Tom Breeze Interview – How To Run Ads on Youtube

Alex:

Hello guys. We have today’s legend of YouTube ads. Tom Breeze. And so Tom runs, it’s one of the biggest direct response YouTube advertising agencies?

Tom Breeze:

Yeah, exactly, for performance based companies we are the highest spending agency worldwide, apparently.

Alex:

Very nice. So, with YouTube ads you deal, it’s Google that you deal with basically? Or you have special support, or how does it work?

Tom Breeze:

Yeah, so when you run YouTube ads, you’re using the Google Ads platform. So all of their, you’ll have Google reps and that type of thing, so your video campaigns will be inside of your Google Ads account.

Alex:

Okay. And so with YouTube ads, so I know we chatted a little bit about it yesterday, so what are typically the learning curves? For example, for the average marketer who wants to leverage YouTube ads platform, how much time does it typically take, in your experience, to figure it out?

Tom Breeze:

It’s a good question. I think that we have a program where we’re saying in 12 weeks we think someone can go from not knowing anything about advertising on YouTube to the point where they’re a bit of a pro, because it’s laid out in a very step by step process the way that we work. So as an agency we have all of our SOPs, our standard operating procedures, working in such a way where we can say, “All right, we start here, we get the data, we move to the next stage, we get the data and move to the next stage. And so we’re always trying to progress and expand. But yeah, it doesn’t take that long, you normally want to work with some sort of creative team to probably get the best results if you’re not familiar with that world. So getting a script writer and getting someone who can shoot the videos and edit the videos is really key. But then if you’re an ad buyer and you’re used to that process, it’s more just learning a new platform. That’s the way to look at it.

Alex:

And so you obviously know Tai Lopez, some guys that just blew up on YouTube?

Tom Breeze:

Yeah.

Alex:

So what do you think, from your perspective, because you’re observing as an expert, basically, how’s it that Tai’s on such high levels? So from your perspective, what are the secrets they have? Or, not the secrets, but basically what was the reason they’ve done so well? Is that a good final, or is it good ads?

Tom Breeze:

So with that, if you look at someone like Tai Lopez, that was all paid, just pay to be rich. Not rich, pay to be famous, basically. So a lot of ads, a lot of spend going on those ads, and it’s just like, [poof 00:02:31], go out there and just spend as much money as you can quickly. And it’s the cost of being famous, it probably costs about a million dollars or something like that. Which isn’t that much if you really think about it. If you want to choose to be famous, then it costs you that much.

Tom Breeze:

The way that you’d really, really blow up on YouTube cost-effectively and with a ROAS and ROI, is to make sure that, first of all you’ve got a really good offer and you can find your audience well. So you say, “All right, what does my product actually do, what does it fix, what’s the problem it fixes?” Now, sometimes you’ve got products that do that instantaneously. There’s a problem like, “Ah, this product fixes back pain,” or something like that. Great, that’s done, then you’re good for that, because you know that if you go to YouTube, there’s a huge audience there looking up videos about how to cure back pain, how to keep a healthy back, and how to improve my posture, that type of thing.

Tom Breeze:

Whereas if you have a product that’s more of a luxury item and you’re looking to sell it, let’s say for example, a watch. Then you’re probably not necessarily fixing a problem directly, you might be fixing an indirect problem. Which might be something like, if it’s a luxury watch and it’s selling for, let’s say $500 for example, then in that scenario, the problem you’re fixing is helping someone choose a watch that looks really stylish and comes in at the right price point. So there’s still a problem that needs to be fixed, it’s just a luxury item that is fixing that problem. So then you want to say, “Right, is my audience there?” Now people are going onto YouTube all the time looking up, what’s the best watch for under $500? And you’ll see millions of views, so you know the audience is there.

Tom Breeze:

So if you’ve got a good product and the audience are around, then it’s just a case of, can I create a really good piece of creative? And if you get a really good ad in front of your audience cost-effectively, and you know the economics are working well, it’s costing you less than it’s costing you to acquire the customer, then you just scale. This audience is just waiting on YouTube ready to be taken advantage of basically, that sounds incorrect, but you know what I mean? This audience is there waiting and you can put your products in front of them and at a really cost effective price. It’s almost like what Facebook was maybe three years ago, that excitement and that opportunity is there right now on YouTube.

Alex:

Cool. And also we chatted yesterday, about the major price point. So for example, for information products, which you also classify as e-commerce as you said yesterday-

Tom Breeze:

Yeah, it’s an interesting conversation. What is e-commerce? Is it physical products, or is it online transactions without a human being involved? So it might be digital products as well. And then you’ve got lead gen, which might be where the human gets involved. I would probably class together e-commerce as anything where someone’s making a purchase online, so I’ll put digital products in the e-commerce space. But obviously you might have a different mindset around what is actually e-commerce. I don’t think it’s just exclusively physical products. I think it’s more like an online transaction is happening, someone’s making a purchase online without a human being involved, that’s how I would view it.

Alex:

Cool. And so in terms of the budget, that for the average person you are saying that it would take them, so obviously they would, let’s say the person who would take your training, and they would follow it step by step. What is the, I found for example with Facebook, I always tell people that you would need this much money, 10, $15,000 until you get good at it, in practical experience. What is that for YouTube, is that more or less?

Tom Breeze:

I can normally find that within the first $500 worth of spend, whether a product’s going to sell well or not. And the way we go into YouTube is we start with the most focused targeting, which might be something like placements, and we say, “Right, can we get an ROI on those?” So does that $500 turn into $1,000, or does it turn into $700 or something? And what we’re doing is we’re just reinvesting that money. Placement targeting is never going to be a huge scale, but it should give you really good ROAS, and it’s going to set you up really nicely to be like, “Okay, cool, that’s working really, really well now, let’s move into the next type of targeting, and the next.” So it feeds your growth.

Tom Breeze:

So you don’t need to necessarily say, “I need to have $15,000 to spend from the start.” It would be helpful if you did, because you can go more aggressively, but you can start with really small budgets. Just, I would say, mentally, keeping the mindset that you might need to spend around $500 to, it’s like a minimal viable test, but that’s going to feed all of your growth as well.

Alex:

Okay. And how consistent are YouTube ads? Is it like from, so probably you heard about Facebook, so Facebook might work well some days and suddenly some … Is that the same with YouTube ads or it’s more consistent overall?

Tom Breeze:

You get a lot more consistency with Facebook, with YouTube sorry, if you’re running it in the right way. So, a lot of people run YouTube ads and they get some success with a campaign, and then Google will say to you, “Okay, you can triple your budget.” And they go for it, and they triple their budget, and then it says, “Okay, you can do that again.” And they triple again, and they do it a few times and then they’ve got, one campaign might be spending more than $5,000 a day. And when you have that, that’s when the volatility can come in, because you’re borrowing so much of Google’s AI to acquire those results that if you are putting too much budget into one type of campaign and there’s a slight change, all of a sudden you can spend another 5,000 but see a 10% drop in your sales rate, but that can move you from really positive to really negative potentially. And so if you’re running it like that, then you will get volatility.

Tom Breeze:

If you are able to spread that cost across multiple campaigns, you have more control and you’re spending less. And then if three of them have fluctuations or something, then like, “Well great, I had another 10 that went really strong today.” So you’re expecting fluctuations but you’re spreading it across more campaigns so that you realize that, okay, there’s consistency across the account but not maybe in individual campaigns.

Alex:

And how is learning happening with YouTube? Is it happening on account level, campaign level, ad set level or ad level? What is it? Because with Facebook a lot of the learning happens on the campaign level. So you want to put more of the ad sets inside of the same campaign. How is that with YouTube ads?

Tom Breeze:

So it’s very different from YouTube, so it’s difficult to do a like for like comparison. But you still have campaigns, instead of ad sets, we’ve got ad groups and you have your ads inside of your ad group. When you have one campaign, you’re deciding your daily budget at the campaign level, and with the ad groups that you have, if you’re going to put loads and loads of ad groups in there, what can sometimes happen is that, one, that group can start hogging the budget and so the rest of the groups don’t get the time to-

Alex:

[crosstalk 00:00:08:50].

Tom Breeze:

[crosstalk 00:08:50] on a daily basis. So if that’s happening and you’ve got lots of ad groups in there, and you’re limited by budget, but you don’t want to spend too much more budget, I’d split it out again into more campaigns, just so you’ve got more control and you can allocate the budget more easily. Because, I think that my advice on this might change in six months or something like that, but right now splitting it out and so you’ve got more granular control and let Google help you out with some of it’s AI, that’s the way to control it right now. In six months time, as the AI improves, it might be the sort of thing where you say, “Well look, just lump it all together and let Google get on with it because they just know what’s going on.”

Tom Breeze:

So that’s why it’s a moving target so to speak. But this is only when you’re talking about real scale, when you’re talking about over $5,000 a day in the account. When you get to that stage, it’s like, right, you need to make some more decisions about how you’re going to tame the beast, I call it. How you’re going to look at Google and say, “All right, we’re going to keep it under control and know what’s going on.” And that might take you from five to 15,000 or something along those lines. And then it becomes another decision point where you’re like, “Okay, well now do I put it back together or do I keep on rolling out?” But it’s becoming a really powerful platform for you there. So it then becomes a little bit bespoke and it’s worthwhile keeping an eye on how your campaigns are performing.

Alex:

And then with, so with Facebook it’s, what, in terms of YouTube ads, how many events, how many conversions do you need before the campaign starts to optimize?

Tom Breeze:

Yeah. Okay, cool. So we aim for 10 to 25 conversions per campaign per day. So if we’re hitting, let’s say for example seven conversions, you’re right on that precipice where the AI has probably not got enough data going through it to optimize. So we’d like to get it to about 10, but if you go beyond 25 you start getting to the point where you’re probably spending too much inside of one campaign and you can afford for it to be split up. Because if you split up, let’s say for example you are getting 30 conversions, then if you were to split that into maybe three different campaigns, that’s 10 per day. And then you can start scaling those ones up more aggressively as well.

Alex:

Okay, cool. So if people wanted to start with YouTube ads, so can you tell us more about your program? How do you help them with your program?

Tom Breeze:

Yeah, so our program is designed in such a way where at every step there’s a lot of help going along the way. So the first part is thinking about the strategy, thinking about what your product is, who you’re getting in front of, what the message needs to be, and what the angle needs to be? So figuring that piece out to begin with. And then you start moving into video creation and a bit of rapid research we call it as well. So starting with a minimal viable ad, which doesn’t have to cost a lot, it’s just more a case, we have a tool to help you script your video ad.

Alex:

Nice.

Tom Breeze:

And then we have software that helps you find your audience as well.

Alex:

Very nice.

Tom Breeze:

So it just really, really helps you along the way. And once you’ve done that, we sometimes help clients with editing as well, and once they’ve come through and they’ve got to the point where they’ve got their ad and they’ve got the creative, it’s just a case of building their campaigns. But we have weekly calls and a Facebook group so that everyone in that group-

Alex:

Nice.

Tom Breeze:

Can just ask questions, get bespoke advice. Because I know that sometimes it’s much easier being on a group call than being like, “I need help with this specifically,” and it’s a two minute answer that I need. And so we do a group call, so everyone can learn from each other, but that means on a weekly basis you’re getting a touch point with somebody that can really help you out. So that’s the whole program and it gets people off the ground, gets to the point where it’s probably $5,000 per day spend. And once you’re at that point, it probably becomes, you don’t need the training so much, you’re making your own decisions at that point.

Alex:

Cool. And then people can work with you personally? Do you work with clients, where you help them, with done-for-you service?

Tom Breeze:

Yeah, so we have an agency as well, so we work with clients on a CPA basis, meaning that when we work with clients we fund all the advertising, and the clients pay us for results, cost per lead or cost per sale model. So it means it’s a no-brainer for most clients. There is sometimes a bit of an up front fee depending on the type of video creative we’re putting together. But we like to partner with our clients so it feels like we’re working with the clients as opposed to for the clients. So whilst we call ourselves an agency, we’re almost like an anti-agency, we don’t like the idea of agency because we feel like if you’re on a traditional model where you’re spending, you’re saying, “Here’s a monthly fee and a percentage of spend,” or something, we just feel like that doesn’t incentivize anybody apart from the agency.

Alex:

Just to spend more.

Tom Breeze:

Yeah, exactly, just to spend more and if you’re getting okay results, that’s fine. Whereas when we’re invested in saying, “Right, we’re going to be going out there and doing our very best to acquire sales at the right price,” and the client can’t lose. Then it means the client’s like, “All right, we’re both in the same boat here, we’re going to both be profiting here, and let’s scale and enjoy our time together,” so to speak. So it’s a very different set up, but it’s, for clients, they absolutely love it.

Alex:

And how is support? So we see a lot of people complaining for Facebook ad support. Is it better with Google?

Tom Breeze:

So I’m not on Facebook, so I don’t know what it’s like at each level. But when you first get started with Google, it’s great because you have a phone number that you can just call with Google and you’re-

Alex:

Nice.

Tom Breeze:

Normally in touch with someone within a minute or so.

Alex:

Very nice.

Tom Breeze:

So, they’re not all absolute experts, but they’re normally going to troubleshoot problems for you, which is really good. As soon as you start to spend, Google has made a real investment in their Google reps that can help you give advice at certain levels.

Alex:

Very nice.

Tom Breeze:

Off the record so to speak, Google reps can give you bad advice sometimes, so it’s good just to keep an eye on what you’re doing and stick to the training and the SOPs that I put together. But then the, so you can get your own reps, but just be a bit careful. Then you do get to a point where you’re, if you’re spending a large amount, you sometimes then get access to the much bigger reps-

Alex:

Dedicated.

Tom Breeze:

Agency reps, and they’re much more dedicated to you, and those ones are really, really good. So it’s different levels, but really with YouTube I find it’s a still relatively new platform and there’s so many people out there that are advertising on YouTube, but we’re still finding our feet, if that makes sense, it’s not like we’ve cracked it completely just yet. Unlike something like GDN or Google Search, or something, and that’s where reps can really help because they see it all day, every day. They just haven’t got enough YouTube data to give really good advice just yet.

Alex:

Cool. And then with, so how do people find more information about your training?

Tom Breeze:

Yeah, so the two sites we have, one is the agency site, which is viewability.co.uk. And then the other site, this is my personal site where I do a lot of training as well, is tombreeze.com.

Alex:

Okay, cool. And also, what would be your main, for people who want to basically take advantage of YouTube advertising, what would be your one piece of advice?

Tom Breeze:

Just get started. It’s crazy how people don’t see this opportunity for what it is. I think with rising costs on Facebook where CPMs are going up all the time, and you think, “Right, well that’s only going to continue. It’s getting more competitive.” But YouTube is still this blue ocean where it’s crazy big and everyone’s going to YouTube. I can’t understand why people still ignore it. I’m okay with it, because I still make a lot of money myself on YouTube. But I feel like there’s this huge opportunity for people to really dive into YouTube, understand how it works and go for it. So the advice would be just open an account today, go and explore it, see how easy it can be and that’s what I’d recommend.

Alex:

And any specific advice, or any specific niches that you see have more opportunities than others? Or overall, YouTube as a platform?

Tom Breeze:

Yeah, I’ve seen, I always get surprised, because we’ve got clients in the sporting world, we’ve got clients in the financial world, we’ve got clients in, like when people have hobbies and that type of thing. It definitely tends to be more B to C, but it can be B to E as well, so the entrepreneurs out there. So if you’re selling software for, say for example, you’re selling a CRM software, then you can definitely promote there as well. There’s a lot of people out there that are able to be on YouTube and see videos, and so it really opens up the whole world to YouTube advertising.

Alex:

Cool. So we have a cat there, it got us distracted. But thank you very much Tom, very insightful, highly recommended. Tom is, if you ask for a YouTube expert, Tom is the guy for it. So definitely check out his website, his training courses, and if you’re in a position to be his one on one client, if you have a proven offer, good converting website, then definitely reach out to Tom, Tom is the guy for this. So thank you very much Tom for this and-

Tom Breeze:

Thank you so much.

Alex:

And looking forward …