The Quiet Light Podcast Cost Per Acquisition Advertising on YouTube and other Google Channels
Two years ago, Brett Curry from OMG Commerce would not have recommended advertising on YouTube. But today, he sees it the way we now look back at Facebook. When cost was cheap and the audiences were huge. YouTube gets a billion views a day, a billion! Brett's company knows all about advertising on paid channels…be it Amazon or the multitude of Google channels.
Recently Brett has seen opportunities on YouTube that allow his clients to advertise on a fixed cost per acquisition basis (my favorite)! In this podcast shares what he finds works and what does not. No need to hire his firm…if you want to learn how to do it yourself, good news! He's created a course with Ezra Firestone. See the show notes.
Episode Highlights:
- YouTube has always been a great content platform. How recent ad types make YouTube much easier to monetize.
- Youtube is used as a product search engine more than people realize. Viewers (and now shoppers) on YouTube are actively doing something, these new campaigns can target people based on that activity.
- Nothing sells like video if it's done right. Brett explains the pre-roll and true view options.
- The key tips on how ecommerce business owners can approach the daunting task of video ad producing that can be profitable.
- Some companies use agencies and others are hiring full time video people in house.
- Search behaviors are different on YouTube than on google. The integration of the platforms allows for hitting more people in order to make more money.
- Why Youtube is an invaluable re-marketing platform.
- If you give Youtube the right audiences to go after and you and you have a video that's powerful, over the time the machine will start hitting that CPA target.
- These platforms can successfully follow the journey of the buyer. The importance of getting all the campaigns working together and connected.
Mark: The world of search engines has changed significantly since about 10 years ago right? Google has been the king for a long time. I believe they started around 1997, 1998 and they've dominated and kind of set the tone for what we think a search engine is supposed to be. But in today's world, if you're in e-commerce or if you're in online business in any way you have to think about different avenues for search. For example, Amazon is the number one search engine for products at this point. But the number two search engine in the world is also owned by Google and that's YouTube. For a lot of us especially those who have been in the online world for a long time we sometimes just think narrowly about Google because that's what we've always done. But there's a lot of other opportunities where people are actually searching and have that direct intent and that's going to be YouTube as one of these things that we need to look at. And Joe I guess you talked to somebody who's really been focusing on YouTube as an advertising channel to be able to acquire customers for a business and he gave you some insights into how to use this channel more effectively.
Joe: Yeah I spoke to Brett Curry from OMG Commerce. I saw him do a presentation specifically on monetizing through YouTube. I guess the best way to explain this is once upon a time on radio I had a campaign, a niche model called Per Inquiry. And we would pay the radio station per inquiry that converted to an actual customer. It's cost per acquisition that we call it now. YouTube has that opportunity now. So Brett really honed in on advertising physical product companies and doing it cost per acquisition … I'm stumbling like crazy here folks sorry, cost per acquisition on YouTube. It's not something we think of out of the gate when we think of YouTube because we're just watching the latest sports, concert, whatever it might be but people are starting to really use YouTube for searching for products and then clicking that link and converting. There are video opportunities where you only pay if someone watches the entire 30 seconds. That's something else we talked about but the one that excites me the most is the cost per acquisition model when he gets into that detail.
Mark: Now I think video is something that all of us need to start opening our eyes to. I think there's just tons of opportunity when it comes to video. And you know fortunately, I think it's a little bit intimidating for most of us. And I say fortunately because if you can get over that intimidation if you can get over some of the worry about "man this is actually pretty expensive to produce" there is a world of opportunity out there if you can start getting it. So I'm excited to listen to this because I've really only just toyed a little bit with YouTube advertising. I haven't actually gotten in and tried to understand it fully so this would be a good primer.
Joe: Yeah it's great. And don't fear the production costs folks because some of the best converting videos according to Brett are the ones that are actually customer produced. So consider that in terms of presenting to on YouTube. That's it, I'm done talking. Let's go see what Brett has to say.
Joe: Hey folks it's Joe Valley with Quiet Light Brokerage and today I have Brett Curry from OMG Commerce with me on the line. How are you Brett?
Brett: I am doing fantastic Joe thanks for having me on the show. I'm excited to be here.
Joe: You're also a podcaster too right? You've got a podcast what is the-
Brett: Yeah. I love podcasting and usually I'm the one firing off the questions and listening. Honestly, I think listening is the harder job of the two here. So I'm looking for just to talking up a storm here talking about YouTube.
Joe: Awesome. Well, I want to talk about a whole bunch of things because I think we met at the … for the folks that don't know we met at the Blue Ribbon Mastermind Conference in Denver. It's part of … I'm going to get that chain of events here wrong probably, it's part of the Smart Marketer Group, right? You guys … how long have you been part of that group with Ezra?
Brett: Yeah. So I met Ezra Firestone at a Traffic and Conversion Summit event like six years ago. It was in San Francisco. It's a long time ago. I met Ezra there. He was just launching his Mastermind Group called Blue Ribbon and I thought to myself this is a dude that I need to know. And so we kind of striked up a conversation, I joined the mastermind group, the rest is history. So I think that was I think years ago believe it or not.
Joe: And I've been going to mastermind Groups and we talk about them here on the podcast whether it's Rhodium Weekend or eCommerceFuel things of that nature. Blue Ribbon right up there for those listening if you can … if your business is big enough and you've got the revenue reach out. Find Ezra somehow through Smart Marketer probably right?
Brett: Yes smartmarketer.com you got to consider it. I'm a huge eCommerceFuel fan as well. Andrew Youderian is a friend of mine. I think they do a killer job but yeah those two are right up there man. If you're serious about e-commerce and growing check out both of those and you're welcome Ezra and Andrew for the club.
Joe: And for those listening if you're not in a Mastermind group or you're a buyer and you think how am I going to learn all this? It's through these mastermind groups. They didn't exist for me. I sold in 2010 as Ezra was saying I spoke to him on an earlier podcast. They really didn't exist when I started and now they're available for so many people to get so much more success I think than I had at the time. But listen I want to talk about OMG Commerce. I want to talk about you. You did a presentation at Blue Ribbon Mastermind on monetizing through YouTube and then kind of blew me away with the specifics of that and then all the other things that you do around that at your company. We want to talk about that. Can you give us … the people listening some background on yourself, on your company and how you started, what you do and then I want to jump into that.
Brett: Yeah, absolutely. So right out of college in 2002 dating myself a little bit, I launched an agency; a small agency helping local businesses with TV, radio, and print; so kind of traditional old school media. I became a marketing junkie in college and I was introduced to Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham and some of those kind of marketing gurus. I fell in love with the psychology of marketing and I kind of fancied myself as a copywriter for a little bit. And so I launched this agency, I started doing SEO in 2004 and somewhat just clicked. No pun intended it just fit my personality. I liked it and so I kind of became and SEO nerd. But still thinking about copy and the conversion rate and things like that. And then moved into AdWords and then really things took off in 2012 when I got hooked on Google AdWords and kind of … really we started our agency OMG, my business partner Chris Brewer and I we started the agency in 2010. But 2012 we kind of got hooked on Google Shopping. I wrote The Ultimate Guide to Google Shopping after months and months of testing and perfecting things. Shopify published that and then that kind of helped ignite the agency. And so since then, I've been speaking at events like Traffic and Conversion Summit and Ezra's events in social media marketing world and internet retail and things like that. And so really the agency is built on driving traffic to e-commerce stores and primarily using Google Ads; so Google Search, the text ads, Google Shopping, Display Network, and more recently YouTube. I've always been a fan of You Tube. Recent ad types make it much easier to monetize and much easier to track and create measurable results. So I'm doing a lot with YouTube. And then kind of the other side of the business is Amazon. Helping companies with their Amazon ads as well and so … but I spend most of my time in the Google Ads ecosystem.
Joe: Well I tell this story and I'm sorry for the podcasters that have to … listeners that hear me repeat this but you know I spent a lot of money on Google Ads and I didn't have any experience. I didn't have any training. And I think there are too many people out there doing that. They were like me. The problem is that I've discovered is that you try someone who claims to be an expert and in fact, they're not. And they take your budget and they blow it up and you cost per acquisition goes up and your profit goes down and you know this is six months before you want to sell and all of a sudden the value of your business goes down as well. When you get up and presented … I knew first and foremost because you are at Blue Ribbon you are going to be top notch. But then I dug deeper. I sat by Chris, we talked for a while and you talked specifically about YouTube and I know that you can't do that alone and that you've got to package everything else in there. But some of the things that you talked about were … and I'm going to let you dig into it and tell us about it, some specific fix targeted cost per acquisition and only paying if somebody views the full 30 seconds and a whole bunch of things that I don't think is out there for the average person that's doing all of the marketing channels themselves to figure out. So tell us about that a little bit.
Brett: Yeah absolutely and I think I'll just … I'll set the stage really quickly if that's cool just talking about YouTube in general. And you know I've been a fan of YouTube forever. It's always been a great content platform. Everybody is on YouTube. A billion monthly users, average session duration is like 40 minutes which is longer though on Facebook. And the cool thing about YouTube is it's full of a lot of learn, do, and buy moments. So if I'm on YouTube I'm actively doing something. I'm looking for how to fix my lawnmower, how to fix my washing machine although I try to avoid that at all costs and just pay people. But if I'm at pinch go to Google or go to YouTube to learn how to do things or researching products. That's something that a lot of people don't know is that YouTube is used as a product search engine pretty frequently where people are looking for unboxing videos and demo videos and things like that. And so … or just you know how to, my kids use YouTube all the time from everything to how to play the piano to … my 16 year old son now is looking at how to pick up chicks which will it make you proud or worried I'm not sure. But yeah you can learn anything on YouTube right? So when someone's on YouTube they're actively engaged in what they're doing and so the beauty of that is you can target people based on what they're doing on YouTube. But then like you alluded to now there's these ad formats that just really make it powerful. And so it's kind of combination now of better targeting than ever before so we can make sure we're reaching the right person better than we ever have before on YouTube. Everybody is there but how do we get to the ideal person for a particular e-commerce business. And then how do we have like a bidding and ad format that people want to click on and want to take action on and we're paying a rate that makes sense. And so that's kind of the backdrop. But yeah, so you talked about only paying if someone engages. That's called YouTube TrueView and so for those that don't know that's the pre roll or before ad. So if you go to YouTube to watch a clip from The Office or something and then there's an ad that pops up before that or the place before that you've got five seconds until that magical Skip Ad button pops up. And so the way that works is if a user skips the ad before the 30 second mark or before the end of the ad whichever comes first then the advertiser doesn't pay. So you know I could watch 28.9 seconds of an ad, click skip and the advertiser doesn't pay a penny for that. And so … or someone has to click through to the sites. If they're watching and they think ooh this is cool I'm going to click on the ad and go to the site and then the advertiser is charged for that as well but really an awesome concept. You know I used to in the previous agency days, I did quite a bit of TV and it was my favorite medium pre … before I got really deep in online marketing just because the power of video right? Nothing sells like video if it's done right and so … but if you're running a TV spot you pay for the spot regardless of if people walk out of the room or change the channel or whatever. With TrueView you're only paying if someone watches or engages so it's pretty powerful.
Joe: Well let's talk about … for the people that are listening and that have a physical product and let's say they're just doing Google AdWords and they wanted to reach out to you how did that … how does it start, how … to me the idea of producing video if that's something you've never done is kind of daunting. How do you try to approach that?
Brett: Yeah it really is and so this is what separates YouTube from say Google Shopping or Google Search ads which are just the text ads. You know a text ad that you can create in about three minutes. Or if you did research it takes a little bit longer than that but it's really easy. Google Shopping, the ads are pretty easy. There's just data feed involved, there's product feed involved which can be a little bit tricky. But a video, man that's tougher. You got to hire a video crew potentially. You got to hire an actor or you've got to be comfortable on camera, whatever. Ultimately though you really can create a video even using an iPhone if you wanted to but my advice on the video itself is be straightforward first. So I think … because we've all grown up seeing ads we have all kinds of ideas of what works and what doesn't work. So we know the funny Super Bowl commercials that we like and so we think we need to recreate something along those lines right? So I need to come up with something like the what's up guys from Budweiser. I'm a believer in direct response. So that's the type of ad we suggest that you run because most physical product companies if you're not huge a pure branding play is going to be tough so you want something that's direct response. And so I prefer a kind of straightforward approach. But a couple of things you can think about is one, you do need to hook someone immediately. So that Skip Ad button comes up in the first five seconds so hook them immediately. So what do you got to say, what question are you going to ask, are you going to be like running up to the camera, are you going to be doing something interesting to make someone say okay I was going to skip because I don't like ads but there's something about this that I need to watch. So hooking them in the first five seconds is key. I believe you got to lead with the strongest benefit. So what is the benefit that your product provides? Is it time savings or is it status or what is that major benefit and then dramatize that. Bring that to life even if it's just you talking and showing the product. So that's important. You also got to incorporate some social proof. So do you have a testimonial, do you have an endorsement, do you have something … are you endorsed by somebody that is trusted by your marketplace; some kind of social proof. And I think and kind of part of this you want to show don't tell you know. A talking head video can work but you want to show as much as you can. That is few of the things to consider to [inaudible 00:15:24.2] have to get in to but things like [inaudible 00:15:27.5] sort of moving the risk. What are the risks that someone has in their head before they buy? So if you're selling apparel or footwear or something what if it doesn't fit? Then what do I to overcoming some of those objections in the video is important. And then a really strong call to action, so like hey what do you … what do I want you as the viewer to do next? If you leave that … oh but this is just crazy to me, you know most people think "well it's a compelling ad people will naturally click". Not necessarily, you kind of have to ask them to. Like go here, get this free shipping code, or check out this, or watch this further demo, or join our email list to get a discount; something, some kind of call to action and then push people to do that. And the nice thing is there are some new ad formats that really make those CTA's or calls to action pop. But that's just kind of few of the things that make for a good video. But I admit making a good video is much harder than other ad formats, it just is.
Joe: Through your agency do you guys have a referral program … people that you say okay these guys have done a good job and you refer people to agencies or do you find that the entrepreneur is creative and ingenious and can create a video on their own and make it work?
Brett: Well, yeah it's interesting. So we're seeing now a handful of our clients are hiring full time video people because of their product videos. So video can be useful on a lot of ways right and different types of videos. So maybe I just have a pure product demo video and I put that on my product detail pages and then I'm cranking out little short clips for my Facebook advertising and then I'm launching maybe YouTube content that I'll try to get to rank organically and then I'm running YouTube ads and I've got someone creating that. So surprisingly this is something that I don't think existed with the size of companies we're working with now. You know kind of two million to 10 million a year and really up to pretty 20 million whatsoever, a lot of our clients are in that range. Those companies now have full time video people.
Joe: Okay.
Brett: There are a few agencies I could name but we don't do any of the creative work ourselves but I can make recommendations.
Joe: So let's go to that assumption then that the client has video … has access to it or produced their own, why YouTube though? Why … like when I go and I search … like I did a search today on how to export a profit and loss statement from Xero because a client said it can't be done and I'd seen it done. I get them all the time. Oh yeah? Well let me send a video. So I did that and I sent him, I skipped the Quiet Light Brokerage banner ad because we don't need to click on it.
Brett: Yeah.
Joe: But it never really occurred to me to buy through YouTube. So what … people know that when you do sponsored Ads inside of Amazon or you spend money on Google Ad Words or Facebook that there's going to be a certain volume you can get to in return on investment. Is it worth it to advertise on YouTube? I know it has a billion viewers but how many people are really thinking products? And is it worth it; a bang for the buck? Should people be paying attention to advertising on YouTube?
Brett: Yeah, the quick answer is this; absolutely. And this is one of those answers that even just probably two years ago my answer would have been a little bit different. It kind of would have been a maybe. Like I said YouTube has always been a powerful platform. If you're a good content creator and you created good content and got organic traffic and then YouTube has always been a good source for running a business. But from an ad platform, I believe it's just become viable for a lot of businesses. I would say most e-commerce businesses should consider it and that's a relatively new development. So aside from everybody being on there and aside from people being actively engaged where like you're looking at how to pull a report from … it was Xero?
Joe: Xero.
Brett: So how to pull a report, if there'd been an ad related to something like that maybe it would have captured your interest or maybe not. But you can target people based on what they're doing on YouTube plus much more. So, of course, YouTube is owned by Google and so now you can target people based on their behavior that Google sees even off YouTube. So one of the options you have is keyword targeting. So if maybe I've got a new Xero alternative so better than Quick Books better than Xero whatever I'm going to … I want to woo people over to my new accounting software; which sounds like just the worst job in [inaudible 00:20:04.7] accounting software. But anyway we'll [crosstalk]. Exactly, I think I just fell asleep as I was mentioning it. But so then I could use keyword targeting and I could target people looking for Xero and Quick Books and Quick Books Online and Quick Books online tutorial. And maybe I'd even target things like why is Quick Books doing this; like some pain points around Quick Books like Quick Books keeps crashing things like that. So those are some of things people type into YouTube kind of just to find a fix. Well then if I've got the alternative to Xero and Quick Books then I run my pre-roll ad for somebody watching a video on how to fix a pain point inside of Quick Books. So there's this keyword targeting that's based on content on YouTube which is really powerful. But then going to what I alluded to a minute ago you can also target people based on what they're searching for on Google. So I think it'd probably be a toss-up like who has more information about you; Google or Facebook? I don't know really. They both know everything about us. And so I don't know about you, my search behavior on Google is different than it is on YouTube. Often if I'm going to YouTube I'm just watching music videos and stuff like that like sort of as in background even. But I search on Google for all kinds of stuff. So then you can target people on YouTube based on what they're searching for on Google. So if I sell running shoes I can look at a whole host of search terms that someone maybe typing on in on Google and I can build an audience around that and then target those users the next time they're on YouTube.
Joe: So it sounds like if someone is doing any paid advertising on Google whether it's AdWords or Google Shopping or whatever it might be that they need to think of YouTube as just what it is which is an extension of Google. They're owned by Google. It is Google.
Brett: Yeah.
Joe: And all those same tools and resources are there that you just got to think visually. So it's really the last couple of years you started to see your advertising work better and get … Google's getting better at it to allow you to do a better job. Can you give me an example without naming any client names on in terms of what it's done for them so that somebody doesn't go "oh, wow, okay"?
Brett: Sure.
Joe: And what other channels within Google they're also spending money on?
Brett: Yeah absolutely and so I'll kind of mention this first, I think YouTube is for a long time have been good at creating brand lift. So even kind of before some of the new targeting options and before some of the new ad options it was good at getting people to be aware of a product. So we'll use Boom by Cindy Joseph because Ezra wouldn't mind if I talk about it and we run all of the Google ads for Boom. But if we ran YouTube ads introducing people to Boom … let's just say we had no call to action I think at the end which we wouldn't do that but let's just say we did, that would likely cause a brand lift. More people would start searching for Boom on Google. After watching the video they'll be intrigued and say oh what is this let me check out a little bit more. And so that's always been kind of the platform or always been a benefit of the platform. But then kind of beyond that the next thing I would recommend someone to do is look at using YouTube for remarketing. So for people that visit your site whether they go to product detail page only or whether they add to cart and abandon, let's remarket to them. So let's use YouTube as a remarketing platform. And so that's what I've been doing for a while as well, taking our remarketing list like you alluded to all of this is built in the Google ads platform and it's now rebranded as Google Ads, not Google AdWords. So it's all in that platform so we can upload our remarketing list, we can start segmenting that and running YouTube ads to those people. So we typically segment break out site visitors, break out PPC viewers, break out cart abandoners, and kind of have different ads that we run from them. But then kind of beyond that we're looking at a new format called TrueView for action. And you kind of mentioned this before too where you're … this is where you're bidding on a CPA basis. So basically what we're doing is we're telling YouTube hey I'm willing to pay X, I'm willing to pay 100 bucks or 80 bucks or 50 bucks or whatever for a conversion and over time YouTube gets really good at dialing that in. So if you give YouTube the right audiences to go after and you have a video that's powerful over time the machine will start hitting that CPA target provided your site converts as well.
Joe: Google TrueView?
Brett: So as- what's that?
Joe: Did you call it Google TrueView?
Brett: It's TrueView for action. So it's a subset of TrueView. So you could just run standard TrueView which is the ad format I talked about before where someone has to watch 30 seconds or the whole video or you don't pay. So that's kind of standard TrueView. With standard TrueView, you're paying a cost per view. So you're telling Google I'm willing to pay five cents, two cents, 20 cents per-
Joe: Yeah, risk … there's risk there but it sounds like the TrueView for action is look you're not going to pay unless it converts which is-
Brett: Yeah exactly.
Joe: But is there volume there?
Brett: There is immense volume and that's one of those things where we've seen people be able to scale pretty quickly. So with Boom by Cindy Joseph, we went from not even really a channel to a pretty large channel quickly. And we were able to start kind of dialing in and hitting their CPA target within a couple of weeks. And then it will sustain that now for several months.
Joe: What happens in the first two weeks when you're … if you're doing TrueView for action aren't you always hitting that CPA target?
Brett: No. So you're not. And you give Google the CPA you want to hit and you set a daily budget.
Joe: Okay.
Brett: But the machine is experimenting in the beginning. And this is something where this is a little bit different than let's say Facebook ads as an example I know … and I'm not a Facebook ads guy. I don't run … I don't run our Facebook even but I know there is kind of this thought that with Facebook ads you build a bunch of an ad sets and you let them … you know each one spends 30 bucks, if it doesn't convert kill it, whatever. Really search pruning quickly. That doesn't work on YouTube, not with TrueView for action. You need to give the machine time to learn. So you're maybe going to be letting it run for seven or 10 days. Obviously, you could pause it if nothing's happening. But usually that CPA, it's going to be above the CPA initially and then it's going to start getting closer and closer to it. So we found again with the right video, the right targeting you can usually hit your CPA target if you let the machine kind of dial in.
Joe: Okay, and you guys don't do any of the Facebook stuff. You're focused on most of the Google platforms and then you do the Amazon platform as well.
Brett: Yeah exactly.
Joe: And is it because that you integrate the Google Shopping, YouTube ads, Google AdWords, PPC whatever they've rebranded it you integrate them all together.
Brett: Yeah.
Joe: Do you think they help each other? Is it Google has gotten to the point where is it intelligent enough to pull resources from one to the other to help improve cost per conversion?
Brett: Yeah absolutely and then one of the things that Google just really stepped their game up in the last couple years in the last six months even is audience targeting. So being able to apply some of those audiences even to your search campaigns and a few of the audiences to your shopping campaigns. But it is all connected because if you think about it if I'm in product research mode, if I'm looking at buying a new … let's say I'm buying a new [inaudible 0027:37.5] a couple of this things for a house and then I'm researching on Google then maybe after I find a few things I'm going to YouTube to watch a video or some unboxing videos or installation videos now I'm going back to Google. And so what you can do if you've got all of the campaigns setup and part of a … we call it a full funnel approach or a team of campaigns, we're not viewing search and shopping in YouTube as this completely separate entities but how do they work together because they do. So if someone finds us on search or shopping when they don't convert then let's use YouTube as the remarketing vehicle. If someone discovers us on YouTube and they watch a video and they become engaged with us but they don't purchase well then let's add them to a remarketing list and target them with search and shopping ads. Because maybe someone learns about your brand on YouTube they don't buy, their next activity is going to be I'm going to go to Google and search. I'm going to go search for this company now or find out more and so we can target them that way. So that's another piece we look at as we create a list of people that have viewed a video as an ad. And then we layer that into our search and shopping campaigns. And we've seen this … let's just go back to the Boom by Cindy Joseph example; we even created some campaigns where we only target people that have seen a video ad. And a lot of those people then go back to Google and they can't really remember the brand name but they remember seeing the video or whatever like something's caught their attention so they're just they're typing in a bunch of random things. Like make up for older women or you know things that would've been mentioned in the ad. And then we're able to target them because we built a list of people that viewed the video as an ad but actually converted them to research a shopping campaign. So if we just think about it, if we kind of step back and think about our own journey like what's my journey as a buyer? I really just click on one ad and buy. I don't just see one ad for a brand new product I've never heard of and purchase immediately. That doesn't happen. I'm usually going to search for something, be exposed to it, click around, visit, and then see another ad and then convert. So we would … we like to get all the campaigns kind of working together and connected.
Joe: So let's say that someone is managing their advertising campaign themselves and business is getting big enough to they want to elevate themselves to more of the captain of the ship instead of a navigator if you want instead of just focusing on one part like the marketing are there resources out there to learn everything you need to learn about for the Google ads platform within Google and outside of it or is it simply your 20 years of expertise that … and what, staff of 17 that allow you to be better than any Tom, Dick, or Harry that's going to try to do it for their own business?
Brett: Yes. So I mean there is a learning curve and I think the learning curve is a little steeper with Google ads than it is other platforms potentially. It's one of those things where learning the basics is not that complicated but then seeing how everything interacts and how one change leads to other implications is a little trickier. So there's a little bit of a learning curve but there are some good resources. So on the Google Shopping side, I wrote the Ultimate Guide to Google Shopping a few years ago. Shopify published that. It's totally free.
Joe: Do you have to update that on a regular basis? Is it changing?
Brett: Yeah, I just updated it a year ago. I needed another round of updates. The core of it is still good but it needs to be updated.
Joe: Okay.
Brett: I'm working on a course with Ezra Firestone. We launched the beta version on all of Google Ads. So it kind of starts with-
Joe: Oh, excellent.
Brett: -that foundation of Google ads.
Joe: That's what I was looking for and I didn't know that. For everybody listening, I didn't know that by the way.
Brett: Yeah.
Joe: Because look some people are going to be hesitant to work with an agency.
Brett: Sure.
Joe: And historically I've been anti-agency although I owned one. I owned a media buying agency specifically for radio back in the day.
Brett: Yeah.
Joe: And my experience is as an agency owner is that you're going to work really really hard because you want to client to keep spending money because you get a percentage of that money that he spent. So you want them to be successful but as an e-commerce owner, my experience was … God, they blew it, my gosh my cost per acquisition went way up. Everything is destroyed. They're not paying any attention to anything that I said but what you did and what you presented was great and different. So that's … I wasn't going there but thank you for going there. So you've created a course on the Google ads platform with Ezra which will be done when?
Brett: So probably by the time this … I don't know when is this is going to live but it will … it's launched in September of 2018 is when it will launch officially.
Joe: Okay.
Brett: So it should be available here pretty quick.
Joe: So people can find that probably on smartmarketer.com right?
Brett: Smartmarketer.com
Joe: And OMG Commerce I would assume as well?
Brett: Yeah well, have some links to it as well.
Joe: Okay so let's assume that a certain group of people are going to be I'm never working with an agency and they'll Google and they find that there and they'll get that expertise and training which is exactly what I want. I want people to get the best advice and expertise.
Brett: Yeah. And one thing I would maybe add to that is I would recommend that everybody get educated at least to a certain degree. Even if you plan on outsourcing it or hiring internally for it, learn the basics of the platform. Learn how everything kind of ties together. Because then you'll be able to analyze does this agency I'm going to be getting they know what they're talking about, is this person that I'm hiring do they know what they're talking about? So I think as a business owner you got to educate yourself at least on the basics and kind of see how the full funnel works and things like that. But yeah you don't have to hire an agency. You can hire someone in-house and train them up and that could be great for some businesses.
Joe: Unless they quit.
Brett: Exactly, yeah. That's true, yeah. Good to be diversified a little bit.
Joe: I agree. Well listen, Brett I appreciate it, I appreciate your time coming on here just sort of unraveling the mystery of YouTube because again to me I've never thought about buying something there. Now that we've talked and I saw your presentation it's every time I'm seeing an ad and I've actually watched a few which is interesting but I haven't clicked through to buy yet. And I think that that's going to change. And I think that people will get ahead of it and start learning it now and being one of the early adopters of advertising on YouTube. They'll get ahead of the curve like those that focused on Facebook first.
Brett: Exactly and I think it's … I think Facebook's going to be a viable ad platform for the foreseeable future. I think You Tube is going to be as well but I would liken where YouTube is now to where Facebook was a few years ago where it's pretty affordable to be on YouTube. Those costs will go up over time as more people hop on to the platform but it's a great place to be. And yeah we've seen from skin care to apparel to automotive to tech; all those verticals in e-commerce are getting good results on YouTube so it's worth exploring for sure.
Joe: Fantastic, so YouTube is today where Facebook was a few years ago.
Brett: I think so, yeah.
Joe: That's a good way to end it. But for anybody that does want to talk to you, I think they can find you at OMGcommerce.com is that right?
Brett: Yup OMGcommerce.com I'm happy to chat, happy to do an audit potentially of existing efforts and I'll let you know how we could potentially help. So yeah OMGcommerce.com.
Joe: Well put that down in the show notes and if this is out before the course is done we'll go back and we'll put it in the course after the fact so that those that just want to learn on their own and maybe bring it in-house can learn from that as well.
Brett: Yeah awesome.
Joe: Thanks for your time Brett I appreciate it.
Brett: Okay thanks Joe I really appreciate it. [inaudible 00:35:07.7] All right see you.
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