Small Business YouTube Marketing Strategies: Logical Position’s Karly Scott

Karly Scott (00:00)

In two years from now, are people even using Google? Are people then are all just moving to ChatGPT and like all of our advertising is housed in there? Who knows?

Gene Marks (00:09)

By the way, that's not a, that's not, that's not a crazy take at all. I mean, that is like absolutely being discussed right now. What will Google do when people can just go into Gemini or Copilot or, you know, what it...Claude and just get the answers rather than getting links?

Karly Scott (00:24)

Yeah.

Announcer (00:25)

Welcome to THRIVE, a Paychex Business Podcast. Your blueprint for navigating everything from people to policies to profits. And now your host, Gene Marks.

Gene Marks (00:35)

Hey, everybody, it's Gene Marks. And welcome back to another episode of the Paychex THRIVE podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. This conversation is going to be all about YouTube marketing. How to improve your YouTube marketing, how to get into it, how to leverage YouTube to expand or hopefully promote your business as well. How to generate more content for your business that can hopefully be overall engagement for your customers. And I am, I'm speaking with Karly Scott. Karly is manager of client services at a company called Logical Position. She is also a massive Lord of the Rings fan. And everybody, if you're watching this on YouTube, that is a map of Middle-Earth behind Karly there. We have the ultimate, we have a geek on the phone. I just want to say, Karly, don't take that the wrong way, but you're the exact person I want to talk to when it comes to YouTube marketing. So, thank you so much for joining us.

Karly Scott (01:29)

Thank you. And yes, got my Lord of the Rings map back here. Fun fact, my husband actually built the frame, so yeah, it just keeps getting...

Gene Marks (01:39)

We could go off on it. Yeah, we go on a tangent about Lord of the Rings. Not on this podcast, but maybe on, you know, on another side conversation, because it is, I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan myself. But first of all, let's talk a little bit about the company. So, Logical Position, tell me a bit about the business. Where are you guys located? What do you guys do? And what do you do at Logical Position?

Karly Scott (02:00)

Yeah, so Logical Position is a digital advertising agency. We are about 15 years old, actually, I think 15 years on the dot, which sounds fairly young. But you know, we originated in Oregon. This is where our headquarters are. We're in the Portland, Oregon area. And you know, we work with businesses anywhere from, you know, small mom and pop shops to big million dollars a month in ad spend businesses. So, I've seen it all. Seen any types of businesses under the sun, baby clothes, ergonomic pillows, instruments, you know, you name it, we've seen pretty much any business that exists. And you know what I personally do, I work with our account managers to make sure that one, they have the most cutting-edge information to do their jobs well. Because let's be honest, the digital advertising world is constantly changing and evolving and it's kind of complicated. So, the continuing education piece is a huge passion project of mine in this, in this job and in my career. And then the other thing that is a huge passion project of mine is the YouTube arm. And one of the things that I'm currently working on with some of my counterparts is developing, you know, more when it comes to tapping into AI products and whatnot for creative strategies like VO3 and whatnot. So that's a little bit about me.

Gene Marks (03:26)

Okay. No, I like that. You know, so, you know, you know, a little bit of a tangent here. And you mentioned VO3. VO3 is Google's, you know, digital image and digital video creation, you know, like Sora from OpenAI and you know, and there are many of them that are out there, you know. Give me your thoughts on, I'm kind of curious what your, what your experience has been with VO and the reason why I want to, I'm asking you this question though, Karly, is I just straight image creation, like not even video. I wrote a piece for, I write for Forbes like six to eight times a month and I cover AI and technology and I'm a business owner and I've been frustrated with video and image creation tools. I think they're amazing. I mean, God, compared to where we were, you know, just a couple years ago. And I think it's amazing that you can put in a prompt to say, create a video of a dinosaur walking through a snowy plane. You know, that guy. And it, and it does. My frustration is from, as a business owner is whenever I work with these image creators or video creators, I can't, I still can't get them to be like, exactly what I need them to be. You know, they get close, but not close enough. So give me your thought before we get into even YouTube marketing. And this is a part of it, by the way. Give me your thoughts. Any warnings that you have for business owners about these tools?

Karly Scott (04:48)

Yes. You know, I think a lot of the times up until this point, I think a lot of people have been fearful of AI tools for video and content creation because they're thinking, oh no, this is going to replace the human element. And I think the more we've gotten into these tools developing especially things like VO3 and text to image or text to video tools, I think we're all very quickly realizing that the tool is only as good as the prompter. And it really drills down to whether or not that this, these tools are going to make it easy to push out content for small businesses. Because I really am excited and pretty bought into the AI world. I think it's going to help small businesses especially be able to come to the forefront a bit more when it comes to churning and putting out more creative more consistently. But the creative strategist role and the overall creative strategy element is still so crucial and important. And if you don't have that understanding of what resonates well, creative wise, how to utilize tools like VO3 and any AI tools, then it's not going to be successful. And it really is just that VO3 is just another tool. And even though we have seen a lot better success with the videos coming out from it, we're actually trying to develop that as a core product at Logical Position. But it's, it is taking time because to your point, the prompting piece, it actually sometimes responds better to more coding language than even natural language. So, it's very interesting. It's still changing and it's, it's really going to come and boil down to, does your prompter truly understand creative and truly understand how to utilize these tools?

Gene Marks (06:37)

I love your response. You know, so first of all, some of the takeaways I take from that is that humans are almost more important than ever when using these tools. It can certainly make them more productive and also more affordable. I mean, to, in the end, to create some of these videos, if we didn't have these tools, I mean, how are we possibly going to create a video of a dinosaur walking through, you know, a snowy mountainside? You know, I mean, so that's amazing stuff. But yeah, it's pretty technical. I mean, it's about the prompt and that is like both art and science, right? And like you said, sometimes hard-coding needs to be done. And that's not something like a typical business. This is where you guys come in, right? I mean, you know, if I'm trying to, if I'm like, hey, Karly, I really want to have a video that puts my company into this, shows this, or tells this type of a story or whatever, you're the one that comes in and says, all right, here's the story we should tell. And because of our expertise, we can do the prompting and the coding and the head banging that needs to be done to get these video creations in the end, you know, a result that you like. Am I, am I saying it correctly?

Karly Scott (07:41)

Absolutely. And I think the thing that you said there is the, the piece of it becoming cheaper and quicker. Right. It's going to help businesses be able to scale the creative arm of their business so much faster. And like, even if you're just using this again as a tool, like, I'm looking at all of these AI pieces as like just part of a puzzle, right? Because you can produce a whole video in VO3. I have. It's okay. You know, they're okay right now, but I actually am envisioning VO3 being more of like a pieces of video to be able to generate more, you know, content that you layer in with your video. Just again, to, if you're missing like UGC content, you can use VO3 to help build that. If you're just missing random, you know, filler content, you can use VO3 to build that content and layer it into your other stuff that you've produced. So again, it all comes back to, boils down to the fact that you still need to have a very clear understanding of creative and what resonates with your audience and you need to understand how to use the tools. But the, the future is so bright from a creative perspective because this is what people expect to see is beautiful creative. That's how people know a brand now, and it's expected. And if you're not tapping into creative, you are falling behind. And VO3 is not just. It's not taking things away from us as creatives. It's giving us more opportunity to expand what we're doing.

Gene Marks (09:11)

I think it's an unbelievable opportunity for firms like yours in your industry, kids in college, art students. There's so many creators out there. They don't have the vehicles, they don't have the money, they don't have the availability to really, you know, think about how many filmmakers that there are out there, like brilliant people, young people that can really do it, but who's going to give them budget to create a film and yet they've got an amazing story to tell. And ultimately these tools will enable them to tell their stories. And that's super exciting. You know, it's just, I just, and again, I don't know if you agree with this or not, but I mean, how can you not, like I feel like we're like when cell phones were first introduced and they were these big boxes that people had on the sides of their heads. You know, like, we are at such an infancy with this that I think yours and mine, generations after us will look back on 2025 and be like, remember, you would put in a, you know, a command to like create a dinosaur going through and the result, what came out looking like that, you know.

Karly Scott (10:10)

Like, I'm still laughing about the era of Will Ferrell eating spaghetti from AI. If you haven't seen those videos, go check it out because those, that was just like the epitome of infancy of AI content. But you're so right. Like, honestly, we don't even know what two years from now in digital is going to look like. Frankly, like I could even, okay, this is, this is me being a tinfoil hat moment. So, just bear with me. But in two years from now, are people even using Google? Are people then all just moving to ChatGPT and like all of our advertising is housed in there? Who knows?

Gene Marks (10:47)

By the way, that's not a, that's not, that's not a crazy take at all. I mean, that is like absolutely being discussed right now. What will Google do when people can just go into Gemini or Copilot or, you know what a, Claude, and just get the answers rather than getting links?

Karly Scott (11:02)

Yeah, exactly. It's changing so quickly and like, you know, not tapping into it and not using these tools now and early is a missed opportunity for businesses, in my opinion, because, you know, the people who are tapping into these products now and understanding them now when they are still in their infancy are just going to be so ahead of the game. We've seen how quickly AI adoption has increased just this year alone and how vastly different consumer behaviors are now changing because of it. So, now's the time. If you're not, if you're not tapping into AI capacity in any way within your business, especially when it comes to creatives, then, yeah, you're going to be going on an uphill battle over the next few years.

Gene Marks (11:52)

Yeah, we're going to, I mean, let's pivot over to YouTube, and that's visual, and it's videos, and it really dovetails right into our conversation of using these video tools. And you make me think, you know, Karly, as well, like my, I have 10 employees in my company. We implement CRM software, and you know, even though I do this for Paychex, but my own business that I'm running. And so, I'm looking to expand my YouTube channel. We do webinars. First of all, just some of the stuff that you're telling me right now, I'm like, you know, man, I'm thinking like, you know, if I hired a kid and paid him a few hundred bucks a week just to dabble around with VO and to make, you know, some cool, you know, video for me, you know, once or twice a month that's, you know, connected to CRM and we throw it on our YouTube. Who knows what we'll come up with, you know what I mean? Like, who knows what fun stuff we could be that gets attention for my business, you know what I mean?

Karly Scott (12:50)

And also like, could you create content that you couldn't just produce with your cell phone on there, you know, and cheaply?

Gene Marks (12:56)

Yeah, agreed. And so, when we're, when, you know, you mentioned earlier about how we don't know, like, well, we still be Googling in a few years, and you know, where all that's going. I feel the same way about YouTube. Like I, I wonder if, you know, five to ten years from now we look at, you know, future YouTube and it looks nothing that it looks like today because all the videos coming out of it are, you know, just AI-enhanced videos. It's a combination of animation and humans and other-worldly creations that businesses are coming up with, using firms like yourself to, you know, to really develop some eye-catching type of content. I think we all, we have to keep our minds open for all that stuff, you know.

Karly Scott (13:43)

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think the YouTube platform very well might look different in, you know, it obviously will, every single platform will. But like two, five years from now, I think the big question is, are we only going to have AI content out there? And like, I really don't think that is going to be the case. We have, like, there is a real issue of AI fatigue in this world when it comes to creatives. And although the products are becoming a lot more sophisticated, a lot more, you know, in tune with real life, I think it's still going to be, like I said, a tool. Because you know, when it comes down to it, we don't just animate everything in this world because we can. Right. You know, like you could just go about it and do easy animations and whatnot. It's not that it's not as challenging to animate things now as it was, you know, 10, 15 years ago. The technology has improved and same with AI. So, I don't think it's going to be something that is everywhere in the same capacity as like the society is talking about it, where it's taking over. I think it's going to be sprinkled into things, and like I said, empowering businesses to have more tools in their tool belt.

Gene Marks (14:54)

I think you're right. I also already I am seeing people getting you, you mentioned the word fatigued. I see like, like a little annoyed with, I mean there is, I'm on Instagram, you know, all the, I don't post on Instagram, but I look at all sorts of funny and great stuff. Like, there was a lot of AI-generated stuff on Instagram that, you know, even, you know, you know, Meta and also X on, you know, are they're flagging and saying this is an AI-generated video because as a user it's just like, oh, come on man. Like this is, you know, you see a bear dancing with a, you know, with a frog. You know what I mean? Or you see something that seems very realistic and then you're like, wait a second, is this, what am I looking at? And it just, you know, and I think again, as business owners, we have to keep in mind that if we are going to be creating stuff on our YouTube channels and we want to, you know, use AI, we have to be very cognizant of the fact that our viewers might not want to see as much AI as we think. Like you said, it's a tool.

Karly Scott (15:53)

100%. Yes. You know, 100%. I think, I think with anything it can be overdone. Any type of content can be overdone. And figuring out what your audience, and this is really the whole crux of your YouTube, figuring out what content resonates with your audience is really all that YouTube, both organic and paid, boils down to. Right? You're not just putting out random content. And it's, and it's never going to be, you're not going to go into YouTube and know automatically, oh yes, this is the type of content I need to produce. You're going to need to enter into it by testing and iterating and experimenting with what other people are doing, look at what other brands are doing and try, and not every single audience that you're targeting is even going to resonate with the same types of creatives. So, it really does all boil down and all the way back to even VO3. You know, maybe your audience does really resonate with a lot of AI content for whatever reason. But, you know, it might, it might end up being better having it mixed in with other types of content, UGC and whatnot, to scale the creativity of your brand on YouTube, if that makes sense.

Gene Marks (17:04)

That's great. Hey, Karly, so, you and I are talking to... And by the way, everybody, this is Karly Scott. She is the manager of client services at Logical Position. And Karly, you and I are talking to a lot of business owners. You know, I guess no surprise to you that our audience, you know, has to do a lot when they're running their businesses. And I'm a business owner as well. HR stuff takes up a lot of time of a lot of my clients. I always wonder why they don't outsource more of it. Most of my clients could really need a breather from all of the details of hiring an employee and doing performance evaluations and, you know, getting health insurance and, you know, calculating tax deductions and all of that. Paychex can actually take care of things like that to get you back to what you love and what you ventured out first in the first place for why you're running your business. So, if you want to get some help in relieving yourself of some of your outsourced HR stuff so that you can get back to focusing on your business, see how you can get help from Paychex. Go to paychex.com/MeetPaychex. That's P-A-Y-C-H-E-X.com/M-E-E-T-P-A-Y-C-H-E-X. There will be a link to that in our show notes. Karly, you know, we're talking about business owners and we're talking about using AI to enhance our videos on YouTube. This is a YouTube conversation. So, you know, again, I mentioned my business. I have 10 people. We have a YouTube channel. I want to increase views and subscribers on my videos. Okay? And I'm going to tell you specifically my videos. We sell CRM software, so we do webinars like once a month. And then we, I have, I have a woman, a marketing woman who sort of chops up my webinars into, you know, smaller bits. And then every month we post the full webinar on YouTube. And then we also post smaller bits, like Shorts, you know, on it as well, onto our YouTube channel. So first of all, I want to say, you know, Karly, like, I don't use a marketing firm, you know, a firm like Logical Position, although I probably should, but this is the kind of value that you guys bring to your clients, and this is, you know, there's a cost involved, so if you know, I know that so because I'm paying somebody to do this, but I want more views and I want more subscribers for these posts that I'm doing on YouTube. What do I do?

Karly Scott (19:26)

Yeah, I'd say what you're doing right now from an organic perspective, that is the foundation. And every business should start by building their organic presence and really diversifying when it comes to the types of content they're creating, which you just mentioned, you're doing some long form, you're doing short form you're splicing it up a bit. Fantastic foundation. So, if from here the goal is to grow the channel, grow the business, grow the leads that you're looking for, that's where paid comes into the mix. Paid ads. So obviously, as you mentioned, this is the piece where it's costing some extra money. But you know, I think the biggest fear when it comes to investing in YouTube is the measurement piece. It's so difficult to get a true understanding for YouTube's impact. And Google has been coming out with more and more different reports that help us be able to actually directly tie the revenue to the YouTube campaign and whatnot, or demand gen campaign, whatever setup you're doing. But really, you know, circling back to all of this paid can be very challenging to attribute back to, and you know, drive that value and actually have the proof of concept. And that's where, you know, an agency comes into the mix. Because YouTube is not like paid search. You're not hitting people when they're actively typing in, you're hitting them when they're on, you know, I don't know, watching cat videos on, on the internet. Right. That's probably what I'm doing. And then you're getting in front of that individual. Right. So, you're going to need to expect a longer payoff times. Right. I usually even tell people run YouTube for 30 days to 90 days, YouTube ads, before you even touch anything or change anything. Let it build some time and momentum and see how it's impacting your brand. If you think about how complex the purchasing journey has become, most on average people are taking anywhere from, you know, four to nine steps before actually making a purchasing decision. And YouTube is meant to A, be a discovery tool and then B, push them down that purchasing journey and hold their hand through it and make sure that they remember you throughout. Right. So, and again this, this all comes back to the fact that evaluating YouTube under the right lens is so, so crucial. But YouTube can be a huge, huge arm in shortening that purchasing decision window and making sure that you are actually a part of that decision. I always tell my clients if you're not there during the research phase, you're not going to be there during their purchasing phase or their decision-making phase. And that, and that's really what YouTube boils down to.

Gene Marks (22:14)

Good answers. So again, I take away from what you're saying though is that if you're just relying on organic, that seems like a pretty big mountain to climb to get, right? I mean, unless you are doing something, you know, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, unless you're doing something really controversial, really out there or you know, like a Mr. Beast, you know, kind of thing, you know, you know, if you're just a business and you've got your, your videos, I mean even if even the people that come up with the most creative and organic to fun YouTube videos, it's still, you know, just because you build it, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to come. Is that a fair statement?

Karly Scott (22:51)

100%. Yeah. And I mean if you think about it, it's the same thing with any advertising channel. Like you wouldn't build a Meta or an Instagram page and just expect everybody to find you. You know, it's the same thing on YouTube. And the cool thing about YouTube, YouTube is more trustworthy for consumers. Actually, I believe, let me see, my research said, I think the quote that I had was viewers rated YouTube as 16% more trustworthy, credible, and honest than ads on other video media platforms. Then, and YouTube is also a channel that not only has very similar, if not more volume than some Meta, it's actually ranked higher in monthly average users than Instagram, but it keeps people on the platform much, much longer. So, the opportunity to get in front of folks and also get in front of them when they're researching. People go to YouTube, you know, when they've discovered a brand and they want to, if they might see your ad on YouTube and then, then they want to go to your channel to really again, don't neglect one piece of your advertising funnel. You're not just going to be able to only dump money into YouTube ads without also building some time into your organic. And it's the same thing across all marketing channels here. It's all about making sure you're there no matter where the consumer is at.

Gene Marks (24:15)

Good. So, so again, let's get back to my specific example. Say I did, you know, we do a webinar and it's on, we're using one of our CRM products that we sell. So, it's product XYZ and maybe we're talking about the webinar's content is, it's for small business owners and it's about how to create reports in this CRM product. You know what I mean? Which a lot of people are interested in. Right. Okay, well, I want to get that in front of as many eyeballs as possible. I want to drive people to not only view it, but, you know, maybe even comment or engage with it. Yeah, I want people to subscribe to my channel. So what would you recommend that I do? I've completed the video. You can assume that it's a good quality video. And I don't want to understate that. That's super important. You know, just done and then I post it. It's got three views on it after a week. You know, so I'm like, okay, I want to get it out to more people so that, you know, more people will watch it. What would you do? What would you recommend?

Karly Scott (25:16)

I would probably do a couple things. So, if we had a shorter form to have that be the video, as opposed to having a long-form video. I have seen long-form do okay in ads, but you know, trying to make sure that people are goldfish brains on YouTube. So, trying to, you know, keep them, keep them focused.

Gene Marks (25:34)

How short is short?

Karly Scott (25:37)

Very short. I mean, I see people drop off in eight seconds. I mean, eight seconds, people are going to lose interest in eight seconds or less. So having a very strong hook, having a video edit that is your webinar, but just a little bit more tailored to an ad. So then from an audience perspective, right, now I would start with two different things. One, lookalikes, that's a very powerful way to go after folks that look like people that have either maybe engaged with your channel for a long time. Like, so we could say, hey, these are, these are my subscribers. Go after people who look like my subscribers. Or these are people who have watched, you know, 30 seconds or more of my webinars. Go after people who look like this. Or...

Gene Marks (26:24)

So, we can tell, we can tell our YouTube advertising manager to do this, correct?

Karly Scott (26:30)

Yes.

Gene Marks (26:30)

Okay.

Karly Scott (26:30)

You can even do a look-alike audience from past purchasers or past leads. Like, hey, these are people who actually have reached out to me and have moved forward as a lead. Right.

Gene Marks (26:40)

I would need to, I would need to upload data to YouTube to do that?

Karly Scott (26:44)

Yes, a customer match list. So, it would just be, you know, an Excel sheet of these people and it's not going after those people. It's still going to respect those people's privacy. It's just about a signal to build the audience so Google can take a look at this pool of people, understand the behaviors that they took, the actions that we are trying to replicate with this look alike and go after other folks who are likely to look like these groups of people. So that's a very powerful way of doing some prospecting, but being very specific. Now Gene, it sounds like you're in a very, you're in a very niche industry so you're probably not going to go on to Google and find an in-market or affinity audience that's prebuilt for you. That's like CRM. People who are interested in CRMs, you might find one but you know, it's pretty specific. So, and I've worked with businesses that are very hyper-specific and still invest on YouTube and my favorite approach for that on top of look-alikes, is adding in custom intent audiences. You can build these from keywords, from URLs. So those could be like competitor URLs, people who do something similar to you or even apps. I use that probably the least. My favorite's the keyword approach. So, if you're you know, targeting a group of keywords on paid search, for example, that drives the majority of your non-branded traffic, I would build a list from that, those keywords and basically say go find people who are either searching for these keywords or who are likely to search for keywords like this.

Gene Marks (28:14)

Okay. And when that means that if you're using that and you're telling Google to go out or YouTube to go out and find those people when they're searching for those keywords, your video has a shot of showing up in their search results. Correct?

Karly Scott (28:26)

Correct. Yep, yep.

Gene Marks (28:27)

Okay.

Karly Scott (28:28)

Yeah. So, and you can target it a couple of different ways. I won't get too in the weeds, but you can target by people who are actively searching for those keywords or who are, you know, look like people who are typing in similar searches like that. So, it's a little technical with the setup, but similar situation. Yeah, you're going to get in front of those people based on, you know, what they're doing on the internet, or you know, the signals that they've been providing to Google.

Gene Marks (28:52)

Okay, that's good. You know, how, you know, what is the length of time you mentioned that people really do have very short attention spans. So, does that mean that you would advise your clients or companies not to post longer form videos? And you know, do you have any recommendations as to what sort of like length or duration your videos should be taking for a company video?

Karly Scott (29:12)

Yeah, length. Google doesn't care. YouTube I should say. YouTube's not going to care about length. YouTube cares about is this video getting the click through rate? Right. Is it getting the clicks, is it getting the engagement, and is it also increasing the overall user's session duration not just on your video but on YouTube in general? So, it's checking all those boxes. That's how Google prioritizes your video. Now when it comes to ads, it's a little different. You're entering into an auction environment. So, I would say experiment with your audience because I have worked with brands who have run long-form content in their ads, and it's been very successful. But they have a very specific approach. I would test with creative formulas. Creative like in lengths with every audience because you might want to say someone who's further down the line is going to get more UGC content or a shorter form content because they're probably already in the know of what your brand is and they might be, you know, closer to making a buying decision versus someone who might be more upper funnel. You might want longer form content that's more in the weeds and explaining the brand. Right? So, it really comes down to experimenting and giving your creatives enough time to play and tell you with the data what is resonating with your audience.

Gene Marks (30:34)

Do you recommend that your clients run multiple campaigns at the same time?

Karly Scott (30:38)

I would, yeah. I mean, I personally, I think that YouTube is a constant testing field. I don't think YouTube has ever done testing. So, if you're trying to scale your brand in more than just one audience type in one area, yeah, experiment and experiment across all those audiences. Play and figure out what resonates the best.

Gene Marks (31:02)

Okay. There are a lot of bots on YouTube. So and you know, you might, you know, get a thousand views on a video and then when you start looking into who's, you know, viewing it's, you know it is just, it's just their bots that are looking at it, or they could be viewed by people that are really not part of your audience at all. They're from, you know, other parts of the world or you know, whatever. How do you try, how do you live at that stuff?

Karly Scott (31:28)

Yeah, thankfully Google, when you set up your either YouTube campaign or demand gen campaign, if you're telling it to go after a specific type of conversion or engagement style. Right. That's a great way of how you can eliminate wasted traffic. And that's also where your agency comes in or whoever is managing your YouTube campaigns. Right. They're supposed to be there to look at where your ads are showing up. For example, mobile apps is a very common placement type for ads to show. And let me tell you, mobile app placements are just pretty terrible because I don't know about you, if you're, if you play games on your phone or something like that, I don't either. But when you enter into an app and you accidentally click on an ad, I can't tell you how many times I've done that. Very, very big area of wasted spend. And that's where an expert would come in and say, hey, this is where your ads are wasting dollars. Right. And continue to refine those out as much as possible.

Gene Marks (32:30)

Right. Yeah, because that happens to be, you know, all the time. So, Carly, you know, we've talked about getting views on these videos. What about subscribers to a YouTube channel? I mean, that's the real value. And by the way, we have a few thousand subscribers on my YouTube channel for my business. I don't, I just want to, I just want to make sure, first of all, that I clarify that I don't know really who these people are. Like, I don't have their contact information. I just know their YouTube, their, their ID on YouTube. So, I can't really market to them, can I? I mean, you know, they're just subscribers to my channel. I mean, my hope is that if they subscribe, they have interest in my content, and if they have interest in my content, maybe they'll click through on something. You know, when I, you know, give a URL on a video. Right? I mean, that's the most I can expect. Correct?

Karly Scott (33:14)

You can. So, if somebody is watching your YouTube ad and you want to get them to actually subscribe from there, you can remarket to them. You can say, I want to remarket to these people who have watched this video and, and they are not necessarily subscribers. You can like, signal to Google, exclude subscribers, and then you can, you know, push a different piece of content towards them. If, you know, they've seen a specific video of yours, and then you want to, to encourage more action, maybe show them another video that's saying, hey, you know, I'm Gene. I post, I post content every, you know, Thursday or whatever that is. Um, you know, come back and subscribe and see some of my other content. That's, that's the kind of action if you want to grow your YouTube channel from a subscribers perspective, to really have calls to action within your videos. And then also making sure that again, as folks are moving down the funnel, they're getting different messages to keep encouraging them to go further down in their funnel, if that makes sense.

Gene Marks (34:11)

So what you're saying is that if I have, say we post a video of one of our webinars and it gets, I don't know, a couple thousand views on it, I can be telling, you know, my marketing person, you know, go back into YouTube campaigns, do a remarketing campaign, you know, target the people that viewed this video and send them another video.

Karly Scott (34:33)

Yeah.

Gene Marks (34:33)

So that they're getting more. And we're specifically going out, obviously there's a cost to that. We'll talk about that in a minute. But we're, you know, we're going back to those people that viewed to get them to see the. Another video and maybe even another. And so, it's not just the initial campaign to get views.

Karly Scott (34:49)

Right.

Gene Marks (34:49)

There are additional campaigns that I could be running, you know, targeted to people that did view my videos to get them to subscribe to my channel.

Karly Scott (34:57)

Exactly.

Gene Marks (34:58)

Is that correct?

Karly Scott (34:58)

And even think about it, even beyond just the YouTube platform. Right. Like, you need to also consider your other channels. I even, I think it's really a powerful, powerful approach to also remarket. For example, I do this very often remarket to people who have engaged or you know, liked my page on Meta. People are engaging with me on Facebook or Pinterest. You can create audiences to again, really make sure that you are hitting those consumers no matter where they're at. Because it's no longer just operating in Google Ads anymore. People are, you know, touching across multiple ads and multiple platforms now.

Gene Marks (35:36)

Okay, we only have a couple minutes left, so let's talk about costs. Okay. I mean, I'm not going to have you talk about costs, about what you guys, how you guys charge. But we'll talk about charge costs because your costs are a value. You are, you are the humans, the experts that are running these campaigns and advising your clients and creating these content, creating the content, all of this stuff. So that's got a separate value and cost proposition on its own. As far as YouTube specifically, what can a business owner expect to be spending on ads to try and get, you know, a couple thousand views on a video? I mean, thousands of dollars, hundreds of dollars? You know, what do you, what do you see out there?

Karly Scott (36:17)

YouTube is very inexpensive. It is. You can pay anywhere from $0.01 to maybe $0.05 per view. It's a, it's a unique channel in that regard. I usually recommend small businesses start small. Just start by allocating anywhere. And here's a great example. I had a client who was dabbling in YouTube and dabbling in it very unintentionally. And it was resulting over time, just continual shrinkage in it because we were looping it in with our paid search goals. Eventually I told the client, hey, you need to commit to a specific spend baseline. I had him up his budget to $2,000 a month. I said, don't touch it. Just we're going to invest in $2,000 consistently after doing that…

Gene Marks (37:08)

Just as Youtube budget?

Karly Scott (37:08)

Just as YouTube budget. Exactly right. And that's, that was just a recommendation for that particular, you know, you can spend any, you can spend like $5 a day on YouTube. I don't recommend starting that small. I'd say probably start around $500 and hang out for a minute, see what it does for you. And after three months of doing that, the first three months, you can see it wasn't very consistent in the conversions directly coming from those YouTube campaigns. But over time what we saw, the brand, the website grew, all of that. And then over time we actually saw consistent conversions coming in directly on the YouTube campaign. So, it does take time. And that's one of the biggest mistakes I see, brands don't give it enough time and they evaluate it in the same lens as paid search and it's not the same and it should be treated as an entirely separate platform.

Gene Marks (37:58)

Well, Karly, this has been great information, and I really want, you know, want to thank you very much for sharing it with us. I mean, there's a lot. I have a lot more questions on YouTube marketing, but maybe we can bring you back in the future and dig even deeper into this topic as well as, you know, other areas of digital marketing. I think our audience, you know, are really into it.

Karly Scott (38:14)

Yeah.

Gene Marks (38:14)

And would appreciate your advice. So, I want to thank you very much for joining me.

Karly Scott (38:18)

And thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. And yeah, I mean, hey, any, any questions you or anyone else have on YouTube, I love talking about this stuff. As you can tell, I'm a yapper, so thank you for letting me yap at you today.

Gene Marks: (38:32)

You got it. And we will have Karly's information in our show notes. Do you have a topic or a guest that you would like to hear on THRIVE, please let us know. Visit payx.me/ThriveTopics and send us your ideas or matters of interest. Also, if your business is looking to simplify your HR, payroll, benefits, or insurance services, see how Paychex can help. Visit the resource hub at paychex.com/worx. That's W-O-R-X. Paychex can help manage those complexities while you focus on all the ways you want your business to thrive. I'm your host, Gene Marks, and thanks for joining us. Till next time, take care.

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