Wild Boars are Attacking YouTube Ads 🐗 (16)
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Yoooo guys!
It's time for a new follow along. This one will probably shorter than my last one (The Scaleship Project).
A year after I started The Wildboar Boar Liquidator follow along, business is still growing. Online we're dominating the niche in the main markets (France, Germany) but there is still a lot of room for growth. For the past few month we were focused to get more offline retailer buy our products in bulk.
Long story short ... because of the COVID-19 we are expecting huge drop from this segment (offline retailers) so I decided to switch focused back to online sales.
France is our strongest market (online & offline) and a few days ago they banned hunting/fishing/...). That said, on the very same day I start running ads in Germany (Facebook).
Until now I have 1 minute long video that's killin it on FB and cca. 100 orders from this FB CBO campaign.
With the right approach, video, product and enough tests I believe I can learn how to make profitable YouTube campaigns.
Why YouTube?
1. I don't want to rely just on Facebook. Never.
2. I have tons on highly-engaging wild boar hunting videos.
3. When I crack it, I will use the knowledge to scale personalized products from the Scaleship project.
Initial Video
Here is the initial video I will use. This is the same video I'm using it on Facebook and its working great.
Today I will make a few different variations of this video.
Var1: More text-on-screen
Var2: Start with the cute hunter girl on screen + curiosity-provoking question
I contacted touch with Ian Nagy who gave me some amazing advices regarding the video and targeting. I'm also following his guide here. His blog about YT advertising is pure gold.
Campaign Structure
For start I have 6 ad-sets with very tight targeting.
WARM audiences are retargeting (website visitors, YT video viewers, YT ad viewers, etc.) I don't expect much volume from these audiences at the beginning.
COLD audiences are YT keywords targeting, In-Market and Custom Intent.
In Custom Intent I added 50 keywords which includes all my competitor brand names and their product lines too and my top-performing KWs from Search campaigns.
Drückjagd is one example of highly relevant keywords. When someone type in Drückjagd I'm almost 100% sure he is wild boar hunter.
TIP: I'm checking Instagram hashtag in my niche to find the most relevant keywords.
Current status
My ads are in review already 48 hours. I talked with a friend of mine who's also start testing YT now and his ads are in the review 4 days now.
Next steps
1. I will prepare more videos. Different intros and more on-scree-text as Ian suggested me.
2. Watch video YouTube Keyword Research With Tom Breeze
I will start with with a budget of $100/day.
If you have some good resources about YouTube ads feel free to share it. 
Cheers,
wakeboarder
I was watching today Tom's videos on his YT channel and here are notes. Maybe someone will find it useful. I found a lot of great information I will use to adjust the campaign.
Start with Channel placements
I'll make a list of relevant YT channels and target them.
Get Title Inspired Search Term
Here he describes technique how to get ideas for highly-relevant keywords with just checking what other other YT publishers are using.
Start with Placement/ KW / Custom intent
I already have this, but I can do better keywords research. Will do this over the weekend.
CTR for ads
Aim for 1.5% and everything 3% and above is fantastic
Add countdown timers
This one is SICK trick. Add count down how much time do they have to click on the button. I can image this is huge CTR booster.
Get ready to clicks
Another hack to boost CTR is to show on-the-screen text GET READY TO CLICK with an arrow point on the CTA button.
Show the product in the first 30 second
Based on what Tom is saying is his videos, maybe my video is too-mysterious. Anyway, It make sense to me to expose the product more in the first 30 sec. Even though I really suck at Video Editing,I will try to do something just to run AB test and compare the results.
Woohooo looks who's back I'm soooo much looking forward to this one!
Holy shit I love this! Very interesting to see in what kind of niches you can create products and generate ROI with. Will follow for sure!
Originally Posted by matuloo
I'm soooo much looking forward to this one!UPDATE DAY#1
Even though my ads are still in review, I was working today on my YT camps.
There were two main things I did.
VIDEO EDITING // OUTSOURCING
I contacted I friend of mine who owns big eCom biz and and exchange my future findings from this Follow along in return for renting his in-house video editing guy.
I'm really bad with video editing so its better to outsource and save my time. Today he already received short brief to implement changes I got from Ian and Tom Breez's videos.
NEW COLD CAMPAIGN
I was listening twice this video and make more notes and I believe I improved my strategy how to setup initial campaign to to maximize chances to make profit ASAP.
| Videos/Channelsaredifficult to scale but can bring the highest ROAS. |
| Placements are probably the best way to start with. |
| Keyword targeting is broader than Placements. |
| Keyword targeting is more scalable than Placements. |
| When you have keywords you can use them for Custom Intent audience. |
| Aim for a search term where the video results have 10k+ views |
Based on this I decided to dip dive more into Videos/Channel targeting because I'm not in a hurry to scale as soon as possible. Right now is more important to me that I really understand the fundamentals and also the psychology behind. That said I prepared 3 new campaigns using only Videos or Channel targeting.
Here are the new campaigns
YT - Cold - Videos - Franz Albrecht - MC
YT - Cold - Videos - Druckjagd & Wildschweinjagd - MC
YT - Cold - Channel - Frankonia - MC
Franz AlbrechtAnyone who is really into wild boar hunting in Europe knows who is Franz Albrecht. He is kind of an icon so I create a campaign with two ad-sets where I'm targeting:
1) videos where he is teaching how to shot a wild boar
2) action where he is sniping boars like crazy
Druckjagd & Wildschweinjagd
Here I'm targeting videos from "driven hunts" where hunters on Sunday are hunting in groups of 40. I'm not sure someone who is not a wild boar hunter would watch this. Data will tell.
Frankonia
This is the biggest EU online retailer in hunting market. 80% of their videos are product presentations so I assume people watching this are looking for hunting products.
####
So my main goal with this new campaign structure is to target users that are in different search stage.
My theory is that users who are watching Druckjagd & Wildschweinjagd are there for entertainment while Franz Albrecht educational videos are watching those who are really passionate wild boar hunters.
Alright, that's all until I don't get my ads approved.
I will end this update with a photo I received from one of our die-hard fana on Instagram.
Crazy shit!
Cheers,
wakeboarder
Cee
It's been four days and my ads are still in review. 
I just duplicated all four campaigns twice.
Does anyone know for some other workaround how to get ads approved faster?
I was thinking to duplicate the campaign and set daily budget to $2500, but I need to do this in the morning so I can monitor.
Isn't the long delay because of the pandemic? FB Ads also take along time to get approved these days.
@manu_adefy Yes, there is an announcement but still ... one week for the approval?
I duplicated one campaign and set daily budget to $1000/day. Let's see if this will help ads approved faster.
Ads are still in the review. Increasing daily budget to $1000/day obviously did not help.
In the guide I'm following the author says:
Your ad creatives are the most crucial element in your YouTube ad campaign:
A good ad with bad targeting and media buying strategy can still give you decent results.
A bad ad with good targeting and media buying strategy is probably not going to work.
I don't want just wait that my ads are approved, so I prepared a new user-generated-video.
This one is raw edition with minimum editing. But I believe it will be a great AB test because it's different style of video than the initial one.
Tomorrow I will prepare 3 variations with different intro, German subtitles and more on-screen-text.
That's all for today.
Cheers,
wakeboarder
The video will do good I believe, it clearly shows how the boars literally can't help themselves but push their bodies against the tree.. it looks very persuasively
BTW: I still owe you a testimonial photo or video for the sample you've sent me, I gave the substance to my hunter friends but so far they weren't able to get any usable footage. They had this phototrap in place and the boars appeared but it was during the night so hardly usable material. Will try to ask them to try again soon, we still have a few bottles left
A friend just told me he is waiting on average 8 days for 1 one new set of banners for the approval.
About the photos/videos ... no worries. I'm that the product worked also on Slovakian boars. Let me know when you need more.
UPDATE
Bad News
Ads are still the review.
Good News
I found old YT campaign (keyword targeting) with approved video ad. I changed the keywords and relaunch it but the ad is linked to pre-lander.
Prelander: https://go.blackfiretar.com/
After one day here are the results:
Spend: 51.04€
Orders: 2
Revenue: 112,98€
CPA: 25.52€
Based on the initial data the CTR looks decent, but I think I should lower down the View Rate.
Conversion Tracking Issue
I had two issues with CR tracking.
1. Because I'm using pre-lander or sub-domain I can't see the conversions (Purchase) in Google Ads dashboard.
I think I have resolved this issue with cookieDomain=auto parameter. Here is the link for sub-domain CR tracking.
Because I'm using UTM parameters on the pre-lander I know I received minimum two orders from YT.
2. I was tracking only Purchases in Google Ads. Under Tools & Settings > Conversion Actions in Google Ads manager I imported from Google Analytics: Add to Cart / Checkout Initiate / Add Payment Info.
SUDDEN INCREASE IN DIRECT/ORGANIC
I don't have enough data yet to make any conclusions but here here is what I noticed in GA.
This graph shows traffic google/organic and its the same pattern for direct/none.
I don't know what else could cause this instant boost. I did not increase the budget for FB ads, so based on that I assume this could be YT.
Yesterday 3500+ users watched more than 30 seconds my video ad which is not a lot, but these guys are in completely different stage about wild boar hunting that Facebook users. That's the main reason why I believe, there were more conversions yesterday from YT.
It's important for me to understand this part because I will be able to make more accurate target CPA for YouTube ads which will be probably different than FB.
///
My first priority now is to confirm that conversion tracking is working properly, so I can see which keywords are converting.
MORE VIDEOS
As I'm aware that videos are the most important ingredient to make profitable YT campaign, I asked our most loyal followers to share some videos with out products.
Here is the first one I received today.
I'm thinking to prepare a simple brief and to these guy what video do I need.
QUESTION
What do you think about my theory regarding sudden increase organic/direct organic traffic?
Cheers,
wakeboader
Yoooo!
My tracking is not yet working as it should, so I will post results only for last-click conversions.
Total stats
Spend: 276.62 €
Revenue: 1,138.63 €
Orders: 22
CPA: 12.5 €
If I look just this stats its already great for the start, profitable but not much volume.
But if I look at bigger picture, revenue from all sources in Google Analytics... its mind-blowing.
A few days after YT camps are live all other channels are getting more sales. For sure, there is also Facebook that have impact, but I was running FB ads one week before and there is now such a drastic difference.
THE GRAPH BELOW SHOWS A TOTAL REVENUE FOR GERMANY
Again, I believe that because of the YT ads we are getting more sales on Google related channels and CPA 12.5 EUR is completely non-relevant because. Its way lower!
Here is another really cool case.
In the past I posted a strategy how I'm using advertorials to increase sales and build authority.
Great thing is that these advertorials are ranking in Google SERP. Which means when someone type in Google #MY-MAIN-KEYWORD# among the top search results there is MY PAID ADVERTORIAL on the most popular hunting portal. So, when someone is doing a research (eg. YT viewers) they go on Google and type #MY-MAIN-KEYWORD + BLACK FIRE# some of them land on my paid advertorial. Crazy!
Form This graph you can see that this advertorial generated 400EUR and this advertorial is more than one year old.
I can see THE EXACT SAME PATTERN on Google Search / Google Shopping / Google Organic & Direct.
There are many data-supported reason to say that CPA of 12.5EUR is much lower and YT traffic is amazing.
------
Some other interesting stats that I will monitor in the future more closely that I used to.
Views: 42,483 // 42k hunters watched my video more than 30 seconds.
Pre-lander CTR: 39%
Pre-lander ToS: 1.55 min
This numbers are saying that the traffic is high-quality.
I'm waiting now for a friend who will help me setup YT tracking on sub-domains and GTM. Until then I will not increase the budget.
@stickupkid posted this today and I believe this is happening right now.
- user watch wild boar hunting related YT
- he see our ad
- some of them convert immediately (2.5% if I'm correct)
- a majority goes on Google for more research
- whatever they type in related to my product, there are shopping ads, YouTube videos or my advertorials from authority porstal.
- basically ... user can run, but can't hide.
In general I'm really excited about this, and I can't want to start increasing the budget and copy the same concept to other countries.
Talk soon!
Cheers,
wakeboarder
From this graph is more clear to see the current situation.
Overall (FB+YT+Google) CPA/Profit.
I believe that in a week or two, I will be able to predict more accurately whats the actually impact of YT ads.
But after 300eur spend, it's insane.
Today we also did a few videos for our personalised products and I will upload the first campaigns tomorrow.
I hope that in a few weeks this FA will have really in depth info about YT ads for eCom products.
Cheers,
wakeboarder
Oh yes, this is the effect of multi-channel advertising... users notice a product on one platform and in case they are interested, they search for more information and eventually buy later on, whether it's after a "direct type-in" click or by clicking on an AD on some different platform.
Same thing happens when doing offline advertising for a product or service that's available online. It's hard to measure the direct effect of the offline ad, but if done correctly, the online campaigns and organic traffic suddenly start to perform better. I handled offline advertising for 2 bigger projects in the past and we noticed the effect in both cases.
To be able to properly asses the increase due to such ads, it's very important to keep track on what went live when and where, so you can identify the spikes and tie them to a specific campaign or initiative... offline or online.
I love the video for the ad and the boars cooming out of the wood :-D I watched this guy on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjP...SnxiLApPFrDOWA he has an agency spending millions in ad rev on youtube and he offers a course lately, which covers the basics #notaffiliated :-D He also confirmed your findings, they usually see a greate uplift in organic search if the barnding is done correctly. Becuase people want to watch their initital video and then the google it afterwards. So branding is key to have this affect I guess.
Keep it up!
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