the without part, without having to waste years thinking, just thinking about what you want to do, actually doing it. It’s like the positive and the negative. Then again, reiterating the excitement that you have to help them and tell them exactly what to do.

Brady Snow: Nice. Yeah. It seems like that messaging makes it really clear for the viewer to know what they’re going to get out of this. Then with that call to action, they’ll hopefully click into it and then you got a new lead right there.

Derek Viveiros: Yeah. If you’re really not sure about your click through rate, or sorry, your call to action, then just test different ones, but try to do them all up front, right? I did eight, because I had four core messages, and then I did two hooks for each, made eight. Well, what I could have done was tested four different call to actions and then it had 12 altogether.

Brady Snow: Yeah.

Derek Viveiros: But how much more time would that have been? Not that much more, I’ve already got everything set up. I was feeling pretty confident about the click through rate just with, I don’t know, my experience or whatever. I didn’t bother doing that, but it’s better to do 12 all upfront, than to do one, realize you didn’t get results you want, feel crappy about it, and then go back to recording again. Just add a couple more hours of the work up front and it’ll save you a bunch of time later.

Brady Snow: Yeah. Because if you start running all those ads, if there’s one that’s not performing well, you can just turn that campaign off, and then run with the ads that are running, because then you’re going to save money by turning that one ad off. You’re not paying for impressions or whatever. Then you’re going to know which ad is doing better and resonating with your audience better. Then you can increase budget there too and try to-

If you’re a TubeSift or Video Ad Vault active member you get free access to the TubeSift Office Hours coaching calls group. Image by John Schnobrich, Unsplash License

Get your support group with TubeSift Office Hours

Derek Viveiros: Let’s say you have different placements, right? Like different placement groups. And you’re like, okay, people who are looking for a new job, people who hate their job, people who are trying to think of what ideas for business, okay? Those are three right there. You take all 12 of those ads, with four different hooks, four different to actions, and kind of like a similar message, you got 12. You put them in each of those, 12, 12, and 12. Now you’re running it, and you’re getting, all at once, you’re getting data on which ad is the best and which of the three targets are the best. Ideally, you get to conclusions quickly, which you don’t know that part. You got to wait to see how the numbers are coming in. Then you might have a good problem where you have 4 of 12 ads doing really well on maybe one of the targets, of the three targets.

Okay, cool. Well maybe I don’t want to use those targets for now because I’m really focused on getting results really quick so that I can get momentum, stick with the one target. You stick with 4 of the 12 ads. Boom. You know, it’s just an iterative process of trying to find the optimization. Yeah. It takes a bit of time and patience, but that’s why I was saying, go top heavy on the creative. That way you can narrow in. Because if you didn’t, let’s say you take two weeks with one ad, you just wasted two weeks, right?

Brady Snow: Yeah.

Derek Viveiros: You know, you do one a week. That’s 12 weeks. You do all 12 in one week, you just saved yourself 11 weeks. That’s crazy, depending on the budget of how much you’re going to putting into it for that one week. You got to get enough data to make sense of the 12 different variations. That’s the drawback of putting so many creatives out there, is that you got to have enough budget to make sense of it. Otherwise, you just kind of have to wait maybe three weeks to be able to get significant data. Hopefully you’re following me.

Brady Snow: Yeah, no definitely. That makes sense.

Derek Viveiros: Yeah.

Brady Snow: Yeah. It’s a good strategy for sure. And yeah, sounds like you’ve got it, the whole system dialed in. It’s so true that once you’ve learned how to do the targeting, and stuff, and using TubeSift makes it easy, but that is the easy part, but a lot of it comes down to the messaging that you use in your creatives. That’s super important for sure. But-

Derek Viveiros: Like it’s tough to say which one’s the easiest one, the hardest, because they all freaking matter. One little improvement on a whole chain, improves the whole chain. It’s like everything’s freaking important. What I think is the most challenging for most people is probably going to be the messaging. That’s what I hear from other people talking about this stuff. Especially a new person. That’s why it’s like follow the structure of how to write a script that you guys provide, really do that, and post in the group, because the group has been … that’s been amazing.

I’ve been posting a bunch, and reporting all these different things that have been going, on asking questions and you guys have been great, replying to my stuff within a day or two. It’s to a reliable point, which is very, very valuable, makes me feel like I’m not by myself, trying to figure this out on my own. Even just reiterating what my intuition is, you know? I’ve been at this for a while, so I got the feel for things, and I’m like, “I think this is the way I would go about it,” then I’d post it. Then one of you guys would be like, “Sounds bang on man.” I’m like, “Sweet. Okay, cool.”

Brady Snow: Awesome. Yeah, glad to hear the Facebook group helped. For anyone that doesn’t know, if you’re an active user of our softwares and stuff, you get access to the Facebook group. We have a free one as well. Yeah, you can ask questions, get answers to whatever you need when you’re setting up your campaigns, or doing your creatives. It’s a supportive community for everyone.

Derek Viveiros: Frankly, that’s not very easy to find. I’m in another group, and they’re not replying at all, and the stuff that they reply is just not helpful at all. There’s a ton of value in that.

Get in touch with Derek Viveiros

Brady Snow: Definitely. Well, yeah, Derek, thanks for coming on. If anyone wanted to get in touch with you about your agency, your course, where can they find you?

Derek Viveiros: Yeah. So my name’s Derek Viveiros, so you can find me on Facebook. That’s probably the best way to do it. The James & Valentine Company is the agency. I’ve had it for 12 years, but frankly the website’s not updated in the last couple of years, just because everything’s been so word-of-mouth, it got kind of outdated. I haven’t put any time into that. The best way to connect with me is through Facebook, Derek Viveiros, in Toronto, Canada. If there’s some other Dereks out there, but, yeah, I would love to hear from anyone who got value out of this, and maybe I can help out just with some thoughts, or even doing any work, or whatever.

Brady Snow: Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for sharing all that. It’s good to hear that campaign went well and-

Derek Viveiros: Thanks.

Brady Snow: You dialing the system in and the strategies for next time.

Derek Viveiros: Thanks a lot. Thanks for everything you guys are doing.

Brady Snow: Yeah, of course. No problem.