Here is the mystery to the big chicken case. I think I got pranked.
What an amazing April Fools trick. I am all about a good laugh, especially when it comes at my expense. The funny thing is, I just answered the text messages with “they are gone.” It’s to hard to explain that I don’t have chickens and somebody is playing tricks.
Dumb Craigslist…I am offering a $25 dollar reward if anyone can tell me who posted this add. I am also looking for a partner to get into the chicken business. I never thought there would be such a high demand. 🙂
Another text just came in…This is going to be a long night.
April 1st 2015
The drama continues.
I showed up at my office around 8:00 and found this:
So obviously somebody has gone through a lot of trouble but the joke doesn’t stop there. At 12:00 I got a delivery from Chick-fil-a. It was a 6 piece chicken nugget. Finally something that I would appreciate. Now I am almost certain that the is being pulled off by somebody in the office, but I just can’t figure out who.
Here is the kicker.
At 3:00 I noticed we had a delivery and I have been waiting for some Basketball shoes from Adidas. Could it be them?
Nope
It was a chicken.
Mind you this came from the UPS guy. His name is Doug and he is a nice chicken.
If you are totally confused on what is going on right now, you might have missed the email. It’s below
Happy April Fools Day. Now go do this to your favorite in-law.
[The Email]
It all started with the Chickens
4:30 pm I get a simple little text that says… “What color is your Roster?”
Weird right?
4:38 pm I get another text that says… “I am ready to come pick up your chickens.”
Now things are getting a little interesting, but it doesn’t stop there. My phone starts getting call after call from people asking for free chickens.
We just passed 9:40 pm and another 3 text messages from people asking for free chickens just hit the inbox. That makes it a total of 14 text messages, 6 voice mails and 7 calls.
I LIED! Number 7 did not surprise me, but I bet you wanted to know what it was! The power of headlines, y’all!
I’m sure most of our more “advanced” marketing readers know how important headlines are, but maybe some of you newbies don’t so lemme tell you, they are SUPER IMPORTANT. Like the most important thing.
Your content might be witty and amazing and full of important useful information, but if you don’t have a good headline, no one is going to click on it and read your awesome content.
Your headline is just like your subject line in an email. How are you going to get someone interested in opening your email? How are you going to get people to click on your headline and read your article? It’s psychology, Holmes.
So what does your headline need to do? It really depends on your product and service you are providing to your clients. We like to inject dopamine or cortisol to our clients. Either give them something that makes them stir and want to know more, or give them something that reminds them that they have a problem and they need to fix it ASAP.
Are you a financial service? You might want to go the cortisol route. Add a little stress to your readers about how they probably aren’t doing so hot with their money. They will want to read what tips and tricks you have for them and how they can get back on track with their bills, or investing and preparing for the future.
Are you a food company? Inject dopamine. People love food. Make them need to read that article because you’ve now got them salivating from your headline. Or use a bit of shock and curiosity. Something along the lines of “10 ‘health’ foods that actually cause weight gain. I couldn’t believe number 4.” I don’t know about you, but I CONSTANTLY click on those. I always want to know what number 4 is.
I did a little research and here’s a list of some of the best headlines . Maybe some will relate to you, maybe some wont, but at least you’ll understand what’s being clicked on. If you can take these and apply them to your articles…more power to you!
“They laughed when I sat down at the piano – but then I started to play!”
They grinned when the waiter spoke to me in French – but their laughter changed to amazement at my reply.
Do you make these mistakes in English?
Can You Spot These 10 Decorating Sins?
How a “fool stunt” made me a star salesman
How a strange accident saved me from baldness
Who else wants a screen star figure?
Who else wants a lighter cake – in half the mixing time?
Free to brides – $2 to others
Free to high school teachers – $6 to others
Announcing the new Ford cars for (year)
Are You Ashamed of Smells In Your Home?
Think about your audience. Who is it? What do they want, no what do they NEED? You obviously are in the field that you are in because there was a need that needed to be filled, so remember that. You should know your audience pretty intimately by now, knowing what they like and don’t like, what they need, what information they like to read from you, and more…so remember that when you create a headline. You customer needs you and your information. And you want to give it to them. How are you going to make sure they get it?
One Secret Trick To Dominate The Front Page Of YouTube Search
(dom·i·na·tion) (dŏm′ə-nā′shən)
a. Total control or power over your YouTube viewers and visitors.
I might have made up some of that definition, but it’s close.
I am not sure if you guys are feeling it, but there have been some weird things going on in the Internet world. It got me a little bit on edge last week.
It’s a constant battle (love affair) between Google, Traffic, Competitors, Facebook, Clients, Employees, and my sanity. I have to admit…I feel like I lost last week and I do not lose.
So I have come back this week with some extra motivation.
I wanted to show you all a little trick I have been working on with YouTube. This little tip will go a long way with your Video Marketing Strategy.
Please understand that I do hesitate showing this because we have competitors and every time I post something I see my competitors start to implement it… (you know who you are and I will get you.)
Let me give you a little bit of History.
Awhile back I was watching a YouTube video on Ydraw’s Channel and I hated the fact that after the video ended my competitors videos would pop up as a suggestion from YouTube. They would also be showing along the right side.
This was a problem for me for a couple of reasons.
1. I want the audience to keep watching my videos not other peoples’. I spend a lot of money, time, and resources capturing customers and once I have one…I like to keep them watching my stuff.
2. YouTube ranks your videos according to views, comments, and watch time. (note there is a little more to it, which I covered in earlier emails.) When you have a potential customer they will watch all your videos to see what you have to offer. I want to feed them info and keep them on my channel for ranking reasons.
Before we jump into the secret, I wanted to make sure you have a couple of basics in place. We discussed this in earlier emails.
1. A Great Video – you need a video that people will actually watch, and if you have a budget, I suggest you create multiple videos that push your product and establish you as the expert in your field. Ydraw would love to tell your story and we have the best whiteboard videos in the business, so get one…
2. YouTube Channel – your YouTube channel needs to be an extension of your website. Make sure it is branded and is linked to your analytics, Adwords, and your website. Ford did a great job with this. [Ford link] Now that we can drive people away from YouTube to a landing page, it’s important that your channel is decked out.
3. Still to come…
Here is the trick that will allow you to Dominate the whole front page of YouTube. It can be found in the tags.
It’s what I like to call the “The Secret Tag Trick Create By Jace The Master Video Guy.”
Here are your steps:
Step 1: You need to create a tag that is custom to your company. It’s a tag that you do not want others to use.
“Yincvideos” or “Aflacvideochannel”
Step 2: When you are filling out the keyword tags just put your special tag at the end.
Example (special tag is…ydrawvideosrock)
Tags: Whiteboard Videos, whiteboard animation, animation videos, ypaint video, how to videos, ydrawvideosrock
I used my special tag at the end of the tags.
Why do we do this?
Because when watching videos on YouTube, or on another person’s site, ads and other suggested videos will pop up along the right hand side and after the video is played.
This is what you want it to look like…There are 20 suggested videos to watch and they all come from Ydraw.
Total Domination. Do not give the viewer a chance to click on someone else’s video. You will see that Ydraw has taken up every single spot after the video and every single spot on the right hand side.
Tricky right?
It’s almost like magic, but without the magic. It’s just “Plain Jane” brilliance.
So there you go.
Now get out there, get a Ydraw video, develop your Youtube channel and start creating videos.
Make sure and set up your Tags properly and you will enjoy the feeling of total YouTube Video domination.
One last thing…Our last blog covered the New YouTube Cards. You really ought to check it out and see how you can use YouTube Cards to drive traffic from your videos to your website or landing pages.
P.S. Since I love my fellow readers I want to make sure that you know what is coming down the pipeline. On April 15 Google is going to basically de-index sites that are not mobile friendly. Here is a simple link that you can use to check your site. I have checked a couple of your sites and some of you did not pass. Get if fixed..
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/
P.S.S Quote of the day…I found this little gem in an email. “I have implemented pre-purchase question limit. If you ask 3 questions then you are not allowed to buy. I have found that asking more than 2 questions is simply looking for the reason why it “wont work”, and someone with this mentality will always find it.”
It first started with annotations, spotlights, labels, quotes, fundraising and now we have the all new YouTube Cards.
This is a new feature that just came out this week. It might have been this morning March 17th 2015. I’m not really sure. All I know is that I am excited to get it implemented on all my videos.
Here’s how they work.
When you enable cards you are allowed to add a new layer of interactivity to your YouTube Videos. A card can be applied to each video individually and work on Mobile Device.
Did you get that?
Now there is a way to drive traffic with mobile devices. You see…Annotations did not work with mobile, now you can use a card and it works great on mobile devices. This is big!
Make sure to provide a destination URL from a list of eligible sites. When I say eligible sites I mean a site that is linked to your Youtube Channel.
Remember that a YouTube channel should be an extension of your website.
You can see what a YouTube card looks like by watching the YouTube video below. There is a little i in the upper right corner. That is a YouTube Card
How YouTube Cards Work
A simple little teaser or i is shown at the designated time that you select. It will only show for a couple of seconds before it shrinks back into a little i image. If a viewer click on the icon, your card or cards will pop up. Like this…
YouTube cards are created to help drive traffic to your designated website or you can send them to a different video. I’m telling you, that YouTube is getting better and that every company needs to focus on their YouTube channel.
Over time the system is going to evolve and YouTube is going to get better and better. The more traffic they can generate the higher the ad spend. It’s a win win for business owners and YouTube
Types of YouTube Cards
When setting up your YouTube Cards you will notice there are a couple of options.
1. Associated Website Card – This is my favorite because I am all about driving traffic to a landing page. One that is set up to capture a lead. If you do not know how to link your website to your YouTube channel I will direct you to this link https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2887282
2. Fundraising Card – Create a YouTube card that will send your viewers to your Fundraising campaign. This is a great way to send traffic and raise money for your fundraising campaign. There are certain whitelisted fundraising sites that google will allow you to drive traffic to. You can check out the list here. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6083754
3. Video or Playlist Card – If you want to drive your traffic to another video, you can use the video card. You can also link to a Playlist if you would like.
4. Fan Funding Card – I do not care much about this one.
5. Merchandise Card – A Merchandise card is a lot like the Merch Annotation. It give you a way to promote or sell your Merchandise directly from the Video.
How To Set Up Your YouTube Card
1. Visit your Video Manager
2. Click on the pencil to edit or video
3. Click on Card and enter a valid URL.
4. Create a custom picture or use one that YouTube suggests
5. Add the Card
So there you have it. Now get out there and start using your YouTube Cards. Note…that YouTube card performance does show up in your YouTube Analytics.
If you have any questions about YouTube Cards, please contact us.
Normally I will tell a story or shoot the breeze for a bit before I jump into the meat of my message. But we do not have time for that because I am about to show you something amazing.
Not Kidding!
This is the ultimate lesson on how to reach the right audience with YouTube Video Ads. When I say “right audience” I mean those people who are looking for your product or service.
We are not just talking about clicks or cheap traffic. We are talking about conversions.
You can target certain groups that are interested in your product or service and I am going to show you how.
Note…there are some options for big brands who like spending a lot of money for top of mind purchasing, but I really want to focus on in-market audiences. In other words…Conversions
Let’s jump in.
Finding people who are interested in your product or service
Choosing the right audience in ad groups can make or break your campaign. Google Display Network provides you with a lot of options yet you have to be careful. Listen to what Google says. This is how they collect so much data on people and what they are searching for.
[xt_blockquote author=”Google”]“When someone visits a Google partner website, we may use the content of the page or website to show contextually relevant ads. We use the main topics and themes from the page as well as data from third-party companies to associate interests with a visitor’s anonymous Cookie ID. This takes into account how often people visit sites like those, among other factors.
“Google may use information that people provide to these partner websites about their gender, age, and other demographic or interest information. We may also use the websites people visit and third-party data to infer this information. For example, if the sites a person visits have a majority of female visitors (based on aggregated survey data on site visitation), we may associate the person’s cookie with the female demographic category.” [/xt_blockquote]
Basically you’re being tracked. Everything you are doing on the internet provides Google with information so that they can run you targeted ads.
This includes YouTube ads otherwise know as Trueview ads.
Back in February Google made a big adjustment to Trueview Video Ads. They divided the audiences into to groups.
1. Affinity Audiences 2. In-Marketing Audiences
Affinity Audience (broad)
If you are going to use Affinity Audiences you will want to make sure you have a nice chunk of money sitting around. This audience is set up for big brands who would like to extend their TV campaign to an online context. They can also do some targeting, but everything is more broad.
We do not suggest this, but to each their own.
Here is how to limit the affinity audience. For example, instead of reaching hotel lovers, a hotel located in San Francisco may want to reach a certain tech audience that will fit their hotel style. Or instead of reaching Women, a Women’s clothing story may want to reach women who love a certain style of dress. You can do this by:
-Using free form interests entered as keywords -And/or using URLs as proxy for interests
In-Market Audiences (more Defined)
When you use In-market audiences you are able to reach customers who are actively searching for your product or service. Once again, Google uses all of your search history and browsing data to determine if you are actively searching for a certain product or service.
The biggest difference…this audience is close to completing a purchase. This will help us get more conversions.
Isn’t that what we want?
Here is an example from the almighty Google.
Say that you own a car dealership and want to advertise on AdWords. Here’s how you could use audiences based on your goals:
• When to use “affinity audiences”: Your goal is to reach as many people as possible and drive awareness of your dealership, so that when people need to buy a new car or have their car serviced, your business comes to mind. You’re probably running ads on TV stations and want to complement this campaign with an online campaign to expand your reach. With affinity audiences, you could go beyond car enthusiasts, and reach “green living enthusiasts” with ads about hybrid cars, “bargain hunters” with ads about a big sale coming up, and “luxury shoppers” with ads about high-end cars.
• When to use “in-market audiences”: Your goal is to reach people who are actively considering buying a car and have narrowed their decision down to a handful of brands or types of cars. These customers are open to various options or dealers, but intend to make a decision soon. You could complement your search campaign or display keywords campaign with “in-market audiences,” and reach people who are looking for “new sedans” or “new luxury vehicles.”
So there you have it. Now lets jump into the video ad campaign and see where this is located.
Here is another side note. Getting the right traffic to your website is expensive, bringing them back is not. So you want to make sure you have your remarketing pixels in place.
This is a key to getting the maximum amount of leads. Start building lists of people who visit your website. Once they land on your site, watch one of your videos, or click on an ad you can put them into your remarketing list. By the end of the year you will want to have thousands of people cookied.
I know I am going to get this question…
“What is the difference between interests and topics?”
Heck if I know! It’s not like I am a video marketing genius…or am I?
Wait, I think I am so I am going to answer this question for you.
In a pumpkin/nutshell, the big difference is context. Topics will place you video ads on websites or videos that are directly related to the topic.
For example
Sports products would go on espn.com
That is fine, but we still want to make sure we get the In-market interests dialed in. This is the big one. In-market allows you to find people who are actually searching for your product or service. It doesn’t matter what website or video the person is on.
Why not try both?
I am testing that right now to see happens. Google tells you to not do this because it might restrict your audience, but their motives are a little different than mine.
I have found that when Google suggests something, it will usually increase my cost per lead. Their goal is have us pay the maximum amount per lead, so be a little weary of their suggestions.
Finally, I must warn you that this is a new thing Google came out with February 17. Be tight on your budget until you have proven the concept. This is exciting because Google is only going to get better at it.
Also make sure you are tracking conversions. Set up the conversion pixel so know that the money spend is bringing you in leads. Until next time this is Jace Vernon signing off.
One other thing…if you run the right ads, you get these types of comments. How long as it been since a person say they enjoyed your marketing ad?
I should get something for giving you guys such amazing content…oh wait, I do. Look for our next Video Marketing Tip. Hope you enjoyed.
I love this new YouTube Interactive Video. It was created specifically for YouTube ads was designed specifically for our company. This is one of the reasons why I am my own best customer. I can’t wait to see the numbers.
I have been harping on many of you about the power of Video and the bajillion reason you need to be using video in your marketing, training and customer service.
Just last Saturday I had an email come in that said:
“I did a little test with like 800 views and it was pretty horrible…not one conversion. I tried to target as best as I could. Do you think with your service there is really something you can do to make it work?”
My dear friend…
The not-so-humble answer:
“Yes, I can make it work.”
You see, I am my own best customer and I am constantly using video to push out my products.
I know… I know…
This can be a little difficult and it does take some practice. Not only that, it does take the right message at the right time.
Let me give you a real world example of how we take videos and push engagement. This has lead to millions in sales and a crap load of traffic. (yes I say crap)
Awhile back I began to realize that a lot of companies are creating commercial videos and slapping them onto YouTube. This is a big mistake and it can be the difference between success and failure. They are two totally different platforms.
Think about it.
The whole human race, including insects, are tired of watching boring commercials. Thanks to TIVO, Netflix, and DVR we no longer have to put up with them. Things are changing and people don’t like it when you interrupt them. If you are going to put a commercial in front of them you better make sure that it is worth their time.
The same goes with YouTube.
There are 43 Super bowls played on YouTube each day and you have the ability to tap into that for $10 a day. With a YouTube video you are not restricted to a 30 second spot, nor are you handcuffed by certain networks. It’s awesome and our numbers continue to get better.
I have so much to say about this, but that will come at a later date.
The lesson?
Create an amazing video that is catered toward the YouTube platform.
Have you ever heard of Dollar Shave Club? Their whole company started with one YouTube video. They have since taken that same style, humor, and creativity to the large networks. Their 30 second ads are amazing but they were first successful on YouTube.
Start here.
1. Create a Video: Here is the perfect example of a video that is created for YouTube. This beats the pants off of anything you currently have…☺
2. Define your target audience
3. Find videos and locations to run your video ad in front of.
4. Restrict your target audience
5. Cookie everyone (set up retargeting). Keep them coming back.
This works and companies need to be doing it. Soon marketers are going to catch on and ruin it, like they do with everything else.
It’s cheap and very effective.
Time is of the essence so we will be waiting.
Impatiently,
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Are you struggling to get the traffic or revenue necessary to grow your business? We have a limited number of spots open for future clients. If you can not implement this strategy, we would love to do it for you. Everything we do is based off of ROI and will help your business. Sign Up and we will get you started right away. We will manager your Video Ads Campaigns, Email Campaigns and Autocomplete Services. They Work and we use them. Sign Up and see if we are a good fit. We may not be…but it’s worth seeing. This could change your business.
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New YouTube Interactive Video and Why I Am My Own Best Customer.
