YouTube Pre-Roll Ads: How to Acquire Customers With Video

Want your ads to drive more sales?

Interested in the benefits of YouTube pre-roll ads?

To explore how to sell products and services with YouTube pre-roll ads, I interview Billy Gene Shaw.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Billy Gene Shaw, a Facebook and YouTube marketing expert. His agency helps businesses acquire customers. He's also the founder of the School of G.E.N.E.I.U.S.

Billy Gene provides tips for creating attention-grabbing pre-roll ads and offers that compel viewers to click a call to action.

You'll discover how to serve YouTube pre-roll ads via a specific video, topic, or location.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
YouTube Pre-Roll Ads
Billy Gene's Story

When Billy Gene was at a professional low, he was making cold calls all day, selling online education from a university he didn't believe in. After he found out the company's CEO made $25 million a year in online business, he quit the next day.

Billy Gene called one of his buddies who had just inherited some money and said, "Dude, we need to figure out something about this online stuff." Long story short, they discovered Facebook ads and Billy Gene saw and fell in love with the possibilities. This was in 2012 and 2013, when Facebook ads appeared only in the right column, not in the news feed.

Over the last few years, Billy Gene has worked with a lot of franchises like Massage Envy, Kia Motors, and Orange Theory Fitness. His agency helps them get more customers.

When a company hires his agency, they want results, Billy Gene explains. They don't want a new website or organic posting. They want one thing: more money than what they're spending working with him. If you can bring a business three times the revenue you cost them, those relationships last a long time.

Listen to the show to hear Billy Gene list his basic tools for attracting customers in an automated and predictable way.

What Are YouTube Pre-Roll Ads and Why Use Them?

When you're on YouTube looking to be entertained, the pre-roll video is the one that pops up before your video. The ad isn't what you searched for and you can't skip it for the first five seconds. These ads are also called in-stream ads.

Billy Gene spends a lot of money on advertising across several platforms: Facebook, Instagram, billboards, podcasts, and so on. In 2017, he believes YouTube is the most profitable, easiest, fastest, and most affordable way to get customers. If you're not using YouTube ads, you're missing out on a giant opportunity, he says.

Everyone is Facebook-centric these days. People are finally becoming hip to social media and they start with Facebook. Because there's a bigger barrier to entry with video on YouTube, it's much less competitive. Both platforms use a bidding system, and where there are more people it's more expensive. Plus, Facebook is increasing prices, especially with the holidays coming up.

When the market zigs, you should zag. YouTube is the zag, which is why it's so profitable right now. Plus, it gives you the opportunity to physically be in front of your customers. Seeing someone's face, watching their body language, and taking in their environment build a level of trust that you can't do with an image.

Listen to the show to discover what prevents people from doing YouTube ads.

Examples

As an example of what YouTube ads can do, Billy Gene talks about an ad promoting his membership site. Members pay about $100 per month, and he teaches a new skill each month. For the first year, he reached about 300 to 400 members using only Facebook ads. Beginning this year,