The Power of YouTube Advertising (with Michael Szapkiw)

Video Transcript:

The Power of YouTube Advertising

Michael Szapkiw: Running YouTube ads right now is such a huge opportunity. You know how Facebook in its early days you could get a lot of cheap conversions and clicks and things (the power of YouTube Advertising). Well, YouTube ads still really in its infancy at the end of the day it’s still early on in that, and there’s still a lot of opportunity to jump in there before every other marketer and their mom jump in and do it. So video is booming and it’s not going anywhere.

Introducing Digital Marketing Consultant Michael Szpakiw

Brady: Hi everyone. This is Brady, Director of Content with TubeSift. I’m on a call today with Michael Szapkiw. Did I say that right Michael?

Michael Szapkiw: Szapkiw.

Brady: Szapkiw. Okay, sorry about that.

Michael Szapkiw: Whenever anyone sees my crazy name, it’s pronounced like Z-A-P Q. Zap Q.

Brady: Zap Q. Okay. Yeah, I like it. But yeah, Michael’s been one of our coaches for YouTube ads, and he’s been doing one-on-one sessions for a lot of our users and people in our mastermind and Facebook group. So, yeah Michael, thanks for coming on the call. To get started could you just tell us a little bit about your background and how you got started with YouTube ads?

Michael Szapkiw: Yeah, absolutely. So I do like to start and say I had really amazing parents growing up. They were always supportive of any of my crazy thoughts and dreams and everything. So hi mom, and I appreciate you and everything that my parents did for me. So I graduated actually with broadcast communication, but then after that I got job in doing more like web design, graphic design, and just really got the bug for that sort of thing and evolved into the digital marketing space. So I consider myself a digital marketer. I like just the whole online space in general. And have probably had my hands in about everything that you could think of that’s online in different platforms and different ad systems and everything. It’s been a blast. Had a big focus on e-commerce, affiliate marketing, and also client work as well. Yeah.

Getting started with YouTube Advertising

Brady: Awesome. Thank you. You’ve been doing a lot of our coaching sessions for YouTube specifically. Was there one big event or something that made you say, “Oh, I should focus more on YouTube.” Or how did you get started with that?

Michael Szapkiw: Yeah, I’ve actually known Justin as part of his groups for several years now, he’d started with the previous one that was upgraded to in a Video Ads Cracked, which is fantastic to YouTube ads course. And so I got to know him a little bit and I went through the content. And with a lot of people when they start out, you’re like, “Yeah, I’m really excited let’s jump in and let’s do this.” Sometimes your attention wanes a little bit, but I circled back to it because I realized that video it’s such a huge growing, growing, growing thing. Like it’s only getting bigger.

YouTube is still in its Infancy

And while you have all these people that are constantly in the rush to Facebook and spending a ton of money there. YouTube is still sitting there. I realize it’s still really in its infancy in terms of the ad platform and really being able to monetize anything that you have to sell. So I jumped back in and started doing Video Ads Cracked with Justin. We’re seeing the types of results he was getting for the people that were part of that. And I’m like, “Yeah I really need to circle back and do that again.” And I haven’t looked back since I’m so excited with everything he has going on there. Being able to then take everything that I’ve learned with that and what he’s been teaching and be able to turn that back around and help other people in the group. I consider myself an encourager and I love to be in the groups, and just keeping people moving on what their goals are. So I love being able to pay that back to folks there.

The opportunity in videos

So anyways I just love the space. I love jumping in front of the camera every once in a while and just creating the video. And there’s just so much opportunity there. Yeah. So that’s what got me into it. And what keeps me motivated is not only when I’m seeing wins on my side, but when I’m able to help bring other people to their first sales and their wins as well.

Brady: Awesome. Yeah. Good to hear. Yeah. The mastermind group is a great place for people no matter what your niche is just to connect with other people, share whatever your problem is, or a challenge you’re facing. And then people give a lot of feedback and stuff, and it’s a great way to find solutions and then connect with people as well.

The YouTube Advertising Mastermind Facebook Group

Michael Szapkiw: Yeah. Anybody that’s catching this video on the blog definitely sign up, we’ll have links on this page where you can get into the Facebook group. You don’t have to buy anything to get into that group. We have the one that’s public that you can get in right away, and you can start interacting and you can join the community there, anybody that does jump into one of the paid courses we have special groups for those as well.

Brady: Awesome. Yeah, for sure. And we’ll have links on the blog posts as well for everyone. But yeah, I wanted to also just talk about you said YouTube is kind of still in its infancy. A lot of people are kind of discovering that, “Wow, this is a really great platform to connect with.” Not just audiences, but your ideal audience, the one that’s going to be most interested in your offer. And in your experience and with your coaching sessions and stuff and helping others out, can you talk a little bit about how you’ve seen like YouTube ads work or just across different niches? Like whether it’s like high ticket offers for like a coaching course or something, or even just selling products or just anything like that?

Google and YouTube are the biggest search engines

Michael Szapkiw: Yeah. One of the biggest things to keep in mind is that Google being the number one search engine, and then YouTube being the second huge search engine in the world they have a ton of data. And there’s a lot that you can pull from. A lot of times people talk about Google as they’re thinking about the search or specifically in search, but when you have this whole other YouTube side that is still hardly tapped, the ability to jump in in front of people that are specifically watching specific videos that are related to whatever your niche is or your product. And this can work from I said lower end, but e-commerce products if you have something that’s even 20, $30 that you’re selling all the way up to high ticket offers 5,000, $10,000, it can work for any of those.

Targeting and Placements on YouTube

That’s what’s really amazing is that it does reach the full spectrum. So wherever people are with what they’re selling, chances are there’s a packet there within the YouTube ads realm that you can make use of. Now, placements is a huge part of that. So one thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that not every video on YouTube is something that you can run an ad on. So you have to be able to find easily the videos that you can run an ad on. And that’s where TubeSift comes in is that it makes it so super simple to jump in. You can type in the keyword search terms that your people would be searching for. Let’s say you’re selling a dog leash, and you want to find people that are showing interest in dogs. So it’s as simple as typing in something about dog video, and TubeSift football all the videos that are monetizable, that you could run your dog leash on.

So it’s just highly relevant videos. And that’s what makes it so powerful. You can just create your short video, throw in front of all those dog videos, and then boom your leash shows up before they see that. So from that all the way to the high ticket offers, obviously courses are a huge thing, whatever your expertise is if you’re selling your course, huge opportunities and reaching out to people that are specifically watching videos that are directly related to what you’re selling. I can’t really overstate enough how powerful it is. And in couple that with the ease of using the TubeSift app to pull up videos for you, specific placements it’s super powerful.

Less Costs for Leads with YouTube than Facebook

Brady: Yeah, it definitely is. You know that made me think of us. I’ve been hearing from a lot of people that have used TubeSift and they’re also just getting started with YouTube ads. And they’d said like they’ve tried Facebook ads or other platforms. And they said as far as their advertising budget went, it costs so much more just to get new leads or make conversions. But when they started using YouTube they found that they get a much higher ROI on their ad spend when they’re using YouTube ads, just because the targeting can be so precise.

Precision Targeting on YouTube

Michael Szapkiw: Yeah, I really can. And so when you’re choosing placements that’s one way to really target people. Again, going back to the amount of knowledge that Google has already, you can literally go in and say, “Hey, someone who’s in the market for dog products.” Boom, and just target those people. You know pick your male, female ages and someone who is actively searching for a specific thing. Your video goes up in front of those people and wherever they are. So, I mean, there’s just so many great features within it that you can find those markets and you’re not paying the huge fees that you’re seeing a lot with Facebook. Yeah. There’s a place for Facebook too of course, but it’s eating a lot of people’s lunch. And so I think when you can really find more targeted audiences with YouTube it’s definitely a good place to be right now and video it’s not going anywhere. So learn it now.

And the nice thing is, and I know that there’s a lot of people watching this right now that are Facebook people. Good news is a lot of that knowledge is very transferable to running your YouTube ads. You have all the phrase allergies, view content, add to cart, purchase, whatever, those skills that you have are very easily transferable to doing the YouTube thing. So if you’ve been a holdout and maybe you’re afraid to learn it, it really is a lot easier than you think it is. Yeah there’s a lot of nuance, but getting started if you have that background in particular, you’re going to be fine just jumping in and starting to run some of your first ads.

Tips for People getting started with YouTube ads

Brady: Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, with that said, for people that are getting started, has there been like a common challenge that you see for people that are getting started with YouTube ads or like what’s a big hurdle that they have to overcome first, just so if they’re considering it, they’ll maybe have a good idea of what might be coming and prepare for it.

Keep your Targeting Simple

Michael Szapkiw: Yeah. I’ll speak from my personal experience, because I overthink things a lot. And I know that there’s a lot of other people that are just like that too. It’s the overthinkers of the world that think everything has to be just right. You have to have it perfect. Don’t do that. And that’s what I recommend for people for a lot of different things, but definitely for YouTube ads, a lot of things are literally as simple as just what seems practical. It’s like, “Hey, I’m selling a dog leash. Let’s find videos that people have dogs are watching and let’s put my ad in front of them and then just do it.” 

Take Action and Create your Video Ad

Second thing so get past yourself and just take action. That’s really the advice on that one. The second thing though, is I know a lot of people get hung up on the video ad creation part. I think that’s probably still one of the number one things aside from more of the mindset thing it’s “Oh, how am I going to get this video created?” That’s another thing that it’s easy to not overthink. If you were selling something where it’s appropriate for you to be the talking head just like I am right here on the screen, and everybody has a smartphone now. And again, don’t overthink it, put your script together, or get an outline of what you want to say. Just throw that camera or your phone up in front of you and do a recording. Anybody that’s seen Justin Sardi’s videos I mean, he’s like out walking in his field just talking about what he’s got going on with his video ad scores. And that was one of his best selling ads. It was just literally him walking out in the back of his field.

So again, something you have to overthink we all have these great cameras. So just go ahead and do that. Other thing is if you’re not the kind of person that wants to be front of a camera, there’s some great resources that you can have people do it fairly cheap. A lot of people have heard of Fiverr, getting something created that way. I guess I don’t have to go into all the details about how to do it, but that’s been one of the hangups I think for some people. But all that to say that there are some great options out there for getting past that hurdle of getting the video created. Really, once you have the video though, stepping through it in the actual campaign builder, it’s actually pretty simple.

Brady: Yeah, for sure. Then that brought up a good point. We actually just recorded a blog post that by the time this interview comes out for everyone it’ll already be on our blog, but it was about how to create a video without having to be in it. So if someone isn’t comfortable speaking or whatever, or if they’d rather just have something that demonstrates the product, or sometimes you can just have music and like text pop- ups and stuff. And like you said Fiverr is a great place to find people that can make that for you if that’s not something you do yourself, but those ads can work really well too. And also like you said Michael, like once you have it, you can run the ad and you can continue to make sales or acquire new leads that way. Like once you have the video, it’s good to just keep on running it.

And you can test two different ones as well too, and see what works with different audiences. But is that something you’ve come across, like say someone’s had an ad for awhile. Maybe you ran it for a few months and then they want to switch something up, but maybe the messaging stays the same. Have you come across that at all?

Change up your Ads and Intros

Michael Szapkiw: Yeah, actually a good strategy if… I’m trying to think how to word it. Sometimes after running that for awhile the performance will start to wane. So it is good to mix it up every once in a while. Again, keep it simple. You can even keep the same script and just re-record it again in a different way. And it’s something that looks different, that would be one way to do it. That would be easy. 

The other thing is all the times what you can do, I’ll just go ahead and have a little hack here, is that you can do a few different intros or hooks at the beginning of your video. So have one core script and then just change out like the first five or 10 seconds whatever. Maybe you’re speaking to a specific audience or have a certain benefit that you’re listing right at the beginning and see what works. Actually, it’s a great way to test videos, but it also could be a way that you could use to mix it up too. So have something a little different at the beginning than jump still into the same core message.

Wide targeting optionality 

But yeah, there are a lot of audiences out there and a lot of different ways that you can target within Google too, or within YouTube. So maybe you’re using placements, but then you also can test keywords and then you can also test people that are specifically in the market or mixtures of all of them. So it’s a classic phrase of always be testing. There’s always something else out there that you can do. Yeah. But yeah, you can keep it rolling. And that’s the thing Google again, their audience is so huge. A lot of times you can just keep adding to the budget and just keep scaling up, because they have so many millions and millions of people that you can reach. Yeah.

Brady: Yeah. For sure. Especially on YouTube, I think it’s like 2 billion people use it now or something like that. It’s really become a massive search engine. And the thing that’s so great about YouTube is that people that go to YouTube are specifically looking to watch a video. So they’re looking for what they’re interested in. It might be a product review, whatever, but they’re there to watch something. So you can place your ad in front of the right person at the right time when they’re actually searching for whatever it is that they’re interested in. And if that happens to be your niche, you’ve targeted them and then they’ll see your ad. And if they’re interested, then there you go.

New Videos coming out everyday

Michael Szapkiw: Yeah. And keep in mind there’s new videos coming out every day. I mean, I don’t have any of this statistics on me, but I mean thousands and who knows, maybe even millions of new videos are coming out every day. So there’s constantly new videos that can be used to help market what you have to offer. So it’s good to keep your placements updated regularly. So let’s say you have a hundred different placements of videos once the placements it’s just the videos that you want to target, make sure you’re refreshing those regularly because you are going to have a lot of new videos that you can add in there. And you can also focus on doing trending videos as well. So there’s a feature in 2% that you can target specifically videos, like in the past two weeks that are really on the rise. That’s a great way to jump on the bandwagon of a popular video and get your product out in front of them or whatever you’re selling. So yeah.

Brady: Yeah for sure. That’s a great tip as well.

The TubeSift Bookmarker

Michael Szapkiw: Yeah. So one thing too I wanted to make sure I talked about, and we didn’t forget about on this interview. It was TubeSift Bookmarker. Most people probably haven’t even heard of this thing yet, but it’s another really powerful free tool. It’s a Chrome extension, and what it does if you’re at all in marketing or advertising or script writing, what this tool does is anytime you do see an ad that pops up in front of videos that you’re watching and you’re like, “Oh, that’s a great ad I would love to use some of the ideas from that or whatever you just want to save it.” TubeSift Bookmarker is a free Chrome extension that Justin created. You can basically save it. It saves the link directly to the ad that you just saw. And you’re basically bookmarking any ad that you want to save.

It’ll automatically track which ones you are watching, but if you find one that you really like it’ll save it. You can just click right on the button on the page. It’s awesome. And what that also does, and this is like a little tip too, since you have the link to the actual ad you can click on it like you would a normal YouTube video, but it’s an ad video that are usually unlisted. It’ll show you how many views that video has. So you see something that has, 10,000, 100,000 million views chances are that’s an ad that’s working for the person as well. So that’s also something to note when you’re making yours that, “Hey, this must be working if they have a ton of views on it.” So it’s just a cool little tip too. So definitely check out TubeSift Bookmarker if you don’t have that extension editor.

Brady: Yeah. We’ll have a link to that as well in the blog post as well too, where you can download it. And then also we have a little tutorial that shows you how you can get started using it. Well, yeah, I think that was all the questions that I had. Was there anything you wanted to add or any final message you wanted to give to anyone that might be considering YouTube ads or anything like that?

Three Tips for YouTube Advertising

Michael Szapkiw: Yeah, I wasn’t sure everything that we’d ended up talking about today, but I sort of touched on it earlier, but I did have a few things just to keep people moving and encourage at. 

Take Action

Three tips again, take action. There’s been no better time. Literally you can sit at home, work on your laptop. You can have a phone that you can record things on, and do videos and sell without even leaving your bedroom if you don’t want to. 

Don’t get Hung up on Video Creation

So definitely just take action, try not to overthink it like I tend to do, just jump in there, figure out what your offer is, pitch your message, get the video up and then just start doing it. It’s really the best way to learn it is to start doing.

And you can do it as low as $5 a day, ad budget, just start testing something and see what you can… And again, we’re all active in the Facebook group and happy to help on anybody that wants to get started and has any questions or any of that sort of thing. So definitely sign up for that if you haven’t done that yet. Second tip, don’t give up either sometimes just persistence, continuing to do the thing and not giving up early it’s a life skill. It’s jumping in there doing it. Sometimes you might have 10 failures, but you get that one win it would make it all worth it. So keep pushing forward.

Seek Help and don’t stay stuck

And then that leads into the third tip that I wanted to mention was don’t stay stuck, seek help, and break through the barriers. So one of the biggest things that I’ve found that helped my success is that when I do have those partners on the side, those people that can really help me when I feel like I’m stuck. And that’s part of what I do as a coach for TubeSift, that’s what we do in the group. If you’re a part of Video Ads Cracked, which you can check that out if you haven’t seen that yet it’s Justin’s video ads course. We’re here to support you to help you to not be stuck. Sometimes that’s when people drop off it’s like, “I can’t quite figure this thing out.” And so then their attention wanes and then they give up.

Well, we definitely don’t want that, and that’s not going to help you in the long run. So seek out people that can help you. And we’re here to help do that and to get you unstuck and keep you moving forward so that you can get to the goals and get to the things that you want to do. So those are the main things that I would add here for anybody to just keep people moving.

Brady: Definitely. Yeah, no, that’s great. Those are some great tips, definitely good skills for anyone and no matter what your field is. But yeah, definitely great for getting started with YouTube or if you already have been going to continue going and scaling from there. But yeah. So if anyone would like to get any help or feedback on their YouTube ads, so we’ll have a link on the blog post here to the Facebook group. And also if you’d like to schedule a one-on-one coaching session with Michael, we’ll have that link as well. But yeah, Michael, thanks for joining us today. And we’ll definitely be in touch again soon.

Michael Szapkiw: All right. Absolutely happy to do it.

Resources

• Book a Private Coaching Session with Michael Szapkiw
• Join the YouTube Advertising Mastermind Facebook Group
• Install the TubeSift Bookmarker Chrome Extension Here
• How to use the TubeSift Bookmarker
• How to Make a Video Ad without Being on Camera
• Find out how TubeSift can help you with your placement targeting