Podcast: Download (Duration: 57:20 — 52.6MB)
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Podcast Highlights:
01:20 – Let’s say you published a book…
05:06 – The two mindsets in play
08:11 – An important YouTube development
09:26 – How to build a following quickly
11:32 – You’ve got subscribers – now what?
13:17 – YouTube versus Facebook
19:02 – A 90-second ad formula
19:50 – Identifying your aim
22:30 – Personify the problem
26:01 – I feel you
27:21 – Yes, you’re the expert
29:28 – What’s the plan?
32:50 – Unpacking the formula
40:24 – Making a good exit
44:45 – Testing and tweaking
50:07 – How long should it be?
51:45 – Carrying out your campaign
James’s new book, Work Less Make More is on Amazon – grab your copy now
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Transcription:
James: James Schramko here, welcome back to SuperFastBusiness.com. This is episode 563, How to Promote Your Book on YouTube. And for this episode I need a YouTube expert, so this is where we cue the amazing, the incredibly handsome and talented, Tom Breeze. Welcome.
Tom: Thank you, James. It’s very kind of you to introduce me like that.
James: Well, you are not a stranger to this show. You were here in episode 483, 484 and 485 where we really went into YouTube advertising stuff. I’ll just say stuff, because it was good. We had case studies, we talked about the message and why YouTube and all of that.
A hypothetical question
Today, I want to run a hypothetical, Tom. Are you up for the challenge?
Tom: I am up for the challenge. Just go for it.
James: OK. Let’s say someone listening to this podcast or even recording this podcast has published a book. How would you promote your book on YouTube? That was the question that was put to me by a very motivated listener slash publishing author, podcaster. I thought it would be good to have an episode covering this topic because coincidentally, this is exactly where I am up to right now, having just published my book called Work Less Make More on an Amazon store near you.
But I thought maybe it would be good to put a video up there on YouTube. I’ve occasionally been to YouTube, watching surfing videos of course, and sometimes I’m targeted by marketing material before I get to watch the good stuff. I see people talking about their online business or their business model or how many cars they have in the garage and lots of books and all sorts of knowledge and stuff. So I’m just wondering, is this a good medium for someone like me to consider to let people know about my book?
Tom: We’ve done a lot of book promotions on YouTube and they’ve always worked really well. I think the fact that most people go to YouTube looking for information, they want to know something, do something, they want to buy something, and they’re there to learn and that’s the sort of time where if you can get in front of that audience with a book, a book is naturally one of those things where we perceive instant value. We see it as like, OK, this is a physical thing that’s been, a lot of work has been put into this. I can see the book, the person’s probably holding it up and talking about some of the chapters, perhaps. And so it’s always served our clients really well to have a book.
And if you have it like a book funnel as well, so should someone buy the book and you have an upsell or maybe along with the book, there’s some sort of video training or something on those lines that go with the book, or if there’s something like that, then it can work really, really effectively from a standpoint of like, creating a funnel that would be breaking even if not generating a lot of profit from day one. So you can really scale up campaigns as well with book launches.
And not just to say it has to be a launch, either. Normally, especially with YouTube, you can get these things where it’s like, the funnel just keeps on performing. It becomes like this evergreen, you’re promoting the book, you’re running the ads and you get to the point where you’re ROI positive and you can just keep on scaling and improving the campaigns over time. And that’s a yes, so when you get to that point you can sell a hundred to 500 books a day sometimes. I mean we’ve got to 500 books a day in a launch. And that was really pushing it. For quite a broad niche, that worked really well.
But yeah, getting a hundred book sales a day all day from YouTube isn’t unlikely, if you’re in a niche where it’s a popular thing. So yeah, I think that like, for me, YouTube advertising and using a book to promote a business is a solid funnel to be promoting.
James: Wow. That’s really interesting. So the first things I’ve noted there, Tom can help me sell 500 books a day. I’ll write that down. Second thing, I’m thinking about things like the workbook that people can go and download from my website that we linked to from the book, and also the extra chapter that is downloadable. And we do collect an e-mail address for the extra chapter. I have noticed with our Facebook promotion that we’ve started selling memberships to SuperFastBusiness every single day from that campaign.
Tom: Nice.
James: So advertising has been cash flow positive, which is a good indicator, I suppose, if we’re going to switch mediums. And I also jotted down here things like video training. So are you saying, if you’re going to publish a book, it might be thoughtful to consider what the next stage is after someone reads the book and to bake that into the book and to provide extra resources?
Tom: Yeah. So a lot of the times, clients will come to us and say, “Hey look, we’ve got this book. We’ve been promoting on Facebook, been doing pretty well, we want to do a carbon copy on YouTube,” basically. And in those circumstances, there’s normally a funnel with the book starting at the very beginning. We’ve done lots of different types of promotions for books, so it could be like giving the first chapter away for free and then downloading the audio book and then buying the actual, physical book. Or we’ve done like postage and packaging only, so the book’s free, just pay for PMP.
Two mindsets in play
We’ve done loads of different types of promotions like that. And whenever I’ve looked at focusing on a book sale, there’s two mindsets really – there’s one which is like, is it an ROI play, or is it a branding play, or is it a bit of both. And so if it’s like straight ROI and they’re saying, this book has been out there already, it’s got a lot of branding, we just want to make sure it’s an ROI-positive campaign, there’s one way of doing it, and that’s kind of like looking at it almost like a funnel.
So having things associated with the book, like a video training or something else that can be downloadable, means that any person that buys, shows a lot of intent to say, ‘I want to learn more from you,’ and having instant, like, ‘Well, the book’s being shipped out to you. In the meantime, would you like to have this video training? It costs this much.’ That’s a great way of making ROI positive and continuing to give the viewer a great experience. And that’s kind of like, one way of doing an ROI-positive funnel.
The other way, which is what I’m thinking about, because I know that we talked about this a lot as well, I’ve got a book coming out in the New Year and in that scenario, I’m kind of looking at it purely as a brand play. Like, I run an agency and that’s kind of like 95 percent of the revenue for the business and I just want the book to be more hands on. I don’t mind going ROI negative as long as I know that I, well, I can pick up a few agency clients in the future that will pay for all the promotion we’ve done with the book.
So it’s a slightly different process with that one, and that will be more a case of like, building a following on YouTube that is very useful for you as an asset as well. So then when it comes to the book sale, you’ll have that as well.
So it’s a consideration of kind of what you want from a book, I suppose, and keeping that in mind. But I do always say, if you’ve got assets that go with the book, it’s going to help the promotion of it. Because if you can get ROI positive on a campaign and you know you can just scale up, then the book is a great branding play and if it’s ROI positive you can just keep on pushing it.
James: Right. So I guess it’s a little bit of a mixture for me at this point, because the point of this first book is to make people aware of me. Because I’ve been like a bit of a secret, behind-the-scenes sort of a guy. And I imagine some other people are already known and they’d put out a new book on a specific technical thing, or they might be the AdWords person, or in your case, you’re a YouTube master. So it makes sense for you to fill your agency with leads from that.
In this case, my coaching service is definitely an interesting destination that I would like people to get to, but first they have to know about me. So I might consider this a two step, so to speak, where I could build a really highly qualified audience and then the next book is going to be more technical, I think, based on the feedback that I’m getting. I’m just jotting down all of the questions and I’ll make more solutions.
You know, when I first contacted you and said, “Tom, would you like to talk to me about what you’ve seen work well?” because you know, I like to go to the source and say, “What’s working?” I was just thinking in more basic terms of what sort of video could I make. I’ve got access to a video camera and a quiet place to record stuff and I was wondering, what should I record?
And then you were sort of putting forward this idea, well hang on – you want to have a look at this as an overall campaign, like what’s the objective here? And that’s a good discipline to do, because we do get caught up in the smaller steps.
So if I had a blank piece of paper here and I said, “OK, Tom, I’m interested in a little bit of branding and it’s OK if people come through and it subsidizes my costs, but I don’t have to be hardcore ROI at this point.” What sort of things would I be wanting to assemble to be ready to run ads for this?
An important change on YouTube
Tom: So, my mindset on this has changed in the last month or so because of some of the changes that are happening on YouTube. So one of the big things that’s going to be happening on YouTube in the coming year is something called YouTube Reels and I’m so excited about it, because, I’ll go back to what makes a difference to your book launch. So the reason I feel that this is going to change the game for YouTube a little bit is because right now, people go to YouTube normally only when they want to go and do something or learn something. You wouldn’t necessarily go there and think, ‘I really want to check in with my favorite person.’ You might do that on Facebook, but you wouldn’t do that on YouTube so much.
YouTube Reels are coming out, which are going to be like Instagram stories. So there’s going to be a 30-second spot where you can film directly from your phone straight to your YouTube channel and it will save that video as well in a certain playlist. But then YouTube will have a feed for every user. So if you are on YouTube, you’ll start to get these feeds from people that you’ve subscribed to, and I think it’ll become this place where you go on a daily basis. It’ll be this place where you check in, you see videos from people that you love to follow.
And I know, James, if you were on YouTube and had a huge presence there and you were playing or kind of recording videos, like behind-the-scenes videos or something on those lines, that’s something I’d definitely subscribe to and just see your videos every single day. It’s a bit like why you would go to Instagram the same way. So I feel like YouTube is changing slightly. And if you’re an early adopter for all these things, you get kind of huge traction from the very beginning.
Building a following
So from a branding play with YouTube, I’d probably look at it now as a, what can you do to build a following very quickly on YouTube? And I would say, I would run an ad that would be to get subscribers. We started doing this with a few of our clients as more of a kind of a push to see what our subscribers are worth. At the moment, we’re aiming to be around about 20 to 25 cents per subscriber.
“What can you do to build a following very quickly on YouTube?”
But if you get a subscriber onto a channel and you build it quickly and you know that you can get in touch with them every single time you release a new video, it means you’ve got this huge asset, that you’re kind of growing this list on YouTube, so that as soon as you release a new video, ping on everybody’s mobiles: “James has released a new video.” And I know if I saw that, I would press Play. If I knew the content was good and people get to know you really quickly, I feel like I would just run. I would, this is what I’m going to be doing, I’m going to be running a few ads just to see if I can get subscribers for very cheap and build a massive presence on YouTube that I can get in touch with. I think that that’s kind of like almost like the new email marketing, somewhat.
James: Right, it’s what I call a list guarantee where you want to be able to access people via push notifications. So I have that Pushcrew doing it for my website, I’ve got iTunes doing it for my podcasts, I’ve got my app doing it for subscribers of my app. It basically just alerts them there’s new content, like a spider finding out there’s a fly landed on the spider web. You know, it can come running.
So you think that it’s a good idea to just have, you know, really encourage people to subscribe to a channel and to put lots of really interesting stuff there that they could subscribe to and the video would point them to that. Would it have an overview of what sort of things they could expect, or is it a sample of what’s on that channel?
Tom: So here’s the exciting thing about this. So as soon as you get a subscriber, let’s say for example you’re running an ad and you’ve got a subscriber for 20 cents for example, and you’re able to spend a lot of money just like, building that list on YouTube. Really relevant, you’re targeting people in normal ways on YouTube, so you know you’re getting in front of a good audience.
It’s not like, I know some people have done this sort of thing in the past, where they’ve promoted to countries like India, for example, and just gone crazy and got loads of subscribers, just a vanity perspective and sort of gone, “Hey, I’ve got a million subscribers.” But they’re not actually going to be proper customers, so to speak. Well, not all the time, anyway.
Once you’ve got subscribers
And so you’d run your ads to your normal audience, targeting people in normal countries, your buyers basically. And what you want to do there is, you build a subscriber list, but the great thing is as soon as you get a subscriber inside of your advertising on YouTube, you can target your subscribers.
So you can say, anyone that subscribes to my channel, I want to run ads to those people. So the user experience would be like, “Hey, have you seen this video from James? He’s asked me for a micro commitment of just subscribing to his channel. Sure, I’ll do that.” And so many people will do that compared to click to a website and sign up to something. So you just start this micro engagement with them. You’re releasing organic videos all the time anyway with these YouTube Reels coming out and just normal videos as well on YouTube.
But also, you can advertise to them by tags in your remarketing lists. And then you’d have to pay the expensive places. So if you’re targeting to run your ad on YouTube in front of a marketing video, for example, it’s going to cost you a bit more money than it would if you were advertising in front of like, a dog and cat video. I don’t know, whatever. Or a surfing video.
So I can target you as a subscriber whenever you’re watching anything on YouTube and so it means it’s super cheap. And at that point, I keep on engaging with you, not just by my organic stuff but my ads as well. Imagine what’s going to happen. Like, so I see a video from you, it says, “Hey, look, I’ve got some awesome stuff to share with you. I’m going to be talking about this, that and the other. All you need to do is subscribe.” Obviously, that’s probably the worst-written copy for an ad ever but you get the picture.
You’ve got to hit this Subscribe button, which is a big old button in the middle of the video, so it’s really easy to click that and subscribe. Then I start getting more and more organic videos from you, but also I start getting ads from you. Now the ads I would do would be like, to promote the book. That’s what I would do at that point. I would go and promote the book anyway from normal YouTube ads, but I would keep an eye on whether it’s better for you to get a subscriber first and then advertise that to a subscriber list instead of just going straight to a cold audience.
Just like Facebook?
James: That’s exactly what people have been doing on Facebook. Can I just use that as an example? Because I think a lot of people are familiar with that. Stage one: put pieces of content out there, boost them, run ads and accumulate a list of people who have watched a certain amount of a video or subscribed to the page. And then Stage two: advertise only to those people. So you’re cutting out the ones that aren’t that interesting. You’re sorting out your metal filings from the wood chips and then you’re just turning on the magnet.
Tom: Exactly. And what we’re just noticing so far is that the people that actually take action and subscribe, because it’s quite a new thing on YouTube as well to do that… I mean, imagine if you saw an ad or some content on YouTube that you kind of liked, and at the end of it they said, “Hey look, if you liked this stuff, we got a load more videos and I’ll be releasing more videos about this. All you need to do is subscribe.” It’s kind of like, OK, well cool, I don’t need to leave my name and email again. And I don’t need to be kind of get caught in a lost, in that kind of email list scenario where you’re just going to get a load of spam probably sent through to you. With this, it’s like, just one button, hit subscribe and it’s easy. Straight for the mobile phone.
It’s kind of like, super easy and yeah, I think that as you build a brand on YouTube, you build this huge following there, and then any time you want to go live on YouTube or any time you want to create organic video, anytime you want to run an ad, you’re basically going back to that list that have already subscribed. But YouTube is a platform where people spend time on. With Facebook, it feels like you’re speeding through your news feed. And then, I don’t know about you, James, but I know I got my news feed and I’m like, OK, I got a load of rubbish about Trump. Normally, at the moment.
James: Who? [Both laugh]
Crypto currency’s the big one right now.
Tom: Oh, god, yeah. Bitcoin.
James: So that will all fade away when everyone gets wiped out at some point or gets bored with it. I’ve had to trim and tailor my feed, but the funny thing is, as a marketer now, I’m not actually on Facebook too much. I spend a lot more time surfing the waves than surfing the internet because I think it’s quite a disease. It’s a real trap of spinning the wheels. And it’s by design, that’s what they’re trying to get you on there.
So all of these things are good for us marketers when you’ve got an ad. They’re hooking people in and that’s why I can totally relate to what you’re saying. I’m sure YouTube are paying attention to what’s working with Facebook, and having subscribers sounds like a very smart thing to do to be able to reach people in case the situation changes, and to be able to target very cost effectively and precisely.
What I’m hearing from you, and I think you’ve said this to me offline before, but YouTube is still in that phase where it’s a tremendous opportunity in the same way that AdWords was a decade ago and that Facebook has been for the last few years and YouTube is still a great opportunity for people who are early to the party.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. Right now, it’s still a great place to be and I think that the mix between organic and paid now is kind of coming together. It felt very much like companies could just quite simply just run ads. And you can still do that for sure. And I just think this is a slightly more effective method sometimes when it comes to any launch or any promotion.
If you’ve got this huge following on YouTube that you’ve built up and you’ve got to nurture it naturally, just because you’re going to be doing this content anyway on these different social media platforms, you might as well do it for YouTube as well. That’s the beauty, is that you can then use that audience to put more promotional material in front of it. And if you’re kind of like, a good bit of content, a good bit of content, a good bit of content and then a promotional piece as well, people love that. But you can do it in a way where you actually advertise to your subscribers. And so you have almost like two campaigns, one’s got the subscribers, one’s got advertised to it.
I just feel like it’s such an exciting space to be in. It’s definitely not as easy as Facebook. I think a lot of people can get early success with Facebook and then, when they start spending some money on Facebook, when they kind of see a good ROI, and they start spending money, they can sometimes get some funny experiences where they might hit a ceiling or they might hit like, fatigue really quickly and they kind of have to keep on keeping on top of things.
“It’s more of a tweaking process than a complete overhaul.”
And with YouTube, it feels like you’re more kind of working with the algorithm of AdWords where you are, which has been around for a lot longer and it’s kind of getting in front of people based on their search behavior. So you’re getting in front of people who are actually looking for this stuff. And so it ends up becoming more of a tweaking process than it does a complete overhaul and ‘Oh, we need a completely new video,’ or ‘We need a completely new app now,’ and ‘Quick, change it all over and start again on Facebook.’ With YouTube, it’s very much like, ‘OK, cool, this ad’s working, let it run.’ Like, ‘Just keep it going.’ And you won’t see these huge fluctuations. When you get a good thing going, you can optimize it and you can scale it and it just keeps on working for you.
And the platform of Adwords helps you. It says, ‘Here’s how much more you could spend kind of without getting fatigue.’ And that’s a beautiful thing, because it just helps you with the promotion. But it can be a little bit more complicated when you first look at the dashboard of AdWords. It’s like, wow, there’s a lot going on. So that’s the pros and cons, I suppose, of YouTube versus someone like Facebook.
What sort of media do you need?
James: Right, so we’re on YouTube, we’re trying to build subscribers. What are we putting up? Like, we have to load some media, I suppose, to get in front of people and target certain places.
Tom: You have to remember that with YouTube, you have to create a really good video. The benefit you have with Facebook is you can release the video and then you have all the text around the post as well. The video can almost just be the attention grabber and then if someone likes that, kind of that idea of that content, they can then go read more. With YouTube, you don’t have that luxury, so it’s purely just, here’s your video, and that’s all you’ve got. So you can’t rely on the written word to help you out around the video, so to speak. It’s just the video itself.
“People are starting to expect a lot more quality.”
So the video needs to be really powerful. And people are starting to expect a lot more quality as well. Data’s coming out from YouTube just showing people that like, if you film it 1080 and they have a really good quality ad and well-produced and edited, then it performs a lot better. And people are just starting to expect that higher quality. It’s a place you’d go to learn, a place you go to find out more information, a place you want to trust in the videos so high quality is important as well.
But people are there to learn, so you want to make sure you give them a good experience as well. It’s not purely like a promotional platform, unless you’re getting in front of subscribers. You can, if you’ve given good content to a subscriber already, you can do like a 30-second TV-style ad to that audience because they know you, they like you, they trust you and they’re much more likely to buy from you as a result.
The 90-second ad formula
But we have a formula for like, a 90-second ad that if you would like, James, I can share with you.
James: Gee, let me think. OK. Yes, please. The 90-second ad formula.
Tom: OK, cool.
James: Is that how long the video goes for, or is that how long the formula takes to talk about?
Tom: Oh, I wish it took 90 seconds to talk about it. It takes a lot longer to talk about, but your ad ends up being 90 seconds in length.
James: Right.
Tom: So this is called “ADUCATE”, and it’s an acronym, so it’s kind of like, obviously, each letter means something. And ADUCATE is a play on words as well, so it’s ADUCATE as an ad. There you go. Every time I feel like, I explain it, I feel like I’m teaching people to suck eggs and I feel we’re getting really patronizing so I need to find a better way of explaining that.
A – Aim
So the A stands for the aim. And really, that’s the aim of the viewer that you’re getting in front of, like what is it that they really want? And also, who are they? So just from your standpoint, James, like, who tends to be your audience? What’s kind of like, if you were to paint a picture of what that audience or what that one viewer looks like, what would that person look like?
James: So for me, my person reading this book probably is already a little bit interested in the online thing, maybe got a foot in it and doing some stuff, but starting to feel overloaded and overwhelmed and getting a bit frustrated at all that, they’ve heard people talk about stuff but it’s not translating in their business and they just need to shift gears on it but not exactly sure which gears to shift.
Tom: Got it. OK, nice. So what if they got that gear shifted in the right place and they kind of got the result they were looking for, what will that give them?
James: For most of them, they’ll be able to quit their job or stop stressing so much about if this thing is going to work out or not.
Tom: Great. OK, perfect. So that’s kind of like, I would keep that in mind. At this stage, I go through this three times, by the way. The first time I go through it, I just start making notes and there’s an aim section. So who is it, and what is it they really want? So they probably want to have a new style of life and a break away from their existing life and they know it’s possible because they’ve probably seen it before, but they don’t know how to get there. But they have seen a lot of other people do it, so they’re excited by that as well. Cool, OK.
And anything that comes up, this is kind of like, a bit like improv, if you’ve ever seen or you obviously know, improv is like, you never say the word no. You just keep on saying, “Yes, that’s great,” and “More.” And so, kind of like with any scripting process, we never shut it down and we just say, “Yeah, that’s great. Stick it down and keep going. Even if you think it’s a terrible idea, just stick it in there anyway. So that’s kind of the aim. We end up kind of like, really focusing on who we’re getting in front of and what do they want.
Because if we can say that at the start of the video, it does a massive thing. Because remember, on YouTube, most of the videos you’ll see are pretty irrelevant or annoying. So if you start off with like, ‘Hey, if you’re this person, you’re looking to gain this,’ in the first three seconds of your ad, then the viewer’s going to be like, ‘Wow, this sounds relevant to me.’ And that in itself is a huge attention-grabbing thing. It doesn’t have to be like, a huge pattern interrupt or schema violation that we may have talked about before in the past. It is more a case of just like, sometimes just being relevant to the viewer is enough. It’s a break in the natural pattern, enough just to be relevant on a YouTube ad.
D – Difficulty
So we start with the aim, like who is it we’re getting in front of and what they actually want. And then the D is the difficulty, which you alluded to a little bit previously. But this sounds like it’s going to be frustration and overwhelm and that type of area, right?
James: Yep, exactly. The promise of what they thought they were getting into hasn’t panned out yet, so there’s a disconnect.
Tom: Great.
James: It seems a lot easier for the gurus, and they’re really struggling, because maybe they’re pursuing the wrong business model or they’re working on the wrong things. They’re almost always doing too many things themselves. Maybe they haven’t figured out of all the things they can sell which ones are better yet.
Tom: Nice. OK, cool. So when we go through this, if I can at this point when I’m scripting for clients, I’ll do my very best to try and personify this problem or this difficulty that people are having. So you know, if you ever see like an advert on TV and it might be, let’s say for example, they’re selling some sort of kitchen cleaner or something along those lines, the kitchen cleaner is there to get rid of the germs. And the germs, if you were to talk about exactly what germs they are, like the scientific name of them, people would just be like, this makes no difference to me whatsoever. So the way they do it on TV with ads is they will personify the germs. It’s like this green little monster or something like that and then it’s being killed by the kind of a kitchen cleaner.
So what we’re doing is, what we’re looking to do in this difficulty is try and work out a way where we can turn this difficulty or this overwhelm into a personification of that so we can point at it and say, that, there is the problem. So it feels like they can finally identify this problem as something, so it’s not just overwhelm on a problem and just, they can’t put a finger on it. It’s much more a case of they just like, look at it and think, I can point at this thing now and say, yeah, that is it.
James: So it’s the enemy.
Tom: Exactly. But it’s personified so they can point their finger on it. But if you can define that for them, they instantly start trusting you because they realize you know more than they do, straightaway. It’s like, ‘Ah, finally, you’ve just explained it to me. I’ve never had that before. Yeah, you’re so right. That is the problem.’
And so that can come out a number of different ways. I’ve just written a script actually for a software company that helps you sell products online and it just really helps you out with just making it super simple to kind of get your website created and start selling your stuff online. And it was a similar thing. So it’s frustration, it feels like, ‘I’ve got all this, I know that people are doing this and I know…’ they’re kind of like, ‘I’ve got this great idea and this value to share but I just don’t know how to get that. I keep on reading and keep on getting all this stuff but it just feels like so much jargon and getting this conflicting advice from different people. It’s difficult but it feels like everything has just got too complicated and it’s too difficult to actually get started.’
And there’s like an older audience, about like 40 to 60-old audience range and we’ve picked on millennials, basically. That’s become the slight enemy. It’s like, oh it’s fine for my son or it’s fine for my daughter or it’s fine for these millennial types. They know all this stuff, but I don’t. It’s an easy one. It’s like, I know millennials get the scapegoat for everything right now and I actually, I think I fall into the category of millennials. But it’s like super geeks and millennials feels like, yeah you can point the finger at those people and blame them and say it kind of feels kind of liberating. Yeah, they can do it but I can’t do it.
It’s like, finally someone can explain it to me. Like, yeah, that is so right. If you can isolate that problem, it makes them feel like, yeah, I can get on board of that problem. It might not even be the right thing to say, but if their natural psychology wants to go there as well and points at something like that, then they can say, yeah, that’s so true. You’re not going to linger on it and kind of like, really pull on it too much, but it’s just enough to give it like, enough of a throwaway comment for them to just get on board with that same difficulty as well. So it does become this enemy that you can choose.
And we kind of like, focused on that super geek and that kind of millennial type that people think, yeah, it’s all right for my son or daughter to do because they know all that stuff, but I don’t. And so it feels like, ah, you know my problem and hopefully then, you’re going to be able to help me fix it as well.
James: Yeah, because they probably thought more than a few times, damn, these people, they just… It’s like when they pick up a new device, you just hand it to a kid. They’ll show you how it works.
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
James: You feel like you’re out of touch. Like, my parents, they feel frustrated with technology. Phones and things can really get them annoyed and when I go and check their accounts and things, I find that it’s my niece’s account. This 12-year-old computer whiz has set up all their stuff for them. They’ve figured it out. Complexity frustrates people. So I can see that you’re onto something with that script.
So we’ve got the difficulty.
U – Understanding
Tom: Yeah, exactly. Then we move on to the U. So, ADUCATE and the U is an understanding. So we’ve kind of helped them with the understanding but now you’re aligning with the viewer. So you’re letting them know that you understand their emotions, and it’s more of a feeling here. So it is the feelings, the emotions. It’s not like, I understand your scenario of like actually what’s happening in the world. We’ve just kind of framed that slightly in the difficulty but with the U and the understanding of the emotion, it’s more like, yeah, I know how that feels. And it feels like this.
If you can describe again the feeling to somebody, it makes them feel like, OK great, you actually know how I feel. But you know my scenario and you know how I feel. Great, you’re ticking all the boxes for me to get closer and closer to you as a presenter.
James: Right. Emotional.
Tom: I mean, you’ve got 90 seconds and sometimes we can get this down to 60 seconds. So we’re looking to kind of like, really get one or two sentences maximum. So don’t over stress yourself if you’re writing a script yourself as we go through this. It’s more a case of you’re wanting to just kind of make a few notes at this stage and think, ‘Cool. I kind of feel like I know what their emotions are.’ That’s good enough for now. We’ll come back and start writing the script afterwards.
James: Yeah, it reminds me of that feel, felt, found sales methodology that we learn in sales. Are you familiar with that one?
Tom: Yeah, I have heard that.
C – Credibility
James: Yeah, it’s like, Tom, we’ve had a number of people feel that way. And so once we’ve got the understanding happening, I guess we move on to the C?
Tom: Yeah. So the C comes down to credibility. So at this point, it’s a nice feed-in from the U anyway, from the understanding. So you’re going from, “Hey look, I understand where you’re at.” And then you can build the credibility at this point. It’s like a nice follow on, it’s like a nice bridge to pull us into helping them out at this stage. So the credibility is like, “Look, I’ve been there. In fact I’ve done this with so many clients, I’ve helped them through the same process as well.” And you can drop in anything that you think would be the power credibility thing to give away.
Again, it’s only a tick in the viewer’s mind, so they can feel like, remember, you’ve already got to the point where they think, ‘OK great, you know my difficulty better than I do, that’s great. And you understand how I feel.’ And the credibility is, at this point, they almost want to trust you. But they don’t yet, so to speak. They’re getting closer, but as soon as you give them like, a credibility hit, then they’re like, oh great, you are the expert then. And it could be like, great, you’re an author, James, you’ve spoken on loads of stages. That’s great because you can then just quickly show the book or you can show you standing on stage in the video itself. It’s kind of like, you don’t have to say some of this stuff. You can kind of have it as a throwaway.
You can say, “Look, I actually was speaking about this in…” kind of like, wherever you were recently, “…to 500 people and we found that pretty much everyone in the room had exactly this problem.” And as soon as you show a picture of that, you viewed on stage, again, huge amount of credibility. That’s just the tick in their box, they’re kind of like, ‘Great. We know that you’re the expert. I’m ready to listen to what you have to say at this point.’
James: Nice. So it’s whatever that positioning thing is, that instantly establishes you. It might be someone who you’ve worked with who everyone recognizes. It could be… does this fall under the celebrity endorsement thing as well for some people?
Tom: Yeah, exactly like it. So I know that mentioning my clients we’ve worked with and kind of like, maybe kind of allude to a case study or something along those lines that you’ve helped someone. Or yeah, like from the ground up, you can go from like, here’s how I helped one person or up to the point where you’re like, here’s how I’ve helped thousands of people, or awards you’ve won or presentations you’ve given – it could be anything.
Because remember, the viewer is wanting to, he’s kind of cheering for you at this point to be like, come on, give me some credibility so I can just like, “Great, you’re the expert.” You’re just giving them that kind of like, tick in the box, so to speak.
And so there’s no need to overdo it here. There’s no need to be like, hey, I’ve done this and I’ve done this, I’ve done this and that. They don’t need that. They just want a quick, like, cool. You are the best at what… you are very, very good at this. They feel very comfortable with that.
A – Action plan
James: Perfect. Alright, so we’re now credible. I guess we are into A.
Tom: Yes. So the A is now your action plan. So you built upon the credibility to say, “Hey look, I can help you. So you positioned yourself as someone actually who can help them. And then you say, “And you know what? Having helped so many people, I know that the action plan of this three-step thing that we do can really help you.
Now, the important thing about this action plan is that, even if it’s like a seven step plan, make it three steps. I know that’s sometimes hard for people to do, but remember, this is the first experience a lot of people have ever seen of you and seven things for them to hold to on in their mind is too much, especially when it’s an ad that they can’t go forward and back on. It’s not going to be a huge level of education in the ad in terms of like, it’s not going to be a 30-minute ad or something like that. It’s going to be like 60 to 90 seconds. So you just want to say there is an action plan that they can use. You’ve got a method, you’ve got something that can actually help them.
So it feels like, ‘Great. What is that plan?’ Like, what is the thing? If it feels like three steps, it feels easy. And most, I mean, every script I’ve ever done, I’ve been able to break it down so it can be a three-step thing. Sometimes we’ll go to four steps and there’s a reason we do that sometimes as well. But you get extra bonus points at this point if you can make someone feel like they’ve already done step one.
“Make someone feel like they’ve already done step one.”
So say for example, Step One for you, James, might be something like, you’ve got to find something that you know people will find valuable, that you can share with the world. Or something along those lines.
James: Right. So they’ve already got that. I was being too cheeky – Step One, you’ve got to be able to watch YouTube videos.
Tom: Yes. I’ve done that one before. I can be like, I think it’s something like, first being aware that there’s a solution to this problem is number one and so it’s like, and by watching this video, you know there is a solution.
James: I was thinking I’d be probably too hopeful if I said that Step Three for the action plan is to stop watching so many YouTube videos, knowing that’s where my target likes to hang out. OK, so something that they’ve already got that they can utilize. So that would be like saying to someone, “Oh look, you could build this amazing paper airplane. Step one is to see if you’ve got any photocopy paper sitting around your office.”
Tom: Yeah, exactly. And the reason being there is a lot of studies on this, but as soon as one perceives they’ve already started momentum, they’ll carry on so much more like it’s carrying on. So you see these places like cafes and things, they don’t just give you… well, they’ve done tests on this, actually, where they say, “Hey, we’ve got a loyalty program and this is going to stamp your card and if you bring it back here once it’s filled out, you can get a free coffee.”
James: They pre-stamp it.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. So they’ve done a lot of studies where they give them the loyalty card and they say, “Hey look, there’s eight to get,” and don’t stamp them, or they say, “Here’s a loyalty card, there’s ten to get, we’re going to stamp you the first two.” So it should feel exactly the same, but it doesn’t because as soon as you’ve got the two on there, you’re like, OK, I’ve already started. I’m going to put it in my wallet and it’s not going to go anywhere. And so next time I come here, I want to make sure I get stamped again. And so many more people are likely to take that action.
So in the same way, when you’re going to share an action plan that you’ve got for somebody, if you can make it a three or four-step plan and say, “Hey, first thing you need to do…” and it’s something they’ve already got done, it’s like, “Make sure you’ve got an idea that you know fills you with passion and you know it would be valuable for other people.” ‘Great, I’ve got that. That’s great, I’m already on the road to success, it’s amazing!’ That’s what you want people to feel like at that point.
T – Teaching
James: That’s amazing. So gee, we’re coming into the home straight now. What’s the T?
Tom: Yes, well the T would become a little bit more teaching around this. So remember, people come to YouTube because they want to learn something. Now, when I say “teaching,” it doesn’t need, I mean, we only got 90 seconds so it’s not long.
So yeah. At this point you want to share with them, you know sometimes when you give something, like you may have said something to somebody before, James, where you say, and they’re like, “Oh my god, that’s so true.” Or it can be just a sentence or something like that.
So you’re going to unpack the three-step formula you’ve given previously, just to give a little bit more detail. Now you can do this in like, Step One, do this – and you might give a little bit more information there. So it can be like, stop doing this because if you keep doing this, you’re going to find that this is your problem. And so it’s like, ‘Oh my god, that is so true. I need to find out more information about that.’
So you’re just unpacking this three-step formula and just giving like a highlight away so it makes them realize that there’s even more value inside of this three-step program that they probably haven’t realized before. That’s kind of like, it’s not teaching per se in terms of like, kind of sitting there and walking it through. You’re going to do that in the next step, so to speak, or in the book they’re going to buy or whatever it is.
And so in the book that you might have, you might say, “OK, Step One is to do this. And in fact, on page 17 of my book….” And you can almost open up and show them, sort of thing, you can say, “You can see this chapter beginning… we’re going to walk you through how to do this, this and this…” or something along those lines. They’re like, ‘Oh my god, yeah, I need to learn that stuff.’
Or you might say, “There’s a definite plan you want to follow in this first phase, and it’s going to be making sure you do this and then this and then this. And there’s a reason why you do it in that order.” It’s really just a couple of sentences, just to unpack that first part of the action plan.
Now, depending on how it feels when you kind of come back to writing the script, you can do it so in the action plan you can do a bit of teaching per point. You can say, “Step One, do this and here’s what we’re going to do, in page 17 you’re going to get this. Step two, you’re going to do this…” So you could do it that way, or you can do, “Here’s the action plan: first you’re going to do this, second you’re going to do this, and third you going to do this. Now let me show you a little bit more information, and actually, let me show you someone who’s implemented this in the past…” You could even do a little case study there as well. So you can say, “I coached Julie and I showed her this three-step model and look what she did. First of all she did this. There we go. Second of all she did this, because I taught her to do that. And third of all she did this, and look at the results she’s got.
So you can unpack it in a real quick case study so they’re like, ‘Oh wow, if Julie can do it, I could do it too. And that’s kind of like, it’s unpacking the action plan a little bit to give them a better teaching.
James: Right. So you’ve basically expanded out your three points into useful information.
Tom: Exactly, yeah. That probably would have been the much more concise way of saying it than what I went through.
James: Basically, it’s like the, I’m thinking in terms of a book. It’d be like the contents table and then you’d flip to the chapter to find out more about that.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. And if you got the book there, I might not show the contents table, just because if you’ve set it as a three-step action plan for this, I might just move straight away…
James: And there’s nine chapters or so.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. It’s a bit of a disconnect between what your book is and what you’ve said the action plan is. So I might just turn to like, a chapter and say, “Hey look, in this chapter it’s going to cover this second part,” for example.
I mean, your action plan, your three-step action plan or your four-step action plan should definitely be part of the book, of course. Don’t like, say, “Hey, it’s a three-step action plan,” and then it’s nothing to do with the book whatsoever. Make sure it’s exactly the same. But it’s just like that, visual representation by the title of the content.
James: Well, in my case, there are four main areas that I would segment my audience into, generally. So I’d usually talk about those four buckets as Ryan Levesque would talk about, and within those buckets there are sub segments or sub things that people could do. So if scaling and building a team is one of the segments that I typically encounter with people who I work with, there is an entire chapter on building a team. But there’s also chapters related to that, that you could bundle together.But building a team is a chapter in the book and building a team might be one of the three steps that a business would need to engage to go from solopreneur to a real business. So it kind of could marry up, right.
Tom: Perfect. That’s exactly it. That’s great. And then, so you’ve done this teaching section, and then we’re going to get to the E, which is like the exit point of the video. This is kind of like the call to action. And I tend to try and bridge it with a statement that I’ve used subtly for many years. So this actually comes from Robert Cialdini and this is the one way to get real quick trust. And a lot of people feel like trust can only really be built when you have a relationship with someone and it’s kind of like, over time it just generates because there’s a lot of interaction, etc. and you just build that trust over time.
But you can shortcut it with a statement. Now the way you do this is you’ve got to highlight a slight weakness or, not a weakness but maybe a drawback for example that is obvious. So like, for example, this might not happen overnight for these people. It might take a bit of learning, for example. That could be a slight drawback or you might think of other drawbacks. It might be a little bit of hard work we need to put into this or something. So you’re being honest with somebody.
And you also need to use one of the strongest elements of your argument, so to speak. It’s kind of like, what is the reason why this is just so powerful? How is this action plan or whatever you share with people, what’s the most powerful thing you can mention that makes them go, “Yeah, that’s exactly why this is so good for me.”
James: So this is the big idea or the hook?
Tom: Yeah. I’ll give an example. Cialdini talked about, there was a meeting (I do a very bad job of paraphrasing this.) There’s a meeting, an annual general meeting with a company and they were in a bit of financial stress and they had to talk to the shareholders of this meeting.
One of the spokespeople came out after the meeting and said, “Look, the financial review looks really good, but it’s going to take a long time to implement.” Now completely honest, I kind of wanted to mention, there was some good stuff and some bad stuff. But as I say that, if you came out and said, “The financial review looks really good but it’s going to take a long time to implement,” everybody feels negative. It doesn’t feel good at all. And it feels like you might not even trust that spokesperson.
But if you flip it around and you say, “Look, it might take a long time to implement but the financial review looks really good.” At that point, it feels so much better because the word “but” is really, really powerful. What you’re doing with the word “but” is you’re negating what you’ve just said in the mind of the listener and you’re strengthening what you’re about to say. That always happens that way. You probably had it before where someone gives you feedback. And I’ve had it in the past, especially when I was in my school days. They say something like, “Look, that’s really, really good, Tom, but what I recommend you do instead is this…” and you’re left with this like, OK, what I’ve just done is crap.
James: Well, actually I refer to that in the book, I call that a sh*t sandwich.
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
James: It’s where they put the positive and then the negative and then try and clean it up with the positive. “But I really like how you polished his shoes.” It’s called pairing and it’s a tremendously bad idea when you’re giving feedback, and I agree with you. “But” does cancel out what came before it. So we would put the bad news should always go first because the good news will look better by comparison. So I think you were talking about a technique that I’ve heard before called the damaging admission.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. I like to call it the power of your but, just because it’s my way of talking.
James: You know, when I was selling motor vehicles, which doesn’t sound good when I talk about it now, actually. Sh*t, I was a car salesman. No, in all reality though, I would point out the flaws of a vehicle to a prospective buyer and they would definitely appreciate that. They would feel that you’re being upfront with them, which is very rare in that industry. In fact, I’ll just go so far as to say that there are bandits in every single industry, it’s just that some industries where they deal with the public get more exposure. And then there are certainly some lower quality people that you can attract to jobs where you have to work weekends as well, that does factor into it, with less academic qualifications.
OK, so moving on from that traumatic situation… The E stands for?
Tom: The E is the exit. So the bridge between this is like to say, mention a slight drawback that you know is pretty obvious to the viewer, and it’s like, “Look, this might take a little bit time to implement,” or “There’s some hard work ahead of you, but this is the clearest path from someone who knows what they’re doing.” Something along those lines. So it feels like you’re being honest with them, and then you’re negating the negativity of that, and you’re strengthening it with a positive as well.
James: So it’s addressing their natural criticism.
Tom: Exactly.
James: The element of scrutiny. Like you know, what’s the catch?
Tom: Exactly, yeah. And so it just addresses that, gets them past that and it leads you nicely into the next section, which is the kind of the exit, which is where your call to action happens. And at this point, you’ve got to make sure that what you’re offering at the end of the video is something that’s very congruent with what you’ve been talking about, of course, and also is the logical next step. Because by this point, you want people to be like, this has been great. I love this video. What’s the next step?
If you can get people to that point by this point of the video, the call to action just becomes a natural thing and we want to show them what to do next. This is where clarity, and this is the point where I shoot this part of the video probably 50 times, maybe, to make sure that I just absolutely perfect this, if I’m doing a video of any sort for anything. I’ll just be like, right, the call to action needs to be done in a really clear way.
“The call to action needs to be done in a really clear way.”
So you would mention exactly what you’ve got for them. You may have already mentioned it because you’ve already highlighted the book, for example, in the three-step plan and kind of some of the areas that you’ve been talking about. So you say, “Look, this is the book and this is the offer that we have on today,” so to speak, or however you want to promote that offer. Obviously, you would have thought about that prior to writing the ad.
You want to be really clear with people to say, here’s what we’ve got and here’s how you’re going to benefit should you do this, and here’s maybe some of the consequences should you not do it. Now when I say that bit, the consequences should you not do it, you can go hard on that if you want to. That doesn’t fit my personality at all, so I make that very, very subtle. I write down in my notes, here’s what they potentially stand to lose if they don’t buy this book. But then when I actually write the script out, I would be trying to make that a little bit subtle, because that’s just not my style to be like, “Hey, if you don’t get this today, you are going to be the worst person ever.” Something or whatever it might be. Try and integrate it so it’s a subtle enough cue to be like, “Look, go and buy the book, it’s the obvious thing to do, and don’t stick with how you are right now.”
But I try and like, associate that with their identity, or at least how they want to be perceived as their identity. So I mean, I’ll do a bad example now, but if they want to become an entrepreneur in this scenario, they want to be like, ‘Hey, look, my mindset is to become a business owner who is really profitable, doing really well.’ Then you would easily associate that with like, ‘OK, well, good business owners and people who are able to get the best results are people that take action, people that do this stuff, and actually go in. They don’t just sit there and think, maybe one day.’
James: So this is Cialdini’s labeling.
Tom: Yeah, exactly. You’re labeling the person, say, “These people do this. The person that you want to become does this, and therefore, you should take this call to action,” so to speak. You’re kind of like, aligning it so in their head they’re like, ‘Yes, I want to become that person or I agree with being that person, and that sort of person would take this call to action.’ So you’re kind of aligning it with their identity.
James: Right. That sounds good. So it’s like, “Tom, people who are really successful are very generous. Could I borrow 10 pounds?”
Tom: Precisely. Yeah, exactly. Or you could even say, “Can I borrow a thousand pounds?” and I’m like, well… “Look, can I borrow a hundred, then?” “OK, fine, a hundred’s fine, compared to a thousand.”
James: You’re quite sophisticated with this, and I imagine these subtle differences will be the sorts of things that can change the results from a campaign from losers to winners.
Tom: Exactly, yeah. If you get a good ad, the very ROI of a campaign can be very, very fine sometimes. And that’s sometimes like, if you say for example, I want 10 percent positive, so for every nine dollars we spend, we get 10 dollars back, for example. With a good ad, you might get that down to, let’s say 80 per cent or 70 percent or something. So for every seven dollars you spend, you get 10 dollars back, for example. And with a really good ad, risen like similar to how we’ve talked about here.
If you get that absolutely nailed and you think, ‘Right, I’ve got this down and I feel very comfortable with this and it does perform like that,’ that margin when you’re advertising is huge, because the knock on effect of it means you can advertise in spaces that maybe you wouldn’t have been able to have done before, because you can start spreading your message a little bit wider. And now, what’s costing you nine dollars to get 10 dollars back would have been costing you one dollar twenty to get one dollar back so you’d have been at a loss.
Testing and tweaking
So you can start to scale out a lot more, still being ROI positive and like, it just makes the whole campaign so much easier to run if you have a good ad. And it’s fine margins sometimes, like we might write like, four different versions of an ad because you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m not sure if you’re pulling on the right enemy here,’ or we’re not sure if we could have like, said the aim is exactly right. So we might create a few different sections of this and say, “Well, let’s pull on this aim and then we’ll do another video pulling on this aim and it kind of will be the same after that.” But you just keep kind of trying out different ideas at different sections of your video.
But that’s the great thing about this, because it’s kind of down to these seven points. Aducate would be like the seven points there. They can be filmed in such a way where you just film that clip and then you kind of like, so as you’re presenting it, you say, “OK, I’m just going to get this A, done the aim right,” and you film that bit and you’re, “Cool. What’s the next bit? D. OK, difficulty. let’s film that section now.” So you can film it section by section and when you edit it together, you can then have different parts of different sections. It should all still make sense as you go through it, of course. But it means you can just test out different intros or test out different action plans or whatever you want to test out and you’ll find that there’s a small margins but one ad can beat another ad by huge results sometimes.
We’ve had ads like, you think, ‘I’m not sure which one’s going to win, A or B,’ and B might outperform A by like, 17 times. It’s crazy how much of a big change will happen. I mean, I go into markets like this and just, I realize the more I know, almost like the more I know I don’t know, which sounds like an odd thing to say, but I’m just happy to say, “Right, this is a good formula, it’s worked like loads and loads of times before and I know it pulls on a lot of scientific research and all the stats that we’ve got before in the past and everything else. But I still know, going into this market, I’m not sure whether this will work or if this works.” But the beauty of it, it’s not like TV. You don’t have to put all your eggs in one basket with one ad. You can have four ads or five ads or whatever you want to do and run them all together at the same time and spend 10 dollars.
So we live in a really exciting time where you can put a bit more effort into the video creation and then see what works for you and do just like an ABC split test or something along those lines, take three videos ads and see which one works best and then just stick with the winner.
So it means you don’t have to kind of get it perfect first time, because once you do this video, that’s the beauty of it, it’s like, once you do this video, you’re going to start getting data in. You’re going to start to see where your ad’s performing well and when you start looking at the analysis of that data, you’re like, “Hey, that’s interesting.”
And we just did this for a weight loss line, in fact. We ran the ad, and then we noticed that some of the best videos we were getting results on was where people were typing in, “weight loss journey,” which you hadn’t really thought of before, but on YouTube people were like, loving watching people’s journeys from being a certain weight, losing a load of weight and then looking like this. They love watching that content and they want to be the same person having that same weight loss journey.
And so we realized that, with the stats and the data and the analysis, and we’re like, you know what, we’re getting really good results when people type in “weight loss journey” or watching videos around weight loss journey. And so we said, “Why don’t we create a video that pulls on that?” And so we’re like, the action plan then becomes like, OK, here’s our three-step action plan for your weight loss journey.
And we just found that we would never have known that before going in, but with the analysis we go and create more videos and it has a massive difference on the performance of the ads. So you don’t need to get it perfect because you can always be improving it. And so, just go with the best you can from like, the ADUCATE process here, but you’re going to be creating a far better ad doing it that way than just by using the traditional copywriting techniques or anything like that.
James: Right. So what I’m hearing is, we should maybe create two or three versions and we could upload them and test them against each other.
Tom: Exactly, yeah.
James: OK. So what else do we need to know? So, this ad’s going to be running there. We’ve got a call to action. Just so that I can get clarity on this – is the call to action to subscribe to the channel, or is this something else? Because I know that you’re saying that might be one of our goals if we wanted to build awareness, is to build subscribers. Are we using videos like this to tell people to subscribe to the channel, and then we’re using videos like this to tell them to go and download the book? Or are they different types of ads?
Tom: Both and with tweaks. So the structure will be the same for a good ad, because once you’ve got your notes down, then you’re going to write it out, like make sure you write out your ad. And then you’d start realizing that what you’ve written out is going to be two and a half minutes, three minutes or something along those lines. And so you start to condense it down and that would be kind of like the process of going through this. So one, get all the notes down. Two, write it all out, and three, start heavily condensing it. And that’s the three-step action plan.
When you do that, let’s say for example you’re going for a subscriber, my action plan would almost be like the content call to action. It would be like, OK, Step One, you’re going to subscribe to this channel by clicking the button displaying on the video. Step Two, I’m going to send you a load of videos every single day or every single week, or like three videos a week or something like that, teaching you methods in business that are working incredibly well to help you, whatever. Whatever that kind of like Step Two is going to be. And Step Three would be like, just start implementing some of this stuff in your business and you’re going to see profound results. And then you move into the power of your but statement and then you’re going to the exit at that point, which would be like, “So, hit the button right now,” or “Subscribe to the channel and you’ll be getting more videos from me very soon.”
So you can kind of do it that way for a subscriber. If you were going to it for the book sale, you would kind of obviously then go for the root of like, saying, Step One might be find your niche or whatever it is. Step Two might be whatever the next step is going to be, the four steps that you talked about earlier. So you can bring that into play and then say, “Right, now go and buy the book.” So I’d just kind of like keep an idea of what your end goal is or mine when you first start creating the ad. Is it to get a subscriber? Is it to get someone to buy the book? And the ADUCATE process still works.
But if you’re going for a subscriber, you probably go for a slightly shorter video, because you’re asking for a micro commitment from somebody, so it doesn’t need quite so much selling. So I might try and keep it down to like, 30 to 45 seconds, for example, to get that subscriber button hit, so to speak.
Best ad length?
James: Are there different ad costs for different lengths of ads? Or do they come in like, 30, 45, 60, 90?
Tom: No. As soon as one watches past 30 seconds of an instream ad, you pay as soon as someone watches past 30 seconds. So that’s what happens with instream ads, so they’re the ones like the pre-roll ads on YouTube. And then the the other ones where you see the thumbnail, they’re sponsored, like promotional thumbnail at the top of the search results on the right hand side, they’re called discovery ads and you pay there as soon as someone decides to click Play on your video. But it doesn’t matter the length of your video, you’ll pay the same amount.
James: Right. So it’s going to be somewhere between 30 and 90 seconds.
Tom: Yeah. I would say for a subscriber video, 30 to 45 seconds. But if it’s 50 seconds and it’s still really good and concise, great, go for it.
If you’re pitching the book, depends on the landing page. If your landing page has a video on it as well, I might shorten the video on the YouTube.
James: And just get that handshake.
Tom: Exactly. You just say, Hello, all we’re looking to do is… get the click so they can go and watch the video and then you can engage with them on the website, for example. Whereas if it’s straight to like, a sales page for the book I might do a bit more work in the video.
Quick summary
James: Perfect. OK, so what else is there? We’ve talked about why you should be there. We’ve talked about what you’re going to be making to attract people to your channel and then to attract people to take a more specific call to action. We have gone through your ADUCATE framework which was fantastic, just for a summary there that was Aim, Difficulty, Understanding, Credibility, Action Plan, Teaching, and Exit.
And we talked about the idea of putting a few different versions of your video in a test with each other and we’ve talked about the optimal lengths. Now I guess the next thing is, we’re gonna have to log in somewhere and upload these videos and start a campaign. And that’s probably a little more in-depth than where we can get to in this particular segment. But presumably that’s done somewhere in AdWords?
Tom: Yes. You’re going to upload your video to YouTube, to your YouTube channel and you’re going to want to make sure that you’ve got like a link at the end of your video inside of the YouTube channel. There’s something called end screens, which are like clickable links inside your videos. So whether someone’s watching on a mobile or a desktop, they can just click a link inside the video and it’ll take them to the website. You can set that up. It’s pretty easy if you go and look at the YouTube interface, once you’ve uploaded your video. It’s pretty simple. But then once the video’s there, you would then use your AdWords account to promote that video.
So a bit like how it works on Facebook, for example, if you’re familiar with Facebook, you’ve got your ad campaign inside of Facebook, then obviously the ads will be appearing in people’s Facebook news feeds. But with AdWords, when you log in, you’re just going to be focusing on video campaigns.
Some campaign tips
And the campaigns I like to focus on, it can get quite technical. When we took that on a podcast, we were kind of like showing on a video so to speak and showing you how to do that. But the way in which the best campaigns normally get it going would be like, for this type of thing when you first get started, like a placement campaign, which is where you literally select the videos you want your ad to appear in front of. So you can say, “Right, all the videos by this person, I want my ad to run in front of.” Or all the videos about this content, I want to run my ad in front of. And we have a tool that’s going to grab loads of these placements really quickly so you can say, right, by keyword.
Let’s say for example you were wanting to get in front of people that were saying, “how to scale my business.” Let’s say for example you could type in the words, “how to scale my business,” and then the bit of software would give you 50, 100, a thousand URLs on YouTube of all the different videos out there about that content, and it would be like ranking order. So obviously, if you grabbed a thousand for that, you might find that you get a bit irrelevant after 500, so you want to be keeping an eye on that. But yeah, you can grab all of those URLs and dump them into your AdWords campaign. And it means your ad will run in front of any of those videos that show ads. And that’s a great place to get started, because it’s normally quite cheap but it’s super targeted as well because then, inside of your campaign, you can decide to stop running your ads on those placements that don’t work and you can scale up those placements that do work for you.
So if you saw like, your ad was running in front of a TED Talk, for example, and it was working really well for you, you might just up the bid price and you can say, right, per view I want to spend more now and you get more scale there. But if you had another ad running in front of, let’s say, an ad about, some randomer’s video on YouTube about how to scale your business and it wasn’t working well for you because it’s a terrible video, you might say, “OK, great. We’ll just stop running ads on that channel or on that video.”
And you’ll just see all the data in front of you. So you can say, right, they’ll just tell you how much you’re paying to acquire a new customer in your AdWords account. And so it’s brilliant, you can just say, “Right, of these 500 video URLs that I want to be advertising in front of, only 100 of them are working for me. Great, turn off 400 then, you don’t have to advertise those ones,” and they just spend a bit more money on those 100. And then you go and get 500 more and go test those on a new keyword and 500 more on someone else’s channel, for example.
James: This is where you’re getting some serious scale. It might be worth having a chat to Tom.
Tom: Yeah. We’re getting a bit complicated at this point.
James: We’re starting to glaze over now.
Tom: OK.
James: That’s good. I could at least work on the video part and then load it to the channel with the, what did you call it, an endless green?
Tom: No, an end screen.
James: An end screen. That reminds me when I was learning tennis. I had an Asian coach and for years I thought that the back of the court was called the bear’s line because he’d go, “OK, go to the baseline.” Gotcha.
Tom: It’s my English accent. I apologize.
James: Well, you don’t get more English than English, do you? That’s excellent. End screen. We’re the ones with the distorted accent.
Tom: Which I always get whenever I speak onstage. People come up to me and say, “Oh, so how long did it take you to get here from Australia?” “No, I’m British.” And after a while, I’m like, yeah, OK. “It took me 10 hours to fly.” I decided to just give up.
James: Nice. OK, well Tom, I think that’s been very helpful. So now I’ve got a nice framework to work with and I have an understanding of the overall process and what needs to be done. So wow, how to promote your book on YouTube. I think this has been remarkably helpful.
Tom, where can people find out about what you’ve got cooking? I know you’ve got a book on the way, so this hasn’t been a completely wasted discussion for you, I imagine.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve got a book coming out called Viewability, and it will be out in, I believe it’ll be like February or March time. I keep on tinkering with the book, so it might be later than that, even. Yeah. So it’s called Viewability and that is also the name of the agency as well. So it’s viewability.co.uk is the website, and if you want to have a chat with me, that’s probably where I’m going to be hanging out. Otherwise I’ll be on Facebook and YouTube.
James: Thanks Tom.
Tom: Thanks so much, James.
James: Alright. If you enjoyed this show, be sure to leave a comment or give it a review on iTunes. Appreciate that. If you want to get my book, Work Less Make More, you can go to Amazon and grab it. If you don’t, you’ll probably see some YouTube ads in a short time from now where you’ll be tempted to get it using Tom’s seductive framework, which we’ll publish on this post and co-credit Tom as well, of course, and a link to his website. You’ll be able to check out the ADUCATE framework and it’s been a blast. So we’ll see you on the next show.
Tom: Thanks, James.
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Lenny says
Incredible value! Thank you James and Tom!
Lenny says
Tom packs a LOT under an hour. Incredible value! Thank you James and Tom!
James Schramko says
Thank you Lenny! I made a video using this formula – we will see it soon
Lenny says
Boom!!!