YouTube: The Most Underrated Sales Channel You’re Not Using Properly With Brian Moncada

Episode 55 Brian Moncada
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The Power of Consistency on YouTube
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Brian: ​[00:00:00] I can tell you right now, like our best clients that get the best results, they have a consistent presence on YouTube. They post consistently at least once a week minimum. Right? And they're able to compound the benefits of not only more views and more clients over time, but when they run ads, it just changes everything for them.

Brian: 'cause they're just capitalizing on all that goodwill.​

Introduction to Brian Moncada and His Journey
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Allan: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Allan Dib, and today I've got a special guest with me, Brian Moncada Brian is a YouTube expert and uh, he's someone that I've followed for a long time. I really enjoy his content and he, he's an expert in both organic and paid YouTube ads.

Allan: And welcome to the podcast, Brian. Great to have you.

Brian: Thank you so much for having me, Allan. Appreciate it, man.

Allan: Brian for those who don't know you, who don't know what you do, who you do it for give us the one paragraph. Who

Brian: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. My name is Brian Moncada. Like Allan said, I'm the founder of ad spend.com. For the last five years on [00:01:00] my own, I've built ad spend.com to be one of the fastest growing YouTube ads agencies in the info marketing online education space. Specifically, we primarily just help amazing experts that are good at teaching some information that helps other people improve their lives.

Brian: And we help them get more clients and customers through advertising specifically on YouTube. And uh, I've been doing that for, like I said, the last five years with ad spend.com. And before that I did it as a media buyer full time for my previous mentor. And yeah, I've just been in this space for, helping other people, get more clients.

Brian: And our mission obviously is just to educate the world through advertising. So personal development changed my life and I believe information obviously can have the power to do that for other people as well.

Allan: Amazing.

The Evolution and Impact of YouTube
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Allan: You know, I was talking to someone the other day and they mentioned the phrase online business and I said, you know, we don't need that adjective anymore. It's not online business, it's just business. And I think of YouTube in a similar way. YouTube is now tv. I mean, when I was building this house a few years ago, I didn't even bother hooking up cable or free air [00:02:00] TV or whatever because everything comes through the, the internet and particularly, mostly.

Allan: it's not social media, it's just media now, right. So, from that perspective, I've been really fascinated with the trajectory of YouTube. Like we've seen platforms like Facebook kind of decline and you know, Facebook is kind of. A lot of people feel like it's a boomer sort of platform or whatever, but YouTube has just been on the up and up and up and it has such a longevity.

Allan: What are your thoughts around that and how is, that affecting kind of the, the online marketing space?

Brian: Well, it's changed everything. I can tell you right now, like our best clients that get the best results, they have a consistent presence on YouTube. They post consistently at least once a week minimum. Right? And they're able to compound the benefits of not only more views and more clients over time, but when they run ads, it just changes everything for them.

Brian: 'cause they're just capitalizing on all that goodwill. But I know, you know, when I first discovered the power of YouTube was I was in college. This was 10 years ago. I was, you know, 20 years old, uh, or 19 at the [00:03:00] time, I believe. And I saw a bunch of creators that were in the fitness space making money by posting videos on YouTube and getting sponsorships.

Brian: And I was like, you can literally just make money from posting videos on YouTube. But that's when obviously I first had the idea to do that on my own. So I started doing that in the fitness space, but that was 10 years ago. And it was only like three or four years ago that Sam Ovens also said like YouTube's.

Brian: Now the best way to get clients organically, but it continues to be that every year after year, because like you said, I don't have a TV in my living room. If you go outside this wall right here outta my home office, I have a projector and that projector has an app on it. That app is YouTube. I watch YouTube for my entertainment.

Brian: Now. I don't have a tv. There is no need for a tv. And so I mean, I have 16,700 or so subscribers on YouTube, so I'm not, a huge expert like Mr. Beast, for example. But in terms of monetizing a channel, right, like that is the way to do it, especially now with everything being super saturated in the info marketing space or [00:04:00] any business in general.

Brian: You need a brand and you need a platform to post content that's valuable, and one of the best platforms to do that is YouTube.

Allan: Well, one of the distinctions, like, is not only the size of the audience, but the quality of the audience, right? So, Mr. Beast like has hundreds of millions of. Followers. Right. But you know, the value of each audience member is not necessarily very high. Maybe they buy his chocolate bar or

Brian: Yeah. You missed beast balls.

Allan: Yeah. Feas of alls ex e Exactly. But whereas someone like you or I, we have a very high customer, lifetime value, customer's worth a lot. So you don't need a very big YouTube channel. You don't need a very big following for it to have a, a massive effect on, on your business.

Brian: Yeah, a hundred percent

Leveraging YouTube Organic and Paid Ads
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Allan: so, um, I'd love to understand more about the interaction between YouTube organic and YouTube paid.

Allan: So, I'm assuming one augments the other. like, where should you start? what should the journey look like?

Brian: Yeah, so I mean, I guess [00:05:00] let's, let's take it back to first principles for people that don't even post content on YouTube. If you're not posting content on YouTube, start one video a week, posting something valuable to help your target audience, like Allan said right there, you know, like you don't need a bunch of subscribers.

Brian: You're just trying to create content that's valuable to someone. That's a few steps behind you, right? Let's say you're already doing that great. When do you start running ads? Well, as soon as you have enough audiences to remarket to with YouTube ads. So you need about a thousand subscribers or video viewers or people that have watched a video of yours on your channel, and you can start running ads.

Brian: Now, YouTube ads can only enhance and grow your YouTube organic channel, and there's a few ways you can do that. You can run direct response ads the skippable ones. Inside of the YouTube, you know, video feed, or you can run them as suggested video ads to get people to actually click on your video and watch it organically and boost that content as well.

Brian: And so both of those go hand in hand. And as soon as you can, I would start remarketing on YouTube with ads immediately, especially if you have a couple thousand subscribers, like I said, because there are people that [00:06:00] watched you subscribe to your channel, visited your channel page. You're not even sewing 'em any ads, but other people are advertising on your channel right now.

Brian: You don't even have to have a monetized YouTube channel nowadays to have ads be played on your channel from other companies. So you might as well advertise on your channel if you're not, because other people are taking that real estate there. So I would say as soon as you can immediately, and the way it augments, right.

Brian: Is because when people watch your YouTube organic video, right, you can then remarket to them with a YouTube ad. You can also show an ad to them in their Gmail inbox. You can also follow them on other third party websites like Google or ESPN plus, for example, and use image ads. So it's not just YouTube.

Brian: That's the powerful component here. It's when they watch the YouTube video. You can then remarket to them on all of the Google properties, including YouTube as a suggested video, as an Instream video, as a Gmail ad, like I said. And so the impressions you get from that, and more importantly, the ROAS. [00:07:00] Is crazy compared to what obviously you would've paid back in the day on like TV advertising.

Brian: So, all of those channels continue to push them to your YouTube channel. 'cause they see more suggested videos from you. They go to your landing page, they see more remarketing ads from you, and then obviously they see your Facebook ads if you're running those as well. So it just creates this full holistic marketing flywheel.

Brian: And again, the biggest brand awareness comes from YouTube.

Allan: Yeah. Okay. And for those who are not necessarily up with some of the terminology like remarketing. So remarketing is basically if someone's watched, say 20% or 50% of. Of a YouTube video, you can then display an ad to them or whatever.

Brian: A view, if someone watches one view of your video, you can show, obviously a number of different formats For sure.

Allan: and is the view counted that they got through the whole video or, or

Brian: No, it's usually about 30 seconds.

Allan: 30 seconds. Okay. Gotcha. So you can essentially build a list of followers and subscribers based on their [00:08:00] behavior and how they've interacted with some of your past videos.

Brian: yeah. Anyone who's watched a video of yours, anyone who's added a video of yours to a playlist on their YouTube channel, anyone who's visited your channel page, anyone who's subscribed to your channel, anyone who's liked a video of yours, you can segment it a number of different ways, and obviously I. The bigger your channel is, the more important it is to segment it and remarket to those different audiences separately.

Brian: So it's very powerful. A hundred percent.

Allan: So a lot of people feel challenged with posting regularly on YouTube for a couple of reasons. So first, there's the kind of the. Technical side, what microphone, camera, all of that sort of stuff. But then also the whole production, schedule. So essentially scripting putting it together, all of those sorts of things.

Allan: What are the best ways for someone who's maybe not super experienced with that? Maybe they, they're are open to doing it. There are thought leader. But those things feel like a little bit of challenge. And then of course, post-production, like there's [00:09:00] editing and thumbnails and descriptions and all of that sort of thing.

Allan: So there is a bit of a lift. It's not just like, Hey, post some stuff on YouTube. There is definitely a little bit of a technical challenge there.

Brian: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I think it starts, uh, first with just the personality type too. Some people just aren't as native to just posting content or filming themselves, for example. So it does take some practice. But I think one of the easiest things you can do to start is you can just forget a lot of the technical setup. Like

Brian: The best part is, is we all have this iPhone though, and believe it or not, some of my best videos came from just an iPhone. Some of my best ads, some of my best clients' ads came from just filming on their iPhone horizontally here without any post-production. Actually, you know, that's the best part because today, especially, I.

Brian: You know, like we talked about earlier with Mr. B style production, you know, squid game challenge videos, like that's a whole different level. Whereas I actually feel that today with the videos that I consume are usually just raw, sit down, direct to camera just long form educational videos without much post-production.

Brian: And when you can actually captivate an audience by [00:10:00] just simply teaching what you do from a place of your expertise, it's a lot easier when you just lower the bar for production quality because you can just throw on your iPhone and, and make it work.

Brian: And actually. I would recommend everybody to get the DGI Osmo as well. That's one of the best cameras you can get. It's not that expensive as well. It can follow you, so it looks like you're obviously having some interaction there as well. And that one's super easy to set up. And of course, you know, you do have to prac, it's, it's just like going to the gym.

Brian: You gotta film your first video, it might not be as good, and you gotta keep doing another video every single week. You just commit to it. Eventually, 10 years later, you'll be. Maybe at 16,000 subscribers or hopefully more at that point, right? 'cause you'll be, a lot more, seasoned. So you gotta start somewhere.

Brian: I would say start with your iPhone. Start with the DGI, Osmo and just be okay with failing. But, you know, public speaking is how you can actually make more money, believe it or not.

Allan: I 100% agree. I mean, one of the things that's made me the most money of, of anything is learning how to tell good stories. In fact. I'm actually working with a, coach right [00:11:00] now who's is not a writing coach, he's not a business coach or whatever. He's just a storytelling coach. So I want to become a world class storyteller.

Allan: So I think telling better stories is powerful from any medium that you use, whether it's YouTube, whether it's written, whether it's books or anything else. so I want to connect with something that you said, and I've noticed this as a trend as well, where we are moving more to longer form, less produced videos.

Allan: So I think of someone like in the fitness space, like Sam Sole, like his videos look really janky, just following him in the gym and they're long like, you know, they're. That could be like an half an hour, an hour long, and it's just the dude doing his workout, right? And he's driving to the gym, his whatever.

Allan: There's a little bit of editing here or there, but they're not highly produced videos and it almost feels like. you are a, a companion coming along on his workout or whatever and I've got an iPad set up in my gym and a Sonos set up, whatever, and sometimes I, I'll, I will just put him him up or someone else who's kind of inspirational [00:12:00] from a fitness perspective.

Allan: And it's kind of like. Half, background half, you know, I wanna see what he does and you know, how he works things and, and all of that sort of thing. So, um, and I've noticed in fact your videos, they used to be a lot more polished, a lot more produced, and some of the later ones, I have seen you on your iPhone, you're talking a little bit about your business, you're talking more about your struggles and things like that.

Brian: yeah. I mean, it's like what you said earlier, like Facebook, you know, sort of declined as well in the past and YouTube ads started taking over. It's just. there's this cycle that happens, right? Like, I think. Everyone tried to be Hormozi, including me to a certain extent, when he was just gaining so much traction that eventually, you know this, the new style of content that started to push through was the Sam Sellick style content, because it felt like you said, you're kind of on the journey with him, alongside him as like a training partner, and you're pushing for him, you're rooting for him.

Brian: You want to see if he's gonna stay consistent. It feels like you're committed to his journey and you wanna watch him succeed. And there's something [00:13:00] different about that than like the highly produced fully edited and, you know, my, some of my best videos are still vlogs behind the scenes, but I film them personally and it feels like you're on a journey with me going to these masterminds and sharing my takeaways and my business that I'm gonna use.

Brian: And a lot of people gave me a lot of good feedback on those too, because it was filmed by me and it was very simple. But nowadays. I think a lot of people are just tired of like the bells and whistles. They just wanna hear someone who's actually going through the stuff that they're going through too, and talk about what they're learning and actually be able to relate to that person.

Brian: You know? Especially now, like, I don't know if you've been seeing this a parody clip on Instagram that was like. the average business bro in Bali or something, and it was a totally AI made like Google VO three video that looked so realistic. Like it, it didn't have any made by AI disclaimers.

Brian: And I was just watching it and I'm like, I know this is ai, but this looks so legit. And this is crazy. And again, no disclaimer, the average person who's not in our world, right? Are [00:14:00] they gonna believe that's ai? Are they gonna even know that that's ai? So the point being is if that's the bar to come very, very soon, then all we can do, at least what I'm noticing other people do, and what I'm trying to do as well, is be as relatable as possible.

Brian: Without being so artificial or synthetic that it actually connects with the soul. And like you said earlier, you're trying to be, even better storyteller than you are right now, which is why you hired a storytelling coach, which is a superpower. Like you said, if you can tell a story with not needing any bells and whistles, no post-production, you can captivate an audience and get them to actually take action without needing all of the extra stuff, then I would argue that's even more powerful.

Brian: You're even better of a content creator than the other people that need the extra stuff.

Allan: Yeah. totally true. I heard, Ryan Levek recently, uh, I was at a, at an event with him and he was talking about, you know, with things kind of getting more automated with things kind of getting you know, AI and all of those sorts of things, the analog stuff, the hand curated stuff, all of that stuff is [00:15:00] gonna become.

Allan: Far, far more valuable. It's kind of like, I mean, we see that in every market. Like the cars that are handmade, like a Rolls Royce or a Ferrari or whatever, way more valuable than the cars that are produced on a production line. And in fact, they're imperfect a lot of the time. Like, you know.

Allan: Ferrari are not a reliable car. They're, they're a crap car. Like, if you look at them from a production point of view, you know, I've got a friend and, you know, we, we go driving all the time and, you know, half the time it's in the shop. But it's a, it's totally, you know, it's a totally different

Brian: It, I, I, had a friend too that had like an old, Mustang and it was like from 1950s it looked sick, but like it was always in the shop. And I'm like, dude, the chances I did get to ride in it with him, I was like, this is pretty cool. But it was just like, it's like more of the side of it.

Brian: And like you said earlier, it's so funny you said that because there's actually a shift happening too. I don't know if you're noticing it, where it's like people are trying to go back to like. Nature, like, anyway, 'cause we're so connected to the digital ecosystem. Like now what's coming back as well is like [00:16:00] disconnecting, like going back to uh, you know, taking walks doing calls while you're walking, getting out in nature.

Brian: Grounding cause we know where we're going. It's like this artificial intelligence world. And now the new luxury is like being off grid almost. So it's again, more authentic in a way. And it kind of relates back to the content too.

Allan: Well, I was talking to Dan Martel last year and I think, you know, a lot of people when I think of luxury, I. The thing that comes to mind is space, right? So what are you paying for when you are on a business class or first class flight space? When you go into a luxury store, you see a few carefully curated items, but there's a ton of space like whereas when you go to a dollar store, there's just junk everywhere and all of that.

Allan: And so I think of that now, from a time perspective, what does your calendar look like? Is your calendar a dollar store with, you know, low value stuff just scattered everywhere? Or is it a few carefully curated items with lots of [00:17:00] available space? And I, I'm thinking of that from a content perspective as well.

Allan: You know, you just spewing a ton of junkie content or whatever versus, Hey, here's a few carefully curated items with a lot of space. I remember something. Dan Kennedy used to say years ago, he's a direct response marketing legend from way back. And he used to say this about websites, but I think this equally applies to what we're talking about with YouTube.

Allan: he used to say neatness, rejects involvement, ugly works. So meaning that, you know, if it's beautifully, Produced. It kind of feels like, you know, a little bit artificial, fake, whereas ugly, I mean, I probably wouldn't apply this to websites anymore, but back in the day when you used to have those big red, ugly fonts and, you know, direct response copy and all of that sort of thing, that's sort of what he was referring to.

Allan: But I feel like more and more that applies to video and content now, where. People just want the raw thing rather than a super heavily produced production.

Brian: Yeah. It's funny when you were saying that, I was just [00:18:00] thinking about how I went to actually Cape Town for a mastermind that was all German agency owners and they flew me out to speak. And when they saw my slides that I was presenting about how we just were able to grow our agency, they were like, yep, we could tell you were an American just by that presentation style alone.

Brian: Like it was just simple like words, like nothing crazy, no bells and whistles. It was just like just. Text like an old school style VVSL, basically. And they were like, this looks like an American presentation where theirs was like very fancy pictures and everything. And it's just funny how like the basic stuff works though.

Brian: Like that works, you know? And it's really valuable because of the person who's presenting the information. But like you said, yeah, the more polished it is, it just does feel a little bit more synthetic.

Allan: Yeah, so you touched on AI earlier. Obviously we, can't have a, a podcast without talking AI these days. I've been experimenting with tools like HeyGen, which are scarily good. Right. So I, I recorded, you know, a few minutes of video. then my team has even used it to produce, you know, thank you [00:19:00] pages and stuff like that, because sometimes they're waiting for me to get into the studio or whatever.

Allan: And, you know, it wasn't 100% perfect, but it was pretty damn good. what are your thoughts on using AI avatars? When do you use them? How do you use them? Do you disclose that you use them? what are your thoughts?

Brian: Yeah, good question. when I first discovered HeyGen, I made like one of my first ads for ad spend.com using it. And like, it was one of the best ads we ever did because it was just literally calling out the fact that it was an ad. Like I did not make this ad, this ad was made it a hundred percent with ai.

Brian: No more filming, no more editing. Just type a few words into this software and it spits out this ad for you. And it was like. A really good ad because it was just so mind blowing. But when I, when I saw that technology and I, and obviously it's still growing and getting even better now, I immediately thought of the solution that you just said right there, which is like our bottleneck is now eliminated.

Brian: Our bottleneck has always, and was always. Clients filming new ads when we are scaling. Because as you spend more money on advertising, especially on YouTube or even Facebook too, your creative can fatigue a lot faster. Especially [00:20:00] determining your total adjustable market, right? If you're spending thousands of dollars and you're only relying on one ad, you're gonna fatigue eventually.

Brian: And so when I saw that a capability, I was like, okay, well now we just need to upload one good video to create an AI avatar for our clients, obviously, or show them how to do that, and then obviously deploy that onto ads. So the crazy thing is though today with Google policy for ads specifically, it's a lot more strict and almost every ad that's not even created with AI is getting flagged more often than not by Google's AI bots on just impersonation or policy.

Brian: Like we got flagged the other day with a policy violation for a client who just simply mentioned, a celebrity as well as, we showed the picture of the celebrity and it said that we were impersonating that person. And it's because of all these new policies that they're trying to combat AI ads with to avoid obviously something like a, I dunno if you saw this the other day, if you follow Patrick Bet-David, but he had to post on his Instagram, his public Instagram and on Twitter and tagged Mark Zuckerberg [00:21:00] because there was a company that was running an AI ad of Patrick Bet-David that looked real.

Brian: The only thing that wasn't real that I could tell was the tone of his voice was just a little bit altered, but the mannerisms the hands movement, everything just looked spot on. And obviously the offer wasn't something he would ever pitch. But the story and the script they used that was like, if the average person just sees Patrick pitching this, they would probably click on this.

Brian: And so the point being is like people are using 'em. It's here. You can use AI ads now and people are doing it unethically, obviously in some cases, but if you're not using them, you're gonna lose to other competitors that are gonna be testing hundreds of ad creatives every single week compared to you filming manually yourself once a month.

Allan: So is it mainly for split testing or so if we want to use some of these AI ads ethically, obviously how are we integrating that into the workflow? Are we just split testing tons of different [00:22:00] scripts? Also, are we disclosing in the ad, Hey, this is an ai, or how do you think about it?

Brian: Yeah, so you actually don't really have to disclose that. It's an AI ad actually right now, which is still awesome in the Google ads eyes, obviously. But the way you would test it, let's say you have an ad right now, it's working on Facebook or YouTube. Well, you have a proven concept. You have a proven control ad, right?

Brian: What you wanted to do is you wanna create, obviously, variations of it. So you would use AI or HeyGen in this case to create a new hook automatically for you without you having to film anything. And then you can switch out the copy, switch out the CTA, switch out the testimonials. All from AI in the prompt immediately, and then download those videos and test them against the control in a new campaign, especially on YouTube.

Brian: So you have a separate campaign with the AI variations of the original, and you can see if the cost per lead or cost per book call, whatever sales funnel you're running to get more leads, more clients, or more customers, and see how it compares in terms of ROAS. And so that's obviously the easiest thing you can do.

Brian: But then what you wanna have, which we have for all of our clients, and we [00:23:00] show them how to do as well, is to create a, you know, creative production pipeline board in Clickup or Asana or Trello, whatever you use. So you have an ideas column. Right. So every single week when you come up with a new idea for a hook, an angle, or something that you wanna talk about in ad or an offer, you have it here, right?

Brian: Or your team comes up with a new idea for an ad. You have that there, then you have the actual to be tested, the approved ideas, and then the obviously scripting, the filming, the editing, and then if it's a control ad, it's working, it's running great. Or you have a testing column to see if it's proven and profitable.

Brian: You put some of the variations there, depending on what their performance is. And then if a control ad fails, you put it in the stopped working column, right? So you can create this literally right after this video or during this video and just have those columns. And then every week, as long as you're spending money on ads, right, and you're looking at the data, you wanna obviously create new variations using ai.

Brian: Switch out the hooks, switch out the call to action, switch out the story. You can keep everything else the same. The setting, obviously. [00:24:00] And then what's even crazy now too, is if you wanted to add a different language on it, you can. Like if you wanted to add a ad spend.com and espanol, you know, company as well, you could, 'cause I could just have my AI avatar speak in Spanish too.

Allan: That's really cool. I've got my book translated into like 40 different languages, but mostly it's been done by publishers in those countries. But the only country that we actually did the translations ourselves was in Spanish. the book has done really, really well in, in Spanish. But yeah, we've never experimented with like ads in other languages or things like that, so it's a massive opportunity. I mean, there's huge opportunity in the non-English speaking world, isn't there?

Brian: Oh, a hundred percent. Especially with, again, Google what they just released with their VO three, like it's, they're gonna be pretty soon.

AI Revolution in Video Content Creation
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Brian: You're gonna be able to have your team literally just create video ads for you without you having to film anything. All the B-roll, everything taken. It's honestly cool.

Brian: And I, that also makes me wonder, like from the YouTube organic content side, if you, [00:25:00] you, Allan, who gets really good at storytelling even better than you are right now, huffed all the marketing knowledge you have. If we just spent me and you, a few hours individually, obviously just.

Brian: Like prompting this AI to film a piece of content for us with this story. Like without you having to do all the B roll set up, the camera, your team coming to film you, all those things like, and have it be a mini movie in a way for YouTube, like that is something that's gonna happen very soon. And if it's not already, it's like.

Brian: That changes the game for everybody, for content creators like me and you who have these coaching, consulting, service-based businesses. 'cause now the content comes directly from the source, essentially, and we can reduce a ton of complexities to get there.

Allan: Hey, Alan here. Want to dive deeper into today's episode? Head to lean marketing.com/podcast for links to all the resources we mentioned, plus some exclusive ones. Just for podcast listeners, you can also subscribe to get notified when new episodes drop and [00:26:00] receive my latest marketing and business tips right in your inbox.

Allan: That's lean marketing.com/podcast. Now back to the show.

Targeting Strategies for High and Low Ticket Items
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Allan: The other thing that I've seen it's clear where this is heading. And Meta is already gonna roll this. Out, I think in the next few months is where the content is the targeting. Like previously you would create the creative, you'd create the ad and then you would say, okay, I want to target this kind of person or this country or whatever.

Allan: Now. The content is the targeting. Right. So they, they're moving towards that approach. Is that happening with YouTube as well, where YouTube now has an understanding of, hey, this content is for this type of view or whatever, and then target them that way?

Brian: Right now? No. Facebook by far is better at terms of the literally broad targeting algorithm. Do your thing creative. Just target for me, Facebook's got that on unlock. YouTube is not at that point yet. The algorithm isn't as sophisticated, especially when you're doing B2B I found because for clients in our ecosystem, like clients that we're trying to attract for you and [00:27:00] me you know, a lot of them, obviously, they're not gonna be as easy to target than the average person just consuming content on YouTube. So like you said earlier, YouTube, it literally is the new tv. So it's more of a awareness platform right now. I hope the algorithm can be shifted very soon to get to the level of Facebook.

Brian: I think we're a little bit ways away from that, so unfortunately we do have to still add. Targeting on our YouTube campaigns to be as specific as possible. 'cause if we didn't, unless you already have a bunch of conversions or you're selling a very mass market style offer, like a book, for example, and you just do broad targeting that way, then you might have success.

Brian: But if you're selling a very high ticket service or product or coaching program, for example, do a very specific avatar and you do no targeting on YouTube, you're gonna waste a lot of money and you're gonna get a lot of people in your funnel that you probably don't want. Uh, converting on your pixel?

Allan: Yeah. So how does the approach work for something like high ticket versus low ticket? Like for example you know, I'm launching a, book in October. Uh, [00:28:00] obviously a book is maybe what, $30 or if you do some free plus shipping kind of thing, it's low ticket. But you know. You wanna hit some bestseller list or whatever versus, hey we want people to book in for a consulting call or, whatever else.

Allan: So I'm assuming from more high ticket stuff, we move much more directly to like a VSL and booking a call with someone in the team versus with a book. I'm assuming you would just send them to the Amazon page or a checkout page or something like that. Is that, right?

Allan: Or how would the approach differ between the two?

Brian: no, you said it's spot on, right? So the strategies could make completely different. The sales one is completely different. So for a low ticket book. Right. Like one of my highest spending ever campaigns was when I worked for Dean Grazios' spending money on his Millionaire Success Habits book, right?

Brian: Like that book was able to scale to $50k, $60k, 70k a day with just YouTube ads when we were at our peak, obviously for a couple months. And so that funnel was a lot different than a VSL book of call funnel. And that quality of customer is a lot lower than the high ticket call [00:29:00] funnel 'cause it was a mass market book offer, right?

Brian: And so obviously you gotta have the AOVB, you know, around $35 or $40, at the very minimum to make it profitable if you're getting a cost per acquisition of like a, you know, $10 best case, $15 cost per book sale, maybe $20, $25 at scale, or even $30, maybe you're making a little bit of profit or breaking even on the front end, and so you're sending 'em right to the sales page.

Brian: So I've never ran a book funnel that sends 'em straight to the Amazon. Typically you would, ideally want to have your own sales funnel upsells, OTOs one-time offers. Uh, and even obviously webinar on the thank you page or, you know, free masterclass on the thank you page to sell them into a higher ticket offer.

Brian: So that's what you would run for a low ticket book funnel, right? YouTube ads or Facebook ads, getting a cost per sale conversion event to get someone to convert right then and there for a low ticket offer. Now, if you're running to a. High ticket item, anything above, in this case, $5,000 plus even $3,000 plus, you would run and run a [00:30:00] VSL book a call funnel.

Brian: Add to, depending on your niche, if you're doing B2B. If I was targeting, for example, someone like you, Allan, I wouldn't even run to an opt-in page. I would just run AD on YouTube, direct offer to a application right away. No VSL, like the ad is the offer and it's the ad. Everything you need to know right away, you apply and then book a call after you apply given you qualify, and then just get right on the sales call.

Brian: So if you are not doing B2B though, then yeah. Traditional opt-in page VSL, very direct, and then application and calendar as well. So two totally different strategies, but the strategy on YouTube to get those to work is virtually the same. You need good creative, and you need obviously decent targeting, and you need your audience on YouTube, which the majority of people are, and both of those can work very nicely.

Leveraging Multiple Platforms for Marketing
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Allan: And what have you found, other platforms complement YouTube well, like does Instagram or Meta or other or do you just see it as a standalone platform? How do you think about that? I.

Brian: I always [00:31:00] believe everything as a system, right? So for example, like. When I look at my high ROAS analytics for even our company, when we run ads to get clients for our agency or our coaching company, right? It's like they don't just come from YouTube ads, they click on the YouTube ad, but then they watch my YouTube videos, and then they also get in my email list, and then they also click on a Facebook ad or Instagram call to action a week later, right?

Brian: So it's all working synergistically. And so it's like not one or the other in the beginning. I think it's important to focus on one platform, obviously. But if you can have the ability to have Facebook and Instagram working for you organically, unpaid, as well as YouTube organically unpaid as well, it's only gonna grow the entire business as a whole.

Brian: So all of those platforms can compliment each other. I do believe YouTube can just give you such a presence and a reach, though that's unmatched even to Facebook. Because again, like we talked about, it's a new tv. So if you're watching someone consistently on YouTube and you see this guy's ads over and over, even if you're skipping them.

Brian: You're still recognizing that person as a sort of micro celebrity person of interest [00:32:00] expert you know, and that's gonna play a role when they see you on Facebook or see you on Instagram, and they eventually buy. So they're both gonna compliment each other. Facebook and Instagram help.

Brian: YouTube and YouTube helps Facebook and Instagram.

Allan: so. There's obviously the, the ads that play things like that. That's if you are not subscribed to YouTube premium or whatever. But a lot of people also have kind of their own ads embedded in their content as well. They might be sponsored ads or whatever. So how do you, how do you think about that and do you know roughly the percentage of people that do pay for premium and don't see kind of ads?

Allan: Like, like I barely see any ads. I'm on YouTube premium. I wanted to be able to just to watch whatever content I want anytime and have the app closed sometimes. So, What are your thoughts there?

Brian: Well, yeah, it's a good, it's a good point. I think a lot of people sugarcoat this so they don't even really try to talk about this 'cause it might hurt their business, but like. When it comes to business to business, like most people have YouTube premium. I did a poll on my Instagram actually, and I [00:33:00] actually was curious about this 'cause I saw Alex Becker talking about this recently as well and how he was having trouble.

Brian: Uh, I believe from what he said was, you know, with YouTube ads specifically targeting you know, people on YouTube compared to what it used to be. And it was because probably of the YouTube premium option. And I did a survey on my Instagram on my stories actually one night and I said, do you use YouTube premium?

Brian: Do you have YouTube premium? Yes or no? And it's funny, it was about a 60 40 split. 60, yes. 40. No, the 60 though was all of my friends that also have businesses that are in the market for business to business. The 40% were people that I could just look at the list of those people and I, you know, friends of mine are not, they just don't, don't have businesses.

Brian: They're more consumers, for example. And so. The people that have the money can definitely afford to spend on it, and they are affording to spend on it. And so how that affects YouTube ads is pretty significantly, especially if you're selling B2B. So for example, I have tried to help clients of mine that sell to a [00:34:00] very specific type of e-commerce business, like a D2C brand that's making a minimum of 30k a month plus, for example.

Brian: And, those businesses are a lot harder to target on YouTube because a lot of them, the owners especially, they have YouTube premium, right? Like they're not gonna be. You know, caught wasting time. We'll, skipping a bunch of ads, wasting a bunch of ads. But if we talk about another client of ours right now, for example, who sells a high ticket trading cohort program or coaching program to the average consumer who wants to make an extra side income trading, I.

Brian: Those people are way easier to target and their ROAS is way higher and their ad spend is way larger because the target market is way higher on YouTube and way more accessible. And so a lot of those people don't have YouTube premium either. 'cause they're looking to make an extra income. So how do you get around this, right, that's the issue.

Brian: How do you get around this? Well, with YouTube ads you can now, again, like I said before, you can do what's called demand gen campaigns. And you can choose to not just run your ads on YouTube, but you can also have them show up. As a suggested video, right? So [00:35:00] it's not Instream, right? So you could maybe not have to skip that one, but you can also have them show up again in your Gmail or in your Google Discovery or in third party websites as well.

Brian: So you can still get into somebody's inbox, for example, with your advertising and get around the YouTube premium that way. And then, like you mentioned earlier, if you have your own ads inside your own YouTube organic content, I mean, that's the best thing you do. You don't need sponsors 'cause you can be your own sponsor for your own YouTube.

Allan: Yeah it's probably an exaggeration, but I heard, Scott Galloway say basically ads are attacks on the poor and technologically illiterate, right? Because, like you say, people who value their time and all that they've got, they're subscribed to the, the stuff that filters out ads as much as possible.

Allan: I don't think that's completely true, but I think it is definitely somewhat true. So it's more of a challenge, reaching some of these high value audiences as well. A lot of these higher value audiences, they tend to be on, like LinkedIn is a strong platform for them, a lot of the time is how do you think about LinkedIn [00:36:00] and cross pollinating those audiences?

Brian: Well, it's funny, I've personally never ran a LinkedIn ad myself. Uh, I do see LinkedIn as a really good organic platform for a business owner. Ads are a totally different topic. I've had people in my mastermind that are way smarter at LinkedIn ads try to teach me and tell me I should be doing LinkedIn ads that I'm like.

Brian: Yeah, maybe, but I've never personally done them myself. But, there's a friend that I have, someone that I met at a mastermind. his name's Matt Gray and I actually had a call with him the other day and he has a ton of followers on LinkedIn. I forget the number exactly. It's like. I think hundreds of thousands on LinkedIn.

Brian: He's grown his business to multiple six figures a month. Just LinkedIn only. Organic. Never ran ads. no. Facebook, no YouTube, no. You know, Google search ads, anything. So paid traffic was completely new to him, and I was like, really mindblown by this because he said he's grown that big for his coaching business, just doing LinkedIn organically and go figure, he's a really good writer. He's a really good storyteller. And so that's why he's been [00:37:00] able to build that presence.

Brian: And obviously that translates to Twitter too. He's pretty big on Twitter now, so, personally I don't have much experience with LinkedIn, but I would imagine that if you can get good with LinkedIn writing and getting that kind of following, it'd be a lot easier to translate that to YouTube because you can just literally take that long form copy and essentially replicate it and just read it word for word if you want to, and make it into a long form YouTube video.

Allan: Yeah.

The Power of Personal Branding and YouTube
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Allan: One of the things that I'm pretty convinced of is that podcasts are essentially migrating from podcast platforms like a Apple, iTunes, and Spotify and all of that to YouTube, and I've seen it from my own behavior. Now, whenever I subscribe to a new podcast or whatever, I do it on YouTube because, you know, I mean, even if it's just a talking head while I'm working out, while I'm, you know, if I'm going for a walk or whatever at least I have the option to see some visuals and things like, like that I don't have to, I can have the app closed as well.

Allan: I think YouTube doesn't [00:38:00] have to do a lot to start dominating podcasts. And now even when I find a podcast that I wanna listen to and they're not on YouTube, I kind of get a little bit annoyed as well. Uh, so, um, uh, what are your thoughts around podcasts as the content for YouTube? Is there a good way to leverage them for, you know, moving people from just a podcast format to, hey, booking a call and things like that?

Allan: What are your thoughts there?

Brian: It's funny, I actually was thinking about this the other day too because what actually prompted me to get YouTube premium was, I don't know if you remember, but like when I would try to listen to podcasts in the gym actually when I really shouldn't be listening to podcasts, but like I have them playing on YouTube and what the problem is, if you lock your screen, it just stops the podcast.

Brian: So like you just literally have to get YouTube premium if you want to continue the podcast playing on YouTube. Or the other option, like you mentioned is you can go to Spotify and listen to it there, but that just doesn't seem as native to me nowadays. Like you mentioned as watching podcasts and listening to them on YouTube.

Brian: And so I actually see that same shift happening to me [00:39:00] too. I don't go to Spotify for podcasts. Even if I'm in the car and I'm traveling somewhere, I'm just putting it up on YouTube. So ultimately, what's funny though is I do believe podcasts play a role with your YouTube organic content, and they're one of the best by far

Brian: to have your own call to actions in there. Like all the podcasts I listen to now, they have their own plugged sponsorships or advertisements throughout the entire long form content. And I think before people had their own podcast sort of like channels, but I think what I believe you should do at least, is you should at least have a few different styles of shows on your YouTube channel, and one of those formats could potentially be a podcast style long form piece of content.

Brian: And that can be obviously a really good value add for your business because again, it just goes back to the, to the time spent with you to get to them to know, I can trust you if they're spending consistently an hour or two a week watching a podcast from you every single week for. You know, six weeks straight, the chances of them actually converting or buying something for you or just [00:40:00] even engaging with your content's a lot higher.

Brian: So if you can do long form, which I believe everybody can, with a simple format like this, just talking about what you love anyways, like that would be very easy to do.

Allan: So you wouldn't have the podcast on a completely separate channel. You would have it in among your main channel or just on a playlist or how do you think about

Brian: I'm more of the accord of simplicity versus like complexity. So like I do believe, like you can argue this both ways and I'm sure people would tell me I'm completely wrong as well. I believe for the average person who's just trying to start something, obviously keep it all in one channel, especially if it's your personal brand.

Brian: For example, my channel, maybe not the best example, but it's like, well, I've only posted on this one channel, which is why it's grown to where it is, right? What you could also argue if you had a second channel for specifically for podcasting, and I just posted that there, maybe that would just cater the audiences to just podcasting.

Brian: But again, it's gonna take away from the entire thing that I'm trying to build personally. So I believe, again, you can do either or, uh, you can have a [00:41:00] podcast channel if you want. Again, it's just another channel, another place you have to upload another login, another password, another maybe whole team having to do that thing as well.

Brian: If you have a media company like someone, like a Patrick Bet-David, obviously who has PBD podcast, valuetainment, and then a bunch of other shows now where he's literally just creating content as a business, then obviously having each channel will play to your advantage because each channel has their own sponsors, their own ad revenue, their own LLC, maybe even.

Brian: But again, it just depends on where you're at. So at the stage, for someone who's maybe just starting, probably not at the stage where maybe someone, maybe you're someone like me as well, or, or you too, and you wanna have a separate podcast channel, I think it could make sense. But again, it just depends on how complex you want to get it.

Brian: I think start with your personal channel and if there's interest, obviously you can switch it later.

Allan: Yeah, I wanted to highlight something that you mentioned just then sort of in passing, but the amount of time someone spends with your content incredibly important for creating relationship, for creating trust. There's [00:42:00] this parasocial relationship. It's like, I think that's one of the powerful things about having a book is because someone has to spend hours with your content, whether listening or reading or whatever, and they feel like they get to know you, especially if you're telling stories, especially if they like the content. And you know, I've been in many different businesses, like I used to have a telecom business.

Allan: I used to have a IT managed services business in the past. And I can tell you, nobody ever rang up and said, Hey. such big fans of you because, you know, our phone system, our internet's working perfectly. Like we only ever heard from people when there was complaints, when there was outages, when there was whatever.

Allan: But in this business, every single day I get fan mail, people saying, you know, read your book, love to change my life. You know, I've got a new perspective, all of this sort of thing. And I think a large part of that is they've spent time with me and my content. And I think especially when we're talking long-term YouTube.

Allan: My friend Taki Moore calls this brandwidth, [00:43:00] so not bandwidth. Brandwidth. So how much time has someone spent with your content? what he found was if someone had consumed at least 47 minutes of his content, they were like. 10 times more likely to convert to being a paid client versus someone who'd spent less.

Allan: So the whole goal of his marketing is to get someone to consume 47 minutes of my content. Uh, and that's in his opt-in sequences, that's in his follow-up, that's in his remarketing and all of this sort of thing. So, this concept of brandwidth, how much time has someone spent consuming your content?

Allan: Massive factor.

Brian: A hundred percent. I mean, that's why I believe one of the perfect flywheels you can implement immediately for anybody listening to this or even, you know, continuing to do now is just like, again, consistent posts on YouTube minimum once a week, and then a daily email to your list, or at least two to three emails.

Brian: A a week minimum one, pushing to your YouTube video. One, pushing to a case study or testimonial. One, pushing to a direct call to action to sign up or get your book, or book a call with my team, for [00:44:00] example. And then, on top of that, just obviously running ads on YouTube. All of those things can be a perfect flywheel.

Brian: One YouTube video a week, two to three emails a week, and then YouTube ads as well as a perfect ecosystem because not only that then when someone books a call, and I learned this strategy actually from Jeremy Haynes, so shout out to Jeremy Haynes. But even after someone does, maybe for example, consume those 47 minutes of content, or even if they're in the buyer cycle and they haven't consumed 47 minutes of content, but they book a call, well, after they book a call, you can implement, for example, what Jeremy Haines calls as the Hammer Them Strategy, where you have a number of different emails being sent to them within 72 hours before

Brian: actually

Brian: show up to the call.

Brian: So for example, if you book a call with adspend.com you'll get 15 to 18 different emails. Three of 'em are gonna be from Calendly, but 15 pre-written emails by me specifically further indoctrinating you into the power of YouTube ads for a business and just showing you the potential that could be possible.

Brian: And it's also telling stories and using case studies and. Obviously really objection handling as well. And [00:45:00] then those long form emails are also spending more time with the person who's already booked a call before they show up to the, to the, you know, to the discovery call for example. And again, further pushing 'em to the buyer cycle and be writing to actually make a purchase decision potentially.

Allan: I like it. Very clever. What's it called? The Hammer Them Strategy?

Brian: Hammer Them strategy. Yeah.

Allan: Love it. Love it. Okay. I'm gonna implement that. That's a good one. I

Brian: For whatever reason, when I teach that, for example, to a different sort of like, demographic or country, like for example, when I did the mastermind in Cape Town for the, 30 agency owners who were all German, they were like, you could never do this in Germany. Like, this is not acceptable here. Like if you sent me, or if I sent my clients 15 emails, they would like literally report me to the police or something.

Brian: I was like, really? They're like, you Americans are so aggressive. I'm like I guess we just don't think about it like that. It's like, if it's valuable and it's gonna help every, everybody make the decision quicker or just easier and better, it's like, let's just do it.

Allan: I'm Australian. I live in Australia, but I do most of my business in America, and you know, I know a lot of people around the world kind of look [00:46:00] down on American exceptionalism, but I love it, you know, and one of the thing I. I love Australia, but one of the things I don't love about Australia is they're kind of, look down on success.

Allan: Whereas in America it's like, success is celebrated, success is pushed. If you brag about yourself, people push you up. Whereas in Australia, if you brag about yourself, people push you down. So, I think Europe is kind of similar as well. So I love that about American culture.

Brian: Yeah. I thought it was funny when I told 'em that they were just all blown away.

Allan: last question. You've been very generous with your time and your knowledge. what do you think about naming your YouTube channel with your business versus your personal? I mean, I, I think we're still early in the personal brand game. I think personal brand is like SEO in 2007 or 2008, and. You know, this channel my channel is currently in my business name Lean Marketing, but I think I wanna rename it back to just Allan Dib.

Allan: I think people connect with people a lot more, but what are your thoughts?

Brian: Yeah. I mean, I've, I've always. Made [00:47:00] everything, like I said on my channel and, and I think it just depends on the goal too, right? So the fact that you have lean marketing as your YouTube channel, I think is good. If you ever did want to potentially exit and sell, for example, I have a client right now that literally just got an $8.8 million offer on their coaching business.

Brian: They don't even have a YouTube channel, but their YouTube channel, they do have, with all their testimonials where they send people to that are interested in working with them. It's just their company name. And I don't know if they did that strategically or not, but if you wanted to exit and sell one day, it would help you because then obviously it would reduce the face of the brand needing to be involved in the business.

Brian: But I always just think about what Sam Ovens told me at his mastermind in Quantum a few years back, and this is the same line that I thought of always before you even said it too, which was people buy from people, just like you said. Right? And you know, if you grow your personal brand, it's only gonna grow the lean marketing brand anyways.

Brian: Which is why, like for example, you know, my logo's behind me, my logo's on my shirt. I'm growing ad spend.com as I'm posting content on my personal brand, my personal YouTube channel, can I have YouTube two [00:48:00] YouTube channel? Sure. A hundred percent. I think it's, I think it could be great as well, but it's just two different types of content and I think if you wanted to do that, it would, it could be great.

Brian: But I mean, like you said, you get, you get mail every single day from people thanking you for your stories and your journey and how all these products you've created. And, I think again, like you said, personal brand is so early. I remember Ty Lopez saying this last year at his mansion in Beverly Hills, right?

Brian: He was like, the two business models of the future that are only gonna matter, are gonna be personal brand and AI. Everything else is worthless. And I was, he's a hundred percent right. So personal brand by far is gonna be a lot better, in my opinion, than the business. The business brand.

Allan: And so how are you thinking about it? Like from a strategic perspective? Like if you were to ever exit one day or whatever else, are you planning to add an ad spend YouTube channel or that would be not part of the deal, or like how are you thinking about it?

Brian: If I ever did want to, I would have a ad spend.com, separate YouTube channel, and I would have specific content around the business [00:49:00] only. it would be a lot more, uh, subject matter niche. So like it wouldn't have a bunch of like. it would just be a totally different thing.

Brian: Like that would be where I'm probably aiming for like a big exit and I wanted to have just content creators specifically for ad spend.com. Like, I thought about this before. I was like, if I was to do that, I would want to have different subject matter experts that are on my team. For example, my copywriter teaching about ads.

Brian: My, uh, organic video content creator, helping other people start their organic YouTube channels all under the ad spend.com domain, but basically creating what like Patrick Bet-David's doing with his media company. He has subject matter experts underneath Valuetainment that are now creating their own shows underneath the Valuetainment brand.

Brian: And so that would eventually allow you to be again growing the ad spend.com brand or growing your own lean marketing brand with other content creators, creating content underneath the company and then allowing you to be able to exit, uh, a lot easier or just even more valuable because you have this asset now that's organically compounding and they can take it [00:50:00] over without you being the bottleneck.

Allan: Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Brian, uh, you've been extremely generous with your time, with your knowledge. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Where can people find you? And of course we'll link in the description to all those resources.

Brian: Yeah, if you want to, uh, check out more about what we do, just head over to www.adspend.com and you can obviously check out what we do there, a lot of cool stuff that we're working on. And then if you just want to catch up with me, go to my YouTube channel, Brian Moncada on YouTube, and yeah, it's been fun, man.

Allan: Amazing. Thank you

Brian: Thank you for having me. Appreciate you.

Allan: Thanks for tuning in to the Lean Marketing Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by the Lean Marketing Accelerator. Wanna take control of your marketing and see real results with the accelerator. You get proven strategies, tools, and personalized support to scale your business. Visit lean marketing.com/accelerator to learn how we can help you get bigger results with less marketing.

Allan: And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review [00:51:00] or share it with someone who would find it helpful. See you next time.

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