The beauty of YouTube is you have that customer there with intent - Talk Marketing 011 - Tom Breeze
The beauty of YouTube is you have that customer there with intent – Talk Marketing 011 – Tom Breeze
Martin: [00:00:00] Good morning, Mr. Breeze.
Tom: [00:00:06] Good morning.
How are you doing?
Martin: [00:00:08] Really well, thank you. How are you?
Tom: [00:00:10] Very good.
I love the how politely you started, a very British way of starting a podcast.
Martin: [00:00:15] Yes. I like to start off formally, who knows how far it will decline, how far into the gutter we’ll go. Man, thank you so much for agreeing to spend this time with me.
As you know, I’m on this mission, I feel I’m dumping everything I know about marketing on the world so maybe I could give up marketing in a year or two and feel like I fulfilled my responsibility to the world; they will know everything I know. As part of that, I’m dragging the most interesting people that I’ve met in marketing in the 15 years that I’ve been running Effective Marketing.
And you are on that list. So thank you so much for agreeing to spend this time with us.
Tom: [00:00:53] Of course. Well, thank you it’s a very lovely compliment to start the call off with
Martin: [00:00:57] That’s okay. You’re one of the most interesting people,
Tom: [00:01:00] One of the most, not the most, just one of the most. Yeah.
Martin: [00:01:04] Well, I suppose if we were looking at the data, you’d be the 11th most interesting person, because this is the eleventh one..
Tom: [00:01:09] How many people do you know on that list? Is there only 11 on that list?
Martin: [00:01:14] It’s just 11 people, thanks.
I know I’m scraping the barrel. It’s not true I was always intending to speak to you and it’s because you put a cheeky thing out, you tagged Jordan Peterson on a Facebook message saying, I can help you with your YouTube ads. I’m like, yes, I want to speak to Tom. Definitely.
Tom: [00:01:38] Okay.
Martin: [00:01:38] So the format is, you can let us know how you’ve got on with that, the format is literally how you are qualified to talk to us about marketing? I know your speciality is YouTube ads, so kind of how you’re qualified to talk to us about that, how you feel about marketing, kind of how you engage with your clients and what you offer to your clients.
And then also kind of your recommendation, your experience of going through this crazy situation that we found ourselves in the last 12 months. So the beginning is how are you qualified to talk to us about marketing?
Tom: [00:02:15] Good question. So marketing in general, I feel like I have a few tricks up my sleeve but I’m probably not the best generalist in the world. My specialist area is YouTube advertising, as you mentioned so that’s where I can go really deep. I’ve been doing it for eight years. Prior to that, I was doing a lot in video, I was doing a lot in the SEO world and I started moving into more of the advertising space. I think Iwas probably one of the first people to be advertising on the YouTube Ad platform.
Since then we’ve done everything in a performance-based model in our agency. So instead of me working with clients and doing a traditional model where we will, oh sorry, most agencies will charge a monthly fee and a percentage of ad spend, that would be a typical setup for most agencies. The way that we do things is different. What we do instead is we say to the client, we’ll do it purely performance based. So we’ll fund the advertising and clients pay us for an agreed result. That’s normally a good lead in, so to speak, to be like, I can talk about YouTube ads because my job is to get results for clients.
If that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have an agency. I’m glad to say the agency is going very and we have some amazing clients that we work with, but it, it does feel like a partnership with all of our clients because we’re only going to take clients on that. We can actually feel that we can get a great result with them and clients we want to work with, because we know it’s gonna be a long-term partnership.
It’s not gonna be the sort of thing where we’ll run it for three months and then they’ll say, great, I’m gonna move on to the next agency. We partner in such a way where like we’re in it for the long run and we’re willing to put over all of our resources into this. So we have a whole team of experts that are great on the scripting, the storyboarding, the editing, the running the accounts and the account management and everything else that goes with it.
We’re kind of like once we have a client on board, we’re all in with them. It just means that we have to be very careful about who we work with at the agency which is called Viewability. So that’s one part of what we do and then the other part of what we do is we have another company called Ad Buyers Club and that is like the training aspect to running YouTube ads.
So there we’ll train companies, almost like we say training, it’s more mentoring. We have the online training and things like that, but we don’t really sell that. We say, look, we’re going to mentor with you. For a period of time, normally 12 months, we turn people into YouTube ad buying pros and we’ve had some amazing results there as well.
Like people are spending now over 2 million, $2 million a month on YouTube ads, that’s USD, not some lower currency and that would only be working if it was very profitable and could scale. So I feel like in a unique position where I know that we have an agency doing this, but also I train people doing this as well.
So from that perspective, YouTube ads I can talk about all day long. But if you were to ask me more generally about marketing there’s probably better people out there.
Martin: [00:05:10] Okay. No, that’s cool. I’m really interested to speak to you about YouTube ads, as I’ve told you already I kind of have a vested interest because I’m about to test the water with some advertising.
I’m producing all this content and I need to kind of push it a little bit harder. So that’s interesting. And it’s kind of interesting that you are so specific because I don’t know if I have been as complimentary; the thing is, I think that marketing has, has been revolutionized clearly by digital and it’s become much more specialist than it’s become much more technical.
I think that it has made it more complicated and less accessible and I think it’s all become compartmentalised, whereas I’m a marketing generalist and I want to sit down and perform a strategy with someone, and I know enough about all of these things and where they fit into the puzzle. So I’m interested to speak to you about that. So I’ve just said a lot and you’ve not said very much, and your the interesting one in this conversation. So how do you, how do you feel about that?
Tom: [00:06:22] Very much so. I think that there are two aspects to running YouTube ads. You’ve got to have one foot inside of the creative world, which is where I think everything’s heading anyway; and you have to have another foot in the analytical, ad buying world as well, which is the more complicated, technical setup. Getting really good at YouTube ads you have to bridge those two pieces. So it’s very rare for someone to go into YouTube advertising and say they can nail it, it’s normally a team effort or someone who’s had just years of experience of doing it.
I know that when I first started out, I came from a more of a creative side and had to learn the technical side and I’m not natural at that. I can see it as a puzzle to, to figure out, but it’s, I wouldn’t say my deep down natural part of me is very analytical. I kind of, I can do it very well from a maths standpoint and I’ve come from that world as well when I did all my studies at university and things. I have an appreciation for it, its not a passion of mine to be diving into numbers all day and, and working with the numbers. The bigger aspect of this is the creative and that’s where you are pretty much looking at the brand and the strategy and what’s going to take for somebody to see your video and make a decision to click and go buy that’s not easy. That’s the bit where it alludes most people because they get comfortable in the numbers and can’t appreciate the creative or get so romantic with the creative side they forget about the numbers. It’s that marrying of those two pieces that really makes for a good YouTube Ad buyer. So back to your point definitely, I feel like there’s a, there’s a, there’s a movement which has been over the last 10 years or so where everything’s getting more and more analytical and very data-driven, which I fully appreciate, we’re starting to move away from that now because a lot more because the data world is changing. Apple and Facebook are having their arguments, Apple are not letting much of the data get back to Facebook. That’s going to make it very difficult for Facebook. That’s just, we’re just the start of this overhaul and this reform basically in the industry.
With that in mind, we’ve got to, as ad buyers got to look at the creative aspect and say, we’re not going to have the numbers we once had, we’re not going to have all this data generating these perfect audiences for us. It’s not going to be as easy any longer. We’ve got to get good at storytelling, video, from a messaging standpoint and make sure we know how to psychologically turn someone from a viewer into a customer. How you do that is, I’m more than happy to dive in to that, it’s the struggle that we’ll have over the next five years.
Martin: [00:09:09] Okay. Man this has got interesting quickly. So there’s two things that you’ve said I want to come back to. So the first; you’re doing this on a performance basis, so not on a commission basis, you’re actually funding the ads yourselves, we need to talk about that. And then there is, which I had no idea of, so you’re saying Apple are not is this through the Safari browser, providing Facebook or YouTube with the data. So they can’t provide you with the data? Is that what you’re saying?
Tom: [00:09:40] I mean, this gets complicated we are in the depths of it, right as we talk now and the new iOS 14 update from Apple will block a lot of the data going back to Facebook.
So this is only happening majorly on Facebook right now. It’s gonna be different on Google and other platforms, but basically what’s happening is Apple is saying way too much data is being shared across multiple platforms and apps, and they don’t like it. So if you’re going to use an iOS device and that’s normally going to be your iPhone, or it could be a a tablet, for example, if, when you go to Facebook, there’ll be an update very soon, if you haven’t had it already, which will say something, a prompt from Apple to say, would you like Facebook to track your behavior? And I mean, I don’t know exactly the wording they’re going to choose, but basically it’s written in such a way where you will say not a chance, I don’t advertisers to have all my data, thank you very much, and you’ll press no. That’ll be the one decision you make and you’re opting out of data basically. So when you use your app on your phone, what will happen is that as you see an ad, that will now be not personalized to you so you’ll start seeing probably more irrelevant, random ads. You still see as many ads, but they just wouldn’t be relevant anymore, so it’s not actually that great for the user, I don’t think, that’s to be seen. What will happen is that if you go click and buy the Facebook advertiser will see that you’ve made that purchase, that conversion will go through and you’ll see that in your ad accounts. Probably wouldn’t be as accurate as it once was; I’ll come back to accuracy and attribution in a minute, if you want me to. The fact is that if someone clicks that ad and outside of that one day window, and this is still up in the air of exactly what this is going to mean for everybody, if it’s outside of that one day window, so you click an ad and buy in three days time, let’s say Facebook, the actual ad platform won’t know about it, or won’t be able to report it to you because Apple won’t give that data back to Facebook.
I’m probably simplifying a little bit, there’s so much more complication that goes on. I might be talking out of turn a little bit, cause I’m not the expert on this area, but basically what’s going to happen is that Facebook can’t get all that data back in and that’s how they build their custom audiences, their look alike audiences and everything like that and it’s gonna get patchy. They are starting to work on models that will hopefully be able to use machine learning to predict it, whether that’s going to be accurate, I don’t know, or not. But basically at the end of this, Facebook’s gonna have a really turbulent time until they find a model that will kind of work at some level.
And if you’re very, very data-focused and building audiences on Facebook focused, your ad performance is going to go terribly. You’ve got to start looking at it from a standpoint of what do we want to say to our customers so that we know there’s a very good chance of those people becoming customers.
We’re not going to be able to track everything as accurately as we’d like. We can track it in our CRM more accurately, but we can’t get that data back into the ad accounts very easily. You can do things called Facebook Click IDs and Google Click IDs, you can get that data back in, but it’s not gonna be able to build you further audiences off that. This conversation goes much more complicated, much deeper, and we’re still in the midst of it so I don’t know what the outcome will be. Just, I know we’re in for a very turbulent time and this is just the start of what will happen over the next five to 10 years.
Martin: [00:13:15] Wow. Okay. So this is kind of relevant also, I think, to why people find it difficult to invest in marketing because it’s, and especially digital marketing, it’s constantly changing. It’s constantly evolving and it’s getting more technical and more difficult and it’s, it’s hard to stay on it, but this is the point that I’ve made. I’ve been saying to people that I’ve worked with, I’ve trained since 2008, make hay while the sun shines, because it can’t ever be, it can’t be this good forever, you know, and we’ve seen that with like Facebook Edge Rank. Everything has got demonstratively worse for the marketer, you know, arguably for the user. Okay. So that’s really interesting. And Facebook, you’re talking about Facebook because you build audiences from, from Pixel and those kinds of things is that…
Tom: [00:14:09] I’m talking about Facebook as it’s happening there most now. Google that’s slightly different. Remember Facebook really, for most people is an app and that’s, if they’ve got an iOS device, that’s where you go for Facebook.
Now, some people will use Facebook on their desktop. I don’t know how much of a percentage of it will be. It depends on that different businesses, but I know it’s going to be more on mobile devices. With Google they’re switching how they’re doing the tracking and they’re being a bit clever about it.
So they’ve got, Google have got about 50 times more data on people because they’ve been around for a lot longer. Also you use Google in so many different ways. They’ve got like, if you use your Google Maps, if you use if you use Google Sheets, Google Docs, G- Suite, or whatever it’s called now, if you use Gmail, if you’re using a Google platform, if you’re using YouTube, they can get data on you from everywhere. It’s not just because you’re logged in as a user, they’re getting information from everywhere. They are changing that tracking behavior or the tracking methods and as a result of that, they’re bypassing this issue with, with Apple so that this prompt won’t come up for you. You can still opt out if you really want to, as a user, you have to kind of find it though in your settings , and no one’s going to do that, but you’re not getting this prompt. I mean, it’s just first wave so don’t, it’s not sure what’s going to happen in the next five years and 10 years, but I know that Apple don’t want data being shared so freely. And I think it’s a good thing, I think the world is going to be a better place and social media be a better place cause you’re not going to get this; we aren’t going to get so many issues with what advertisers are doing. It’s going to change the world from an advertising perspective. But Google , I think, will be a little bit more delayed.
They have a much more data so they can predict more accurately and they can start to get data back into your account with better accuracy is my prediction. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, and how much of an impact it will have because how many people are using the app to make a purchase? Lots of people using Google and YouTube on desktops and multiple other platforms as well and they can stitch all that data together. So I don’t think Google going to get hit quite so hard, but because Facebook’s more of a isolated app by itself, that’s going to get hit hard first and we’ll see where we go from there. But it’s, it’s almost like all out war for Apple and Facebook, and it feels like Google and Apple have worked and collaborated together through this period.
So it feels for me, I’m just pure to YouTube so I don’t know this inside out, but I just know that if entrepreneurs who are using Facebook ads as a main source of their traffic right now, and they’re not really, really savvy they’re in . I’ll prefer to say it now, it’s almost like now is a time to do something about it and the way to do it, to kind of get ready for it is to understand how to track your customers most accurately. Platforms like Wicked Reports is a great thing to invest in because whilst it’s expensive, you can start to get all the data into your account and see exactly what’s happening and then you can see how you relay that back into your ad accounts. But people are, it’s like flying blind soon and Facebook just won’t be able to help you and that’ll be a big problem.
Martin: [00:17:28] Okay. And do you think that Apple is doing this for the good of the users and the good of the world? Or do you think there must be some commercial aspect to this? They don’t want Facebook being as successful or benefiting from their users commercially? Maybe. I don’t know. I’m just cynical.
Tom: [00:17:47] Well, yeah, I understand, I think probably it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple bring out an advertising platform soon, that would not surprise me. And so it might be a kind of, a bit of warfare in that way like we’re going to get all the app buyers and all the activity happening on Apple now, not on Facebook so much and make it more difficult for other platforms.
That’s a little cynical maybe from me, but I don’t put it past Apple. Apple make their money from selling products right? And they create products for their users and they want their products to be as best as possible and if you’re using apps where you getting frustrated with those apps, that’s coincided with your experience on the iPhone. As a result, they’re going to be like, well, we don’t want the experience to be bad, why is it bad? Oh, it’s because they’re tracking people in this way, that’s not great, we can stop that from happening and therefore this product becomes better for our user. I think the Apple are quite right in that stance. I think it’s actually a very, very good thing. I much prefer that than governments trying to come in and try and sort things out because if you ever saw like how Zuckerberg was treated, when they were trying to get into their understanding of how this data is being shared, they just didn’t have a clue what they’re even talking about. It’s not like governments can step in, someone like Apple can step in and has done a very good job of that. The thing that I think is the overriding problem with someone like Facebook, and I’m an advertiser so I’m speaking from this as a user’s perspective. I love getting lots of data and using it to run better ads, don’t get me wrong. That’s kind of my, my day in, day out. But when, when a platform like Facebook is using all this data to continue showing you ads, you end up realising that the user’s -not independent, the user is the product. That’s what Apple will say, is that you end up in a situation where like, without the users, there is no Facebook, cause it’s not anything but the users and our users being exploited for ads and the profit of that is just going back into the Facebook platform.
I don’t know how I feel about that. I’ve got mixed feelings around it, but I know that something has to change and I’m glad that Apple are doing it rather than legislation from governments.
So yeah, I mean, I, it feels like I’m right at the edge of where I know where we’re at right now and I, I don’t know how to talk about it more without getting lost myself. I have opinions, but they’re not founded in lots of facts because there just aren’t the facts yet. So I feel like I’m out of my depth a little bit going any further on this topic, but it’s it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a big moment and I think it’s, it’s a good time for YouTube advertising because I don’t think we’re going to hit get hit nearly as hard.
However, we’re still going to get hit for sure. It’s just more that like we have, we just prep as, as best as possible for the upcoming changes.
Martin: [00:20:47] Okay, cool. I don’t need you to go further. You’ve already blown my mind, man. I had no idea this is going on so you don’t need to get any more technical, any more detailed, we’re good. What did I want to say? What I wanted to say is, because this is going, you’ll have seen the Social Dilemma thing I got really mad about the Social Dilemma thing. … so I wanted it..
Tom: [00:21:10] That’s the Netflix thing.
Martin: [00:21:11] Yeah.
Tom: [00:21:12] That’s exactly what we’re talking about here. Like Facebook have all this data on us are using it and exploiting the user really.
Martin: [00:21:19] Yes. And I can imagine if I was Apple, I wouldn’t want another corporation taking my customers and turning them into product. That’s of course, you wouldn’t want that. Apple could come up, when you say Apple could come up with an ad platform, you’re talking about a social media , is that what it would have to be?
Tom: [00:21:40] No, I think that it’s just ads coming up on your phone. It doesn’t have to be on the social media platforms. Just like, it’s just yeah, like I’m sure they can get ads in front of us in multiple ways based on whatever app you’re using. They’ll have a whole heap of different ways of getting ads in front of us, for sure.
Martin: [00:21:56] Yes. Okay. So we’re talking iOS devices, we’re not talking desktops, Mac desktops aren’t a significant enough part of the market. Okay. So that’s interesting, YouTube, if you access it, I’m not an iPhone user, but I imagine it’s the same as on my Android, if I access YouTube it’s through the app. So there could be, they could be something there or that you just think that Apple and Google are playing nicely, more nicely, together?
Tom: [00:22:26] They’re kind of working together to get to an end result that kind of works based on Apple’s hard stance. So again, there’s been one of a series of four presentations from Google at this stage of how to prepare and what this is going to mean. The biggest thing that I’ve noticed from that so far is that two things will be coming from Google and YouTube, one, they won’t have the prompt for users to opt out, so that will bypass that because they’re changing their conversion tracking model. And the second thing, as well , because Google has so much more data on us and they can collect data from multiple places, there’ll be much better at predicting what happens.
So when we’re running the ad accounts, we can normally see a bit more accuracy. Accuracy is such a huge thing though, because attribution and accuracy, like if you run an ad from YouTube, let’s say, well, let’s say for example, I ran an ad from YouTube and you saw my ad. Now you might’ve loved that ad and thought, this is brilliant, but didn’t click because.
Either, you’re kind of not ready to click. You had something else in your mind, but you’re like, Hey, that was a, I like that. I like that guy maybe. And from there you may then go to Google and type in Tom breeze or whatever you would type in Viewability or a Ad Buyers Club or something, and you would type it in, you’d do more research and then you’ll go buy potentially.
Okay. Now in that instance, you can start to say, well, what happened there? Because you saw my ad and then you went to Google, maybe saw a different ad of mine. That’s running on Google and then you bought, and I can probably see that in my account. I think that’s, I know I could, but how much do you weight the conversion based on what your interaction was like? Would you say that YouTube did the work and turned you into a customer or did Google do the work and turn you into a customer? Because without boosts, that would never have happened. Like if you went to YouTube and you saw it, then you Googled me, you wouldn’t find me and lose interest, then, all of a sudden, you’re no longer a customer. So the Google ad did something, it was the last thing you clicked on before you became a customer. But that would never have worked if it wasn’t for YouTube, and YouTube would have never worked if it wasn’t for Google. Now, it’s quite easy because it’s one platform and you can start to see the interaction there, but things get a little bit more complicated when you don’t do it on a Google platform.
So let’s say, for example, you click on my ad on YouTube, you go to my website, or a page, or a blog page, or something along those lines. You interact on that page. If you spend more than two minutes on this blog page, then I want to drop a pixel on you, a remarketing or retargeting pixel on you. Then, seven days later, you see an ad of mine that is targeting you based on that recent behavior on my website, you now see an ad from me on Facebook, at that point, Facebook then advertises to you, you’ll see the ad on Facebook, you click and buy. That is a little bit more complicated because you’re saying, well, the Facebook ad would never have even appeared if you weren’t on my website to begin with, so how do, how do you weight the, the ads at that point. Then you’ve got an even more troubling aspect, which is, what happens when a I’m bigger brand and I’m running TV ads, radio ads, billboard ads, and I could never track you in the first place? What happens then? And things get really complicated then. Cause you’re like, well, how do I actually weight the conversion? Like if I had a billboard ad and then you clicked, Oh no we can’t click on a billboard ad, but then you went to Google and searched and you saw my Google ad, you clicked on it, waited three days, and then you saw a Facebook ad and then you bought. Alright, well, what was the customer journey like? Do we just attribute that all to Facebook cause that was the last click? Or do we look at everything else that happened and things we can’t even track as well? So when people talk about accuracy, they’re normally, most laymen, are talking about the last click.
Like what was the last thing you clicked on to become a customer and I’m going to take it all from there. So that’s what they deem as accurate. So there’s no such thing as accuracy in the first place, you’re just looking at trends of data. You’re saying, all right, that Facebook retargeting ad works really well, but something was happening over here that’s created that bond with the brand, or an experience with the brand, and then they just happened to see the Facebook ad and click from there and go buy. So then you’re saying to yourself, well, If we’re going to take a step back from this and realise that all of this can’t be tracked anyway, we’re just tracking a limited amount of data and then we’re deeming that as completely accurate. You’re still dealing with a whole myriad of different experiences that people can have, and then they go buy. That’s what I’m trying to say, is that it doesn’t matter about all this tracking to a certain extent. You want to try and be as accurate as possible so you can see the trends of the data, but it’s just that, it’s just trends. When you’re looking at what all of the exposure is doing, and if you get bigger, it gets more complicated. If you’re smaller, you can kind of niche it down to become a little bit more siloed with your approach and be able to look at it from a standpoint of, if I’m trying to track everything, don’t forget the message, and the connection you have with a customer is far more important. If you see a killer billboard ad that’s just amazing, and people rave about it, and talk about it, and share it everywhere, but you can’t track any customers from that accurately.
You could do a separate URL perhaps, and have a unique offer on there. But if you got a big brand, you’re not going to be able to do that. If it was like a Prada, for example, and it’s an amazing ad and everyone then types in Prada and go buy Prada have got a problem on their hands because they’re like, well, not a problem, they’ve got a load of new customers, and it’s working really well, but they’re just going to have to attribute it in a way that makes sense to them.
They’re not going to have the numbers in a spreadsheet, or numbers in an ad account, that proves that, it’s going to be a far more difficult to see that data. Does that mean, just because you can’t track it, you wouldn’t run that billboard again? Of course not, you would continue running it.
So you’ve got to look at the trends of the data, and you’ve got to be really clear with the messaging you want to have, and data is getting more and more sketchy regardless, and it’s only gonna get worse as we go on. So you’ve got to start focusing a lot more on what impact you’re having with your customers through your ads and not look at everything as well, if the data doesn’t support it, we’ve got to turn it off. Get as much data as you can and try and see those trends as accurately as possible so you know what to keep on doing and stop doing, but on the whole, if you’re, if you’re very profitable because your messaging is good, life becomes a lot easier.
Martin: [00:29:12] Wow. Can I just say this is exactly the conversation I was hoping to have, exactly the conversation. Because there’s another two things I’m going to have to start writing stuff down. And if you’re going to drop two amazing points every time you open your mouth. All right. So remind me the first one. What was the first one? Your funding ads. I think you answered the second thing here is you’re talking about the customer journey and I’m, and I really want to talk to you about that because that for me is an issue, that for me is a challenge for specialists like you. So I want to talk to you about that. The third thing that you said is, is basically about the data becoming less and less, or sketchy is the word that you used so let’s use that word. Now, I’m not operating, I’m a generalist, I’m running some campaigns for some customers still. Yesterday we had occasion to look, like clearly I haven’t been marketing my website for six years and we’ve just started again. It’s all looking nice, we’ve trebled things in, in a month, you know, it’s easier when the numbers really small to start with. We Had occasion to go and look at, we look every month at the Search Console data and it’s clearly broken, because on Analytics it’s telling us that we’ve had X number of visitors and or clicks and from search and on search console, it’s giving us a much smaller number, so it’s broken.
Okay, so now we have to look then we start looking at a few clients and comparing. What we realize is that the two sets of data from Google, not Google/ YouTube, Google, are completely conflicting. So we concluded well,
Tom: [00:31:03] Do you care?
Martin: [00:31:05] I do care if I’m reporting it to a, to a client because they might come back to me and say, we need you to justify this because we’re looking at something different, this is where it gets sketchy. You know what I mean? I don’t, I don’t particularly care. I think as long as we, well, what I’m interested to do in my reports from my clients is, is report progress. As long as there is progress, everyone’s happy. So as long as I, like, we always go to Search Console for the data, we never had cause to go and check it against analytics so that’s fine.
The temptation is now to say, okay, but Analytics is reporting more, let’s, let’s use that data in future, you get a hit in one month and then it’ll go terrible after that. But that gives people a sense. Now I would’ve known this when I was proactively winning customers and running lots of campaigns I would have known this, and I did know this, but yesterday when I came to look at it again, it’s still shocked me that the data could be so different.
This goes to the core of digital marketing. You and I, and everyone we know in digital marketing has pitched digital marketing because of the data, because of the knowability, because it’s not like putting up a billboard, it’s not like running a TV ad, it’s not like putting an ad in a magazine; you can see exactly what’s working, you can see exactly what’s effective. Then you can go to the level you’ve taken it to with YouTube and you can turn that screw infinitely to get more, and more, and more value.
So the question is then is digital marketing in trouble if the data’s not going to be available any longer?
Tom: [00:32:40] Digital marketing’s not in trouble; people who think that digital marketing is about data are in trouble. That’s the difference. Like it’s like those people saying, Oh stop doing the TV ads because we can’t track it. It’s like, what are you talking about? That’s ridiculous. What if the TV ads are the best thing you had? Just cause you can’t track it you wanna stop it, that’s the worrying thing. People are black and white with it, they poopoo it immediately, can’t track it, no point. It’s like what? We run some campaigns and we were always performance based, but we do campaigns for massive brands and household brands.
I don’t wanna mention any right now, but like household brands that you would, you would know, maybe not in Bali, but definitely in the UK and US and places like that. With those guys there’s two things. Okay. So if they’ve been going crazy on brand, and brand awareness, the digital marketers normally hate that because they can’t track it and there’s no end result, or they can track it, but it’s not as easy. If they did a massive TV ad campaign, this big brand, it’s a digital marketers nightmare because what result is that bringing? I couldn’t track it. And it’s not easy, right? Unless you get a very direct response type TV ad, and then you had it running it four o’clock in the morning or something and then be like, ah, four o’clock the morning, we saw this big peak so we’re going to attribute that all to that ad that we ran. But big brands run ads all the time. If I stop the activity and then say, right, no more ads running and we’ll start running performance-based campaigns, we’ll start running them and we’ll notice that we get great results and we can normally sit back and be like, the power of the brand, right? Our ads, all the performance ads, are so much easy to run because everyone is thinking about that brand or aware of that brand, well, that’s just that brand. That’s just Prada of course, Prada are going to convert. Yeah, they had to spend a fortune on branding so you know who that brand is in the first place, and get in your brain, so you remember who they are, that is such a powerful asset for years to come. So anytime you’ve run a performance-based campaign and they see it’s from Prada, I don’t dunno why I keep on using Prada but you get the point, you’re going to be like …
Martin: [00:34:56] They aren’t going to be sending you handbags cause you keep mentioning them.
Tom: [00:35:00] They can right? My weekend get up is not going to be the same without it, but there we go.
But the, the fact is like, you can look at your performance based campaigns. You’d be like, guys, we’re working with one of the biggest brands in the world of course a performance-based campaigns are much easier to get good results on because everyone knows who this is, and everyone trusts the brand, and everyone’s got great experience, and they’ve got all the elements that you would want to run a really good performance based campaign. But it cost them a fortune to get that in the first place. People ignore all that hard work, that is the brand piece. That’s probably the most valuable piece just because it’s not trackable, easily, and people are like, well, sod that, don’t do that, just focus on the ads that turn a customer from cold to warm to, to a new customer. In that one experience, like that’s hard
That’s what I do all day, that is hard. It’s not as easy as it’s, well, it’s, it’s easy when you know what you’re doing, but it won’t be easy forever because platforms get more complicated, more difficult to run, and it’s not simple. That’s kind of why people should not look at digital marketing as a, get in, do it and kind of like, see what sort of results they can get; this is a career. You gotta be in it for the long run and ride those waves because I’ve been through the SEO waves where everything was brilliant and then everything was cutaway; I’ve been through the ad journey where everything was brilliant and everything was cut away from me.
We’re in another situation now where data has been freely available for everybody and it just won’t be that way. In the space of a few weeks and in the space of a few years, it just won’t be available for people, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop and doesn’t mean I’m going to, because I can’t track things it doesn’t mean that it’s not working. It’s just that you’ve got to look at the trends and look at a little bit of the broader picture, get as much data as you can, but know that you’re going to be dealing with limited data.
Mike Rhodes is a brilliant advertising expert, very, very good. On the Google side. He explains it by saying, let’s imagine that you were to go to a pub and you were to have 10 pints and you’re going to get drunk, unless you’re a real…. for me, five is probably fine for me but if you were have 10 points that evening, or swap some of those drinks, so you can say, right at that point, I’ll have a Gin and Tonic or something, but you know, you’re going to have a good night with that much drink in you. In the morning afterwards, you’ve got a hangover.
How would you attribute that hangover? You don’t say, it was that fourth pint I had, that was the one that got me, the rest of them, nothing involved with any of that, that was just precursors, that was just nothing, but that fourth one really got me. That’s how advertisers are thinking about it at the moment. They’re thinking that one action caused the result and it’s not, it’s all 10 actions caused the result. How do you track that? You track it as best you can, look for the trends of the data, but at the end of the day that one beer wouldn’t have got you drunk. 10 beers got you drunk, they all worked together and you’ve got to look at that from that perspective.
If you swapped one of those beers out with a Tequila Chaser, then that probably had more of an impact. I’m sure you can kind of get the idea here is, is, is a, it’s a whole theme of activity that’s going on. So when people look at the data like, Oh, well, here’s how much my blog traffic got and things that’s useful, but it’s not where it ends, at the end of the day as a performance marketer from my side, I’m saying to the client, what’s going to make this work and make you really happy. They’re like, well, at the end of the day, we’ve got to sell this. I’m like fine. Now let’s focus on doing that. And it might be that we have to do some branding activity here, might be, we’ll have to do some kind of ads over here that are much more performance based as a YouTube advertiser. I’m kind of lucky because I get that whole experience from a YouTube ad itself, because you can run a long ad and you can get all those elements into the ad and create a really clever ad and do the lead gen, or do the customer acquisition model that you need to push and you get all of that in one sitting with YouTube. Which is why I like YouTube so much.
People have to take a step back and realize that there’s more, it’s not that one ad that did all the heavy lifting, it was everything that went into it.
Martin: [00:39:14] I do this. . When I teach digital marketing, I play what I call, I do it for the Digital Marketing Institute, so I call it Digital Marketing Institute fantasy football manager, digital marketing channel selection something.
And so what I’d do is I’ve got them learning…
Tom: [00:39:37] Catchy
Martin: [00:39:37] …it’s really catchy. Yes. It’s flying, flying. I put all the logos on and I say, okay, your job is to put these in kind of the formation. So which of the digital marketing platforms do you put in goal? Which ones are your defense? Which one are your midfield, feeding the attackers, scoring the goals. It doesn’t really matter what formation they end up in. It’s a great rest for me because the group will argue for half an hour about it, so that’s fantastic. And it doesn’t matter what they come up with. What’s important is for me as an integrated marketer, cause that’s what I push, is that you have to do everything and find what works. For me, what’s important is that people understand the different roles that the different platforms play in the customer journey. I think you’re right, apart from YouTube is only one of those platforms.
So that brings us brilliantly back to this idea of a customer journey. So for me, I know it’s more complicated than this, but for me, all of the things that you kind of tend to talk about are display advertising, which is about generating awareness, which is absolutely a hundred percent necessary.
People don’t think about that. There are things. So it’s all kind of brand marketing, which is hugely, hugely powerful of course, and necessary. But it is still display marketing, display advertising, like the billboard, like the TV, like the, the, the magazine. And you’ve said already that this is hard work taking people from there to customer, to action.
So this is nice because this brings us back to the first point, which is about you funding their ads. So explain to us how that’s different from me taking out a full page ad in the Guardian for my customer, me paying for it and getting paid on the basis of the performance of that when you’ve told us already how difficult it is to actually attribute any of these things.
Tom: [00:41:38] Good. Okay. Yeah. So when we do performance-based advertising, we’re not doing the brand piece. I’m saying that that piece is really important and most digital marketers forget about it because it can’t be tracked. It’s such an important piece, but we don’t do it. We’re not brand advertisers where direct response advertisers.
So we’re like saying, Hey, it’s just easier if they’d done all the branding activity beforehand, much easier. So there’s huge amount of value in that. But that’s kind of what you’re talking about where the digital marketing space is going. I think that people are gonna have to start investing a lot more in their brand in order to get better results and that’s always been true. It’s just that we’ve been, we’ve got away with having great data, which has made, made it easy to run those performance based campaigns, which is going away. Now from a performance-based activity, if I was to, if you had to take a full page out in the Guardian, let’s say, I don’t know how much that would cost that say, it’s gonna cost you a half a million to run a big campaign like that in the Guardian newspaper.
Then what you would need to do is you’d need to feel comfortable with the fact that you can send them somewhere that will be unique for that activity. So let’s say for example, there was an exclusive offer and only one place you can get that from. If the brand name was something like , it couldn’t be Prada, if you did that for Prada for example, because people just know the brand Prada, but if it was like a new, new brand that no one’s seen before, but they’re like, Hey, I’ve not seen this brand before, that’s pretty cool. You would want to have an exclusive URL for them. I don’t know, if it was, give me a brand because I just thought of something that is probably wildly inappropriate.
Martin: [00:43:18] The Effective Marketing Company
Tom: [00:43:20] An internet marketing company. Okay, fine.
Martin: [00:43:21] The Effective Marketing Company
Tom: [00:43:23] Effective marketing, did you say yes?
Martin: [00:43:25] Yes.
Tom: [00:43:26] Okay. Effective Marketing Company. So you might buy the domain name, EFM.com. If you could afford it, and it was available, efm.com and you might say, go there and it’s the page, website you build purely for this offer. You send traffic there, then any traffic that hits that page, you know, it’s come from one of your billboard or your Guardian ad activity. Then you can say, right, that traffic is purely from that ad, it can’t there from anywhere else because no one’s searching for EFM. EFM might be too broad, you get the idea. You can kind of go for that.
Martin: [00:43:57] Yes, yes, yes.
Tom: [00:43:58] And then from there, and the website itself, you could track everything there. You’re not going to be able to track everything a hundred percent, but you can have a far easier time of keeping an eye on what works. Now, you can do the same thing on YouTube but you actually have a clickable link on YouTube, so you can send them to a very specific website or page and a website, and you can track that pretty accurately
Martin: [00:44:21] Or you could give them a UTM link.
Tom: [00:44:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You also get UTM data, which is like, where you say it came from this campaign, this targeting , this ad, and I’ll have a long string of data basically of UTMs on the end of your. Domain name and that’s useful. That could be also generated from running your ads, you also get something called a Google Click ID. A Google click ID is where Google naturally append a Google click, special code, basically on the URL itself.
So then if you did sign up inside of my CRM, if I’m the client, inside of my CRM, I’ll be able to find that data to be like, ah, you came in under that Google Click ID and I can track that. Then you can get that Google Click ID to import back into your ad account. That will give your ad account exactly the information you need from that so you can get that data back into your account.
It’s just, it’s not going to be able to be used in the way that Facebook wants to use it. It’s just purely reporting it rather than building more data off the back of that activity. So you can still see what’s happening inside your accounts, you do need a bit of software, but you can do it manually.
It’s probably best to get a bit of software like Wicked Reports; Hi Ross is another one, there’s platforms out there that can do it for you and do all the UTM tracking and that type of stuff as well. It means that you can get very accurate data that way. I would never send traffic to a page without those UTMs or where you are always gonna have to go Google Click ID, but I would want to be making sure that the client can get really clear with my traffic as I send it through. And then from there I can look at the next milestone that I’m getting paid out on. Whether it be a lead, a sale, I’ll try and track everything I can. But again, it’s trends of data. And what we’re looking to say is like, okay, well through that activity, how many of those people became customers?
Their CRM won’t lie. If you’ve got a hundred customers, you’ve got a hundred customers in your CRM, there’s no doubting that, or through your shopping carts or whatever it is you want to see, like, that’s exactly what it is. That’s how much money is in the bank. I can’t deny that, that is what’s happened.
Whether you still show a hundred sales in your ad account is different. You’re probably not going to see a hundred sales, you probably gonna see maybe 80 sales and in the future, it might be 60 sales in your ad account and that’s what you’re working with, trends of data. You’re saying, I know there was a hundred.
but for my, for my ad account, is seeing 60, I can support that with doing the G-Cloud upload and get a hundred back into the account as well. So I can do it very, very accurately like that. But the, on the whole, like when I’m doing performance-based advertising, I’m saying to the client, what’s a trackable end result that I can get paid out on that you would feel very comfortable paying a certain amount on,
and that’s the figure we try and work towards. And, and then attribution’s always gonna be a question Mark, but if they know they’re happy to pay that price, then that’s what I get paid for.
Martin: [00:47:21] Okay. So let’s come back to this you can’t track the display brand type stuff because actually you can, but what they don’t want to do is they don’t want to compare apples with apples.
So in the old days, which you’re not old enough to remember, but I am just about, I started selling advertising in magazines and we lied to them, and we had certificates, but like, to them though, like industry certificated lies. It was literally, we had readership certificates that said basically 3.5 people read every issue that we send out,
so our circulation is X and our readership is, is three and a half times that. They had no way of knowing that they had no way of knowing that. So it was a complete lie. So for me, there’s kind of a scale. You go from the billboard, you might know what the traffic flow is past that billboard. You don’t have any idea how many people are going to look up, you have no idea how many people are gonna care .
And then you go through newspaper magazines so you can say, well, at least we’re in the women’s fashion section with our Prada ad so we get a sense of how many people, we know how many are sold, blah, and that goes all the way through something like Facebook. Somebody I know, somebody who’s quite a respectable lecturer in digital marketing calls Facebook the 21st century publishing fraud. Basically what they are is publishers and they’ve never paid anyone to produce anything, it’s insanely good. But then you go through to, again, to something like YouTube, and YouTube is more interesting because YouTube is display advertising, we can compare it to the TV, but they are offering content at least, or, and we’ve always got a sense that that content has to be supported, paid for somehow.
So that kind of makes sense, but it’s also a search engine. So it’s where people go to ask questions. So YouTube probably falls somewhere between that and like a search page where people literally go to buy things, you know? So I see how it’s valuable, but the way you’re kind of hedging your bets is by making sure that you’re at the sharp end.
So in my fantasy football 11, you’d be the strikers because you are doing very direct response, lead stuff to get people to click, and then you can track them.
Tom: [00:49:45] Just go back to your fantasy football activity. Yeah. Like I would be more upfront scoring the goals, putting the ball in the back of the net. I may be diving back into midfield to find those audiences in the first place, but with YouTube I can do that.
Like I can’t survive without, like I can survive without a brand activity, but there’s certain things I can’t survive without. I can’t magic and add up out of nothing. There’s going to need to be some credibility of the brand. There’s going to need to be a claim they can stand behind. It’s going to be some, it needs to be some testimonials, or some sort of method, or demonstration of their product.
I need those assets. Otherwise I’m not going to create a good ad. But I can go from scratch and say, all right, give me those bits and I can find a cold audience and turn them into customers and I do the very best job I can. Going back to the tracking thing is like the beauty of YouTube is that you were giving people an experience
and this is video, not just YouTube, but you’re giving people an experience that they won’t forget. Not to say they’re going to buy immediately but if you saw a text ad or a billboard ad, it may stay in your brain for maybe five, 10 minutes unless it’s, it’s really, really good. With a video that might be three minutes in length, and you’re telling a story, and you’re giving good content and sharing with them the opportunity and getting them excited.
They may never forget your ad. You know, it’s, it’s quite a big impact and so what I’m saying is that like, don’t, just because it’s not clicking and people aren’t going to buy at the same rates as something else that was really spammy and click baity. That’s people like, Oh, I want to click that and get that thing and then get that
and they’re disappointed; if you have that amazing ad and it really motivates people and excites them and seizes up new opportunity, you don’t have to ask for the click right then to get the click through rate up. You might just be like, Hey, that’s a big moment for the brand, terrible click through rates,
doesn’t matter. People wouldn’t buy from it, didn’t really matter because you’ve got a great experience in front of people. The next touch point, they’d be like, Oh yeah, I remember this brand and that first impression really makes a difference, you know? It’s I very rarely pitch anything to anybody, like the agent.
We don’t do too much outbound marketing in our agency or outbound marketing and Ad Buyers Club, we do calls like this and stuff, but it’s always value first. So people might one day want to become a YouTube ad buyer and they’ll be like, actually, hang on a second. Maybe I should go and learn from Tom.
Or if they’ve got a company, I might think actually, do you know what, maybe let’s go to viewability and use them. I’m not interested in saying like, okay, here’s my call to action off the back of this podcast or something like, cause it’s not important to me I’m more much prefer to put good message out there, build a brand of people saying Tom Breeze is the YouTube ads guy go to him for his agency, go to him for his brand, and people, other people carrying that message because I’ve given them good value.
That’s the, that’s the piece that people forget when it’s purely direct response and purely focused on turning and doing a striker activity. It’s like, I’m going back and doing like the defense, the goalkeeper and everything, in your scenario to build that, cause then the strike has got an easy time of it.
Martin: [00:52:58] Yes. The thing is, I think like you, I’m a bit of a camera geek. What I spend my money on, now that I’m old ,is basically photography equipment. The buyer has to go on that journey. You know, I have to see the new panning, tilting, blah, blah, blah, maybe 400 times before I start thinking, you know what
I probably should have one of those, you know? And then. And then I start and then I’d go back to YouTube cause now I’m looking for reviews of that thing, and then I might Google it to see if it’s actually available in the world where I am. You know what I mean? So you have to go on that journey and the point I was talking about.
Tom: [00:53:37] Yeah. Imagine that like, so I think you said Canon right as, as a brand for the camera.
Martin: [00:53:41] No, it didn’t Canon, definitely not.
Tom: [00:53:44] Okay. Well that says, you know who I mean by Canon, right? And you didn’t like that, but who was the brand?
Martin: [00:53:48] I said panning, tilting, electronic head or something is what I say.
I’m a Sony user now.
Tom: [00:53:54] Okay, fine. So you got geeky on me there for a second. But let’s say for example, you’ve got Sony, like Sony somehow have you, you said just then I’m a Sony person.
Martin: [00:54:05] Yeah.
Tom: [00:54:07] That says it all. You identify yourself with Sony. ,And they’re just a brand, they’re just the company, they’re just doing good products and stuff. If you were to compare it to Canon other people to say other things about Canon, you might not like them, you might love them. Apple do the same thing, I’m an Apple guy, loads of people say that, I hate Apple or whatever.
I’m a PC person or something, you don’t get many I’m a Microsoft person. That’s the thing, is that you’ve, you’ve told me just then that you’re your Sony guy, how much easier is it for me to sell you Sony stuff than it would be Canon stuff, like it’d be a far easier job for me to sell you Sony stuff.
That’s because Sony have done all that hard work in the background for years, and you have that immediate and the fact that there’s actually videos on YouTube about Sony cameras, to even see the reviews, says it all as well. People want to create videos about the brand. If I was like the brand, if I, even if I had the best camera in the world, I’d have a really difficult time to sell it because I don’t have a brand.
Yeah? You know, it’s tough. People have to trust me on that decision. And so the trust is everything and that’s kind of why there’s a lot of fly by the way, like I say, fly by night, fly by year advertisers at the moment, they’re going to get crushed with the new changes because they don’t understand this.
They don’t understand that there’s brand, there’s marketing, there’s messaging because their life has been so easy up until now because data’s just been there for them. They just say, I just want to run an ad to these people or build a lookalike audience of my current customers. And Hey, I’m making a million bucks from Facebook.
It’s like, yeah, you got data on your side, but you don’t have anything else. And as soon as that data gets pulled in, in the smallest way, they’re like, well, now nothing’s working. I don’t have a business anymore. It’s like, yeah, sorry. That’s this way life goes. You’ve had a good time, you forgot about your brand.
And that’s the piece that’s, that’s going to be the long lasting brands that are out there. Make it, make a good buck, fine when times are good. If you’re a real brand, a real company, then you don’t care about really what’s happening. You’re saying Facebook, YouTube, any other platform that’s out there is purely just an opportunity for you, but you’re independent of it.
You’re like, Hey, this is a good place to advertise right now. Might not always be, but let’s go for it. Maybe it’s TV, maybe it’s radio, maybe it’s billboards, maybe it’s magazines, whatever it is, or maybe it’s word of mouth or building a good, solid relationship with your customers; they refer you all the time.
There’s like, we’re, we’re in a weird stage where people feel like digital marketing is everything and it’s really not. It’s such a small aspect of marketing in general. People think it’s big, but it’s really not and people forget everything else that’s out there. People are gonna get crushed because of it.
It’s such a shame, but that’s just the future going to be that way. And it’s, it’s coincides with COVID, which is awkward timing because companies have already got hit and the companies that are smaller don’t have Facebook experts in their in-house team are gonna get double crushed because they’d be like okay, we can open our doors again,
let’s turn on those Facebook ads again, wait a second there’s no data here. There’s nothing here for me to get access to , I can’t see how to run this account properly. And it’s like, it’s awkward. It’s, it’s, it’s really the timing of it. I don’t like because of Apple could have chosen the time in better, and it’s going to be the small guys that gets crushed and the big guys will live on and that’s not a great place to be.
It’s not a great place to be. Okay. So this is the enormous power of brand. So when I teach digital marketing I struggled at the beginning because there is a what they call it a bit of a course, a section, I don’t know.
A module.
Martin: [00:57:40] A brand advertising module. There you go. I sound like a real digital marketer lecturer now.
So there’s a module which is all display advertising and it used to be because they have to teach people about Google display ads. I struggled at the beginning, because I’m a digital marketer, so I was one of those people. What I say to my groups is , whatever his name is, John Wanamaker said in the 1850s, I know 50% of my advertising budget is effective, I just don’t know which 50%. I tell people if your team come to you and say that, take them out to the car park and shoot them, because you don’t have to do that anymore. You’ll teach me the error, look at your stoney face, say something so we can we see how serious you look.
Tom: [00:58:23] I’m concentrating. I’m concentrating on what you’re they’re saying,
Martin: [00:58:25] I have this whole stchick now. So I’m also an Adidas person. So I’ve got this thing where I say I was going out to play tennis one day and I put all my Adidas shorts, Adidast-shirt, Adidas cap, picked up my Adidas bag and only realized as I caught myself in the mirror, at some point in my life Adidas had really done a job on me.
Tom: [00:58:48] Yeah, no, they definitely have.
Martin: [00:58:50] Because I don’t go into the store looking for Adidas, but I definitely leave with it. So there’s something at the front of mind, when Adidas is an option, I’ll buy Adidas.
To go back to your point about me being a Sony guy. When I started doing this, I was a Nikon person. I told people at that
time, I went to New Zealand to take amazing photos and the shutter spewed oil all over my sensor. I hiked days and weeks to get these photos and they were covered in all these terrible spots, but still I considered myself a Nikon guy
cause when I went to get it cleaned in the shop, theyhad an, I am Nikon pen, and I left with one. Do you know what I mean? We all have these brand relationships and I do this whole thing; I’m a Manchester United fan; I use an Apple computer; I use Google Pixel phones; I buy my shirts in Next; I buy my underpants in Marks and Spencer’s; I buy my jeans from Gap. I’ve got these places where I continuously go to buy things, because they bought me as a customer is what they’ve done.
And this is where digital marketers are idiots if they don’t understand this, they don’t understand it. You’ve just got to compare it to the other forms of brand marketing. You’ve got to compare it to the billboards, and the TV, and the press, and all of that stuff. Then what you’ll see is actually digital marketing is still giving you a better option, because it’s telling you for this amount of money I got you this amount of impressions, and maybe I got you this amount of clicks.
Do you know what I mean? So you’re getting something. So I’m with you a hundred percent on this, I’m with you a hundred percent. So this is also a recurring thing, cause I’ve spoken to a few agency type people in this series. You’re saying that you need, your customers have to have a very certain criteria if you’re going to be successful for them.
Tom: [01:00:35] Yeah. Well, I wanted to get back to that point as well. So I’ll get onto that. I think that the Wannamaker statement, which is right, like, you know it’s effective, but you just don’t know which part is effective. That that’s still the case, even though you can track something, it doesn’t mean that, you know, the whole story.
You’ve tracked one aspect of the story, and you’re trying to make too much of a story around just that one aspect. Let’s say, for example, you saw an ad from Adidas with, I dunno, I can’t think of a good Adidas model, so to speak, but there’s a sportsman that wears Adidas for example, and you might’ve really aligned with that sports person.
Might have really loved them, read their story or kind of knew all about them and then you saw them in Adidas, and all of a sudden you paired the two be like, or I kind of deep down want to be that guy or that girl, and it doesn’t matter whatever they stand for and they wear Adidas. So by the nature of me wanting to be that person or share attributes with that person means that I kind of got to buy at Adidas now.
And as illogical that might sound, that’s how the brain works. It’s it’s we have a deep desire for something, and we’re not always aware of what that desire is and then you can play on that. It’s exactly what all the adverts, like if you’re selling a 4×4 car for example, they’re not going to talk about in the advert about mileage and how safe it is, unless you’re Volvo perhaps, what they’re going to talk about is none of that.
They’re going to show you what it’s like to drive that 4×4 car up the side of a mountain or go off-roading in it, and then get to a secluded beach where you can get your surfboard out and go surfing because you’re buying that identity of like, I want to be that person, I want to be, I want to be that person, doing that thing, feeling that emotion.
And so they’re selling to you basically adventure, and I want more adventure in my life. And the way I do it is I buy that 4×4 car. Doesn’t make complete sense to you consciously, but unconsciously that’s what wakes you up and says, I’m now motivated for that product. Same thing with, if you’re selling like a business franchise opportunity or kind of like these make money on line
people always stand in front of cars and houses, and like beautiful mansions and stuff. Cause they’re like basically saying, if you do what I’m doing, you can be me and a lot of people want to be that person. It doesn’t necessarily align with my way of advertising. I don’t like that strategy, but it works and people hate it,
people love it, doesn’t matter. Like that’s what happened, that’s kind of like the deep desire and some people. And I’ll give you another example as well. Like, so I bought a house recently, about a year ago and I was putting up a shelf and I’m not a DIY person, but I have a level of like manly pride or stereotypically manly pride with putting a shelf up.
If you put up a shelf, I’m sure you have ,getting it straight is quite an anxious moment. And the reason it’s anxious is because you’re playing that future self out to yourself. You’re saying, okay, well let’s this isn’t straight, and I can tell you exactly what I thought, I was like, if this isn’t straight
first, my wife’s going to look at it and she’ll be fine with it. She’ll be like, she’ll be like, Oh Babe, it’s fine, we’ll get away with that and I know what she’s thinking, it’s fine, it’s really not fine, and you’re not a real man. That’s at least that’s what I’m playing a story in my own head. And then I’m thinking, do you know what also is going to happen?
My father-in-law is going to come around and he’s going to see that it’s not straight, and then he’s gonna say something about it and I’m gonna feel really awkward about it. So I was like, do you know what I need to get proper drill, cause the drill I had was, I didn’t trust it, basically. It’s probably fine.
I’m going down to the hardware store and I went down there and I remember talking to the person that was going to help me buy a drill. The sales rep and he said, what sort of drill you after? I was like, I know I was like, that’s a stupid question for me cause I have no clue basically. I was like, all I want in this drill is to be idiot proof.
I just wanted to do the job of me, but at the end he was like, all right, well, what are you doing? I was like putting up shelves and he’s like, okay, cool. We’ll buy this one, it’s really easy, it’s a bit more expensive, but it’s really easy to use. And then also let me show you something else. That’s gonna help me get straight.
He upsold me loads of stuff. I bought this product, but I was buying basically out of security of saying, I’m proud and I want to keep it together. So if they had said to me, Oh, here’s the, here’s the product that any man can use and never make a mistake when putting up shelves I’m like, yep
I’m in, I’m buying that one, whatever. I don’t even care how much it costs. That’s the one I want. And so it’s, it’s understanding what deep desires people really have and playing into that and you can’t track that in a pixel, you can’t track that in data. It’s that, but that’s what marketing is
and so we can’t like separate the two easily. We can measure it somewhat and look at some of the trends of data. But if you’re saying I’m going to run this perfect ad, which talks about this amazing drill, and then next month I need a drill and I’m like, I remember the idiot proof one I’m to buy that brand.
It’s, you can’t track that, it is impossible to track it, but you can, you know, that’s good marketing sense. So that’s kind of on that side. I don’t know if he wants to go on any on that, but I can then now talk about the type of clients we look for, if you like.
Martin: [01:05:54] Yeah. Yeah. That’d be really cool. But what you’re saying is that you, they have to come with something if you’re going to make them successful
and I think this has been the theme of this where I’ve been talking to agency type people because people are resistant to marketing and I think, and so what you have to be really careful of is making sure that you take on the right customers. So now you can tell us about the sort of people that you work with and who it works for.
Tom: [01:06:22] Yeah. Logically, we, we don’t like marketing, unconsciously we love it. Don’t forget we love buying stuff, it’s a really good feeling of pressing the button saying I’ve bought or leaving the shop with a product underhand. Like you could argue that what the product does in general. Like, cause I know that I’ve bought products, books.
I love buying books. Okay. I buy books. I feel really good about it. And I might, I bought that book, I walk out the store and 15 minutes later, I, if I’m really honest with myself, I’m never going to read it. But I like the fact that I bought it, which is a really weird concept because now I’m thinking
well, where is the, I still do it and I still love buying books. I’m never going to read them. So what is going on there? Because maybe I’m buying out of a different choice. I don’t want the content. I just want the feeling of buying something, that’s quite weird. But that kind of that’s whata lot of people forget as well when it comes to the sale, how are people going to feel about the purchase? And that’s probably a large part of the product. I, when I, when I buy an Apple phone, I buy it and when it arrives is, comes a beautiful packaging. I feel good about opening it. And as soon as I got the phone, I’m like 15 minutes later, I’m like, it’s kind of the same as the other one that had maybe a slightly better camera, but it costs me a fortune.
The emotion’s gone at that point, but that motion with opening it up and feeling like, okay, I’ve got a new phone. It goes away pretty quick. And then, but it’s, it’s that moment I’m probably buying more than anything else. So yeah, I’ll keep on going on tangents here, but yeah. So with regards to the clients we work with.
We’re looking for typically look for direct to consumer products, B2C, direct to consumer and we’re, so we’re not going for B2B necessarily, very rare that we take on B2B clients, and we need, normally need to have something a little innovative so we can kind of actually create something cool around that brand.
We’re also looking to have like good margins. So someone says I’m selling this fidget spinner for $5 or something, I’m like, yeah, that’s going to just be too difficult to do that at any meaningful scale or trying to get trying to get it to work in the first place, you’ll go negative too quickly. And then also people are building legit brands.
Like we, we consult with the top brands and we help them, we guide them on that, on their journey to getting into YouTube ads, and we do some agency work on there as well. But with the with up and coming brands, who’ve got great products, they just haven’t, you haven’t heard of them before. Those ones, that kind of tend to be our sweet-spot client right now where it’s like, they’re struggling
they might do Facebook really well, but they’re struggling. They’re not pure in and out digital advertisers, but they need help. And they’ve got great products and they really care about their customers. That’s almost the best products. The assets we’re looking for, typically a good level of credibility,
something that I have really good results for their clients and it’s consistent, so good testimonials. And then we’re looking for like some sort of action plan that is like, it’s not just, Oh, we’ve got some cools things, it’s like, Oh, we’ve got a plan of, here’s how it works. Here’s like the demonstration of the product or the service
so people can kind of wrap their heads around it. Some of that could be worked on with the clients, but with that, then we’ve got the opportunity to be a lot more creative with how we build out from there. And and yeah, that typically makes a, a good YouTube ad customer so to speak.
Martin: [01:09:39] Yes. So the people who’ve had a rough ride in these chats have been like probably Tai Lopez.
Who’s one of these guys, he’s always standing in front of a room full of books or he’s standing in front of Ferrari or there’s some people I know that do a similar thing on Facebook. So what is offensive to me as like a marketing generalist, an integrated marketing proponent, is that, this is the secrets of marketing and do this one thing with us and you will be successful.
So I really don’t enjoy that at all. There are lots of differences between you and them. You are still a specialist in YouTube, like we’ve discussed, it’s a display platform; it’s a search engine; you know, people are there to consume content, so if your content is good enough you can hold them;
you can put in your very direct links; so you can play YouTube as a striker, I think is what I’m saying. I’m really glad that you’ve enjoyed the analogy and invested in the analogy. But the other thing that makes you different is that you understand that there’s more to this, like the ground work has to have been done.
You know, you, people have to be aware of you, they have to be aware of the products and services that you provide, they have to be aware of the value in that, and they have to be somewhere near the end of that journey, where they’re actually ready to respond to something that’s very direct and invites a response.
Tom: [01:11:06] That, I mean, I say that definitely helps and people should not forget that. When we take on clients, when no one’s heard of the brand before and don’t know what it is, but the beauty of YouTube is that you, you can normally hold someone’s attention on a YouTube ad for up to five minutes in some instances.
So if it’s a good quality ad people will watch it. You can take them from, it’s like shortening up that journey from cold to warm very quickly cause you have a video to do it with. If you tell a really good story there and then your product’s price is like, let’s say $50 for example, you can sell that straight from cold to someone making a purchase there and then in that direct moment, because YouTube is great for that. People will go into YouTube looking for help or looking for answers to questions and if you provide them amazing help and then say, actually, look, there’s a whole products around this. Like, let’s say, for example, you said, so I’m going to go to YouTube and learn about YouTube ads.
And then you saw my ad and I was like, let me lay it out for you and show you how it works in five minutes. And then I say, go and click and go and watch my extended version of this, which will be a 25 minute video, perhaps and then I have a $50 sale at the end of it. There’s a good chance you’ll go by that
cause you were already searching for YouTube ads, so it doesn’t have to be necessarily the brand be aware, but it’s like you are solution aware, you’re kind of, you’ll realizing there are people out there that can teach you YouTube ads cause you’re going to YouTube and looking for that in the first place.
And if I’m getting in front of you that time, it’s not going to be too difficult to turn you into a customer because it’s like, okay, cool can you part with $50 to learn a training of stuff you already want? Yeah, you’ll probably do that. And that’s the beauty of YouTube is you have that customer there with intent.
You do also have like the interest based audiences as well, but it’s, so you don’t always have to put the brand out there first and we don’t, but we run ads for clients that don’t have any brand exposure to the customers that are already getting all of the users are getting in front of and so we have to build that within an ad itself and then build a whole campaign off the back of that with the clients.
And so YouTube works great for cold traffic. It’s just it’s, it helps if you have that brand exposure beforehand, for sure.
Absolutely. Okay, cool. We have done, I think an hour and 20 minutes already. You’ve been amazing Tom, I knew you would be.
Thank you very much. Good questions. You know, you kind of. There’s a lot of podcasts.
Is that because that’s when you asked and I had looked at some of the episodes, I liked the way that you take the approach to this, because you don’t just go in and like, here’s my set questions and here’s you kind of actually interested in the answers and see where it takes you. So, which is refreshing for podcasts.
I do a lot of podcasts and a lot of the time it’s just like, okay, tell me how you got into YouTube ads. Okay, great. And what’s next for YouTube Ads? But we’ve gone deep into subjects. We didn’t get into much YouTube ads activity in fact. So I’m happy to come back and do that one day, but yeah, but this has been very refreshing and I love the way that you do the Podcast.
It’s very cool.
Martin: [01:14:00] Thank you very much. The thing about this is, is that I am interested. I dont know if you knew but I was, I’ve wanted to be like the small business marketing champion, like between 2005, probably when I met you around 2010. Then I realized that they don’t deserve a champion
and so I stopped. I kind of feel like Oliver Stone and Platoon, he spent his time in the trenches and then he wanted to tell the world, and I kind of want that as well. I think if we can have these conversations and actually dig a bit deeper, and challenge a little bit, because I don’t think marketing people get challenged enough.
That’s this part of what I’m doing. We’re going to have to do this again. I think it might be about, I don’t know. I do actually have more than 11 people on the list. So I don’t know, but it might be in two or three months, something like that. But I think we could come back and do a, how do people actually go about doing YouTube Ads,
because I think it’s really interesting. And I didn’t even talk to you about the Social Dilemma where they’re telling us how clever these platforms are and you’ve got no option but to buy this stuff, cause I think that’s junk. Cause I think, what you’ve demonstrated to us again, what’s demonstrated to anyone who watches YouTube for more than 20 minutes a day is that YouTube advertisers are typically idiots.
I am never going to buy a Chinese industrial for floor cleaning piece of equipment. So why are they putting in front of me I mean,, I’ve never done a search that suggests that I will. So, you know, so we could go into all of that as well. I think that’d be really useful.
Next week you’ll be buying it.
You know, I will not. Maybe when I’ve seen it 4,000 times, I’ll start thinking. If I find myself ever on YouTube, searching on YouTube for Chinese industrial floor cleaning equipment, then we’ll know that YouTube advertising works.
Tom: [01:15:39] There’ll be a moment in the future where you’re like, I knew I should have bought it.
Martin: [01:15:41] I knew it. Excellent, man. Thank you so much for this. I’ve really thoroughly enjoyed this and I will be back. It will be two or three months and we can do like a next level. How do you actually go about doing this? Because I think that also, it’s good for businesses like yours, but I think these platforms have got to the point where if you’re not using a specialist, like you say, if you don’t have in-house people you’re kind of in trouble.
If this is something you look at every six months, you’re not going to know how it works in six months time. It’s really a simplest as that. Okay, thank you so much, man. I will speak to you again in two or three months time.
Tom: [01:16:19] Sounds good. All right.
Martin: [01:16:22] Thank you so much, man.

Martin Henley
Martin’s original content is based on his very current experience of running effective marketing initiatives for his customers and the feedback from Effective Marketing’s successful and popular marketing workshops.
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