Brett Curry is the Founder of OMG Commerce, a Google Shopping agency that specializes in Google and YouTube advertising for ecommerce brands.
He’s also the guy who, this year, helped me crack YouTube advertising for my $20 million+ cosmetics brand.
Before Brett, most of our budget went to Facebook. The only problem with that is after four years of advertising at scale, every woman over the age of forty on Facebook has seen my ads (like, 10 times).
YouTube was our answer for how to add a second profitable stream of ad revenue and a channel with hundreds of millions of potential new customers.
But I struggled for months to discover a YouTube strategy that would work for physical products.
Why is it so difficult for ecommerce brands to make YouTube ads profitable? What’s the right strategy? What’s the secret sauce?
Brett Curry seems to know — he’s done it for a bunch of the ecommerce brands in my Blue Ribbon Mastermind.
That’s why I asked him to give us a 2-minute crash course on how ecommerce brands can utilize YouTube ads to increase sales. Enjoy!
How YouTube Fits into Your Ads Strategy
Unlike Facebook (which can be effective at any stage of the buying cycle), Brett found that YouTube is really the best at two stages:
- Top-of-funnel awareness ads
- And bottom-of-funnel remarketing
In his experience, YouTube is NOT a channel that’s going to catch people who are ready to buy right now. Google Product Listing ads are better for that.
But YouTube can connect you to people who are just beginning their search, OR who have already visited your website but didn’t buy.
That means if you’re selling running shoes, your YouTube budget is better spent on folks who are searching for product reviews, demos, or search queries like “What are the best running shoes?”…
And not by trying to reach more product-educated audiences searching for price comparisons.
TrueView Ads: A Cheaper Way to Build Audiences
What Brett’s agency is doing a lot right now is helping ecommerce companies figure out who they should be targeting, specifically at top of funnel.
How do you find the people who are just starting to look at customer reviews and product demos, so you can put your product in front of them and push them to your site?
One of the best tools he uses for this is YouTube TrueView ads.
What makes TrueView ads unique from other YouTube ads — or any Facebook ad for that matter — is that you only pay for the impression IF the viewer watches 30 seconds or more.
TrueView ads are the ads you see at the beginning of a video that users can skip after 5 seconds. And if they do skip your ad, YouTube won’t charge you for that impression.
In other words, that groovy TrueView ad that plays before the user watches a funny cat video is FREE unless they click to your site or watch 30 seconds of your content.
This ensures that you’re only spending money on people who are interested in your brand or product.
Then, once they’re on your site, you have the chance to get them to join your list or enter your sales funnel from there.
And so far Brett has seen tremendous success using this strategy with ecommerce brands.
And for do-it-yourself advertisers like us, TrueView ads have been the cheapest way to experiment with YouTube as a second advertising channel and build profitable audiences to help us scale.
If you want to see more of Brett’s YouTube strategy and learn how to copy it for your store, watch this YouTube training we did together.
Or, if you a want step-by-step, in-depth course with Brett on how to increase sales using YouTube & Google advertising, check out Smart Marketer’s new premium training, Smart Google Traffic.
Thanks for reading!
Highlights:
0:25 YouTube is a great way to find someone who is just beginning their search
0:49 YouTube is a great place to remarket to people
1:34 If a user skips a TrueView ad, you as an advertiser don’t pay
1:59 TrueView ads are a great way to introduce someone to your product and brand
Click Here For Video Transcript
So, that’s a great way to catch people that are ready to buy now. But YouTube is a great way to find someone that’s either beginning their search, so maybe they’re not quite ready to do a price comparison. They’re just looking for what are the best running shoes, or what are the best minimalist sandals, or what’s the best backpack for hiking, so just getting ideas on YouTube. Or it’s a great place if I’ve already been to your site or already checked out your products and I did not buy. YouTube’s a great place to re-market to people. So, it’s kind of one of these interesting channels where it’s a great top-of-funnel channel, but it’s awesome bottom-of-funnel channel as well.
So, we’re doing a lot right now is helping e-commerce companies identify who they should target on YouTube, specifically at top-of-funnel and saying, “How do we get people that are just beginning to look at product reviews, product demos, customer reviews, things like that on YouTube? How do we get them in front of your brand and then push them to your site?”
And so, we use a tool called TrueView, YouTube TrueView. And so, those are the pre-roll videos that you see before the cat video you’re watching on YouTube, or whatever the case might be. Those are the ads that you can skip after five seconds. And if the user skips, then you as an advertiser don’t pay. So, they have to watch at least 30 seconds, or the whole video if it’s less than 30 seconds, or you don’t pay. Or they have to click through to your site. So, they have to either be engaged in the video, or they have to click through to find out more. And we’ve had tremendous success with that platform, very affordable still, very affordable. Great way to introduce someone to your product and to your brand and then get them on your list, get them in your funnel, so you could even sell them more.
