I’ve been running a paid advertising test on YouTube to see if it’s a good way to attract clients into my service business. Here’s a blog post on my results.
Big Fat Lonely Zero
I would love to say that I’m rolling in clients due to my ad spend on YouTube but I can tell you, dear reader I got nothing but a bill from Google.
No email signups, no leads, absolutely nothing. Wait! That’s not quiet correct, I got a lot of click throughs to my site that generate nothing. I don’t want to sound bitter about this experiment, because we need to test these things, but it was 100% a failure.
I know you are a little disappointed and were looking for that key to building a killer sales funnel, but YouTube does not seem to the traffic source you need to sell services.
My Thinking Behind Running YouTube Ads
YouTube can be thought of as a a search engine, it’s not just an algorithm throwing cute cat video at you.
How many times have you done to YouTube, how to I change the widget on my 2008 version of a car, and some expert has recorded a how to video.
I thought I could link with people searching for how to videos to build their sites and convince them to hire me instead. By was I wrong 🙂
How I Planned To Convert The Traffic
I used a series of different funnels to see if I could capture peoples email addresses from a click on YouTube and then convert them using an email sequence. Here’s what I tried
A webinar – I sent people to this webinar landing page to teach people about the 5 pillars of optimization so people can earn more money from their WooCommerce store, no signups.
My free code generator – I tried to sell the AI story that we can all code using AI, nope nobody wanted to enter their email address to get free code.
A squeeze page to VSL – I went old school and had a Video Sales Letter (VSL) to sell my service, no email addresses for me.
UPDATE – I was running YouTube ads as a more scalable way to try and attract new clients, in my mind it’s faster and more scalable than content marketing.
What I Found From This Experiment
I got loads of traffic, YouTube will give you that. My analytics showed people stayed for next to no time and clicked back to their videos.
I got loads of shite traffic from display networks. YouTube runs their ads on other people sites, and they can earn money via Adsense for clicks
There is no way to limit ads being shown on the display network and as a result I was getting people from sites like:
- https://animal.mamamath.net/
- https://www.poemhunter.com/
- https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/
- https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/
None of these are related to my services and it looks like I was probably getting bot clicked for ad revenue.
YouTube Is The Biggest TV Station In The World
Service providers, think of YouTube as a TV network, no one wants the ads just like traditional TV.
People are there to be entertained or find how to videos to do it themself, not find and hire people.
Wrap Up
I’m licking my wounds and moving on from YouTube advertising, it didn’t work for me, so onto the next shiny objec.. ooh look a squirrel.
As a side note I sent a single email to my list of existing client’s and generated loads of work, it’s easier to sell to people that know, like and trust you rather than selling to a cold person on YouTube.
I think YouTube will work with people selling how to training, I just don’t think it’s the place to sell services.
If you would like to work with me to build your WooCommerce store, let’s use the tried and test content marketing approach by adding a link to my hire me page at the end of my content.
Photo by Christine Roy on Unsplash