Justin Sardi explains what a swipe file is and how to use our free chrome extension, the TubeSift Bookmarker, to build your swipe file.
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Video Transcript

Be a better marketer with a swipe file

Justin Sardi: You may have heard the term swipe file before, and a lot of people do know what that means, but when I was first getting started, I didn’t know what a swipe file was. So today we’re going to be talking about what exactly a swipe file is and how you can use one to become a better online advertiser or just a better marketer in general. So let’s go ahead and dive right in.

Justin Sardi: My name’s Justin Sardi I’m the CEO and co-founder of tubesift.com and videoadvault.com. Now, today we’re going to be talking all about swipe files, and I actually have a free tool. that’s going to help you compile your own YouTube ad swipe file, and I’ll link to that below this video, and we’ll actually talk about it in this video, but right now I want to talk about what exactly a swipe file is and how I personally use them to become a better marketer.

Justin Sardi: Now you may have seen an ad online, and by may have seen an ad online, I’m going to go with you’ve definitely seen an ad online. So if you’ve seen an ad online, you may have seen one that actually really resonated with you and you thought, “Man, that’s a really good hook.” Or, “That’s a really good angle. Hey, that’s a clever ad.” And what a swipe file is, is essentially taking that ad and adding it to a file. Now I do this with emails, I do this with YouTube ads, screenshots of Facebook ads, things like that. And every time I see a really good angle, I’m like, “Hey, I really like how they convey their message in this ad.” I will add it to what I call, or what everybody calls, a swipe file.

The TubeSift Bookmarker is a free Chrome extension that will let you save your favorite ads to reference whenever you want.
The TubeSift Bookmarker is a free Chrome extension that will let you save your favorite ads to reference whenever you want. 

TubeSift YouTube Ad Bookmarker

Justin Sardi: Now on YouTube it’s a little harder to do, but every time I see a really good YouTube ad, I like to save that into my swipe file. Now you can use the free tool that we’re giving you, which is the YouTube Ad bookmarker by TubeSift to essentially see an ad that you like, and it’s actually just a Chrome extension. So you’ll be watching YouTube, you can see an ad that you like, you can click save, and it will save it into the plugin or the extension and you can reference it later.

Justin Sardi: Now, why exactly would you want to do this? Well, the reason that I like to do this is because I can always reference it later and be like, “Oh, that was a really good example for an e-commerce product. Hey, I really liked how they were able to create this ad without being on camera,” or something along those lines. “Hey, this was shot in a very interesting way.” Or, “I really liked the hook on this. It was funny, compelling, and it got me to watch,” something along those lines. And then from there, what I can do is I can think of how to use similar properties from that and apply them into my niche.

Justin Sardi: Now, a lot of times the ads that I save are not even in my niche, they’re actually just ads for let’s say a mattress or anything like that. But I like the way that they have conveyed their message. So I can actually go and find other software companies, because we run a software company, and be like, “How are they doing this?” It might not be the exact same niche or anything like that, but I could see, “Hey, I really like how they were using other people on camera instead of them being on camera,” or something along those lines. And then I can apply that to my business.

Use the Bookmarker for inspiration

Justin Sardi: And the cool thing is, with YouTube ads, is you can actually check the number of views and you know that, hey, if this has a lot of views on it, it’s probably working. And if it has not a lot of views on it, then it’s probably not working and maybe you don’t want to model that. So what I like to do is use the TubeSift Bookmarker. Have it installed if I ever see an ad, click save, it saves it into my swipe file, and then I like to check the number of views and the publish date as well. So I’ll check the publish date, the number of views, and if that is up to my liking, then we will go ahead and model something after that. Obviously not copy and paste, but take some of the core principles that I really like.

Justin Sardi: Now, if you don’t want to go out and find ads that only you see, because you meet a certain demographic. You might not be seeing ads in the weight loss niche if you’re not interested in weight loss or Google doesn’t think you’re interested in weight loss. You’re probably not going to see weight loss ads. So what you can do is you can check out Video Ad Vault and you can just type in weight loss ads, or not weight loss ads, but you can just type in weight loss or something like that or any big company that promotes weight loss products. And from there, you’ll find all of the ads that are currently running on YouTube and all the archived ads as well that have been running on YouTube and you can really analyze all that data and dig much deeper into it. You can even see the landing ages that they’re pushing to.

Find and study any YouTube ad in your niche faster than doing it manually. Image by Tranmautritam, license under Pexels.
Find and study any YouTube ad in your niche faster than doing it manually. Image by Tranmautritam, license under Pexels.

Find all the ads for any niche

Justin Sardi: So if you don’t want to spend all the time browsing YouTube yourself, maybe you’re not a heavy YouTube user, maybe you just aren’t the demographic that you’re trying to find ads for and you’re not able to find them. You can sign up for Video Ad Vault and you can find all of the ads for any niche and then you can watch them, check out the landing page, see average number of views, split tests, where they were shown, all that good stuff in a much faster and easier way than you finding the ads manually.

Justin Sardi: Now that pretty much wraps up what a swipe file is. It’s essentially a file full of, or an archive of, all the ads or marketing materials that you’ve seen and you really like. Now the best way to use them, to recap, is to see what’s working in those ads or those emails or whatever, and model that in your marketing. Now I do this with subject lines and emails all the time. That’s actually probably what I have the most swipes of if you will, and subject lines, you can very easily swap out a few key words, but you can use the same hooks and principle. Well, you can do the exact same thing using YouTube ads when you have a swipe file, like we’re talking about today.

Justin Sardi: So that is it for me. Like I said, below this video, I’m going to link to the TubeSift Bookmarker. You can get that absolutely free. And I definitely recommend checking out Video Ad Vault, where you can find all of the ads running on YouTube and get a ton of detailed information. We actually update that archive every single hour with all the new ads that we find every single hour. So it’s constantly being updated, all that good stuff, and I know it’s going to help you become a better online advertiser.

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