How Do YouTube Ads Work with Jyll Saskin Gales

Have you been avoiding YouTube ads because they feel overwhelming, expensive, or just... a lot? You're not the only one overwhelmed by the idea of video advertising. But that being said—you might be making it harder than it needs to be. 

Whether you have zero dollars to spend or a real ad budget ready to go, there are ways to get started with YouTube advertising that meet you exactly where you are.

In this Talk Copy to Me episode, Google Ads coach and Inside Google Ads podcast host Jyll Saskin Gales walks through everything a small business owner needs to know about YouTube advertising. 

From the simple "promote" button inside YouTube Studio to full Google Ads campaigns, Jyll breaks down the different ad types, targeting options, and what actually makes a YouTube ad work—including her two-second test for diagnosing why an ad isn't converting.

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EPISODE 180.
Read the show notes and view the full transcript here: https://erinollila.com/how-do-youtube-ads-work-with-jyll-saskin-gales/

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Get to know our Google and YouTube Ads expert: Jyll Saskin Gales
Jyll Saskin Gales is a Google Ads Coach, and the founder of the Inside Google Ads course, podcast, and bestselling book. 

She advises business owners, agencies, marketers and freelancers across industries, helping them get the best ROI from their marketing. Jyll worked at Google for 6 years and has an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Here's the info on your host, Erin Ollila
Erin Ollila believes in the power of words and how a message can inform – and even transform – its intended audience. She graduated from Fairfield University with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and went on to co-found Spry, an award-winning online literary journal.

When Erin’s not helping her clients understand their website data or improve their website copy, you can catch her hosting the Talk Copy to Me podcast and guesting on shows such as Profit is a Choice, Mindful Marketing, The Power in Purpose, and Business-First Creatives.

Stay in touch with Erin Ollila, SEO website copywriter:
• Learn more about working with me or just book a strategy session to get started right away
• Visit Erin's website to learn more about her business, services, and products

Transcript

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Hi, Jyll. Thanks for being here today. So let's jump in. Maybe we could start this episode by just talking about like the type of YouTube ads that people could, , invest in. And , I should probably mention. YouTube and Google are all the same company. So if we happen to use those like terms interchangeably throughout this episode, we are talking about the same thing. Okay. Your YouTube ads will be managed through, your Google account. So just bear with us and yeah. Take over the show. Tell me about these different types of options that people have if they're considering YouTube ads for their business. With pleasure. So there are actually three different ways as a business owner that you can advertise on YouTube, and the first way I'm gonna start with is a way that even a lot of Google ads practitioners don't know about and it's something you can do right from within YouTube Studio, the part of YouTube, you go to upload and edit your videos., You can click promote. Next to any video, and then actually promote your video on YouTube. And that is one way to do YouTube advertising. So think of this kind of like how on Instagram you can boost a post on YouTube, you can promote a video. And I'll admit, when I first saw this, I was like, oh, that looks dumb. No way. I wanna do that. But actually it can be a really. Easy way to get started because in the backend, what happens when you choose to promote a video is you don't need to set up a whole Google Ads account or a Google Ads campaign. Google takes care of that for you. You tell YouTube whether your goal is to get views, subscribers, or website visits. You pick your locations, your budget, your timeframe, and it goes, and all it does is show your ads to people who are most likely to do the thing you want. So people who are most likely to subscribe. View or visit your websites. That's probably the easiest way to get started with YouTube advertising. Then, if you wanna take things to the next level and actually go into Google Ads and create a Google Ads campaign, there are two different campaign types you can use to advertise on YouTube. One is called a video campaign. And we typically call those YouTube campaigns, but video campaign in Google doesn't just mean YouTube. There are also video partners, other websites that are not YouTube where you can run video ads. I recommend turning that off, but it is an option in a video campaign. So that's one campaign type. And then the other campaign type in Google Ads, so let's you advertise on YouTube, is called a demand gen campaign. I find, again, a lot of people don't realize this, so key difference between a video campaign or a demand gen campaign. First, in a demand gen campaign, you can have image ads or video ads that can show on YouTube, whereas in a video campaign, just video ads. Second difference is in a demand gen campaign, you can optimize for clicks, so visits to your website or you can optimize for conversions, form fills, meetings, booked purchases, et cetera. In a video campaign, you actually can't optimize for those things. You can optimize for reach, you can optimize for views, but that's it. You can only optimize for things that are happening on YouTube. the third key difference is with a demand gen campaign. The way you target those ads is by using something called audience targeting. Actually, that's my whole book about, for those who are watching, you can see it behind me. And audience targeting just means you're showing ads to people based on who they are, what they're in market for, if they've been to your website before, et cetera. Whereas in a video campaign in Google Ads, you can target ads with audiences, but you can also do content targeting, which means you can choose to place your video ads on specific YouTube channels, maybe your competitors YouTube videos if you like, or you can pick certain keywords you want the videos to have. So there are more targeting options. And so that in a nutshell are your options. You can promote a video on YouTube Studio. You can run a Google Ads video campaign or a Google Ads demand gen campaign. And there's your episode folks. We did that in under five minutes right here. Uh, that was extremely helpful. And, you know, as you talked, I, I could kind of even see my wheels turning and then changing, right? Like continuing to turn, because at first when you mentioned the promote option. I've been in marketing, and especially in the online world for so many years now, that like I hear that and I'm like,"oh God, we're promoting posts again. Don't do this." But it actually, like the way that you described it seemed like a really good entry point to dip your toe in, right? Compared to doing that on an Instagram or Facebook, where. It, it feels like you're just throwing your money away, where at least on YouTube, it is allowing you to not have to go into the Google campaign managers to set things up and just see is this performing right? So you can maybe use some maybe not quantitative, but qualitative decision making skills to see what am I gonna do next? Is this for me? Do I wanna go a little further in this? And then what I was going to say, although at the end of what you were just, talking about changed my mind a little is I was wondering if this like 1, 2, 3, so first being promote and then video campaign and then the demand gen. Would they be like a staircase in the sense that like you would do the promote and then you could try the video campaign, because of staying on YouTube for the video part, for the most part, and then the demand gen having different options like forms. But I actually think that maybe it just depends on the goal, right? Those options two and three, you have to decide what do you want the end results, to be able to choose between those two. Are my assumptions safe? Did my wheels turn in the right direction, or are they going backward? Your wheels are going in Okay, direction. pH. I would say YouTube Promote is a great place to start. I was like you, when I first saw this, I was like, no way am I doing that. It was actually another expert in the space named Corey Hanky. I saw him speak at a conference specifically about YouTube promote and just sharing the amazing results he was able to get for his clients. And so based on that, I went and tested it with my own money. I did YouTube Promote and Demand Gen and YouTube Promote, was able to get me the same results at cheaper costs. It was like a dollar per subscriber. In the test I run, which is just unheard of now, a little, you know, insider baseball for you. What actually happens behind the scenes when you create YouTube promote is Google silently creates a Google Ads campaign for you. Create creates the account for you, creates a demand gen campaign for you behind the scenes. That's what's powering it. Choosing the goal you chose, and putting it on something called optimized targeting. And optimized Targeting is a feature that exists in a lot of campaigns and Google Ads. All that means is instead of picking your specific audiences, you're telling Google, find me people who are most likely to convert. if Convert is purchased, people who are most likely to purchase if converts, fill out a form. People who are most likely to fill out a form. If the goal of the campaign is just website visits, clicks, people who are most likely to click. So really when you're doing YouTube promote, you're actually doing demand Gen without having to know. How to set up demand gen, so it can be a great entry point. And then from there, decide like is my goal on YouTube actions, like reach, like views, then video's probably the right choice. Whereas if your goal is to get people off of YouTube and onto your website, then demand gen's probably the right choice. Which I think is fascinating just to have that option because so often all of the channels that we can use for marketing in our business are. Definitely trying to force you to stay on platform and obviously YouTube itself wants people to stay on platform. I'm not trying to suggest that they don't, but just having the option to have a paid advertising campaign built into a tool that traditionally keeps people on platform but will encourage in specific ways, people to take these actions that do meet, move people a lot more. I hate to use this term, but down that like marketing funnel, right? To become closer to buyers, that's an excellent opportunity to have those things. A question for you, how, hopping backwards for a second, the, um, conversation, the test that you did, did you have a podcast episode where, I mean, excuse me, a YouTube episode where you talked with Cory about this? Okay. I loved that. I wa we gonna link to it because I watched that and I was very fascinated. I was like, wow. And then I think that kind of helped me understand more of, um. What these options were when I first watched it, because I probably would have thought that video campaigns and demand gen were pretty much the same thing. Like even having been described it in the way that you had just described it right now, it was helpful to kind of see it play out because you share all the stats and, and, and the data as part of your campaign and, and what that looked like. So we'll link to that episode 'cause it was really, really interesting to watch. Thank you. Yeah, episode 78 of my inside Google Ads podcast. And so you can listen to it, but if you watch it, I actually share my screen and show you the real numbers I did with my spent a couple hundred bucks.'cause I wanted to get to the bottom of this so that I knew what to recommend to my clients and to my audience. Which is so valuable, right?'cause we all know that in marketing testing is super important, right? Like sometimes you just have to spend to test. And while we can't replicate every single like, you know, success that we've had, and try to avoid every failure, it's. When you can see someone else testing something and you're not, and then you're able to, um, see what worked in that type of environment, but also learn from the opportunity that's saving you bottom line, right? Like, so you might be hiring someone like Jyll to run campaigns for you, or you might be not doing this actual implementation, but to understand it so you know where your, , advertising dollars are going. Is so helpful and you can learn about it through someone else's testing that they've done. Absolutely, and even if your test fails, so to speak, another great thing you can do with of the campaign types I've mentioned is if you have a Google Ads account, you can build a remarketing list of people who have viewed your YouTube videos, even if you're not. Advertising on YouTube at all. So it's one of the first things I always recommend to folks who are just getting started with Google Ads. Even if you're doing search ads or something else, if you have a YouTube account, you just connect it to Google Ads, you can start building these lists of people who have viewed your YouTube videos, and then when you are ready to start advertising, you can use that audience to narrow your search campaigns or you can use that audience to reach people. In their Gmail inboxes. Or you can use that audience to advertise to people on YouTube who are already familiar with your content. So YouTube itself, is owned by Google and it occupies such a special place in the Google portfolio.'cause you can advertise there, you can use audiences from there. It's kind of like how on Instagram, if you were to just get started advertising on Instagram, you'd probably just wanna reach your followers and people who interact with your content. And so YouTube is the equivalent to that in the Google Ads ecosystem. Especially if you've done the work of making sure, like the content that you're putting out is attracting. The audience you want to work with, that you're actually like meeting all their needs, , answering their questions like, , building up interest to keep them, building confidence with you. So for example, if you have a service that is, um, high priced, you know that your, uh, lead to client time might be significant, right? You might have. A year, two years, that someone is just consuming content, saving up for the purchase, whatever that it is, right? So if you are gonna spend all of this time actively marketing to people that you don't know of yet, right? They are leads, you just don't know that they are leads, A retargeting campaign is keeping that backend information for you, right? Like it's saying , okay, Erin, you don't have to, you don't have to know that Jyll is watching your episode. We'll know it so that way later on when you are ready, we could be a little bit more strategic about this. And I think it's really helpful to do that work even if your investment, isn't ready yet. Like you can't do that full campaign, but you just wanna make sure that what you're doing is capturing data. That's a great first step for you. Yeah, and another great way to get started is there's this special kind of remarketing audience in Google Ads called the Google Engaged Audience. this is an audience of people who have. Clicked from Google search results to your website organically or paid. So again, even if you're not advertising on Google Ads at all, if you do have some organic traffic, and by the way, Google search results doesn't just mean Google search that means YouTube search results, map search results. This audience already exists waiting for you once you create a Google Ads account, and that can be a great way to get started with video ads, for example, is just reaching people who've been to your website before without even having to set up conversion tracking and all this kind of stuff. So there are a lot of these newer features that have come to Google Ads over the last year or two that are very small business friendly. Don't get me wrong, 90% of product launches are meant for the large advertisers. But there are a few little things like YouTube promote and YouTube Studio, like the Google engaged audience that really have made it easier for solopreneurs and small business owners to get started with Google advertising on YouTube and otherwise. Yeah, and I think that's also something that if you are newer to business, like you might see these things and be like, yeah, that's just, that's sure. That's just one step that I can take. But I've been in business now for 10 years and prior to that work still in marketing before that for a traditional company. So I don't think you realize how much actually that is. Five years ago there were so much fewer options for creatives, right? Like any type of ad campaigns that you were going to run. Other than let's just, let's ignore social media for a second.'cause that's this whole different ride, but like in on Google, on YouTube, anywhere else, like even literally in your newspaper, there were so many less opportunities for the tiny businesses just because the budget was such a large play in whether you are gonna advertise or not. So having the chance to put a small amount of money towards one of these promote options or building this, the knowing your audiences like you were just talking about, like gives you so much more information and it spends your money wiser that I actually think, like being in business for so long, I can see it as more of a perk or I can see , well. These companies have come very far, just that their audience is not just the big, huge brands that their audience is actually made up of the everyday person, speed. Maybe even five years ago, I wrote an article where it was like the everyday influencer is actually the influencer, not the Kim Kardashians, right? It's that mom who has that YouTube channel where she posts about like teething and like all these toddler things. So the audience is made up of everyday people. The um, actors are made up of everyday people, right? And then now let's just throw the business owners into the mix because it's not just. The acting like it's not just the individual who's gonna stand there and talk about their life. This is someone who's gonna bring their expertise and their content that maybe they would've put on social or maybe they would've posted blog posts about, or a podcast, but now they're willing to do it on video. So I think that we've seen big changes in these huge, ginormous corporations being willing to do like creator networks and tools that you can get better analytics, that you can get better reach. It's just learning how to use them and why you use them. That's so important. Yes, and some of the most recent, you know, I'm someone who pays very close attention to all the new product launches. Sometimes they even get pre briefed by Google PR to help spread the word about new launches. And so just a few of the video related tools that have come out recently. There's something in Google Ads Now called the Creator Partnerships Hub. So if you do wanna work with a creator and you just like. Don't even know where to start. There's a place right in Google Ads that'll help reach out to creators. Another option is like AI generated videos. I know some people are all for it. Some are all against it. That is totally up to you. But there are tools now built right into Google Ads where you can have a picture of a product you're selling and you press a button and you say, give it a Christmas theme, and boom, you have a video that you can use. Right there. So there are a lot of these different ways that, , Google is trying to make video content and video creation easier for business owners that are worth testing because that's what I've experienced as a Google Ads coach who meets with hundreds of business owners and marketers a year. The number one obstacle to advertising on YouTube tends to be the creative. Right. It's not, and by the creative, I mean like what video are we gonna advertise? I know who I wanna reach, I know what I want my budget to be, but like what am I even gonna show them? And so that absolutely is the most difficult part, as it should be. But there are more tools available now to help with that. Okay. I'm gonna ask, what could be the weird question here? Is it safe to assume that? When it comes to this creative \ that they're building or they're filming that for smaller businesses specifically. True everyday, real life video is still gonna outperform, like prerecorded content. Let's say I know a lot of my clients are like, okay, well I'm gonna, I'm gonna hire this local video company and we're gonna go to the, coworking place that I can book a room because it's very pretty and it looks like a real office. Would it be safe to say that, if you just go in your messy, like we both have kids drawings behind us, right? Like that. Showing up, human showing up. Like an everyday helpful person performs well for that type of business versus a forced, not that there's anything wrong with prerecorded video. Anyone, let me just say that, but like a forced thing that you're trying to do because you think you have to show up and have a certain persona on YouTube. I would make it even simpler and say having a video is better than not having a video. So you know, if the option is to just turn on your camera, on your phone and record something just to get started, that's better than not getting started with video advertising.'cause you don't have the thousands of dollars to invest in hiring a professional. Videographer. Yes. so some video is better than no video. And again, image can also get you started with a demand gen campaign. You can advertise on YouTube with images. Okay. called YouTube. and basically it means that your ad can show on the YouTube homepage when it shows you all the different thumbnails you're deciding what to watch. One of those thumbnails could be your video, or it could be an image ad that leads to your website or in YouTube search results when someone searches for something to try to decide what to watch. And then again, there's scrolling through one of those ads Could be your video ad, or it could be an image ad. Um, so even if you wanna like dip your toe in the water. Every business owner has images you can use. Start with that. Start testing and then get into video. And your first video's gonna suck it. Yeah. That's Okay. The second one will too. But the third one's gonna be better. And the fourth one will be better. And then you'll get used to it. And I don't know if, me it is now second nature, I Yeah. everyone feels that way, but, uh, but you have to start somewhere. And so it's better to have something than nothing, so that at least you can get started with your organic video content or with your video advertising. Yeah, and I tell people this about for example, like a blog or a case study or even a podcast episode. So I'm sure this translates 'cause it sounds like what you're saying, if it sucks the first time, but like the quality of the content is good, you can rerecord that later, right? If you hate your second podcast episode, but you like really researched it and it's so good. Okay, episode number one 16 can be the same content, rerecord it, add a couple different takes to it or, or don't, right? Just do a better job at sharing that exact same information. So. No, I love that. I actually think it's really more important because that is what I think the problem, is people feel as if that they need to have a certain thing ready before they can jump in and do something. And in fact, I think they'll probably be better off to get more comfortable, to get more practice of just doing the thing. So that way when they do start to invest more of their money in ads, they're investing it wisely. And that's something else. Maybe you don't wanna like post something on YouTube because you're like, oh my gosh, my friends are gonna see it, my family. So like you can create a YouTube video and have it be unlisted. And then run it as an ad. And that way it's only showing as an ad. If that's something that feels more comfortable to you and is not gonna be posted publicly on your channel associated when someone searches for your name. So that is another option that some people like is to create some video ads, have them be unlisted, and only show them to those audiences you're trying to reach. Yeah. That's so helpful. I always joke that when I decided to start my podcast, I was writing a ton for my clients, like a ton for big brands and little guys that I knew. I just, I didn't feel like it writing my own content for my blog. So I knew it was podcast or YouTube and I was comfortable with either or. The entire reason that I chose a podcast was because I was in a period of life with tiny little babies at home, and I looked like a hot mess all the time. This is good for me today. Like I actually have mascara on, if you can believe it, which is not normal for the podcast. But the reason why I say this is that was my own issue. That was a non-issue because once I started listening to my own podcast and getting feedback from my audience, I realized this is some pretty damn good content. And. I didn't give a shit anymore, like what I looked like because I was actually just really proud of what I was producing. And even if , it's harder for you to recognize your own genius and feel proud of yourself when you get feedback from people. That's motivating. And a beauty of YouTube is that people do tend to comment on videos and share their thoughts. So that right there is that ability to kind of get that motivation and, and move forward. And I think that, again, if you're nervous, you do it unlisted. Like you dip your toe in and then you'll start to get like, oh, okay, I guess this doesn't matter. Maybe I am gonna do these videos and heck I'm gonna even share them with my family. I wanna talk about goals for a second because I think it's clear of what you could be doing when you're on YouTube, but I find that sometimes people jump in without necessarily making strategic decisions. And at least for advertising, it's really helpful to know what you want the result to be. And that sounds obvious, but what do you want from this? So could you maybe share some types of goals that smaller businesses would have when it comes to what they like their ad campaigns to do for them or their, , their promotions that they run on YouTube. Sure. I mean, your end goal is to make money obviously, but you're probably not gonna make money directly from someone who just viewed a YouTube video view for the first time. Mm-hmm. So really, the first goal that I think can be helpful to get is views and. To be very clear, a view on YouTube actually has about 10 different definitions, but I'll simplify it for you. A view either means they were served your ad before watching another video, and they watched at least 30 seconds of it. Or to the end, whichever came first. So think about that. You're hovering, waiting to skip the ad. The skip ad button comes up at six seconds. So someone views, not only did they not skip, they kept watching for at least 30 seconds. That is a hugely engaged. Action. A view can also mean that in feed placement I spoke about earlier where they're served your thumbnail and then have to decide whether to watch it or not. If they click on your thumbnail and the video loads, then that counts as a view because again, they weren't just served your video automatically. They actively chose. To go watch it. And then the third definition of a view is on YouTube shorts. The vertical video, that's like TikTok or reels, A view means they watch at least 10 seconds or the end of the video, whichever came first. So think of how fast you probably swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, watching at least 10 seconds. So I say all that to say a view. In the YouTube world is a highly engaged action. It is not passive. And so your first goal is just get the view, which shows that you are engaging someone enough to not do whatever it is they were going to do. Go watch the video, they were gonna watch or look up the video, they're gonna look up. Instead, they're choosing to spend that time with you and typically. The benchmark kind of view rates I can share is that for Instream, which is where the video is playing, your video ad plays before the video, they actually wanted to watch. I would aim for a 30 to 40% view rate for infeed, where they have to actually choose to click on and watch your video. I would aim for a 1 to 2% view rate, and then for shorts where they have to choose to not swipe away for at least 10 seconds. I would aim for about an eight to 10%. View rate. And that's really good because then what if you're not getting there? It means either you're reaching the wrong people, you need to adjust your targeting or your creative needs work, which creative can always be improved. And then once you're getting that solid view rate and you're getting those views, then I would start to think about next. Okay. How about getting these people off of YouTube and onto my website? And that's where you can choose in a demand gen campaign at least, or in a YouTube promote, uh, click strategy of just like getting to leave YouTube and come to your website. And then once you've been doing that for a while and you've proven that again, with the right targeting and the right creative, you can get that right audience off of YouTube and onto your website. Only then would I think about, okay, let's change our goal to conversions now and see what YouTube ads can do for me there. Yeah. And you know, I, it's funny because in the episode that came before this with Olivia Lawson, we talked at. Mostly about really getting that website in order before you invest any money, because it doesn't really matter. Now, this is not like the actual statement. This is like a, a paraphrasing in a, in a slightly sarcastic way. It doesn't matter what your actual Google ad is because once they get there, if it, if it's crap of a website that they're just gonna leave anyway, meaning the creative part of that. Google Ad. Google ad. But here's what's really interesting about this, talking about YouTube. Creative is vastly important on YouTube, right? Because in social, in email, on podcast, the hook is really, key, right? So if you start a podcast episode, like if we started today and I was just like, so Jyll, tell me about that picture that someone drew behind you and that was the entryway into this episode. We would lose a lot of people. I am interested because again, I have kids pictures in my background, but people don't have the time to sit and wait to see if what they're being served is interesting. So you gave us actual amounts of time that you would find success, in the different types of, shorts, full videos, all those things. Now, if you don't have a good hook, if you don't have good visuals, if you don't showcase why this is important to the, the watcher, like that will not be successful. So it's really interesting to think now, yes, your website's still totally important, obviously, especially if you're gonna do one of the, demand gen campaigns. Got that one right, fof, where you are having people go back, having them fill out forms, having them, take other actions off of YouTube. Your website is important then. But before all that, boy do you need to make them interested in actually clicking or watching or, investing their time and energy into the campaign that you've created on YouTube. Absolutely. And one of my favorite examples of this is actually, oh gosh, this supposed to be more than a decade old now, but there were these Geico commercials, back in the very early days of YouTube. advertising, and they said, you can't skip this Geico ad because it's already over. And so they I love that. out a scene in the background, and then they would just freeze. And for the rest of 30 seconds, the actors would just kind of be frozen and looking around like it was funny and it was memorable and it was playing with the format itself. You can't skip this Geicko'cause it's already over. Even by then, the skip ad button isn't there yet. Um, so anyway, I say that. to say we don't all have Geico level budgets or creatives working with us, but just like don't fear the format. And whenever I'm on a coaching call with a client and we're analyzing their YouTube video and why it might not be working, here's my challenge. You can do this as well, is start playing your video and after two seconds, pause it, watch it for two seconds, and then pause. Because that's the amount of time you have to make someone decide, do I want to keep watching this or not? Okay. And then press play. Let it play for four more seconds and then pause again.'cause now you are at the six second mark where every impression is free. You only pay when people view your video. But at that six second mark, that skip bad button comes up. And what so often we find with a YouTube campaign that. Quote unquote not working whatever not working might be is when you do the two second test and then the six second test. I don't even need to tell my client what's wrong. They'll tell me, oh, okay, I need to go back and re-edit this. Which, this is just a, the marketing principle that works anywhere, like clarity over, I mean, you could be clever, but like look at the Google ad that you mentioned as an example. It's doing both. It is clever in that it stands out for it just being, different and direct. But it is clear. It is clear. They, it is a brand saying to you, I know I don't have a lot of your attention, but I really want you to remember me like that. That's all that it's happening, right? So it's an important on your website pages, it's important in your emails, and it's very important when you have just two seconds and just six seconds. Especially 'cause on YouTube the difference of someone coming to your website.'cause you also have less than three seconds for people to decide whether they'll stay on your site.

Here's a huge difference: 29:45

someone had to make the decision to go to your site. On YouTube, the individuals are just spending time on a certain channel, so it's not like they've had to take a step to decide whether or not they want to pay attention to you. They're already actively paying attention to videos, period, which means. It opens you up to a much wider audience that did not search for you because they have a need. Maybe they do have a need, but like they're not actively going to make a purchasing decision, like they're not actively seeking. A provider or maybe following a recommendation, they have found you because you have putting ads aside slightly, you have good content, you seem personable. But now when we think of ads specifically, if you get in front of someone who needs what you're offering, you're gonna really make an impact there. Like you're gonna really capture their attention because now you have a wider audience that is. Hopefully if you've targeted well, and you've provided good content needing what you could offer them or being more, , interested 'cause they're watching the videos, they want to see what you have to say. So unlike those three seconds for your websites, like that's when you have a smaller group of people who have to already have made the decision to check you out. You actually have a built-in audience on YouTube that could get to your content. And what's so cool about the audience targeting options is like you actually can target people who are currently in market for what you offer, depending what you offer. So like, you know, someone who is in market for SEO and SEM services, or someone who's in market for email marketing services, or someone who's in market for website design development, there are thousand of these in-market audiences to choose from, where based on all of their online behavior. Google already knows this person is actively researching these products or services, and you can get an ad in front of them. But another kind of YouTube targeting that I find a lot of people don't know about is you can show YouTube ads to people based on things they've recently searched for on Google. So for example, if someone, let's say you sell running shoes, okay? You can show ads to people who recently search for Nike Running shoes. you try to show them a search ad. On Google at the moment, they're searching Nike running shoes. You're not gonna get a lot of luck'cause they're not looking for you and your cost per click there could end up being way higher can of worms. You won't open, but you can reach that exact same person later that day, the next day as they're on YouTube and reach them for, a 5 cent view instead of perhaps a $10 cost per click. Knowing it's the exact same person who searched for that thing yesterday. So that's another really great kind of targeting. It doesn't work in all Google Ads campaign types, but it does work when you're showing ads on Mm-hmm. that you can build your own audience of people who have searched for specific things and then show them YouTube ads. And so that's probably one of the most narrow. Kinds of targeting you can do, and a really way to get started if you are already advertising on Google search and wanna expand to YouTube. Or if you have worked really hard in your SEO, you have a good sense of the keywords you want and you wanna bring that information to YouTube advertising. Or if you just can't afford to advertise on Google search, like in my industry, if I try to advertise on Google Ads courses, I would expect to pay 20 to $30 per click. Yeah. search, 20 to $30 per click. That just doesn't work for my business model. Even if I had a 50% conversion rate, that wouldn't Yeah. model, but I can reach the exact same people who searched for Google Ads course on YouTube for 5 cents a view, and that's absolutely worth it. Would it be safe to say that like this specific thing of the opportunity here of what people are searching on Google, would be beneficial for people who are looking for, um. Like aligned audiences. So you mentioned a running shoe company, , and then they can target someone looking for Nike shoes. What I'm thinking, and I try to tell my clients a lot, is, it's sometimes it's harder to market for your exact thing or sell your exact thing, but it's easier to sell something that's related. So a website design person might be able to, you know, recommend me. Better than we talking about website design over and over again. They might want to invest some time and energy in talking about quality copy or they might want to even bring ads people on. But I hear the Nike example and it made me think like, uh, you know, people who do, um, what is it couch to 5K? Am I right? Like, like a running coach for example? That might be a really smart, um, step for them because a lot of the times people just don't know what to target. So. They might have really quality content for people who, they're looking for shoes, they're just starting running, and then they could advertise their, you know, running courses or like, you know, something to that effect. So that's what I heard, just as the marketer of like, well, it doesn't have to be exactly a shoe company. It could also be something that's like adjacent to your business. Um, so you're still meeting that need and you're just being introduced to a wider audience. I'm not understanding that incorrectly. Right. No, you can absolutely do that. It's actually something I call non-linear targeting, Yeah. of saying, I sell running shoes, I'm gonna target people in market for running shoes to selling running shoes. It's like, I sell running shoes. I'm gonna target people who are searching for marathon practice Mm-hmm. running Yeah. and whatever, because that also would be my audience. So you can absolutely do that, but I would go as far as say like you don't even have to go. That far. It depends what your industry is like. If you're trying to target people interested in running, there's in-market for running shoes, there's an affinity segment of running enthusiasts. There are in-market segments for other kind of athletic wear products. You can build your own custom segment based on things people have searched. There's so many different ways you can reach your target audience. Let's say's some selling something more complicated. Let's say that you're selling like B2B HR software. Okay? There's no box to tick for B2B HR software. So that's where you need to take this non-linear approach and think, okay, who is the person who buys? B2B HR software. And who is the person who influences the decision to buy B2B HR software? And so maybe we're actually looking to reach people who work in hr. Okay. What else are people who work in HR interested in? Maybe we wanna target people who've been searching for certain HR conferences or publications in that space, or different apps or websites that they tend to Mm-hmm. and on and on and on. So there's so many different ways to reach your audience, and I would say if you or like an e-commerce kind of company with a, I don't wanna say generic product, that's not fair, but like a product we all know and understand, there's probably an audience you can just tick the box for. If you sell something a little more different or custom or niche, then you can use things like building an audience based what people have searched for as a more targeted way to try to reach that audience. Yeah. And that's awesome. So before we end this episode, one thing I wanna make sure that we really talk about is actually the creative. That is being created because I think that we could probably have four episodes, truly five, six episodes on just YouTube ads and what they are and the different approaches, goals, how to measure conversions, investment amounts. But if your creatives stinks, again, you're just throwing money out the window because you might get, , results that wouldn't be your normal result, right? So if you're looking at data that is correct data, but it's because your ad was pretty stinky, you're gonna think, oh, I can't do this. This isn't fit for my industry., It's not gonna help my business. So do you have suggestions on, what makes a good YouTube ad? And how people can walk into filming their own ads more confidently, and know that it's gonna be not necessarily proven successful, but has much more opportunity to perform because they're, checking the boxes in the correct way. Absolutely. So I'll give two principles and then four tips, and this comes straight from YouTube, by the way. in their own research they've conducted. So first thing to know about YouTube ads and how they may differ from video ads on other platforms is by default, more than 90% are viewed with sound on. So if you're creating, for example, an Instagram ad, you know that a lot of that's gonna be viewed sound off, and that's gonna affect how you think about your ad. Most YouTube videos and ads are viewed sound on, so definitely think about that. It means that just putting, background music and having to like, have. Person talking, during the video to keep attention. The second thing I'll say is to design for mobile. People watch YouTube on their phones, they watch YouTube on their TVs and everything in between. But more than 70% of YouTube watch time does happen on mobile. So what I would say to that is like when you're editing your video, you're probably editing it on a computer as an exercise, drag your window really, really, really small. And watch your video at that scale to make sure that it's still legible. If you have text on screen, that if you're the main hero in it, you're not tiny in the middle, you're taking up most of the screen. Like really design with mobile first in mind. So those are two like mistakes to avoid. Make sure you're designing a video that is meant to be heard as well as seen, and make sure it's something that will look really good on mobile. And then the four kind of tips we get from, YouTube, it's called the YouTube, A BCD framework. But if you're gonna Google it, don't Google YouTube, A, B, C, D 'cause you'll get YouTube videos of people singing in the This happens to me all the time. I love that. YouTube, a, b, C, D framework to learn more about it. But I'll give you the quick preview here. So the A stands for attention. You wanna grab attention early. So this is not like a traditional TV commercial where we start and there's some intrigue and then we build towards our climax at the end. No, your climax needs to happen at the beginning to entice people to stay and watch the rest. So grab attention early. The Beast stands for brand, brand early and often it can be sticking your logo on screen, but it can also be within those first six seconds. You get for free, even if people choose to skip, make sure that a person on screen says the name of your brand or business in the first six seconds. If your brand colors are blue and gray, have the people wearing blue and gray or have them in a bluish gray setting, like really incorporate that branding early and often through the video. C stands for connect. You want to connect with the viewer through an emotion. And emotion doesn't need to be tear jerker emotion like humor is an emotion. Surprise is an emotion, but as you're drafting the story for your video, you wanna make them feel something. Maybe it's fear, and then you offer a solution, or maybe it's excitement or anticipation, but by creating une emotion, whatever the emotion is, you're going to foster a stronger connection. To your brand. This is not just applied to advertising, by the way. And then the fourth piece of the YouTube ABCDs is the D, Which stands for direct. You wanna direct the user to action. So assuming they have chosen to watch your video and they're not skipping and they've consumed it and we're getting towards the end, what do you want them to do next? Tell them, visit our website to learn more. You know, click the link to sign up Now, follow us to keep up to date or even something businesses do is in one of the final frames of the video is show someone searching for your brand on Google. Like maybe the thing you want them to do next is look you up. Uh, so don't forget at the end of the video, don't leave them hanging close the loop by directing them to take some kind of action. And those are the ABCDs. Which I, I mean, yes, that sounds perfect for YouTube, but like friends, I talk about this stuff all the time. I surely hope you're doing it elsewhere in your marketing because it's, it's not hard. It can be hard. Obviously everything with marketing can be difficult, especially for the tiny businesses. You only have so much time, energy, finances, but all of those things are truly what. You would do if you were meeting someone in person. You go to a networking event and you talk to, , let's say someone who owns a hairstyle, like a hair studio and you happen to be, a graphic designer and they're complaining that like their front of their store is always looking so dirty and they really wish it would be better. And you're like, " I make window designs like I could help you out." Like that's a normal conversation, but think of the emotion there, right? Like you, the connection's happening, they're, you're, that person is showing, they're frustrated and they've got concerns about their shop, and your enthusiasm of your expertise is doing it, and it's all happening quickly, and that's in person, so you can replicate that. And I don't think it has to be as hard, I think as we sometimes make it in our own mind, I don't think you need to have going to school to be, a videographer to be successful with your YouTube ads. I just think that like following some of these be best practices like you're sharing. Then making it repe, repeatable, like practicing your being on video and doing all of these things will make you a lot more confident in spending the money, using YouTube ads as an example to grow your business. And a Mm-hmm. get inspiration is there's something called the Google Ads Transparency Center. Which is like the Google Ads library. And so you can Google that and you can look up any business that's running ads. Oh, cool. I know you wanna look up your competitors, but put them to the side for now. Mm-hmm. up some of your favorite brands and Yeah. they're running video ads and if they are. Watch them Mm-hmm. what do I like about this and what do I not like about this? It can actually be more helpful to look at ads from industries other than yours because you might say, oh, I really like the structure of that. Let me replicate that exact structure in my own Yeah. if it's a competitor. You shouldn't do Yeah. the Google Ads transparency set, it will show all their Google ads, but you can filter it for video specifically and then see what video ads any business is running right now. And it could be a great way to get inspiration. And don't just look at like the Nikes and Lululemons of the Mm-hmm. They have huge budgets, like Yeah. other businesses, maybe one step ahead of yours, a similar size to yours, see what their ads look like. It's a great place to find ideas to get started with your own video ads. I love how you added that to the end, because this is something I am constantly trying to reframe my individual clients about. You think if you're going to work with a copywriter, they're obviously gonna ask you questions like, who is your competitors?, What brands do you admire? And I will hear a lot of, I mean, not recently at all, but like way back in the day, I used to always hear " I want a website like, Danielle Lapore or like Amy Porterfield," and I'm like, "well, okay, pause. They, they're not, they're not currently following the rules. They do not have to, their audience is ginormous, so they do not have to follow best practices. Like they, they can have messy navigations because the people who find their way there are already primed generally, like by referrals or ads or whatever." So. That's not a Nike obviously, but they are an example of a bigger brand that you might admire, that you can definitely take creative inspiration from and see what you like and see, like what you connect with. But then when you said that like you can go someone maybe one step ahead of you, that's who you really wanna pay attention to because. The flip side of what I'm saying is I have to constantly remind people that just because their competitors are visible does not mean that they are successful. I see a ton of backend stuff and, just because someone speaks loudly doesn't mean that they're actually bringing in the income or the promotions are working and people lie also. People feel uncomfortable looking at their , true competitors. So when you can shift it again to an adjacent field or, maybe like a software company, if you're a system strategist, look at HoneyBook ads. See what Honey Book's doing. They're not your exact competitor, but like it's going to give you inspiration and can teach you a little bit more that might actually successfully work for your business. Absolutely. I didn't come up with this, but, Netflix's biggest competitor isn't Disney Plus it's sleep. Oh, And so it's a great way to think about, I do love that. Mm-hmm. think about who your target audience Mm-hmm. and what are the other businesses Mm-hmm. they'll be interested in, and look to them for inspiration as well. Oh, I love that so much. All right, so listen, before we leave, we need to, obviously people can Google this, and this will be in the show notes, but I would love to direct people to your podcast, because it's both a podcast and a YouTube channel, correct? That's right, Okay. record my inside Google Ads podcast. As a video. So I post it on YouTube. It's also on all the podcast apps. So wherever you are Mm-hmm. right now, you can look up inside Google Ads and find my podcast as well. And then on my YouTube channel, I also will sometimes post different shorts. I host live streams, or I'll host, you know, some like newsier videos when Google announces new things. And I wanna break it down. It just doesn't quite fit a podcast episode. So I have a bit more stuff that goes on my YouTube channel as well. And you can find me on YouTube. I'm Jyll with a YJY. LL. If you just look up Jyll, Google Hmm. need to remember my last name, Yeah. me there. I am so glad you say this because whenever I am a guest on people's podcasts, and they'll say whoa, how can we find you? And a lot of the times I'm talking about copy and SEO and the end of the episode, I always get to say, you don't actually need to know how to spell my last name. If you just give it a chance, like type Erin Gorilla instead of Erin Ollila Google will be like, oh, I know her. No, no, no. I know. I know exactly what you're talking about. Because that's what quality content does for you, right? Having those five website pages with no blog and no podcasts and no YouTube presence. Now social helping with this because you can actually index social posts, but not having a presence anywhere is not going to allow Google to be your wingman. But if you have a presence, Google's just like, I got you. Jyll with the Y and like, you don't even have to talk about YouTube, just write video. We're good. I'll direct you to where I need to be. But I love that we have that similarity there.'cause I like cute and corny stuff and that works for me.. Me too. If you haven't figured this out yet, you, Jyll, is extremely, down to earth and approachable, but like you learn a lot from her. So I highly recommend actually like finding your way over right now to that YouTube channel because there's a lot that you can learn, and she doesn't. Obviously just focus on YouTube. This, she's the Google girl, so you'll learn a lot. And I kinda want you to waste your time elsewhere. Just, I'm telling you where to go. Go there. That's it. Thank you so much, Jyll, for being here today and sharing all this with my audience. Thank you so much for having me.