Proven YouTube Lead Gen Tactics from Agency Leaders

0:28All right, so we have a little treat for you. or what's the challenge right now? Sure. I mean, I'm still doing, you know, what we're doing for a while, which is inbound calls from paid search. And after the summer, that's ramping up really nicely. Can't complain. I think what we've been trying and hitting our head on the wall for a while is just tracking and cracking YouTube as a channel. So how do we generate those calls from YouTube because the clients are already there and it's a matter of just selling them more. So I guess the question there for the group is how you would go about doing this, right?

1:07So it's a totally different channel, right? Like if you guys were doing SEO, you're now going to do paid search. Your skillset is not there. How would you think about go about doing it? Would you do it yourself? Would you hire somebody? Would you hire the agency? And remember, this is like core competence, right? this is the key value that we bring to our clients right it's channel expertise

1:37i would definitely contract i mean definitely so the clients are asking for youtube as well is that what's the clients are just asking for calls um and basically what we've seen is that uh you know as a business our expertise is channels and expanding through other channels we know YouTube works and YouTube is part of the Google ecosystem. So, you know, the Google reps will definitely help and they're more conducive to being helpful than Facebook. I would second Rebecca. We like leveraging experts, but I also don't like them just to do it, but basically do it with the mindset of, hey, we want to see how you do it and explain it.

2:23And, you know, you know, like, you know, yeah, give me the fish, but also show me every step while you're fishing. So you already have a team that is delivering Google ads, paid search. Who's speaking? I only see seven of us. Is there more? Oh, yeah, this is Matt. Sorry, my camera is off. Okay. I'll put my camera on later, but this is Matt. I was just wondering if you already have an internal team that is basically handling paid search. We do, but it's a different skill set, right? Really? Is it? Because I'm trying to challenge you on that assumption because at my company, we have a few people who do Google Ads, and they really specialize in Google Ads.

3:20And I just actually, this week, I went to New York to a Google Think lead gen event where you have advertisers that spend, you know,$100 million on Google Ads,$10 million a year on Google Ads. So, you know, we definitely are doing a lot of Google Ads. And for my team, the person who's doing Google Ads, they also are doing anything that goes through Google Ads. So they do YouTube Ads. They'll do Google Display Network. They'll do remarketing. So I think it's a very similar skill set. I would encourage you to think about your current team to expand, you know, their capability and just learn YouTube ads and how to manage them.

4:04Maybe the creative aspect of like what type of creative is going to work. That's a different skill set. But as far as buying ads, I think it should be the same team in my view. So on the buying ads, yes. And we're a performance marketer lead generator, not a service agency. Oh, okay. Right? So, that's the, we've been trying to crack. I mean, I'm a media buyer by trade, and I've been trying to crack this for two years and have not succeeded. I think what I've seen, mainly the difference with search and YouTube is search is multiple keywords. Like, we have tens and thousands of keywords, and it works really well.

4:49And then on YouTube, the way people have told me is you don't need to target. You can just go global audience, but you really have to have a studio as a creative. Yeah. To really be successful on, you know, performance based versus just running ads. Yeah. I think like the things that maybe are small scale, but where I would start is remarketing through YouTube. So if you already got a click to your website and perform certain actions and whatnot, then the remarketing, it should be like hopefully low hanging fruit. But when you start advertising, like you said, it's audience, it's building audiences and whatnot, optimizing them.

5:34But also I think the creative, like the actual ad, the actual, you know, video, that's what most people fail at because, you know, the creative is maybe not good enough. So hopefully it's helpful. I'm just trying to share my experience. Thank you. Appreciate that. Cool. All right. Quick note. This is about my company. It's called Single Grain. And Single Grain is an ad agency where we're focused on driving innovation. We'll talk about a couple of new strategies. And if you need help with marketing, great. If not, here are a couple of new strategies that you should try out. One is programmatic CRO.

6:06So we are doing programmatic conversion rate optimization on our site. So it's building products that will automatically optimize your site to increase conversion rates. We're also auto optimizing, auto updating from an SEO standpoint. And we're constantly thinking about what else we can do in terms of enriching the visitors that are hitting your website and also tailoring custom messages for them using AI. And so there's a handful of things that we're doing from a marketing standpoint. And our mission is just to drive more innovation. So if you want to learn more, just go to singlegrain.com, grain like rice.

6:35So singlegrain.com to learn more. And we'll see you inside. Yeah, what's still outstanding there, David? did you want to ask any follow-up questions or no i guess i'm just trying to do the approach right because um i have you know i just wanted to see what you know people would would look at doing and if there's something i'm missing maybe mainly we've kind of tried the the two parts right like i've hired contractors and tried to do it internally um the contractors is like

7:13the person the marketer who I've seen make a lead generation on YouTube work really well it's a unicorn it's not just like somebody because it's not just running it right running it is not too complicated it's actually getting the same performance as you would with search that is hard um yeah yeah i also feel like sometimes what we are seeing is people who are you know influencers and they talk about how video ads are working from a perspective of they're using them for themselves so they would create the video of like 30 minute video or a 15 minute video or they would you know i'm here in my garage with my maseratis and whatnot and And, you know, it works for the influencer.

8:07But if you have a client who's a roofing company or you have a client who's a dental office, you know, how to make it work for them for lead generation. And, you know, if you're getting the same type of advice that is working for the influencer, it's not the same type of advice that's going to work for, you know, for a business or a brand. And I think, you know, the way we use it is also more Apple funnel. That is really what, you know, what really works for brand building. but for like a lead gen, you know, for any business, it's not going to work perfectly for any business. So maybe you are struggling to crack the code.

8:43It just also depends on the type of businesses and industries you work with. If you would maybe consider that as well. Yeah. It's my friend Amisu who make it work. So within the lead gen spaces, people share a lot. Okay. So these guys are basically shared part, but, you know, can only share so much. Right. Yeah, so it is not an influencer. It's really like somebody who does auto or health insurance through leads, through YouTube and Facebook. Makes sense. Yeah. It's something I'm trying to crack for a while. Thank you for your feedback. You're welcome. Maybe I'm just not paying enough on the contractor.

9:30You just have to like pay for like premium contractors, right? Well, you know, once you have some kind of a formula and you know a company that they're getting the leads and it's working for them, then I would maybe try to reverse engineer what they are doing. Use some tools to kind of see the creative that they're running. You can use similar web. Add clarity within SEMrush. They actually have pretty good competitive tools and try to, like, you know, reconstruct their flow, their conversion flow and whatnot. Maybe that's the way to approach it. Okay. Cool. Cool. Love that. And I think there are some, I'll have to look through the CRM of the AOA members, but I think there's some people who are like more specialized in YouTube that I can put you in touch with.

10:24I'll just have to take a look over there. All right. So I wanted to take a second to tell you about the agency owners association. So this is a agency peer group ran by my podcast co-host Neil Patel and myself, Eric Su. And these were nine and eight figure agency owners respectively. And what I will say is at the end of the day, you want to learn from people that have been there, done that. If you want to grow your agency to seven figures, eight figures and beyond, this is the group for you. And we bring in other agency owners to speak as well. And it's a great peer group where you can help each other out.

10:51And you're going to learn how to acquire more clients. You're going to learn how to take yourself out of the day-to-day and to build the business of your dreams. And the cool thing till November 30th, we are holding a special price and you can apply at marketing school, the aisle slash agency. And the great thing about it as well, if you try to get into group, there's a seven day free trial, right? So once November 30th hits, we're going to increase the price by$200 per month. So right now you're getting it at the lowest price possible. So go to marketing school, the aisle slash agency to learn more and we'll see you inside.

11:19Is there someone else who has like a main challenge, like they're bringing up or just like a topic that seems to be coming up more so that you want to discuss with your fellow members?

11:34Gabriel was looking antsy there. No, I'm just kidding. Who was speaking? Matt? I was just asking. I saw the pack raise his hand. But my question is maybe just I wanted to check the temperature of the room in terms of Q4. You know, it's the last quarter of a year. Usually it's busy. I kind of see that a lot of deals that I thought that we're going to go through by now, a lot of things are on hold. I'm talking about sales, business development to see how, you know, if it's only me that I'm seeing sort of clients may be waiting at least here in the U.S. with the election. but I just want to check the temperature if you guys are closing, killing it, you know, or it's, it's just a little bit slow right now.

12:21Slow for me. Slow. Yeah. Typically slow. Yeah. Like compared to, for me, like at least when I look at last Q4, October usually is the month that September, October, November, when we tend to close a lot of deals. And I think, you know, I have the leads, but with the closing, It's a little bit challenging. So I feel like it's good to hear the feedback that I'm not alone.

12:50Anybody else? Who's killing it? I'm not killing it, but we're seeing an improvement. But we're weird because we were coming. We had a standstill. We were nearly at a standstill in February, March. And so we've put so many irons in the fire to create momentum again. So we're picking up. Deals do take a long time to close, for sure. And I was kind of trying to glance at Lasky 4, but it's just night and day. Just was a different salesperson and all kinds of stuff. So I have no real comparison.

13:31But selling is possible. we're a different monster as well because we're lead generator so we don't charge for services we basically sell leads and calls and those are easier to sell because there's a metric to be put in then combined with auto insurance coming back up um so uh we're like 50 percent month to month

14:00it's nice to have a no-brainer offer

14:07I'm also curious based on what you were saying Matt like who is doing the main business development are you like the main closing like is there anybody that's still like closing their own deals or do you pretty much have like a team or what's that structure look like

14:25you mean anyone for me yeah I wanted to start with start with Matt and see what that looks like For me, I'm the closer, but I see that this is not entirely scalable. I've been speaking at 10, 20 events. I paid a year. And right now I'm getting support on the marketing side. But also, I actually am working with Rebecca's team to onboard HubSpot for CRM, which is a great help because I had that issue on the last call. And then I connected with Rebecca. So, you know, I think my goal is to develop a sales operation that is going to be more than just myself. But I just I'm definitely not there yet.

15:07It's just something that it's on my mind right now. So I'm not sure if anybody else. I know that Pac has like a scheduler. I think he was saying last time. But beyond that, I don't know if anybody here has a sales team per se. I feel also from conversations with other agency owners, if let's say you're selling to dental offices and that's your niche or you're selling to, I don't know, law firms or something like that, it's easier to put up a salesperson with a phone and CRM to hit these targets versus when you sell, like in our case, would be maybe a marketing director at a midsize company. and a salesperson of college with a script, they're not going to get their attention that easily, right?

15:54They want to talk to somebody who's already more of an expert. So I feel that this is a role at an agency where you work with, you know, maybe, you know, broader businesses and you're targeting marketing teams when you have to have somebody with more experience who just would maybe support you in that. But I don't feel like it's that easy in my case. Maybe anybody has any feedback on that. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started.

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18:28I actually agree with Matt. I think, you know, from within our sides, it's usually owner-led growth, right? it um and I have a sales prep which we're training and hopefully you know can eventually become part of leadership um but I you know everybody I know is basically it's like the owner is hustling for the deal so I don't know if there's a what what the model would look like if you start giving it as a sales team and how that will affect your business. Yeah. Go ahead, Rebecca, I think you were talking. I wasn't, but I know plenty of large HubSpot agencies with sales team, and I'm sure Austin can speak to this very effectively.

19:19There comes a point where you definitely have a sales team, and I don't know exactly what the number is, but you know it's definitely done it's definitely done it definitely works and i know those owners personally i'm just no way am i there

19:37seem to go a couple ways you know one is you know if you want to scale with kind of non-founder caliber people you have to simplify your offering um you know i've hired salespeople who don't have that consultative, you know, leadership, thought leadership to kind of advise. So those calls end up being more simplified to, you know, what's your problem? How many resources do you need? What do you need? And then let me get back to you type of calls. So I don't think those do as well, but they can scale. And then the other, you know, I've worked with bigger, you know, tech and development agencies and how they've scaled is, you know, rather than founders, it's, you know, executive directors who are just as seniors, but they're just not the business owner, but they can, you know, they're basically kind of like you, Matt, right.

20:29But they just don't want to be the business owner, right? Like they're, they just want to be part of an organization, but they can consult, they can advise and they can, you know, they can lead teams. So they're, you know, usually kind of an executive level, almost like partner. And maybe they, you know, they eat what they kill type thing, you know.