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How to use Instream YouTube ads to grow your channel
Brady Snow: Hi everyone. This is Brady Snow, Director of Content at TubeSift, and today we have a special interview lined up with Drew Gallagher, and this is Drew here and he lives in Boston where they’re having a heat wave recently. But yeah, he discovered YouTube ads and he’s been using it for a few different things so we wanted to talk to him about that and bring him on to hear about how he’s been using instream YouTube ads to grow his channel and what he’s been finding out and share some strategies.
Drew, could you just give us a little intro about how you discovered YouTube ads, and what attracted you to them?
Drew Gallagher: Sure. Yeah, so I started about a year ago just diving into digital marketing, I was really interested in my music and promoting it, but I didn’t know how to do that. I play pop punk music and that genre is slowly coming back, but it hasn’t been popular for a while so blowing up organically is really hard on a lot of the platforms with that genre. So I wanted to look into a predictable way to grow that.
And so I took some marketing courses, took some high ticket stuff, and I started promoting affiliate products as well as digital agency services, just to learn how to do it and make some money on the side, I’m still doing some of that. But now I primarily use YouTube ads to promote my music and I drive people to my channel and try to build an email list because one day I want to be able to tour so if I can have a bunch of people on my list that I can send announcements to and drive people to my music, I can have the success I’ve always dreamed of.
Build your email list
Brady Snow: Cool. Yeah, that’s awesome to hear that you’ve been using it for music. And have you seen kind of your email list growing since you’ve been using YouTube ads?
Drew Gallagher: Yeah, for sure. So I started last year in November and I had nobody on my list and I knew how to build a list or still learning how to build a list. But I started running ads, I did a little bit on Pinterest and then dove deep on YouTube ads, and now I’m at about 700 people on my list, and I was running those ads probably at like, I don’t know, between 10 and $20 a day, which is really cheap. And so to be able to grow it that far, now I have almost 700 people that are subscribed to my channel and I’m driving people straight to my channel too with in stream ads, and it’s growing, the last couple months it’s been about 40 subscribers a month, which is actually pretty good for me considering my channels so small. So the rate that it’s growing, I’m going to be able to monetize it soon, and I’ve created this really big community of people that respond to my emails, join my Discord, listen to my music, and just give me feedback, and it’s really awesome.
Design a script that resonates in your niche
Brady Snow: That’s awesome to hear, yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about the creative? So what are your ads that you’re running, kind of what’s their structure formula, or what’s your main goal with those?
Drew Gallagher: Yeah, sure. So a lot of people in my niche and genre of music, they like Green Day and Blink 182, which are two of my favorite bands, and so what I try to do is I try to use those audiences, and I try to structure the ad around that so it’s relevant and it gets people going to the right spot. So I say, “Hey.” The thing I’m doing recently is like, “Have you ever heard of Good Riddance by Green Day? Well, what if it was written by Blink 182?” And so I’m making an offer that’s kind of a twist on a popular song that they already like most likely, and then I’m saying, “Come check it out, you don’t want to miss out, click the ad right now, click the button below, and grab my free song, join my exclusive community.” So it’s all about giving them an experience that’s going to get them excited about pop punk music and to help me bring it back with my brand.
So I just them to my landing page from there. And I mix it up a little bit so sometimes I’ll tease the song, sometimes it’s just a talking head video, sometimes it’s just the song and a animated background. I try different creatives, I think the best is just my face in front of the screen and just saying, “Hey, I got this song for you. I think you’ll really like it, and you can join this awesome pop punk community. So click the button and join up.” And it’s been working really good.
Brady Snow: Awesome. Yeah. That’s good to hear it. It sounds like a lot of people say that every time no matter what their niche is, that the talking head video is the best one, I think because it’s just… It’s relatable and it’s really personable right away. And if you get too fancy with your video it’s almost like people maybe skip. But then if you’re like being sincere and talking to them and you’re targeting the right audience, that’s really important too, but if you are then they’ll be interested and will go check out your offer, or your landing page, whatever.
Why is YouTube better to advertise on than other social media?
Drew Gallagher: Yeah. And the behavior on YouTube is a little bit different. You’re not necessarily scrolling, you’re watching content that’s long form, you’re used to people presenting as if they’re a teacher or something like that, and a lot of people are teachers on the platform. Whereas if you’re on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all the social platforms, it’s a lot of scrolling. So those videos, you kind of need to pull people out of that type of traditional talking, whereas on YouTube, it almost seems like they want to see that because it’s so familiar.
Brady Snow: For sure. Yeah, that makes sense. That’s a really good point too because any other social media platform I can think of when I’m on it, I’m just scrolling.
Drew Gallagher: Right.
Brady Snow: It’s almost like it’s just automating you’re scrolling until you see something you’re interested in. So on those platforms, if you want to get someone’s attention, you have to really stand out and that’s hard to do, but with YouTube, yeah, it sounds like you can get your message and if you get it in front of the right people it’s going to be the only thing that they see and they’re going to engage with it more.
Drew Gallagher: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
You can also use Tubesift for any creative niche
Brady Snow: Yeah. That’s cool. Yes. I don’t think we’ve had anyone on that uses it for music before. Do you think that’s something that could work for any kind of creative niche, or artists, or maybe a photography site or anything like that, you think this same kind of strategy would work?
Drew Gallagher: Yeah, for sure. One of the challenges with music, a lot of people discover music on YouTube, and it’s usually on placements and stuff, but it’s not easy to come up with audiences and tailor necessarily all the time just because it’s keyword based and people are usually… They know who their band is, they’re not necessarily… If you look up Green Day it’s such a massive audience, or Blink 182, it’s such a massive audience because they’re big bands. So you might get a broader audience, but whereas you pick something like how to do acrylic art, or how to take photos outside with good lighting, those are very specific searches, and so as a result, you can gather those audiences through intent audiences or affinities a lot easier, I think, and you can actually potentially deliver better results right away. And so, yeah, I think the arts is huge, it’s very visual. And really any niche that people are consuming content and long form that is visual I think can succeed on YouTube, and that’s why so many people use things like TubeSift and YouTube ads because it works.
Brady Snow: For sure, yeah, so you use TubeSift when you run your ads. Can you tell us like a little bit about that and how you found it?
Drew Gallagher: Yeah, so I’ve used it before, I don’t use it currently and it’s not that I don’t like the tool, it’s just I’ve gone away from using placements as much recently. But when I was using it heavily I took the training course, I tried to learn about YouTube ads, I had somebody that was a mentor that shared it with me and said he was using it for his so I wanted to gather placements. I was actually running an affiliate marketing offer for a make money online product, and a lot of people do that, and one of the ways that you get really hyper targeted traffic is by using a tool like TubeSift, you can find a video that’s like how to make $500 a day with affiliate marketing. And if I’m selling a product or promoting somebody else’s that’s affiliate marketing based, it doesn’t get any better than that unless you’re doing like a search ad, and you can’t do that with video and search, or at least not yet, then that’s what YouTube is there for.
So yeah, it works really well, TubeSift’s able to sift through all the videos and get you everything you need really quick so you don’t have to worry about going through each video because I’ve tried that and that’s not very fun.
Brady Snow: [inaudible 00:08:32].
Drew Gallagher: Yeah. But it’s a great tool. It’s a great tool. It’s got a great community. I’ve learned so much from the community and some of the trainings and I wouldn’t be surprised if I was a customer again.
Make plans to achieve your goals
Brady Snow: Cool, good to hear. Yeah, so we’re end of June here so we’re for sure halfway through the year, but do you have any just big plans for your channel or anything, I know you said you were trying to get to 1,000 subscribers, or what are you working on right now?
Drew Gallagher: Yeah, I’m always working on a lot of stuff. And so my big goal by the end of this year, which I think it’s very optimistic on my end at least, that I should be able to reach 1,000 subscribers, and my goal is to get my email list up to 1,000 subscribers and to start creating more offers, trying to do more live streams and create live experiences. With COVID things are opening up again, but people are now getting accustomed to online experiences and offline, and I’m such a small musician that it’s almost to my benefit to try to just do my stuff online until I build up an audience.
So my biggest goal is to really turn the corner on that channel, and once I hit 1,000 subscribers see like, “Okay, how can I ramp up my ad budget? How can I start monetizing this channel, getting more views, and building this community?” Because something special happens when you get your YouTube to a certain point, it just starts to grow itself, and hopefully that happens with me, but I’m just going to continue running ads and getting more people to join my community.
Visit Drew’s Channels for Inspiration
Brady Snow: Awesome. Yeah, good to hear. That was about all the questions I have, but I just want to give you a chance [inaudible 00:10:14] if people want to check out your website or your YouTube channel, where can they go? What’s it called?
Drew Gallagher: Yeah. So it’s just Drew Gallagher Music. So I played pop punk, punk rock music, and I also have a business channel it’s called Drew’s Business Accelerator, and I actually teach people the stuff I’m using currently with my music and other affiliates trainings and different things. So, if you want to learn how I use YouTube ads to grow my music or different things and build an email list, whatever, you can go to Drew’s Business Accelerator on YouTube. And then if you want to listen to some pop punk jams and jump up and down you can go to Drew Gallagher Music.
Brady Snow: Awesome. Thanks. Yeah, we’ll be sure to link to both of those on this blog post so those will be in the links below, everyone that’s watching. But yeah, that was all the questions that I had. Was there any questions you had or anything else you wanted to talk about?
Drew Gallagher: I just wanted to say, if you’re a creator out there, big or small, and you have doubts about YouTube ads, or being able to grow something on your own, tools like TubeSift and platforms like YouTube ads allow somebody like me, just somebody who, I still have a job, I’m by myself, I don’t have a big team, I don’t even have any VA’s, or anything like that, I’m able to grow my list and monetize things, and it’s just so powerful that you can reach consumers directly like that. So if you have a big dream and you want to go for it, it’s totally possible and trackable, and just go for it, and use tools like TubeSift and ads to get there.
Brady Snow: Awesome. Thanks. Yeah, it’s a really good message, thanks for sharing that.
Drew Gallagher: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Brady Snow: Cool. Well, yeah, thanks for coming on and, yeah, we’ll be in touch again.
Drew Gallagher: Awesome. Sounds great. Thank you.
Resources
Drew Gallagher on YouTube
TubeSift Blog
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