Introduction
YouTube says that there’s 300 hours of new videos uploaded to this site every minute, three times more than one year earlier, and that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the USA. So, 800 million unique users a month. I’ve heard that that’s a billion now and so you just need to understand that there’s a massive opportunity to market yourself on YouTube.
YouTube is still the wild, wild west. Facebook is now not such a great place to advertise for local businesses. With YouTube someone watches your video and then they go watch a whole bunch more videos, which is super powerful.
The social media giant has over a 1 billion users and people are watching 50% more video on the platform year over year. For marketers and small business owners, this represents a huge opportunity to get in front of a target audience.
Because the YouTube ad format relies solely on video, the platform can seem a little daunting at first. When you can give a great ROI (return on investment) for your client you will have a client for life. Instead of learning anything about marketing to generate new clients, customers or patients for their business, they just concentrate on the business and not the marketing.
The only type of clients we will deal with are those that are willing to work with us and see the need. You can achieve your financial target with a small number of clients. We just need to get the first client and our objective is then get the next client, then the next.
You don’t need to be a talented movie director to create a YouTube video ad that is going to generate revenue for your business through a video content. I’m going to take a look at how you can use a YouTube ad format to grow your business and help other local businesses.
I will show you how the platform works, including pre-roll ad ideas and the process you need to go through in order to get a return on investment for video content.
The different kinds of YouTube ads
In broad terms there are two kinds of YouTube Ads: ‘skippable ads and non-skippable ads.’
Non-skippable ads are ads that force people to watch. They can only be 15-20 seconds long. These are pre-roll ad campaigns, meaning to view the desired video content, the ad will appear.
These kinds of ads get better engagement, but they also have a higher video view abandonment rate.
These ads also tend to get a bad rap because they seem forceful. But, if your ads are good and targeted effectively, they don’t need to represent trouble. In fact, good ads will be shared on social media for entertainment purposes in their own right.
Skippable ads are also known as TrueView ads. These are ads that don’t force people to watch. These can be shown in two ways: ‘In-stream’ and ‘In-display.’
YouTube doesn’t really say that there is a maximum length for TrueView video content ads.
What they do provide, however, are some suggestions — especially for the In-stream ads.
51% of In-stream ads are an ad format that run for 15-30 seconds.
If you want to make your ads longer than this, you may want to keep your video length at around 3 minutes (as YouTube has suggested).
In-display ads don’t exactly have a suggested maximum run time. These ads can be used to take people directly to a YouTube video, so you can get away with them being long. 25% of videos watched on Tablets are 60 minutes or more.
So, if the video you want to advertise is long and of value — In-display may work best for you.
In any case, if you’re creating a YouTube ad from scratch, you might want to keep it short so that it’s easy to create.
You don’t have to stick to the suggestions provided, but doing so will reduce the chances of your ad being rejected.
In-stream are a pre-roll ad shown at the start of video content. These are one of the more common ad types that people use when advertising on YouTube.
People don’t necessarily mind watching ‘In-stream ads.’ A study once found that 72% of ‘In-stream video ads’ are watched to the end.
If you’re new to YouTube Ads, In-stream ads can be a great way to get in on the video view game. In-stream can be used to achieve a variety of goals.
You can also create a form of YouTube Ads called In-Display Ads. These are ads that are shown in the search listings, related videos section or as video overlays.
You’ll notice there that there is a box on the far right that mentions ‘On partner websites.’
Because we’re only advertising on the YouTube site, this option is not open to us. In-display ads aren’t as invasive as the other types of ads that we’ve discussed so far. That doesn’t mean that they’re not any good, though, as they can still generate results for your campaigns.
YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine in the world. If it costs too much for you to advertise in the Google search listings, there is a different ad format. You can advertise in the YouTube search listings instead.
Let’s Take A Look At The Numbers
Living in an area like mine is always an advantage. Your area of coverage extends to six counties. I could honestly run this business only working in two counties. You can work this business anywhere and do it virtually. But it is always easiest to work in your own backyard.
You only need 2 clients from each of the six counties…just two! That would bring the total number of clients to 12. If the lowest fee you charge per month is $750 for leads, the figures are computed below.
$750 a month is fine!
12 Clients @750 per month $9,000 per month
Ad costs ($2,500 per month)
Net Profit $6,500 per month
Now think about doubling your efforts! That is life changing money. When you get 1 or 2 clients, they will definitely refer their friends and your new venture will be booming! Forget right now about the 12 clients. After you get that first…what would 3 clients mean to you? 5 clients? An extra $3,000 per month means a lot to a lot of people.
Here is an example of what is possible using the training in this course. I started testing the idea of using YouTube ads to get clients and generate leads in early May of 2018. Since then I acquired 4 new clients as you see below.
Case Study
Once I secured my first client, I wanted to do a quick case study. I had an $800 a month client so I made my targeted ad spend $225 for the first month. I ended up spending $190 which wasn’t bad at all.
For the roofing client I am working with, in the first month I generated 27 phone calls for him. We used 5 different cities around Fort Myers, so there were 5 different tracking numbers used. That is over a call per day. My client closed six new roofing customers for over $70,000 in new revenue.
The majority of the phone calls came in the third and fourth week. As I tweaked the process and targeting I got better at getting the phone to ring. I show you how to do that in the course. Once you get that process down you will have no problem generating leads for your clients.
Goal Setting
Essential Goal Setting Steps for your Design Business
When it comes to getting ahead in any business, it is essential to set clear and achievable goals. After all, you aren’t likely to hit the target if you can’t see what you are aiming at. Setting a goal is also about more than just getting a good result. A properly thought out goal statement will also help you to be more efficient.
By setting up a proper goal statement, you get a great picture of what you want to achieve and things that are simply a waste of time can be done away with. Learning how to set goals is the first step towards getting the life that you want.
Define your Goals and be Specific
You need to write down exactly what your goals are for your design business. It is simply not enough to say that you want to grow your business. You need to be very specific. State that you want to grow your business by 20%. You can even go as far as defining the different segments that you deal with and setting goals for each of these.
If, for example, you love working with commercial clients but find individual clients frustrating, consider setting a goal to increase the work that you would prefer to do. At this point, do not censor the goals. According to Jim Rohn, we should set as many as 50 goals. This may initially be a little daunting so start out by setting 5-10 goals. Make sure that these are goals that you actually want to achieve for yourself.
Set Goals for Different Areas of your Life
Just as you are not 100% about work or your social life, your goals should not focus only on one area of your life. Set goals for your personal life, i.e. family, health, spiritual, etc. as well business goals as well so that you become a more well-rounded and balanced person.
Create a vision board of your goals, using pictures that represent each one. Put your board somewhere where you see it every day. This will be a constant reminder.
Believe in Them
If you ever read the “Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, you would know that for goals to really work, you must believe in them wholeheartedly. It is pointless setting a goal to earn a hundred thousand dollars a month if you do not believe it is possible. Now is the time to review your goals and make sure that they are achievable in your mind.
Set Time Limits
All things become possible if you give it enough time. What sets goals apart from wishes is that goals have a specific time limit. You need to have some short-term and some long-term goals. Where do you see yourself in 6 months? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? You need to ensure that your long-term and short-term goals gel.
“People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period than people without them could ever imagine.”
– Brian Tracy: Self-help author, speaker, and lecturer
Review your Progress
You will need to set times to review your progress in terms of your goals. You need to see if you are still on track and, if not, you need to change the way that you are approaching achieving your goals or you need to review your goals in general. This is the point at which you will see if your goals are truly achievable or not.
Overall, you are the one who determines whether you achieve your own goals, whether they are business or personal goals. The scary thing to acknowledge is that your future really is up to you and goal setting helps you to map out this future.
“The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them.” – Jim Rohn
So, get on with becoming the person you want to be, and your business success will shine through too.
Lead Generation With YouTube Ads
The expectations from your new clients is that you will be able to accomplish the main goal of bringing them new customers. The other objective is to enhance their online platforms or SEO, but the main goal here is acquiring new customers. They want to grow financially. Once we have the trust and have brought new customers, we can then work on social media, websites, SEO, etc.
Offline consultants will always have a major issue. If you decide to create a website, the intention is to increase traffic and the number of customers. You hope to use social media to get the customers. But the main problem here is whether you be able to convince customers to look for your client’s business and bring the leads after upgrading the SEO. There is some doubt here.
All the parties involved will benefit because even if you decide to charge clients a monthly fee or per lead basis, your clients will gain by getting leads on a constant basis each month. This means more money to both parties.
What you will do is use YouTube ads with a call tracking number in the title description for the clients. The call tracking number will show the leads that are coming in and this is our proof to get paid.
You can’t argue that even though a local business owner understands that commercials sell, they’ve been conditioned to see commercials in the local space, for many, many decades, and going back to the point of radio-only commercials and back to the ’40s. You know, pre-TV. These local business owners understand commercials.
They understand what the internet is, but they might not understand the specifics of YouTube advertising and stream ads, so keep it simple and straight to the point. You’ll do wonders and that’s my tips for how to sell on the local level. How to sell these commercials. Of course, you can take your phone and maybe show them a little sample, but again, it’s just too much. You know, just keep it straight to the point. Five second hit.
Video works for lead generation only if someone watches it. If your prospect list is small, the video is unlikely to magically end up in people’s hands. If the video has amazing shock value that entertains, it may spread like wildfire. More often than not, however, it’s your known methods of distribution that support the video’s effectiveness for generating leads.
Have a Clear Call-To-Action
Creating a high-quality and engaging video is not enough; you need to think of ways to hold onto the visitor’s attention even after the video is over. The biggest video platforms YouTube and Vimeo offer “suggested content” after the videos end, so that they can keep their visitors hooked onto their website. If the visitors get distracted and move onto some other website or brand, they might forget about you completely.
Make sure your client’s video includes an appropriate call-to-action, at a strategic point inside or at the end of video, to help the visitors perform a specific task or divert them to related content. The CTA would depend on the part of sales funnel where you want the visitors to be directed to.
For instance, if you are targeting new prospects, you can offer them an explainer video containing a call-to-action that takes them to a product tour, followed by a link where they can download a whitepaper or another video that talks about setting up a trial.
By planning your video marketing campaign carefully, you can achieve your goals easily!
Types of Videos that Work Best
So, now you know how to utilize videos to generate high quality leads and ensure better conversion rates. But you still might have one question in mind:
Here are the five types of videos that can aid lead generation:
1. The Explainer Video
These are simple and straightforward videos that offer the visitors with enough information about products or services. Though explainer videos are considered to be top-of-the-funnel marketing videos; if the videos are engaging enough, you can successfully drive your audience further down the funnel.
2. The Educational Video
In order to improve awareness, branding and viewership, you need to offer value to your audience and this is exactly what the educational videos do. Educational videos can be specifically very effective if you can address specific problems that your audience face.
3. Testimonials
Testimonial videos are specifically very effective since they address how your brand is helping people solve their problems. This helps you position yourself as a reliable solution provider and win viewer trust.
4. Case Study Videos
These videos act similar to testimonial videos since they dig deeper into the specifics of a particular case. Case study videos work best for visitors who are closer to the bottom of the sales funnel and help in converting them to customers. Case study videos validate your success stories and thus help you win visitors’ trust.
5. Promotional Videos
Promotional videos help in increasing awareness, engagement and conversions, but you must make sure they are informative as well as entertaining. Promotional videos give you the opportunity to deliver your messages in a creative way to a targeted market.
The process works like this :
- You will prospect for your client. You can either do this by running YouTube ads which is covered in this course. You can look for prospects that have a video on the first page of the YouTube search, but the video isn’t ranked on Google. Do a “fake audit” email or use other prospecting outlined in the course.
- Make the presentation to the prospect via “winning the bet” and closing the initial test. The bet is for gaining exposure (YouTube ad) and getting phone calls coming into the business (call tracking number).
- Set up the YouTube ad and begin the process. You will be using a call tracking number to prove that you generated phone calls.
- After 14 days, you will go back to the business owner and show him the call tracking detail and close him for a monthly fee for running his “online commercials”
How to Set-up YouTube Ads
Let’s talk about how you’d actually set up your YouTube ads.
As mentioned, there are ‘skippable ads’ and ‘non-skippable ads.’ The process of setting each one up requires a different approach.
Let’s take a look at how you’d set up a ‘non-skippable ad.’ First, go to your AdWords account. You can do this by visiting https://adwords.google.com.
You should then see this page.
You’ll need to click on the ‘Campaign’ button, so that you can create a new ‘non-skippable’ ads campaign.
When you click on the ‘Campaign’ button, you’ll need to select the ‘Display Network only,’ option.
You then need to fill in some campaign details.
For the moment, I’ve chosen ‘No Marketing objective.’ I’ve found that this makes it simpler to go through the ad creation process later on.
You then need to pick a location for your campaign. You don’t need to focus just on the US, as 80% of traffic for YouTube comes from outside of the US. You’re not going to be stuck with the options you choose here, so don’t worry if you want to later change the location.
Even if you do mess things up, you can just create a fresh, more advanced campaign, after you’ve learned how to set up the basics of a ‘non-skippable’ campaign.
When you scroll down the page, you’ll see some more options. I would leave the ‘bid strategy’ as it is for now, as well as the ‘ad extensions’ option. You do, however, need to focus on the Budget field. This is the amount that you can afford to spend, per day, on your ads. You can change this later.
For now, just put in a modest figure that you can afford. Remember to change it later, though, if you need to.
For the moment, you do not need to adjust the Advanced settings. Nevertheless, if you’re good at AdWords, you may want to dabble a bit here. For newbies, though, I wouldn’t worry about it.
Once you’ve filled in the relevant options, click on the ‘Save and Continue’ button.
You’ll then see this page.
Name Your Ad Group
You’ll then need to pick how you’re going to target your Ad Group. This is essentially how you’re going to decide who sees your video. Important: In the targeting section you need to pick the placement of Youtube.com.
By picking the placement option of YouTube, you ensure that your ads are only going to be shown on the YouTube website.
To choose a placement option, click on the ‘Use a different targeting method’ button. Then, select the ‘Placements’ option from the drop-down menu.
Type in YouTube and select the option that has 2.5B-3B impressions per week by clicking on the double arrows.
Now, let’s focus on how we’re going to target our ad, so that it is shown to the right people.
Click on the ‘Narrow your targeting further (optional)’ button.
Though it says optional, it’s not really optional if you want to focus your ads and get them in front of the right people.
If you’re new to YouTube advertising, the easiest way to target your ads is by selecting the ‘Topics’ option.
Let’s say that I wanted to target people interested in SEO. I would just enter the topic ‘SEO’ and then select the relevant options that show up.
You’ll notice that there is a graphic on the right-hand side of the page that lets you know how many impressions your ads might get.
What you see in this graphic correlates with how your ad is being targeted.
This graphic gives you a sense of potential. When the number is high, there is greater ability to show your ad without it becoming saturated. Once you’ve chosen your topics, click on ‘Save and Continue.’
On the next page, you’ll be offered the chance to create an ad. However, you can’t create the ‘non-skippable’ ad format on this page. So just click on ‘Skip ad creation.’
You should then see this page. Click on the Ads tab.
Then, click on the ‘+ AD’ button and select ’Ad gallery.’
On the next page, select ‘Video ads.’
Then, select ‘In-stream video ad.’
So, we’re getting exposure, especially in a local space. Imagine there’s no competition, there’s nobody. So, imagine if you have a client who is a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist or an auto shop or a restaurant. There’s nobody else running ads versus them, so they have literally all of the local traffic for themselves to take advantage of.
They’re going to get a ton of traffic, a ton of click-throughs, and whether it’s making a reservation at the restaurant, or making appointment for an oil change, or maybe a consultation for a lawyer and so forth, we’re talking about a major amount of traffic here that you can’t get through TV anymore.
It’s just not there. This is going to be the majority of your ads. You’re going to be doing in-stream ads. This is the page where you get the chance to upload your video. As discussed before, a ‘non-skippable’ video can only be 15-20 seconds long.
Either provide the YouTube video link or upload the video now. Be sure to check the video on your mobile device to ensure it is clear even on a tiny screen.
Once you’ve provided the video, enter a ‘Display URL’ and a ‘Landing Page URL.’
The Landing Page URL is the webpage that people will be taken to when they click on your video.
The Display URL is just that — the URL that is displayed, but not necessarily the one that the viewer is taken to when they click on the ad.
Then, click on the ‘Save’ button on the top of the page.
Now, you’ll have to wait for AdWords to approve your ad. Which doesn’t take long.
Let’s take a look at how you can create ‘skippable ads.’ As you know, you can create In-stream ads and In-display ads.
We’ll be covering both options now, as they’re pretty similar in terms of how they’re created.
As before, go to your AdWords homepage.
This time select ‘Video’ from the ‘+ Campaign’ drop down menu.
You should then see this page.
Enter a ‘Campaign name’ and then set a budget for the campaign. Important: Deselect ‘Videos on Google partner sites, apps and the Display Network.’ Pick a location for your ad campaign, in terms of where you want it to be targeting. You’ll also need to pick a language for your campaign.
You have the option here to pick the mobile device type you want to target. This, of course, will depend on what kind of campaign you’re looking to create.
Remember that around 50% of YouTube views are from mobile. The ‘mobile bid adj,’ option lets you vary the bids of your ads when they’re displayed on mobile devices. I would not worry about that for now.
Click on ‘Save and Continue,’ and proceed to the next page.
You’ll now have a chance to set up your ‘Ad Group.’
Name your ad group and paste in the link to the YouTube video that you want to advertise.
As you can see, you have the option here to select ‘In-stream ad’ or ‘In-display ad.
If you pick ‘In-stream ad,’ you’ll see the following options.
It’s not that complicated to fill in the fields. Supply a display URL and a Final URL (the page that viewers are taken to when they click on the video).
In terms of the companion banner, you can upload some of your own images or let YouTube select the images for you. Images are normally created using your video content.
If you select ‘In-display ad,’ you’ll see these options instead.
Here you need to enter a headline and a description. Creating headlines and a description is an art in itself and can help get that video view.
If you want to create a great headline, make sure it calls out to people who are relevant to your video.
For example, if I were targeting people who need SEO services I could say — ‘Need help with SEO?’
If you target your ads by keyword, then ensure that this ad has the keyword in the headline. An example might be ‘Learn how to write blog posts for SEO.’
How-to videos are becoming increasingly popular on YouTube. 100 million hours of how-to videos have been watched in 2017.
If you can incorporate how-to into your titles, you’re increasing the chances of this ad format succeeding.
Area, of course, is really important for local, so use zip codes. Zip codes are not all created equal. Some zip codes, there’s more money. If you’re doing home improvement, some zip codes might be really wealthy, all homeowners, while another zip code might be all renters.
Obviously, renters are not going to be looking for home improvements, but homeowners would. So, you could actually target your local audience and segment them by demographics. So, either case you’re going to do really well with YouTube ads here, and then bumper ads are basically just the ones that you can’t skip.
If you’re used to using Facebook Ads, you’ll find that there is a lot of transfer between the two platforms. In essence, though this a different kind of ad, the same principles apply.
You could even argue that YouTube is the intersection between AdWords and Facebook Ads.
When you select the In-display option, you can decide if you want your ad to take people to the video you’re advertising, or to your channel page.
The option you choose will depend on how well populated your channel page is and, more importantly, your goals for the campaign.
If you just want people to watch your video, you may want to take them straight to the video page.
You’ll also need to set your bid. But, before you do that, it might be better to set your targeting options first.
For this kind of ad, you don’t need to set the placement as YouTube. In terms of the targeting the video view, you can just follow the steps I laid out earlier in the course.
If you’re feeling brave, you might want to target by keyword.
If you want to do that, enter in a keyword that is related to your video and the market that you’re trying to target.
Select the ‘Find related keywords’ button and then enter your keywords.
It’s important to set your bidding after this, as your bidding suggestions will change as a result of setting your targeting.
You can see that that my ‘Cost Per View’ suggestions have now gone up as a result of targeting my videos differently.
When it comes to setting a bid, start at the top, so that you can quickly get a sense of how well your ads are working. When you enter a bid amount, you’ll find that you get some suggestions on what the results will be.
You can see that there is an estimate of 0-700 views per week, at the budget level I have set. Even though I’ve set a top-end bid, the suggestions still sit at around 19 cents per view.
That’s because it works the same way AdWords does — using an auction.
Once you’ve done all of this, click on ‘Save ad group.’
A lot of students ask me about budget and how much they should spend, what is a good budget per day, how much should be spent for a total campaign, and I just want to say the whole goal is to test, test, and test. It really depends on your budget per day but then it’s also about your bid. Depending on what your ad is, and what your target is, will really determine what your budget is.
If you know your bid amount, if you’re trying to do maybe four cents per view or one cent per view, and you want to spend maybe $30 a day, let’s say that you want to get four cents per view; let’s divide that by .04 and that’ll give us 750 views at a rate of four cents per view a day.
If you’re going be spending say $100 per day and you want to bid only one cent per view then you just divide by one cent and then out of $100 you’re going to get 10,000 views per day.
You can then link your AdWords account to your YouTube channel. This is a good idea, because it will let you gather a lot of useful data that you can later use to improve your campaigns.
Once you’ve linked your channel, go back and click the ‘Finish’ button.
Now, you just have to wait for your ads to be approved by AdWords.
Optimizing your campaigns over time
As with all advertising campaigns, including social media campaigns you’ll need to monitor your YouTube ads over time.
For Skippable ads, one metric that you want to be paying attention to is the ‘view rate.’ In skippable ads, this represents the number of people who watch your video after having been exposed to the thumbnail. Note: This is different to view-through-rate.
If your view rate is low, the following things could be wrong —
- Your headline is not drawing people in
- Your description does not encourage people to click
- Your thumbnail image is not eye catching.
- People are tired of seeing your video (assuming view rate was once high)
It’s hard to get these things right on the first go. Because of this, you might want to create multiple variations of the same ad, but with different headlines, descriptions and images.
If too many people are skipping your videos, you might also want to experiment with just changing the first five seconds of your video.
It could be that your social media videos are not hooking people in as well as they should be. When it comes to ‘non-skippable’ ads, the metrics you want to watch out for are different.
Here, you’ll want to focus on your ‘Click-through-rate,’ (CTR). Your CTR will let you know if your ad is being shown to the right people.
If your CTR is low, your ad is probably irrelevant to the people it is being shown to. So, you’ll need to change your targeting so that your video is shown to another, better targeted group of people.
Of course, if your CTR is low, then it might just be the case that your video is not good enough. It may, for instance, be that your video is not delivering your message clearly.
As a result, viewers will not know what the video is about and so they will not feel compelled to click on it to visit the website on the other side.
However, as with all paid marketing campaigns, there is only one metric that truly matters and that is your return on investment. You might also refer to this as your ‘earnings per click,’ or, in this case, ‘earnings per view.’
You should not always blame your videos and your ads for poor performance, when running a paid YouTube campaign.
That’s because your ads might be designed to encourage people to visit a website or social media conversion.
But, if your website is not optimized for conversions, then it’s not going to turn website visitors into leads or customers.
Always remember to be thorough in your approach. You’ll know that your website is a problem when your ‘CTR’ and ‘View Rates’ are high, but you’re not generating leads from your pre-roll ad campaign.
Over time, you’ll be able to optimize your ad targeting by analyzing the analytics that YouTube collects for you.
You can access the analytics, by going to the ‘Creator Studio’ and clicking on analytics.
Using the data provided, you can reduce your ad spend and improve your conversions. You’ll be able to show more of your ads to people that care about your offering because you’ll continue to refine your campaigns.
Ads is just so amazing. I love the fact that we can choose the location, whether it’s country, city, or state, where we want to show your ad.
It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. If you’re in a dental business, and you’re trying to promote cleanings, that you’re doing a sale on cleanings or Invisalign, and your shop is in Nashville, well, then, maybe you don’t want all of the United States and Canada. You want to specify.
Well, you can click on here, and you can enter, “Nashville,” and you can type your city right in there, and then you can just click, “Nashville,” so that your ad only shows in Nashville. How awesome is that?
Maybe you’ve got multiple stores all across the state of Tennessee, and not just in Nashville. Maybe you’ve got multiple locations. Well, then, you can just type, “Tennessee” in. You know? And there’s the state of Tennessee.
You know, you could do Texas, or you could do multiple ones. You can add, depending on where your reach is, and what your business is in.
The great thing about YouTube ads are that you can use them for your prospecting or you can use them for your clients lead generation. Both work well together. In the course I have laid out the formula for setting the YouTube ads up in your AdWords account. If you are working with your client simply use the demographics they are looking for with their ideal client.
On the other hand, you can look for businesses that need advertising help, SEO, website development…the list is endless.
Finding Local Businesses To Work With
In this section I am going to list every prospecting method I have tried. Some have worked better than others. If I went into every detail of the prospecting methods this book would be over 100 pages long. I am going to highlight a lot of the methods. There are quite a few people reading this that have my other courses. There is greater detail in those courses. All these methods work. Find two or three that work best for you and own them.
Meetup | Meetup.com. I call it the “forgotten social network.” It’s still huge. And why not utilize the Internet’s largest network of local groups to attract new clients, while helping you lead a community of your ideal potential clients? Go find a meetup (or start one) in your area and you’ll have immediate access to other local business, and some who may also be your alliance partners.
With most of service-oriented businesses, the #1 question I hear is:
“where do I find my clients?”
And the answer is that you find them at a common meeting place, which is an assembly point for people who have common interests or needs.
The Meet Up Marketing strategy is about getting involved with and contributing to local hubs of people who could benefit from your services.
And the best thing is that it is FREE!!!
Audits. Website audits, SEO audits, and Social Media Audits all add value to any prospective customer’s condition. And my suggestion is to offer them for free, even though you could also sell them if they are thorough enough. A local business as a business owner is always trying to evaluate their own business, but they don’t have the experience or know how to truly evaluate their own digital marketing efforts. This method is great combined with the LinkedIn method.
I can tell you from talking with a lot of local businesses, usually this is something that they always want to get fixed. They want their information to be correct out there on the internet. If their business hours were wrong, or a phone number was wrong, address is wrong, or even their business name has some sort of inconsistency to it, then this is something usually a lot of business owners want to look at.
The other reason this is important is it has a direct effect on the ranking results for this top three if we want them in the maps section. Obviously, in this training I’m not going to go over how to rank in that area necessarily, but this is one of the most common things that you can look at as a marketer, to go out there and fix for a business, and a lot of businesses really desire it.
Below in the LinkedIn method I talk about giving a free audit as a “foot in the door”. This is a great way to contact someone and be of service and offer value that your competition will not do.
LinkedIn Marketing and Prospecting
Understand that LinkedIn is a process. Done right, you will be able to work with interested Local businesses quickly. Both steps need to be done. There is the methodology of sending a friendly message letting them know you will give a “free audit” of their marketing and the competition. Then there is the process for building the business and referrals. This will take a little time but is equally as important.
Free Audit On LinkedIn
I know it’s basic stuff. But you want to convey yourself to be as professional as possible. You will want a good photo of yourself. This is a professional network. The picture doesn’t have to be professionally done. But it needs to look good.
Second is to start contacting people and connecting. To connect with business owners initially you want to do this. Although we are connecting with Local businesses, we want to connect with other professionals.
The people that are more likely at first to connect when we request are auto sales and advertising sales. That will build your connections number up so that you can begin to target contractors, HVAC, Plumbers, Pest Control, etc.
Start reaching out to auto sales people, advertising sales, and realtors. These are professions that I found that are happy to connect on LinkedIn. We are doing this only for number of connections.
Once we have around 100 connections you can start this approach as well. You should send no more than 15-20 invite to connects a day. You can do a search for Local businesses all over the country.
You can view unlimited profiles per day. The following day see who viewed your profile. Those contractors who viewed your profile are free to connect with. Send them an invite using the email template we discussed.
Do this for 3 or 4 days. You should have enough Local business connections that we can start to have credibility in the Local business community. First, we now want to change our profile.
We want to be the “Local business Marketing Expert”. This will add a ton of credibility to your LinkedIn profile. Do a search for contractors in the area you would like to work in. Begin to contact and send an invite to these Local businesses.
When the Local business is your connection, you are going to send a friendly, non-invasive email to them. You are going to thank them for the connection and let them know that you can be of service.
LinkedIn is all about establishing connections. When you connect with other professionals in your field, you’re gaining more knowledge and insight since you’re interacting with colleagues. Have a question?
Ask someone on LinkedIn. Want to know about upcoming events in your area? You can find out this information on LinkedIn as well. In other words, your connections on LinkedIn can help accelerate your business.
The letter that I send out is in the attachments included in the course.
Networking and Building Reputation on LinkedIn
The first step is to create a hot 100 list. Now, this list is not a list of prospects. If you’ve done your job, and you’ve gone through the other LinkedIn lesson, you’ve learned in this course how to optimize your profile. If you don’t have a couple of articles or blog posts published on that on your LinkedIn profile by now, you’re not doing the action steps that are being taught in this course.
Photos, articles, et cetera. Build that out and look at my summary section on LinkedIn if you have it and build one like it. You want to create a top, hot 100 list. So, who’s on this list? People who sell to the clients that you sell to. Who is doing business with local businesses. So, what you have to remember is, not a lot of people are as niche-specific as you’re probably being inside of your business.
That means every day, spending 10 or 15 minutes, and just add 10, or 20, or 30 people to your network. Every day. If you do this every day, you’ll have over 600 by the end of the month. New connections. So, who do you add as connections, besides your prospects? You add people who do business with your Local businesses prospects.
Payroll service people, merchant processing people who sell credit cards. Processing. People who sell POS systems. These are the best ones, in my opinion. POS systems. Point of sale systems. If you don’t know what a point of sale system is, go to Google and type in, top five point of sale systems to buy. Then you’re going to get a website of …
tons of websites of all these review companies reviewing the top 12, or top 10 POS system companies.
Then, do a company search in LinkedIn, and go find all their salespeople who could be in your alliance, who could be at least on your top 100. That’s how you start doing this. So, you go, I don’t know who sells payroll. Just type in Google, top payroll service companies.
Grab the top five for ten, go into LinkedIn and do a 50-mile radius. And then, type in employer keywords, like payroll services, or type in the employer of the ones that you found the top companies. And then, type in keyword sales, or type in keyword account management.
Other examples are office supply companies, office furniture companies, delivery, medical waste, medical supplies, insurance agents, car salespeople, etc. Let your mind wander. Walk into a local business’s clinic and look around.
Because that’s a very rich source of getting referrals. But, this is a cool underground way to get referrals that most people aren’t doing, which is why it’s effective.
The Second Step is going to be to endorse and/or recommend. Endorse and recommend. What’s the difference? I can only recommend people, which means you go onto their LinkedIn profile and click on recommend Jim, if I know them. Because it’s going to require me to write at least a couple sentences about them in my recommendation to them.
Now, if I’ve met Jim, but I haven’t done business with him, but I’ve heard good things about Jim. Then, I can go ahead and recommend Jim. But, I usually only recommend people that I know, who I’ve met. And I can, at least if I’ve met them. I can say, I’ve met Jim, I’ve spent time with him, he’s a real personable guy. I highly recommend him anyone looking for payroll services.
If you can’t recommend, then at the very least, endorse them. That’s just when you give them a little plus click next to one of their skill sets. And your face shows up on their profile, and they also get notified that you’re one of the people who recently endorsed them and/or recommended them, which keeps you top of mind.
They, then, are more likely to go to your profile and see, who is it that’s recommending me? Who’s endorsing me? Be like, oh man, there’s Jim. There’s Joe. There’s Matt. There’s Mary.
That gives you step three, which is, give them a referral. I don’t care who you are. Every single one of you reading this knows of another business owner, even somebody who might have told you no. This works great with people you think should have bought from you, who you thought were going to, who told you no.
Go give them a referral or give the referral person them as a referral. Now, the secret to this is, it doesn’t have to be somebody who you’re certain would buy from them.
And you do that introduction through LinkedIn. And you just copy, CC both the people. Right there, inside of LinkedIn. And you can put in the subject line, an introduction, or you can put, a referral for you.
Now, remember. They don’t have to get business from this person. I know a lot of small business owners. Most of them are already happy with their payroll services. But, do I think everybody should have a backup resource to turn to if their payroll service company fails them or goes sour?
There’s nothing wrong with saying, hey Jim, I know you probably haven’t switched payroll in 10 years, but if you ever have something go haywire, this would be the person I recommend to you to have in your back pocket. I want you guys to meet each other and say hi.
This is just common business practice, and people really appreciate it. Now, both sides appreciate it, to be quite honest with you. But, the person who’s in your top 100, who you’re trying to stay top of mind to, that they might refer you now to somebody that they are connected to, is powerful.
The Third Step is to then ask them for an introduction to a Local business that’s in their network. You’ve given value. You’ve endorsed and recommended them. You’ve added value directly with an article or a blog post, maybe a couple. You’ve given them a referral.
You’re just going ask for an introduction. Say, hey Jim, I see you’re connected to Oakville Chiropractic and Sports Injury, and I know they have two facilities and they’re located right there in Atlanta. And I service the Atlanta area. And, I would love an introduction, if you happen to know that person even a little bit. Would you be willing to do that for me?
Wrap your head around this before we finish this video. People who sell payroll services, merchant services, POS systems, insurance, get what? They get paid commission every month that those clients stay a client. So, they don’t want them to struggle and go out of business.
So, if they can find somebody reliable like you to refer for them, then it’s genuinely helping their business. It’s helping them make more money, too.
So, it serves them to ask them to refer you to someone that you can help. Just tell them the truth. Say, look, there might be somebody that you as one of your clients that you don’t want to lose because they go out of business. Is there anybody you know who’s struggling who happens to also be a local business?
Google My Business (Maps)–
Any business that has not claimed their listing on Google is missing out on a huge number of customers and so can be easy sales. This is an indicator they need help with online marketing. Any local business that has not claimed their listing on Google is missing out on a huge number of customers and, so they would be easy sales.
Geo-Specific the suburbs are also important.
Google Local clients:
- The business listing is not in the top 3 results
- Position 8 through 20 is my sweet spot
- No pictures are in their Google Places listing
- No, or few Google reviews, or even better, bad reviews
- No website or lead capture
Yp.com and Manta
Businesses that are currently spending money on advertising. Yp.com is another excellent site. There is business that pay for advertising on that site. Those are excellent leads. Yp.com has star ratings. Chances are good if there are negative reviews on yp.com, then there are bad reviews on Google as well.
You will want to look for businesses that have a poor reputation, no website or a poor website. Those are the Local businesses that really do not understand marketing.
The Free Morning Goodie Method
I hear all the time from my private coaching students that getting through the gatekeeper is one of the toughest things to do. Hogwash, I have the way to their heart. The “donut method” is the easiest way to get through the gatekeeper and meet with the office manager or local business.
This is how you can get your first client. It is a 3-step process. It works well. It involves the Law Of Reciprocity. If you do something nice for someone, chances are…they will do something nice for you.
STEP 1: Do this in the morning.
- Go to a Donut Shop, Bakery, Bagel Store and pick up some goodies (two dozen of something)
- Write a Personal Note that says: “Hello, My name is YOUR NAME and I run a marketing company here in YOUR TOWN. I just wanted to stop in and introduce myself. Enjoy the Donuts!” (name, name of company, phone number at bottom)
- Deliver the Cookies and Introduce yourself to the Receptionist
- Come back at the end of the day and ask for the appointment.
Prospecting With Cold Email
Prospecting with cold email still works. However, it is the least effective of the methods. It is never a bad thing to mix up all the prospecting methods. Never rely on only one.
This process is straight forward. We are going to look for auto repair shops that are advertising because they are looking for new customers. They are spending money to acquire new business. So, they will gladly open the check book to a consultant they know, like and trust. And it just so happens if you are using the Ringless Voice Mail method you will have a lot of email addresses to send to. Below are other ways to find businesses to email. There are a bunch of ways to skin the cat.
Fake Audits
A great way to get started and only spend time talking to interested people and creating video audits for people who want to do business with you is to go out and created fake audits. You aren’t creating anything. You are sending an email to people that have issues on their sites.
What I like to do is go out and make the audits. And what I would is I would end up following up with that phone call, and I would say, “Hey, I just wanted to follow up on that email I sent to you guys.”
And of course, they have no idea what I’m talking about. Come to find out, they never even looked at the email, or in a lot of cases, they would go and open the email and then they wouldn’t watch the video. They would admit, yeah, I got that email and maybe I thought it was spam or whatever, and they just ignored it.
What you do is take a screen shot of their video and put it in your prospecting email. What you do is send an email first that has a screenshot of their website, and in that screenshot, you can overlay kind of like a video player or a video button. You can do this by using Snagit and taking a screen shot.
You send them an email and tell them that there is an issue on their video you found on YouTube. Don’t put the YouTube link in the email. The emails I use are in the latter part of the course. The idea is that you are telling them they have an issue you can help them with. The real issue is that the video is doing nothing for their business.
They will respond with a question usually about the video doesn’t work when they click on the screen. So, they are interested, and it is much easier working with interested people. I’m sure you will agree.
This is a just a concept that I really want you to think about because it is going to save you a lot of time. Ultimately, you’re not going to be spending all this time doing these video audits and then come to find out later that people haven’t watched them.
Getting That First Client
When selling your service, you just want the next step. The first step is the initial contact. The next step is the getting the appointment. The next step is the sales presentation. The next step is closing the sale. We covered that earlier in the course.
When you are going through the presentation and talking to your prospect, keep it simple and to the point. You are not selling YouTube ads. This can mean a risk and is a dirty word to business owners. They have been burned too many times before and they get countless calls every week with people pitching SEO and Facebook ads. You are selling an online commercial.
Think about what is in it for them. Matt Bacak taught me when writing sales copy always think “WIIFM” “what’s in it for me”. Always think about what’s in it for your client.
They are in business to make money. To make money, they need people or customers to give them money. Therefore, they need customers, clients, patients, etc. The perception of SEO, PPC, Facebook Ads is that it is risky. It will cost them money they are not 100% sure they will ever see back. Therefore, you want to position yourself as a problem solver. You are going to get them more customers.
Going through the presentation is an easy process. Use the Power Point included in the course. When you get to the last slide, that is where the money is made.
Say to your prospect “Let’s make a bet. What you want is more customers. Lots of people promise the moon and deliver nothing. I see huge potential in your business. If I can get you more exposure in 10 days, you pay me $100. That covers my cost for the short period. Since you are helping me out I’ll do all my usual work for free. And when I show you more exposure, and I win the bet, we can talk about what I can really do for you for – what I normally charge $600 to $1000 per month to do. AND we offer a 100% money back guarantee. Fair enough? Then SHUT UP! He who speaks first loses.
The first hundred will cover your ad costs and you will make a few bucks. After that and you roll out the monthly service, in 14 days you might have the business’s phone ringing.
Do not worry about the money back guarantee. With what I am showing you, it will not be a problem if 1 out of 10 asks for their money back. You will be earning 6 figures. It’s the cost of doing business.
After You Win The Bet
You will be offering a service from $500 to over $1000 per month for each client. When you go back to collect your $100, you will want to have with you the following items:
- The call report (You will get this from your call tracking dashboard)
- Your phone or tablet to show them the ranking on Google
- A contract
Sit down with your client and explain what you did and that the commercials and the phone calls will keep going as long as the monthly fee is paid. The great thing is that you can add commercials, test new ones; there are all different kinds of things to do once you have the client on board.
Know your market and your client. If there is not a lot of competition, you can easily keep them ranked and happy for $600 per month. In a higher competition keyword such as air-conditioning repair and plumbing you would want to get $900 to $1000 per month. Do not be afraid to ask for the money. You now have their trust and you have proof.
If you have any of my courses you know that I teach this method and it works. I see it over and over again with my done for you 3-pack clients and my coaching students.
Making the Commercial
When making the commercial here is a PRO TIP: Just keep it simple. What I like to do is the least amount of work as possible and bring home the most amount of profits. The way to do this is to not make the commercial. Have someone make it for you or use an existing video. Your clients should be able to provide you the video and they should give it to you on YouTube unlisted.
PRO TIP: You want to use an unlisted video on YouTube. Or if they give you a video, make sure it is unlisted.
For example, if I go over to the video section in my YouTube channel most of or almost all of my videos that are in my channel, show up here on YouTube. This is because I use the video sales letters for my One Time Offers.
When you’re creating the video, I’m going to go ahead and … Say I’m going to upload a video, click on upload video, and I upload this video, it’s going to ask me if I want to keep it unlisted. You just click on that button.
That’s if you’re actually creating the video for them or they give you the video to upload on a channel. Set it public but keep it unlisted, that way the ad is not available publicly. In most cases, you’re not going to want them to see the ad publicly on YouTube.
The big thing is keep it simple. You don’t have to create the video. You don’t need to use software. That’s my recommendation. Now, of course, you can absolutely go ahead and do that if you want to make more money. But for the amount of money that you can get for creating the video and the amount of time and effort, it’s not really worth it in my opinion.
What you can do is you can hire out locally to a video professional, let them do that for you, and then you can just take a commission, maybe 25%. Or here’s another option. Hire somebody locally through Craigslist. Or maybe you’re not in that local area. You’re going to have to hire out. Another way is to get several pictures and send it over to the outsourcers in the course I have recommended.
You don’t have to be a video expert by any means to run this kind of business. You don’t even have to ever touch a video or ever do any editing. This is why I suggest targeting business owners that have YouTube videos up that are ranking on YouTube and not Google.
These business owners already have a video ready to go and you just have to plug and play that video. Make sure they have it up on YouTube. All they need is a YouTube link to run these ads. That’s it. Of course, there are other options. If you want to create the video yourself using software, you can.
Running The Commercials
Let’s talk about pricing for local businesses. The good thing about YouTube ads is that you could spend next to nothing and get a ton of results for a client. Since you are the only one out there who’s selling commercials for the internet for these clients, you’re going to have little competition and you’re also going to have a high margin for profit.
So, for next to nothing you can do this and become an expert, or guru in your own area, and be that person who local businesses refer to other local businesses. Your client can get on the internet with a commercial and pay next to nothing.
Just in general, we’re going to be spending about one third of what you charge. So, if they want to spend $500 a month doing commercials online then you’re going to spend about $150 in YouTube ads and profit the rest. And it just goes up from there.
The more they spend, the better discount they’re going to get. It’s not an exact formula by any means, but it just gives you an idea of what has been working. When they start to see returns, then you are going to be able to increase their monthly spend which is going to put more money in your back pocket.
The more they spend with you, try to go ahead and offer them a bonus. Perhaps extra traffic and just better support. One of these clients could obviously pay all of our bills. So, for one of these larger clients, you can provide better retargeting, more detailed ads or throw in some more videos. One of my students has an attorney client that pays him $3500 a month. Not bad for one client.
It’s not an exact formula, but that’s somewhere where you should be, depending on what kind of clients you’re working with. If you’re working for a little, tiny company that doesn’t have a whole lot to spend, then you’re probably not going to spend more than three hundred bucks a month on ads, so about 10 bucks a day.
Your goal should be to get the first client and then move on the next. When that first client starts seeing results you bump his ad spend up. This is where the big bucks are made.
I don’t see a whole lot of local businesses spending much on YouTube ads. That is why right now it is a great time to start working with local businesses and running the commercials for them.
It’s really a win, win for your new business client and for yourself in providing a lot of value for them. So, go ahead and establish yourself, brand yourself as the guy, or the gal, who has this amazing service that nobody else is offering in your local area. You’re going to do really well and so, I’m excited to see your results
Study this guide and get going!
Client Getting
We are going to talk about how to bring on new clients. How to sell commercials for a local. There’s definitely a proven way to do this and here’s the first way. Create a spreadsheet. The first thing I like to do is make a list of every single business in your area that’s currently running TV ads.
Look at businesses that are on billboards. Just do a drive by of your city. While you are in your car listen to the radio and see who is advertising on the radio as well.
The second way to approach local businesses is going niche by niche specific. My favorite way to find clients is to search on YouTube in the niche that you want to target. And do a search of the “city + keyword” on YouTube.
Write down in your spreadsheet everyone that has a video. It doesn’t matter how good the video is but what you were looking for are videos that are ranked on the first couple of pages of YouTube.
Then do a Google search and see if any of those videos are showing up on the first page or second page of Google. Chances are, they aren’t. These are perfect clients. The reason is that business owner know the importance of video. But they are not using their video to their best advantage. This is where you come in.
You want to approach them with a way to get them more exposure and more phone calls. You were going to do something similar to winning the bet in my other courses and I have laid it out in this course. You are offering more exposure and phone calls and by running the ads you’re going to be able to do that and win your $100 bet that you can make this happen. After that, you will have a client that will be with you for the long haul.
I like to use the fake audit method when doing this. The fake audit method is great because it has the picture in the email of their video but there is no link that works. This will get the business owner to pick up the phone and call you as opposed to a cold email.
Once you have an interested prospect you want to start with some questions to build rapport and also gain information. This is going to tell you everything you need to know to gear your presentation.
Ask how much is being spent right now with on advertising. Have you ever run TV ads? Were they effective for you? Find out some information first. Get the conversation going. A lot of businesses think TV ads are too expensive. And they are! Bottom line here is that we want to get results.
You could be using YouTube ads in particular to get prospects as well. Make sure the attention is on them. Don’t become a salesperson. Become someone who’s really just interested in their business, curious to see what kind of ads they’re running.
I’ve worked with clients on from Florida, Texas, North Carolina to California. Using the fake audit method is how you can work outside your area. Same thing applies across the country and I’m sure in other places as well.
Keep it simple and straight to the point. Hey, you’re running commercials. Hey, you’re running TV ads. I hear you’re running … have any billboards right now? What do think? Are you getting results?
Tell them you help local businesses create commercials for the internet. Do not say, YouTube. Don’t say YouTube ads. SEO etc. These are terms that should not be in your vocabulary when talking to a business. You do commercials on the internet and you make phones ring. Period. End of story.
Conclusion
YouTube ads represent a new opportunity for you to get in front of potential customers. As with all ad platforms, you need to know what you’re doing if you want to protect yourself from losing money.
That includes knowing how to create compelling pre-roll ad videos, as well as knowing how to target your ads in the right way.
Whether you use ‘skippable ads’ or ‘non-skippable ads,’ you’ll need to keep a constant eye on your metrics. You should always consider split testing, too.
You might not get it right on your first go, but frequent testing will help you zero in on your goals. Once you get those things handled, YouTube ads will be as familiar to you as all the other ad platforms you have used in the past.
Understand that YouTube and YouTube ads are the wild west right now. It is possible to get 1 cent views. And it isn’t difficult. If you are getting results for your client, you will have a client for life.