← Social Media Marketing Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
Hey there, Mike Stelzner. Before we get started with today's podcast, picture this. While your peers are struggling with basic chat GPT prompts, you're the marketer everyone turns to for AI solutions. You're automating tasks that used to take hours, creating stunning visuals in minutes and analyzing data like a pro. This, my friends, is not a fantasy. It's exactly what's happening to marketers. It's in the AI Business society. When you join the AI Business Society, you get monthly live training from leading experts, real world examples you can implement immediately, and a community of innovators pushing the AI boundaries. Don't let this moment pass you by. Visit Social Media Examiner.com AI and start your AI transformation today. Before we get on to today's show, here is something that might surprise you. Every marketer using AI is at one of four distinct readiness levels. Here's what's scary. Most marketers, they have no idea which level they're actually at. While you're wondering what AI skill to tackle next, your competition is already a couple steps ahead of you. Because they have a clear roadmap, they know exactly what to focus on because they understand the their AI readiness level the difference they took our free AI readiness assessment. It doesn't just tell you where you stand. It gives you a personalized 30 day plan designed specifically for your level. Stop guessing, Start progressing. Find your AI readiness level in just a few minutes by visiting socialmediaexaminer.com aiassessment again. Socialmediaexaminer.com aisassessment pause this podcast. Take the assessment right now.
- [01:53]
B
Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner.
- [02:03]
A
Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media marketing podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and and business owners who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales. Have you created video ads in the past and they've just completely bombed? They really haven't worked for you? Well, maybe, just maybe, today's guest is going to open your eyes to a new and exciting strategy that is going to allow your ads to generate the sales and the leads that you really need. And I'm very excited to see to be joined today by Alric Heck. He's going to explore a strategy that is going to make so much sense to you that I think you're going to want to start experimenting with it right away. Are you new to the show. Be sure to follow us on whatever podcast app you're listening to. We've got some great content coming your way. Let's now transition over to this week's interview with alright Heck.
- [03:02]
B
Helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide.
- [03:10]
A
Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Alric Heck. If you don't know who Alric is, you need to know Alaric. He is the author of Video Authority, the Art and Science of Converting Viewers into Clients. He's also a video ads expert and the founder of Ad Outreach, a consulting business that helps info marketers and entrepreneurs leverage video ads for more leads and sales. His podcast is the Marketing Minds with Ulrich Heck Podcast. Al, how you doing today?
- [03:37]
B
I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me on, Michael. I'm excited to be here.
- [03:40]
A
It's super exciting to have you back on the show. Today, Alec and I are going to explore how to create video ads that generate lots of leads and sales. Now, it's been a little while since you've been on the show. As a matter of fact, it's been five years since you've been on the show. So why don't you bring us up to speed of what's been going on with you since 2020.
- [03:58]
B
I know it's crazy that it's been that long, but it is great to be back here.
- [04:02]
A
So.
- [04:02]
B
So yeah, we've been doing a lot with all things YouTube ads, video marketing as a whole, and now AI video ads. A lot has changed in the last five years and AI video, especially over this past year, has gotten more and more prevalent. But essentially working with a wide variety of different businesses, helping them leverage the power of YouTube, the power of YouTube ads, video marketing to craft high value videos that they can get in front of the right person at the right time, at the right message. And now AI is making that even more streamlined.
- [04:34]
A
Love it. Okay, so why should marketers focus on video ads? A lot of my community is very into the social, organic side of things and they don't necessarily really understand the idea of making ads that are video. They kind of maybe have some preconceived notions of what they need to be looking like and we're going to get into all that. But if they do it well, if they really apply what they're going to learn today, what could it make possible for them?
- [05:00]
B
Well, well, what I like to say is if a picture's worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million, right? There's so much that you can convey when people are actually watching a video. They can build the know like and trust factor. They can actually see you, your brand, your product, services demonstrated, your credibility and expertise demonstrated. And you get the ability to get in front of people with the targeting that you now have available to you with online advertising, but get in front of them with an actual video that warms them up, gets them excited, and actually showcases either your expertise, products or services. So I think it's just such a powerful way to get your message in front of the right people and actually get them to know, like and trust you.
- [05:41]
A
Just curious, do you find that businesses that embrace the paid side of video are able to go further than they could do just on their own organically? I just would love you to talk about that a little bit.
- [05:55]
B
That's exactly what I see. Because when you're dealing with organic video, there's a lot of different factors involved. You may not actually reach all of the exact people that you're looking for, or it might take a longer period of time to get in front of them versus when you actually start to run paid ads. You can get that message that you've crafted in front of the right person at the right time. And there's ways to do this. You know, of course one of my favorite platforms is YouTube ads, but you can also do this on meta ads now, LinkedIn ads, and all kinds of different platforms as well. There's also short form platforms that you can get video in front of people, like on TikTok, Instagram, et cetera. So there's a lot of opportunities to get in front of people. And then once you get in front of them, then you have the ability to showcase your message in a way that actually can drive more conversions. Because if you're optimizing for organic traffic, it's this game, this balancing game you play to try and make sure that the algorithm serves your content more, which means that you can't actually have it be as conversion heavy as an ad that you get in front of people and you're actually willing to pay for. So it actually gives you more capabilities to have more direct response and actually get a return from the advertisements that you're running.
- [07:05]
A
I know so many of the people that listen to this podcast are a little squeamish on spending money to get their videos in front of an audience. But I know where we're going to go today, folks, and trust me, you're going to want to pay attention to what Alec is going to talk about because it's going to resonate with you. And I'm going a strong believer that if there's a way that we can increase the likelihood, we can achieve our mission in our marketing department, whoever, you know, or for our business, then we're going to be the champion of the business. And, and we are facing declining reach across all the platforms, including organic YouTube. You know, it's all like this race to, it's getting harder and harder. And by putting some well crafted strategy together, which we're going to talk about today, I'm a strong believer that this actually can help you accomplish your objective at the business. You put together a really cool framework and we're going to kind of break it down step by step. So let's start with like how can we create a framework for high converting videos? And if there's any kind of baseline stuff you want to say before we get into this that might be useful, feel free to say that as well.
- [08:12]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So the thing to really know when you're getting videos in front of people is you want to provide actual value to allow the people who are watching to see either the credibility that you have, the product being demonstrated to actually build that know like and trust factor to actually get them to convert. A big mistake a lot of people make is providing no value in the ads. But those are the ads that we've been trained to do. Now that's probably also why a lot of, you know, listeners and viewers might be opposed or initially not as excited about creating ads. Because a lot of people think that ads are these 15 or 30 second spots that aren't really providing a whole lot of value. But what we want to do is we actually want to flip that on its head. We actually want to create an ad that's designed to feel native to the platform, actually provide value, but at the same time also drive people off the platform and into your funnels into your site to convert, become a client, buy a product, whatever that next step is.
- [09:13]
A
Real quick, before we get into this, I want to like key in on a couple things you just said there. Folks. What Alec just said is really important. Obviously with ads it's completely acceptable to drive people off the platform, but with organic, it is completely unacceptable to drive people off the platform. So if you've been scratching your head wondering why my videos aren't driving traffic to my sales page, well, guess what, it's natively designed that way, right? But it's completely acceptable, is it not?
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C
Right?
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A
When you're paying to get in front of that audience that There will be a call to action that is intended to take someone off soft platform, isn't that correct?
- [09:46]
B
Exactly. And what we're talking about here is a combination video that takes the best of both worlds. So a lot of people play in this either or category where either they're providing a really valuable piece of content, but then the problem is it doesn't actually help you hit your metrics because you're not really driving people off the platform. Or you create this ad that's very structured as an advertisement but you're not really providing a lot of value. So people are skipping it, they're not actually interested or converting it doesn't have the same type of brand value that you're looking for. What if you could create something in the middle where you actually have an ad that drives direct conversions but you're actually providing real value inside of the ad. You're giving aha moments to your ideal clients. If it's an expert based brand, so if there's information, courses, consulting or coaching, then you're putting yourself or the face of the brand out in front of people and as that expert, actually providing real value. If it's more of a product or a service, you're demonstrating the product or software or service being done so that people can actually see that and actually have an understanding of what your product really does, what your service really does, what the value of your software is. A little, maybe a little bit of a mini demo. So essentially you're actually educating people inside of the ad. And that's what I call the value add. It's the value add. And that's where I have that framework that you referenced earlier, Michael, is it's the hook, educate, call to action. So hook, educate, call to action. You draw people in and you capture their attention. To break all these down in just a second, then you actually provide real value inside of the ad. And then you have a clear and concise call to action to get people off of the platform to actually take action. Each of these components are really valuable because the hook is what actually gets people to pay attention. You need to have something that stops them from scrolling, stops them from clicking Skip ad on YouTube and actually gets them to pay attention. And then from there you want to provide value.
- [11:43]
A
And by the way, we're going to wait on the value stuff. Okay. Because you've done a good overview. Let's go in on the hook. So we're going to break this down. So tell us what we need to know about the hook.
- [11:51]
B
Yeah, let's jump In. So with the hook, the big thing that you want to really know is, is you're not hooking people to actually go and opt in or go to your site or go to your funnel right away. What you're looking to do is you're hooking people to actually want to watch your ad. That's a big distinction. You want to pull in people to get them to pay attention and actually interact and engage with your ad. And what you're also trying to do, especially on YouTube or a platform where you kind of have the skip ad, there's. It's more algorithmic. You want to actually push away people that aren't the best fit. So you want to pull in the right people, potentially push away people that aren't as good of a fit and get them excited for the value that you're going to provide inside of the ad itself.
- [12:39]
A
So let's break it down.
- [12:40]
B
The big way to really do that, there's a few different factors that you can, you can add. I'm actually going to give you some examples in a second, is to either bring up a problem that you can solve. So a problem that your ideal client is having, you can say a bold statement, you can ask a what if question. There's a few different. You can have a pattern interrupt. There's a few different ways to capture people's attention. I'll give a couple of examples here. So one of our best performing hooks is a what if question. What if you could ethically hijack your competitors traffic and send it directly into your own funnel? Well, with. And then dot, dot, dot. And I'll teach people how that can work and we'll cover that when we get to the educate section. But it's probably capturing your attention. What that does is a few different things. What if you could ethically hijack your competitors traffic? That's exciting. But also if people aren't really interested in that, they're going to skip the ad. So it's actually designed to pull in people that are genuinely interested and it's posing a question. And I'm going to then deliver the value in that video. So that is something that's going to really capture people's attention. Another great hook. And this is more of a visual representation or a pattern interrupt. A teaching style hook is we had a nutritionist client and he was holding up a cup measure of oil and he holds this up in front of the camera. He says, this is 2,000 calories of oil. If a calorie is a calorie, why can't I just drink this every day and be healthy? Well, now that we've established a calorie isn't a calorie, why do you think you can eat 2000 calories of pizza and have that be the same as 2000 calories of salad? There must be something different here. And you see how that pulls people in. It captures their attention. It's framed in a way that they've maybe never heard it before. And it gets them really excited to understand what new information they're going to learn. And so one other hook is kind of a reframing of how people think about something that's very basic. So life insurance. There's so many different people out there that offer that. But one particular client was offering a special type of life insurance with living benefits. And so the ad hoc we helped them create is this. Is your life insurance really death insurance? What happens if you get in a serious accident but you don't die? Nothing. Why should you have to choose between your own death and your family's financial future? And then from there, it talks about life insurance, living benefits. We'll get to the actual educate side in just a second. So you see all of these different hooks really capture people's attention and then demonstrate that throughout this ad, we're going to be teaching you something new. Same thing with the hook that I shared about myself. Right. I'm going to teach people how they can target their competitors using something called URL affinities, in this case with YouTube ads. Right. It's something that's going to allow them to understand something that they maybe didn't know they could even do before, or just give them a new way to look at something that they might already be considering.
- [15:41]
A
Okay, a couple questions. First of all, how long is a hook typically? And then secondly, any tips on how we can. Anyone who's listening, maybe some questions we can ask ourselves to try to figure out how we could craft a hook.
- [15:53]
B
Great question. And there's two major components to the hook. There's the initial few seconds, because on YouTube and also on Meta and LinkedIn, like, people have an opportunity to see your video, but you got to capture them in those first few seconds. Otherwise they might be gone. They might be skipping that ad, they might be swiping. So we want to capture them in those first, usually five seconds. That being said, the hook itself typically might be around 15 or 20 seconds long. You heard? I think one of the examples I gave was a little bit longer. Might be closer to 30 seconds. Some of the other Examples might be closer to 10 or 15 seconds, but really it's in that 10 to 30 second framework. But you really also got to pay attention to what the first few words you're saying. If you listen to any of those three examples I gave you, and those are some of our, you know, top performing examples, you can see all of them really capture your attention in the first few seconds and then they go on to build on top of that and allude to what someone's going to learn throughout the rest of the ad.
- [16:54]
A
So let's just say hypothetically, I don't know, let's pick a product. Let's pick social media marketing world. You've been there before.
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B
Yes.
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A
So if I was to create a hook, hypothetically for something like that, like how would I reverse engineer that? Is it design? Just guide me a little bit through that, if you don't mind.
- [17:12]
B
So one great, great question that you can ask. And I love this. And we can actually do this right here too. I've got some ideas too. So it's kind of like the elevator pitch meth. Right. And I love to think about this because it's so cliche, but it's the classic thought exercise that allows you to distill your product, services, event, whatever it happens to be into that short period of time. What's the thing that you need to say? If you're in the elevator with your perfect fit client and you know it really fits that model, right, you have five seconds before, if you, if you can't capture their attention, the first few seconds, they're going to put their head back down. They say, hey, I'm not interested. So you got to capture their attention, get them to look up from their phone. Then you have to tell them something that's going to intrigue them to get them to actually want to engage in conversation. So I guess, you know, Michael, for you, and I've got some ideas, you know, I've gone to social media marketing world as well, of course, but what would you say, like if you were in an elevator with your ideal client, what's something that you would say to them to capture their interest? Let's say they've never heard of, you know, social media marketing world before? Which, I don't know, I would probably.
- [18:13]
A
Come up with something like, hey, are you feeling like maybe your job is on the line now because you feel threatened by AI? That might be something that I would say because I know a lot of marketers are feeling that. I don't know if that's even the right thing. And then I might say, what if you could go to a place where you could get trained up by marketers who really intimately understand AI so you can secure your job future? I don't know. That's me, but I don't. I probably did it completely wrong.
- [18:38]
B
Well, so here's the thing. That's the first draft, and then you can take it from there. So what I would do is I would add a qualifier. And at the beginning, as a marketer, are you afraid that your job is going to be taken by AI if you're looking for the next way to make sure that not only your job is protected, but you can be that person providing the best results for your team, business and company, you need to be on the cutting edge. It doesn't cut in anymore. To use yesterday's strategies when today and I are moving so quick and we.
- [19:12]
A
Did not mention the product, which I love.
- [19:13]
C
Right.
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A
And I would imagine we would go on to educate people on the ways they can go about being on the cutting edge. Is that kind of the angle of where we're going with that?
- [19:22]
B
Exactly. And so then from there, and this is actually great because we can follow this into. If you want, we can take it in the educate section and explain that. So from there, real quick, let's reverse.
- [19:32]
A
Engineer so far for anyone who's listening.
- [19:34]
C
Right.
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A
You said start with the elevator pitch.
- [19:36]
C
Right.
- [19:37]
A
Like if you were talking to someone in the elevator, most marketers know what the problem is that they're solving for.
- [19:43]
C
Right.
- [19:43]
A
And presumably we could kind of agitate that problem, which is the angle that I took. Or if we didn't want to go down that path, we could reframe the reframe thing.
- [19:55]
C
Right.
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A
Which is what you talked about.
- [19:57]
C
Right.
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A
So if it was health related, you know, you would have to reframe it. And that requires a little creativeness is really what I'm hearing you say.
- [20:03]
C
Right.
- [20:04]
A
Because my nature was just to go right into the pitch. You know what I mean? And that's not exactly what we're doing with the hook. And this is why if we get right into the pitch and the hook, we've failed is effectively what you're telling me. Is that correct?
- [20:14]
B
Exactly. And there's other other ways. So if you take another element of this too. So even out of what you said, Right. With AI moving so quickly and marketing, you know, so you could take a whole different hook and. And I'd actually recommend split testing at least three different hooks. When you're testing video ads, you want to Test different hooks and then the educate section. So usually we like to test maybe three different hooks to educate sections. The call to actions usually all the same, because that's just sending people to where you want, want to go.
- [20:41]
A
Here's an idea. Like, you know, I'm in the business of helping marketers become not obsolete is probably the best way of saying it. Okay, so one angle that I could say is like, you know, do you feel like when it comes to your marketing that you're just not getting the performance that you want?
- [20:56]
C
Right.
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A
Do you feel like every time you try something, it fails?
- [20:59]
C
Right.
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A
You know, I don't know. I'm just. I'm just flowing with you a little bit here.
- [21:03]
C
Right.
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A
What if it's not your ideas that are the problem? What if it's your strategy that's the problem? I don't know. Something along those lines. Would something like that work?
- [21:10]
B
Yeah, exactly. And then you could add, because you mentioned the obsolete, you could kind of agitate a couple of these different things. So does it feel like all the marketing strategies that used to work the best have become obsolete? Like the strategies that worked even a month ago, two months ago, aren't working anymore in the age of AI? Well, you know, it's not necessarily you. It's the world that's changing so fast. But how do you stay on the cutting edge? Especially with everyone and their uncle online claiming to be experts at marketing and AI, when in reality, many of them just learned it a few days ago? What if you could go to a place where the experts are vetted, the strategies are cutting edge, you know, and so on and so forth? Right?
- [21:53]
A
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Okay, good. Well, if you haven't been tracking, there have been some major AI updates over the last month, and the changes just keep coming. I know this feels overwhelming, but what if I told you you can actually thrive in this rapidly evolving AI frontier? The marketers succeeding aren't the ones with the most AI tools. They're the ones with the right guidance. That's exactly what you'll find inside the AI Business Society. Our team cuts through all the noise so you can focus on what actually moves the needle in your marketing. As member Shannon Caldwell told us, quote, these trainings are filling the gap between knowing what AI can do and knowing how to do it. Are you ready to thrive with AI? Join me inside the AI Business Society by visiting social mediaexaminer.com AI so, first part is the hook. And it sounds like you have to spend your most amount of effort really on this part, right? Like they'll never get past the hook to see the rest of the ad if you don't get that dialed in. Is that fair to say?
- [22:57]
B
Exactly. Because they won't, they won't see the rest of it if you can't capture their attention. And remember, you notice what we're doing, we're hooking them for the ad. That's, you know, reiterate that because I mentioned at the beginning, but now I think it might make more sense for everybody listening is you're hooking them for the ad, not for social media marketing world yet. Now it is kind of a hook for social media marketing world, but you're actually hooking them for the value you're providing in the ad and then you're pulling them into social media marketing world is the solution. So you're kind of burying what the actual call to action is so that then it's revealed as. And this is the answer to, you know, all of the problems, right? So you're agitating them with a hook, with a challenge or something that comes up. Then you're starting to educate them on if this existed, here's what would be amazing. And then guess what, it does exist. And we've got tickets and you can go click here to get your ticket now. And that's kind of the formula.
- [23:49]
A
Okay, so we're on this model called value add, right? And we, we spent a lot of time talking about the hook. And then the next part is what? Let's, let's get into that next part.
- [24:01]
B
Is the educate section. This is where you want to provide real, genuine value, educate your viewers and actually teach them a little bit about what it is that you're looking to do. So if this is more of an information expert based business, then that's pretty straightforward. You are an expert or your, your company has an expert spokesperson. And that's where you want to lead with some of your biggest aha moments that your ideal clients have. And that's what you want to do is you want to present those aha moments. I'll give some examples in a second. If it's a product or it is a service or it's a software, then what you want to do is you want to demonstrate that product or service or software solving the problem in the way that your product does better than anybody else. And that's what you want to demonstrate inside of that or whatever your unique advantage, competitive advantage that's going to be most appealing to your ideal clients is going to be if you've got a software that is able to track some type of data better than anybody else, then you want to demonstrate a little bit of what that looks like in a way that's going to get your ideal clients excited. If you've got a product that's going to clean up a mess better than any other product, you want to demonstrate that. And if you're an expert and you have something to teach, you want to share some of your really high level value so that people get excited about what they're going to be able to learn. So to give some examples. So with my example, so I've just hooked them in with what if you could ethically hijack your competitors traffic and send it directly into your own funnel. So then what I say is, well, that's possible with YouTube ads and something called a URL affinity audience. Not a lot of people know about this, but you can actually build audiences with your competitors URLs on YouTube and you can actually put in any different URL, one of your competitors or even just a tool your ideal clients likely use and actually target people that have gone to that site or similar sites. It's kind of like sneaking in and installing a retargeting or lookalike pixel on your competitor site. But it's totally legal and ethical to do and you could do it right from Google's dashboard. Now remember who we're dealing with here. And then I talk about how, you know, Google has, you know, 52% of websites have Google Analytics. That's how they have all this data. They know what people are going to. And so I'm basically educating them on this feature that they likely don't know about. And in that case, and now I'm more holistically working with, you know, video ads and video marketing and hence that, you know, book. You know, Michael, you mentioned earlier, however, especially when I was running that ad is like one of the primary ads. I was mostly selling YouTube ads and kind of the service of helping people with YouTube ads. And so I really wanted to sell them on the value of that and if I could educate them on something they didn't know about and also frame it in a really exciting way because I could frame it in a boring way or I could frame it in an exciting way, it's going to get people, you know, excited to actually want to work with me and have me help them set that up.
- [27:00]
A
It's so fascinating because I don't know if you can share a YouTube ad. Can you share YouTube ad? Is it something like a Regular organic thing or is it not easy to share? Because it sounds like it's almost shareable content? Like.
- [27:11]
C
Right.
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A
The value you're providing is super valuable.
- [27:13]
B
I appreciate that. Yeah. So with the in stream ads, it's not as easily shareable. There's also other types of YouTube ads, the ones that appear in Feed, which is part of Google's new demand gen. It's a whole nother rabbit hole to kind of dive into. But you're exactly right. It's. But even something that has that feeling, even if they're not directly sharing it, it is going to actually provide value and educate them, which is going to make them more likely to actually want to know like and trust and actually want to work with us.
- [27:39]
A
Okay, so let's, let's kind of break down how you would do this with some of these other examples if you were able to go back to some of those life insurance or the calories thing, I don't know if you have those in your mind, but I would love just to give a kind of a variety of different ways someone could do this.
- [27:54]
B
Exactly. And for these it's going to be, I have their hooks memorized perfectly.
- [27:59]
A
And it could, you could free flow, you could hypothetically going to be a.
- [28:01]
B
Little bit more free flow. So it might not be exactly what they ran. So let's take the life insurance with living benefits. At this point we just said, you know, what happens if you get in a serious accident but you don't die? Nothing. Why should you have to choose between your own death and your family's financial ruin? Well, here's the thing. People don't realize when they have life insurance, it only insures you against your life, which means you have a massive gap in coverage. Did you know there's something called life insurance with living benefits? And honestly it's not that much more than regular life insurance, but it is going to provide so much more coverage and peace of mind. You see, people who actually get life insurance, they're not getting it just to protect against their life. They want to protect their family's financial future. Why are you getting life insurance in the first place? And if that's the case, you don't want to leave any gaps that could leave your family in harm's way. So here's exactly what life insurance with living benefits looks like and how it works. And then this is where I can't really describe because I don't know all the ins and outs. But you know, they would describe the pieces.
- [29:13]
A
Hey, if that was a free flow that was a dang good free flow. If you just reflowed that. I mean, it sounded like you were reading the script. That was really good. So during the education phase, at what point do you introduce your product near the end? Or do you not? Or how does that, like, help people understand when they kind of flip it from educating to a little bit of pitching or whatever?
- [29:31]
B
And it depends, because with the life insurance and living benefits, that's where you want to bring it in. Because that itself is the aha moment.
- [29:36]
C
Right?
- [29:37]
B
And this person specializes in that and that firm, you know, that they've got. That being said, actually, it's great because I'll give the other example of the nutritionist, right? So they've just done the 2000 calories of oil. So basically they've just said, why do you think 2000 calories of pizza is the same as 2000 calories of salad? There must be something different. And that's the key. Not all calories are equal. Everything you thought you know about calories is not actually as it seems, because there's more than meets the eye. There are macronutrients involved. The exact same reason you can't just drink 2,000 calories of oil or you can't just eat 2,000 calories of pizza. There is more to it than that. And so when it comes to macronutrients, the things you need to know are A, B and C. And it's also going to be unique to each person and figuring out for you what is going to be the plan that's going to allow you to. To be able to lose the weight. The problem is a lot of people, they just count calories. But how often have you counted calories and haven't actually been able to lose the weight? That's the problem. And it's because people aren't telling you the full story. I want to share the full story, but there's only so much I can do inside of this advertisement, and that's why I put together a free training. By the way, we're transitioning into the call to action, so we'll talk about that in a second.
- [30:56]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Cool.
- [30:57]
B
That's why I put together a free training that's going to walk you through, step by step, exactly how you can start implementing this into your own life and actually learning more than just about the calories, but actually learning the macronutrients and the real nutrition of food, and the food that's going to allow you to actually feel more full, enjoy what you eat more, and lose Weight at the same time. That's what we're going to talk about inside the training. So click the link. I'll see you there.
- [31:27]
A
Love it. Okay, so the key to this part of the ad, this educate part of the ad, is to have that aha moment. It was the macronutrient or it was the life insurance with living benefits. And I'm just going to free flow a little bit and try social media marketing world. I might say something like, you've probably been to other events and you sat through a lot of content and you walked away and you really didn't discover anything that can move the needle for your business. And, and I'll say that's because other events aren't designed for you, they're designed for the sponsors. And the sponsors are designed to get your information so they can sell you products and services. But what if there was an event that was actually intentionally designed for you? From the moment you sign up, they work with you to understand, prepare you for the event. They have specialized content designed to allow you to truly learn. They don't allow people to actively promote and sell from the stage. And, and you walk away with notebooks full of notes that you can take home and actually apply to your work or business that exists. And it's called social media marketing world. I don't know, I just free float a little bit. But what do you think about something like that?
- [32:38]
B
I think that's great. And then what I would do is I would write like basically you write all that out and you get all those details because that's really great. And then how can I take that and turn it into a next draft that just. It hits it home even more.
- [32:49]
A
Yeah, just dials in on all those things.
- [32:51]
B
Yeah, okay, exactly. And we can even do a little workshop on that. The other thing too is if you can kind of hit with a one, two punch. So what I would think is you've just done the hook, you know about AI and we gave a couple of the different hooks right there.
- [33:04]
A
Oh yeah, I'd have to get the AI thing built back into it, of course.
- [33:07]
B
Yeah, exactly. So then we kind of flow from there. So what you're probably doing right now is going on YouTube trying to find all kinds of different information, but you realize that not everybody's an expert and a lot of people just learned things a few days ago. So then you sign up for an event. But here's the dirty little secret that event owners don't tell you is most events are designed for the sponsors. They're not actually designed to provide the best value to you. And I know this because I've been running an event, X, Y and Z and I've seen how other people are doing it and that's what led me to create my event social media marketing world where it is designed for you in mind to actually provide the best value. And that is how we have been running event after event after event for X, Y, Z many years is because we lead with value and we're focused on the cutting edge. We're also not just bringing back the exact same people every single year. It is a process to bring the most cutting edge people that are going to be here to share the best strategies that are actually working today. Not just the same rehashed old strategies that you see a lot of other places, folks.
- [34:22]
A
I hope that you're learning through these examples. You know, we've got Alric who's selling, you know, services, we've got nutritionists, we've got insurance companies and then we have me that's selling an experience. But this could apply to a physical product as well, could it?
- [34:39]
B
Not Exactly. You could absolutely apply it to a physical product. And one example, I'll actually just use an example of a product that I scaled up some YouTube ads with like a iPhone charging stand. It was like a tree charging stand thing. I realized I didn't really enjoy the e comm world as much but at one point I kind of ramped this up and it did quite well with ads and it's because I followed this exact same methodology. So essentially it was like a tree looking iPhone charging standard and we would kick it off with saying why do most charging stands not actually look that great and they don't charge your phone as fast as you want them to. Well, introducing, you know, and there was that, you know, name of the charging stand that has a three in one charging stand that looks just like a tree. You could put your iPhone and iPhone, apple watch and AirPods all at the same time and it has, you know, X, Y, Z technology. And so basically it like demonstrated. It was a while since I did this one, but it basically demonstrated the product, the phone, you know, going on it. The phone could kind of turn the watch on it, the AirPods on it and it looked different than every other charging stand that was out there. And then it demonstrated the product, it talked about some of the challenges with other products. It talked about how it was all MagSafe compatible. So, you know, it kind of sticks on there. It showed some of the, the different features so even just being able to like turn the phone so a lot of charging stands, you only had one direction you could have this, you know, turn. Basically it demonstrated the different features of the product inside of that ad.
- [36:12]
A
I love that. And for anybody that's running a software as a service company, you could just look at your unique differentiators of your software that makes you competitively different and then you could reverse engineer the problem that it's solving.
- [36:22]
C
Right.
- [36:22]
A
Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a piece of software that could do this thing instead of having to use three pieces of software?
- [36:28]
C
Right.
- [36:28]
A
I mean, hypothetically.
- [36:29]
C
Right.
- [36:29]
A
So hopefully people are beginning to understand that there is a way you can educate people and still kind of talk about your product indirectly, but ultimately reveal the product. Now, is the reveal of the product always at the call to action stage, or is it sometimes in the middle of the education side of it?
- [36:47]
B
So sometimes it's in the middle of the education, but it's either the middle towards the end. It depends on exactly how the product is integrated. And actually that's a good example. Like sometimes it's right at the beginning of the educate section. So software. So I have got a software as well that does like AI ad targeting. And so essentially a hook for that and then going the education and then demonstration is, you know what if you could use AI to target your YouTube and Google Ads in front of the perfect person at the perfect time and take what used to take hours of manual research and condense it down into just minutes. Well, now you can do that with keyword search.com, our AI ad targeting tool for YouTube and Google Ads. Let's hop over to my computer screen and I'll show you exactly how this works. By the way, I love that. If you've got a software steal that, let's hop over to my computer screen and I'll show you exactly how this will work.
- [37:33]
A
Ah, I like it. Because then you integrated the name of the product right into the beginning and then you said, let me show you how it works. But is it just a talking head at this point in the video? I mean, just talk about the creative a little bit on this side.
- [37:45]
B
So then at that point. So it's a talking head right at the beginning, so it's talking to the camera. And actually how I filmed that one, because this is an ad that we're running for our software is I actually was in a different room and I had a big TV behind me in like one of my boardroom area and I just had the website up behind me for my software.
- [38:02]
A
Like subliminally there in the background kind of thing?
- [38:04]
B
Yeah, subliminally there in the background and I'm talking in front of the camera and I say, let's hop over to my computer screen. You know, I didn't actually pull it up on the tv. You know, it's just a screen share. But like that's kind of like what I used. And I said let's hop over to my career screen, show you exactly how this works. Then I just go to a screen share. I think it's kind of funny because it just changes literally to like right here. So it's me share my screen. You see this background behind me and I'm in the corner, but then I'm actually showing the product. And then what I'm doing too is, you know, I am showing a very fast demo of the product. And I also think for this one, we ended up filming the demo and then put me in afterwards because we did, you know, shorten some sequences just to make it like work and fit in an ad format. But basically I show start to finish doing audience research and then syncing an audience with the software to Google. And I'm showcasing like, here's what you used to do in spreadsheets because I know, because I used to do this, all those manual audience research. Now I'm just putting in the URL. The company I want to advertise, it does all the, you know, it researches everything. Oh, I want these different targeting options or these search terms. I click which ones I want and sync it and then I show that in the ad.
- [39:09]
A
So we know that it's about total for the initial opening of the ads that we, the hook is going to be at most 30 seconds, 10 to 30 seconds. How long can this education section be? What's the average or what's the range?
- [39:23]
B
And it's actually a good point to kind of share the overall. So it depends also on the platform that you're using. But in general, I would say for a standard kind of, you know, widescreen or horizontal video, we like to do a two to three minute long ad as one of these value adds. So it's a little longer than the traditional, you know, ad, but it's also not incredibly long. It's not like a full YouTube video. So essentially you want to have a 15 to 30 second hook, usually a one to two minute educate section and about a 30 second call to action. Because in the call to action, which we'll talk about in a second, you do Want to have multiple calls to action, like a reminder and kind of a value stack of what they're going to get. But basically you want to do 15 to 30 seconds, one or two minutes, and then a final 30 second call to action.
- [40:08]
A
Talk to me about the call to action, please.
- [40:10]
B
Yeah, so the call to action, what you want to do is you want to have kind of the initial call to action, then from there you want to stack the value, why they should take action, a second call to action, then either a little bit of urgency or a personalization or a friendly push, and then a final call to action. We want to do three call to actions and that's very strategic because we want to tell them to click the button three times because sometimes it takes that many times for them to actually click the button. That's what we've tested. You know, I think just in general, if you try to do it more than that, it kind of gets a little weird. But we want to have that repetition. So that's kind of what we found is those three and you can do hit all that in 30 seconds. So I'll give an example of our own ad. So let's just use the affinity audiences or show them how to do URL audiences. So I would say exactly this. So now that you've seen just how powerful YouTube ads can be, I want to invite you to sign up for my 20 minute training where I'm going to be covering exactly how you can use YouTube ads on our Alpha AI targeting strategy to target the right people at the right time. So all you got to do is click a link right here on the screen and fill in your details and you're going to get instant access to my full training and my 19 page YouTube ad strategy PDF. So when you click the link right here, you're going to be able to get access to the training. The PDF is going to cover, step by step, absolutely everything you need to know. So click that link and I will see you on the inside.
- [41:26]
A
Interesting. So you almost did almost. If I lost count, you might have even done four call to actions in there.
- [41:32]
B
I may have done four. I may have done four.
- [41:34]
A
So I like what you did because if I reverse engineer what you did is you kind of elaborated a little bit more each time.
- [41:39]
C
Right?
- [41:40]
A
Because I think you know what I know, which is sometimes it takes people's brains a few seconds to process what they're hearing or what they're seeing on the screen. And if you just do it once and then the add ends are going to go Right on to whatever the next piece of content is. Is that correct?
- [41:52]
B
Exactly, exactly. And so that's the thing is we want to give them multiple opportunities for them to be able to take action. And if you look at any of these other ones, let's actually use the nutritionist example. That should be a pretty simple example that we can utilize because people have gone through and they've watched the ad, but we have the customization angle. Right. So what he, what you can do and this, this works really well for, for expert businesses is you can say, well, there's only so much we can talk about inside of this ad. And that's why I put together a training that breaks this all down and actually helps you also apply this to you and your unique situation as well. So all you got to do is click that link right here on the screen. You'll be able to fill out your details and get instant access to my 20 minute training. It's going to walk you through this, this and this. And you're also going to be able to get access to this bonus which by the way, you have the bonus be like when they get onto the training, you're like, if you stay until the end of the training, you're going to get this bonus. So it's all designed to, you know, and then you say from there, so click the link right here on the screen. And then I like to do either urgency or personalization. If you have like a live webinar or something, or you've got a product that could sell out, you know, you could add a little bit of urgency there and say if you're watching this right now, that means a webinar is coming soon. You know, if it's a live webinar or if you're watching this right now, that means, you know, Early Bird registrations available for social media marketing world. But again, Early Bird is going to close soon, so you got to click that link sign up now. So you add a little urgency at the end which by the way you could swap out. So you can just, you know, switch it to a different one if you want.
- [43:14]
A
Love it.
- [43:14]
B
But that's basically the pieces that you put in.
- [43:16]
A
Any tips on getting leads versus direct selling? Because I know we've been direct selling here or maybe we are getting leads in some of these cases. Right, because you are offering a freebie as the next. Actually in all these situations you are offering a freebie as the next logical step, weren't you?
- [43:30]
B
Yeah, all the situations except for the product and the software. So the Software went to a free trial, credit card required free trial. And then we found that that just works really well for software off of ads like this. And then for the product, that's the only one where we're directly selling. So that was like a $89 like iPhone charging stand. So that was a direct sale. But the other ones are all just lead capture. So basically if it's people for ourselves, we're having them sign up for the training, then on the training we like rehook them in. That's a whole nother conversation. But we lead them through a 20 minute training that then leads them to book a call. And the way, by the way, this is just a little bonus. The way we, we frame to book a call at the end of that training is more customization. So now on this training we broke things down, we showed you all the different elements, but there's only so much we can do in a prerecorded training. That's why I want to have one of my top advisors actually speak with you one on one, understand your business and how we can help you implement video ads directly into your business for your unique situation and your unique goals. So I got to do is click the link, fill out a quick form, we'll see if you qualify to have a strategy call, and if so, we'll invite you to schedule that call and go from there.
- [44:35]
A
I love it. Okay folks, for those of you that stuck around, here comes some magic sauce stuff. Alric has agreed to share some insights about how he's using AI to help him make ads better, which I think is really exciting. Video ads in particular. So please do share your insights with us.
- [44:51]
B
Yes. So what we're finding is really, really interesting is that AI ad hooks, followed by more of a traditional value add framework is outperforming all of our other ads right now. So essentially these are AI ad hooks that you can create with Google VO3. There's some other different software, but that's our favorite is Google VO3. And you can go in there and it's an eight second hook. And you know, over time they're already in talks to like increase the length. But right now you can create an 8 second hook. And what that is is it's a video. It could be me as a superhero jumping in and it's actually one with this big monster and it's like the monster is outdated marketing and I jump in as a superhero. Does it feel like you're battling outdated marketing monsters? By the way, it could also work for social media marketing world. So anyway, and I'm there. It's like a superhero. It's like, you know, it's me, but as a superhero, there's like this monster. It's kind of comical, right? It's a funny thing. And the monster's throwing like a floppy disk at me and I'm just like knocking out of the way. And then, you know, does it feel like you're out battling outdated marketing monsters? Well, it's time to start leveraging the new way of video marketing online. And then it cuts into. So that's. That's an AI hook. And then it just cuts into me talking head style, diving into how, in this case, how you can do the video use, you know, value, video ad and the video marketing framework. Some of the stuff I talk about in my book, you know, Video Authority, to kind of dive into that. In that particular ad, I have another one of me in a medieval costume wearing this kind of king, like, cape and all this stuff. There's a YouTube emblem on my shirt and I'm walking forward and I say, if you're not using AI in your advertising, you're practically living in medieval times. That's one of the top hooks right now, is that one. It basically just kind of transitions. Like I have like this YouTube staff or whatever and I kind of wait it and then, you know, and then transitions to me speaking. We have tested full AI ads. So I know that's the next question a lot of people ask is like, can you just create the. And a lot of us have started to see now these on social media and some running as ads where it's all just AI back to back. The thing is, we're actually finding that those are performing worse than our traditional ads. And I think the reason is it doesn't build as much trust later in the ad. But our traditional ads are now being beaten by an AI hook and a traditional educate and call to action. So it's really interesting and I think the reason that is. And this, by the way, this is right now. So I'd be curious because it could be that this is just this point in time, you know, that AI is new and exciting, but I think it's because the AI hook captures people's attention. You see somebody fly in as a superhero battling an outdated marketing monster or walking through a medieval city, and it captures your attention. But then it actually cuts to me talking and providing real value. And you can tell, you know, that it's. I think the problem with it all being just an AI ad is you don't really know what's the company behind it. Right, right. So I think the combination, the AI hooks them and then you want to educate and actually have more of a traditional ad to provide value and have a call to action. That's what we're finding is working the best. And the pro tip, if you're running any type of video ads, this doesn't have to be YouTube. We're seeing a lot of success with meta ads with this as well actually. But if you're running any type of video ads right now, just take your best performing ad and then go into Google VO3 and create some AI hooks and put it on top just literally in front of your ad. Or if it makes sense, maybe just trim off a little bit of the beginning, put some AI hooks into your ad and what that will allow you to do is split test a few different hooks and potentially beat your top performers.
- [48:22]
A
Love it, love it, love it, love it. Google V E O and the number three. If people want to do a little research on that. Alaric, I know we've just scratched the surface of what is in that brain of yours. If people want to connect with you on the socials, where's your preferred place you want to send them? If they want to work with your business, where do you want to send them as well?
- [48:42]
B
Well, I have a special gift for everybody and it is ad outreach.com SME and this gift is going to be a replay of my viral AI ads workshop. Now I've actually sold this replay for 97, so this is something I'm doing especially for everybody here. I did this, you know, live and ended up, you know, people, people have the option to get the replay, but I'm actually just going to give the replay to all of you. You go to ad outreach.com SME you can get it completely for free. And I'll also give you my 19 page YouTube ad strategy PDF as well. So you're going to get the viral AI ads hooks and you know, video ads frameworks and you're also going to get my 19 page YouTube ad strategy PDF as well for free.
- [49:23]
A
Love it. Awesome. And then if they want to connect with you on the socials, is there a preferred social platform?
- [49:29]
B
YouTube is my preferred platform. I'm constantly putting out value on YouTube every single week. I also have my marketing minds podcast there as well.
- [49:36]
A
How do they find you on YouTube? Just your name?
- [49:38]
B
Yes, just Alrik Heck. Exactly. Just alright. Heck on YouTube and I'm also on all the major social media platforms as well.
- [49:43]
A
Alrik, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today.
- [49:46]
B
Yeah, thank you so much for having me here, Michael. I appreciate it.
- [49:48]
A
We forgot to mention during the interview that Alric will be speaking at Social media Marketing World 2026. And by the way, I know there was a lot he mentioned and if you missed some of it, we took all the notes for you over@social mediaexaminer.com 680 Also, if you're brand new to the show, be sure to follow us on that app you're listening to us on now. And be sure to spread the word. If you don't mind, share this episode with your friends. Feel free to tag me and do check out our other shows, the AI Explored Podcast and the Social Media Marketing Talk Show. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week, I promise. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving.
- [50:33]
B
The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.
- [50:42]
A
Just a quick reminder before you go. If you're ready to become indispensable in the age of AI, the AI Business Society is your solution. Join now and secure your discounted membership by visiting socialmediaexaminer.com AI I can't wait to see you inside the AI Business Society.