TikTok Ads: How to Drive Billions of Views with Dennis Yu (Episode 125)

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[00:01:11] Chris Schwager: Hello video marketing professionals. Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast. It takes the mystery outta video production and provides business leaders support to help them break through the monotony of day to day communication. I'm your host, Chris Schwager, and today our guest is Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzMetrics, a digital marketing company based in California.

[00:01:29] Dennis co-authored the number one bestselling book in social media, The Definitive Guide to TikTok advertising: how to access 1 billion people in 10 Minutes. He's also an internationally recognized lecturer in digital marketing and co-author of Facebook Nation, a textbook taught in over 700 colleges and universities.

[00:01:49] Dennis is gonna help us learn more about TikTok as a marketing tool and how businesses can leverage the platform. Here's our chat with Dennis Yu.

[00:02:05] TikTok. Such a trending word right now. Uh. You've made lectures on Facebook ads and now TikTok ads. What appeal to you about these two platforms?

[00:02:14] Dennis Yu: They're both the same thing. They both are driven by the algorithm, but TikTok's a little smarter in that they're able to recognize the faces, they can recognize the backgrounds. There are people that are going viral because there's not a lot of competition right now. There's mostly organic traffic. Ads are starting to catch up, but TikTok right now is eating Facebook's lunch. And what would like to say is TikTok in 2022 is like Facebook in 2007, and certainly you don't wanna miss that boat.

[00:02:40] Chris Schwager: Well, look, there's a lot of digital marketers, digital agencies, digital strategists who still haven't quite caught up with TikTok as an advertising platform. Think that's quite ironic. And it's also a little bit limited in terms of people's information around it. And someone, as someone that's just started investing in TikTok advertising, we have seen amazing results so far with great, uh, CPC and ROI. So yet to land actual jobs where we've only been advertising for a month now, but the lead flow is, is, is very good and comparable to LinkedIn advertising.

[00:03:18] But why should people advertise on TikTok?

[00:03:21] Dennis Yu: Depends on what your objective is. So if you wanna generate leads, TikTok lead ads are outperforming Facebook ads two to one, cuz the base cost of the traffic is about half the price and it converts just as well.

[00:03:31] If you use the number one format on TikTok, which TikTok told me is 60% of the ad spend, so 60 cents of every dollar, do you know what format that's going to? Spark Ads. And what makes Spark Ads so amazing is that you can boost someone else's post. So if someone else makes a post about you, could be a customer, could be an employee, could be anyone that knows about you. Maybe you're on someone's podcast and they said something about it. Like this one, you can boost that post with their permission if they give you an access code. And that's completely revolutionized the game.

[00:04:02] Chris Schwager: Oh, I gotta, I gotta get clear on that. Spark ads. Just break that down to the simplest version. I'm not a hundred percent clear on exactly what that is. And, uh, limit, uh, we are limited by our lack of knowledge to a certain degree here in Australia. We, we seem to be about four or five years behind the States. So Spark Ads, can you just go into a bit more detail around that?

[00:04:23] Dennis Yu: So TikTok, imagine TikTok and you're thinking, how do I get all of these advertisers who are already advertising on Google and on Facebook to switch over to TikTok? It's yet another social network. And the number one thing that we hear from people who are hesitant to do TikTok is they say, Yeah, but I don't wanna be on video. And I don't like how I sound. And I don't wanna sing and dance. And I'm not able to be charismatic like that.

[00:04:50] Well, guess what? If you have customers, if you have partners, you have, if you have other people that are making videos in a natural, authentic, vertical, selfie style way, you can boost those posts. And TikTok came up with this because they thought the biggest issue in social advertising is the video itself. If we can help businesses of all types be able to create video, kind of like you, Video Made Simple, and, and if we can show that with our algorithm being able to optimize, that it generates leads, it generates sales, it generates the right kind of traffic, the right kinds of comments, the right kinds of website traffic, then people will put a ton of money into this. So the hurdle in social advertising has always been the video creation by the underlying client.

[00:05:37] The agencies face the same sort of issue. So TikTok said, well, instead of making the client have to make video, why don't we enable the client to work with anybody who's saying something good about your product or service to be able to run ads against it. And you don't even have to be on TikTok. You don't have to have a profile on TikTok to be able to run TikTok ads, which is genius.

[00:06:00] Chris Schwager: It sure is. It sure is. Look that this is all news to me. We're just doing the old traditional: Hey, do a video, publish, create an art out of it, uh, with amazing results. So can you, can you share a specific example of what you're talking about?

[00:06:16] Dennis Yu: So, I teach a course called Dollar A Day. And we spent a billion dollars on Facebook ads and I don't wanna make videos.

[00:06:23] I'm a search engineer, engineer, right? And I've been dragged kicking and screaming in the video. And if you heard from me, Chris, let's say you don't know who I am and I say, Hey, you know the Dollar Day strategies like this, and this is how it's been used, and this is the kind of success we've had, and this is our whole program and our whole course around that.

[00:06:40] You might think, Yeah, it might be good, but who's this guy? But if you see Grant Cardone saying, I'm making one minute videos using Dennis's strategy and here's how to do that. And the TikTok algorithm is showing that to fans of Grant Cardone, you automatically have trust. You're more likely to buy from me because you hear that endorsement, that word of mouth, that recommendation from someone that, you know.

[00:07:06] I was at Jake Paul's house and we were filming a course that he wanted to build called the Financial Freedom Movement hasn't launched quite yet. But just behind the scenes I was making some videos, some selfie style video because he's got the, he's got a really cool house. You ever been to his house? He's got this Lego wall and you, you pull on the string and all these legos come falling down, right? He's got, it's like the, the perfect child's idea of what an ideal mansion would be like. All kinds of fun toys. And I made some selfie videos. And one of them that we put on TikTok happened to, It went to millions of people. Saw it. You got half a million people to like it on a random account. Why? Because TikTok saw in the background, that's Jake Paul's house and it's naturally gonna show it to people who are fans of Jake Paul. The system does the targeting for you because it's looking at your content. It's looking at who's engaging. I didn't have to target Jake Paul, I didn't have to target people who are interested in boxing. I didn't have to target any of this because the video does it itself.

[00:08:13] And I give you more examples. So my friend Justin Martin, he's the number one real estate agent in Colorado. And of course he's good on video, but he also has 70 real estate agents that are on his team. And these real estate agents, they're building relationships with local restaurants, with the little league team, with people that are buying selling houses, and they're making selfie style videos. We put all those in the TikTok. TikTok recognizes that these are Denver landmarks. TikTok recognizes who some of the people are and it shows it to friends of those people.

[00:08:46] Of course, the algorithm is going to do that, and then we just run dollar a day ads. So we can run dollar a day on Facebook, on Twitter, you probably have heard about our dollar a day technique largely used on Facebook, but it can be used on every single channel.

[00:09:00] And TikTok happens to be the most powerful one because the algorithm is able to figure out what you like. The algorithm makes really strong recommendations. The algorithm picks up on every single thing about what you were trying to do, Chris. About what kinds of things you're stopping on, about what your friends are doing, about who you're with, about where you are. It's almost scary that TikTok can read your mind. But us. As entrepreneurs, as business owners, as marketers, we can use that to our advantage.

[00:09:28] Chris Schwager: So give us an example of the dollar a day marketing that you're currently doing.

[00:09:34] Dennis Yu: Oh, we've done thousands of these, and it works in almost any particular case. So my friend Bryce Clark, 19 years old. He bought a car from a dealership in Phoenix, Arizona, and his car wasn't ready. And apparently the dealer said that they were gonna do these modifications and do some fixes that would cost a thousand dollars and then give him the car. But it turns out that the dealer didn't honor their promise. And so Bryce came to me and said, What am I gonna do? You know, these guys promised that they were gonna fix the car. I'm just a poor college student and I was counting on this thousand dollars fix being able to happen before I would get the car.

[00:10:11] And I said, Don't you worry. What I want you to do is I want you to make a blog post. Not angrily, not with any kind of emotion, but detailing, I bought the car from Earnhardt Chevrolet in Phoenix, Arizona, and this is what the contract said and the general manager promised me, here's the text where he promised me he was gonna fix the car and whatnot. And I'm just, I'm really sad because I'm a poor college student and these guys promised that they were gonna do this, and here's the text promising where he said he was gonna do this. And Bryce is like, Well, that, that's not gonna work. If I put it on some blog that has no traffic, he's not gonna see it. And even if he sees it, why would he ever do anything about that?

[00:10:50] So I said, Don't you worry, you watch. So I ran Dollar-a-day on Facebook, targeting all the people who work at that car dealership, all the people who are in management and Chevrolet General Motors in their headquarters in Detroit, Michigan. And lo and behold, three days later, Bryce gets a call from the general manager saying, I don't know what you're doing, but I'm just, all the employees, a lot of the executives, the executives exec can say the words. The executives at GM are saying, What is going on with Bryce Clark? What is going on with Earnhardt Chevrolet?

[00:11:24] Because we were using Facebook dollar a day to target those employees. And of course, those employees. See, this is how Bryce Clark gets mistreated by Earnhardt Chevrolet. And they come in, they read the blog post, then they start arguing on Facebook saying, You know, this guy probably deserved it, or, you know, we are, we are a great company and screw him and all this. And every time one of those employees that represented the car dealership said something that defended the dealership, but also pissed on Bryce, the rest of the community, including the employees of General Motors, could see that and just created more controversy. And so that initial paid using the dollar day strategy resulted in a huge organic boost. And thus the more they tried to bury the thing, the worse it got.

[00:12:13] And a day into it, the general manager texted Bryce back and I have this text and he says, I don't care what you think about social media. Just cuz you complain on social media or you leave me a bad review, I'm not gonna give you any of the money. Right. In fact, I'll sue you back. But lo and behold, three days later, he had to eat his words. He had to pay the thousand dollars to Bryce, and he had to make good on his word. And I'm not saying dollar a day is something you use to beat up on other people. That's just an example of how powerful it is.

[00:12:43] I've used dollar a day to wish happy birthday to a friend of mine, targeting all the people that work at that company. My buddy Eric Ludwig was the CMO Rosetta Stone, which is a language learning company. And I said, Eric, happy birthday. You don't look bad for 50. And I targeted all the people in marketing, all 300 employees at their headquarters building in Washington, DC and it works. Uh.

[00:13:05] For example, I was on CNN a couple years ago and they were interviewing me live about Cambridge Analytica and all the issues with Facebook, and I was giving my opinion in front of three and a half million people live. And that was a great moment, right? That was great for me. I got some unhappy texts from Facebook executives saying, You can't be saying stuff like that on tv. And I said, I don't work for you guys. I can say whatever I want. And I took those clips on CNN and I targeted them on Twitter and on Facebook and on LinkedIn using the dollar a day strategy to people who work at the Washington Post, to people who work at the LA Times, to people who work at NPR, to people who work at the Chicago Tribune, not the people who read the Chicago Tribune, but the people who work at these places. Very small audiences, but that's media inception. So if you have something that is worthy, then you can use this Dollar-a-Day technique to be able to reach whoever you want.

[00:14:01] I'll give you another example. A friend of mine, Lee Isaac, he's 22 years old and he's a country music singer. And of course, like a lot of musicians, a lot of creatives, they all want to get millions of views on YouTube. They wanna be signed by a major record label. But of course there's millions of them and very few actually breakthrough, right? So what do we do? We take his song, I think it's called Summer Nights. And then we take it on YouTube. You can go look at it, and then we target all the people that work at Sony Music. We target the people who do A and R for Capital Records. We target the people who work in Nashville in the music industry, right? Very small targets, B2B targets. But it's inception because when those people at Capital Records see this artist that is not yet broken, meaning they've not yet become big, they'll say, Wow, I see this guy everywhere. His music's actually pretty good. Maybe I should reach out to him, right? Maybe he's a, a new talent that we can spot and we should talk to him. So Dollar-a-Day gives you micro exposure in an industry, and it works super well. I've done this for 15 plus years, spent over a billion dollars using this technique.

[00:15:10] Chris Schwager: So it's an amplification tactic.

[00:15:12] Dennis Yu: Well, all ads are amplification. But this is micro amplification against the exact audience. Either their influencers or it's the CEO of the company, or it's the media people that you wanna influence. I could do this against all the employees at Facebook. I've done that all the time. I'll write an article about why I think Facebook ads is so amazing and I'll target the executives at Facebook. So cuz I want them to see it.

[00:15:36] Chris Schwager: And where does the dollar a day, I guess, compare with just traditional TikTok advertising?

[00:15:41] Dennis Yu: Well, dollar a day is a way to do testing and, and when you don't wanna spend a lot of money, but you wanna find out quickly and scientifically, you might have 10 or 15 different posts and you don't know which one is gonna convert the best or do the best. So what do you do? Put a little bit of money against each of them.

[00:15:56] Now, TikTok, we can't technically do dollar a day because the min budget to be able to boost is $5, and certain objectives require $10 or even $20 a day. But that's okay. You can put 20 ads inside an ad. And now you've got 20 ads that are running at $20 a day. Let it run for a week. We don't wanna run just for a day or two, cuz that's just not enough data.

[00:16:19] Plus the weekends behave differently than the weekdays. We like to run tests for one week. So if you run $20 a day times seven days, you're spending $140 to be able to test, however many items you wanna put in that bucket. And the system will tell you, you won't know in advance what the winner is. You never do.

[00:16:35] I'm never right. Like I'll see a grid of all these different ads and I think I might know which one's gonna perform the best. I'm wrong every single time. Let the system tell you this works very well on TikTok. Probably better on TikTok. Then maybe even Google or Facebook, although these three are probably the smartest in the world of digital because their algorithms are so smart in governing the newsfeed, which is the same algorithm that governs what shows up in ads.

[00:17:00] Chris Schwager: So you mentioned Google. Where is Google heading with regards to advertising? And this I'm hearing, and this is very limited audience, but hearing not so many favorable things about ROI on standard Google ads versus, you know, I mean, in our experience, I guess. Yeah. Uh, LinkedIn and, and TikTok have been great for us. Uh. Got digitally squat out of, out of Google. Um. Do you have any information around that?

[00:17:29] Dennis Yu: Depends on the industry. You know, Google's been around forever and the cost of traffic has gone up seven to 10% every year for the last 25 years or so. I remember buying clicks for less than a penny a click, and it was amazing 20 years ago.

[00:17:43] But the cost goes up and therefore it forces out a lot of the competition. So you have to be a lot more clever. If you're a local service business, you probably were relying upon local service ads, but now you've been priced out because everyone else is in there. If you're relying upon regular keywords and Google search, the cost of traffic is way up.

[00:18:00] If you're a personal injury attorney, for example, it's $250 a click. It's absolutely insane. The price has gone up. Mm, maybe even 15%. In the last two or three years with Covid, cuz a lot of people have gone online. So the econ prices have gone up. If you're an agency, if you're a SAS company, it's a lot tougher because people are cynical about software cuz there's so many and there's so much, so many offerings in the marketing space.

[00:18:24] But I think Google is still number one. It is number one in Advertising. because they have the most well known system, their ads management platform, their ability to provide support. And I'm not saying this because I'm getting paid to say it. I'm just saying Google's not as sexy, but it's definitely where most of the traffic is, especially low funnel intent.

[00:18:46] Like you can't beat Google search. So for you guys, what are the keyword that you wanna rank on? And do you actually deliver when someone searches that keyword, do you actually deliver against that expectation? The thing that's really changed the game, in the last year, Chris is Google Performance Max. So Performance Max, as you probably know, allows you to create campaigns in a Facebook-like way, meaning you have combinations of text and images and video, and the system will optimize and figure out what combinations are gonna work best for you. That has been an absolute game changer for people that A, understand how Google ads work; and B, also understand social advertising by including images and video. Because you know, Google display easily 20 to 30 times bigger than Google search. A lot of people think, well, Google Ads is just search ads. No, no, no. That's like this much. It's almost nothing. Now you include video and running ads on YouTube. That is a huge blue ocean opportunity to run ads.

[00:19:44] Chris Schwager: There's probably a lot of controversy over this next question, but do does quality matter? Does video quality matter?

[00:19:54] Dennis Yu: Well, there's different kinds of video quality, so there's, you know, shooting in 4K and having great lighting and a fancy camera and that kind of video quality that really doesn't matter as much.

[00:20:04] The most important thing in the video is you probably know if you're a performance marketer, is the Sound, so you have to have a microphone. But most of the videos that we see they're converting are off of an iPhone. And we've done these kinds of tests, $50,000 professional cinematographer, you know, Hollywood filmmaker versus Dennis, who's not a video person with an iPhone. And we win almost every single time because we shoot vertically, because we're not making it as a commercial. If, if we're doing it as a commercial, there's a bump in the beginning or it's very obviously a commercial. It's lit in a certain way that tells you it's a commercial. The people in the ad are obviously in a commercial.

[00:20:46] We go after things that are intentionally authentic and imperfect, and in fact, TikTok calls this being flawsome, having flaws, and also being awesome. And that's what people trust. And filming vertically gives you the entire screen, versus when you film landscape, you're only seeing a little piece of it and then you have the black bars at the top of the bottom, and that's just not a great user experience.

[00:21:08] Also, the way we film, and this is what we look at in terms of quality, is we start with the hook first. So unlike a Hollywood movie or TV where you're building, building, building, and at the end of the 30 minutes you reveal like what's actually going on, social media is you start with that hook first. You do it backwards cuz you have to get their attention in the first two seconds.

[00:21:29] It doesn't matter about what kind of camera you're using or any of that kind of stuff. It's your ability to tell stories and that's what happens in the first two seconds. People like you and I may suffer from what's called rambling white man syndrome, rambling old man syndrome, where we can't get to the point. We've gotta immediately get to the point.

[00:21:49] Chris Schwager: What's your opinion about metrics on TikTok? Are they inflated?

[00:21:53] Dennis Yu: What do you mean metrics on TikTok being inflated?

[00:21:57] Chris Schwager: Um, I don't know. It's, it's the first post I ever put up wasn't an ad or anything. It was a, uh, you know, a republish on, you know, using someone else's sound and it got something like 30,000 views. You know, that just doesn't happen on LinkedIn, for instance.

[00:22:18] Dennis Yu: You don't think was a.

[00:22:20] Chris Schwager: I think it's probably a way to get me, entice me into the, um, to the platform so that I'm kind of, you know, get my endorphin hit or whatever it is, and continue using TikTok. I mean, it worked, but I, I subsequent post have not had anything near, uh, that level of engagement. Um, Yeah, running TikTok ads versus LinkedIn ads, for instance, you know, been running TikTok ads for about three weeks with something like 90,000 views. And look, you know, views is just a basic metric I'm going off, but it, it doesn't quite make sense. We, we, we don't have the, um, the following on our, uh, channel at the moment. We're still relatively...

[00:23:10] Dennis Yu: You don't need to have the following.

[00:23:12] Chris Schwager: Right.

[00:23:12] Dennis Yu: Doesn't even Okay. But, but see individual.

[00:23:16] Chris Schwager: Okay, so, So we're targeting an Australia, australian audience and we're doing the same on LinkedIn. However, we don't get anywhere near those numbers on LinkedIn. That's been running for nine months. We haven't, wouldn't even come close to 90,000 views of videos. It's exactly the same video.

[00:23:31] Dennis Yu: I mean, I would love to, Well, that's probably why it's not working as well. You can't necessarily use

[00:23:35] Chris Schwager: No, no. It's in terms of terms of. Oh yeah, yeah. Chris.

[00:23:43] Dennis Yu: Chris, I would look at your stats and I'd, I'd say, what percent of people go past the first three seconds? What percent of people get to 10 seconds? If you're not getting 30% plus at 10 seconds, then it's the video. It's not TikTok metrics or something like that. When you have something that takes off, TikTok has has found that some users like that, but then if it falls off, it means that you're, it's no longer relevant. You have to figure out what was a winner in that video. It's always something, right? It's, it's the way you said it, it's the music, it's the what's in the background. It's movement. Like there's always something. And that's what we've learned in the last three years on TikTok. The gotta get part, the, the analytics.

[00:24:23] Chris Schwager: So, so the performance, the actual lead flow is abundant, you know, it's, it's equally, if not more abundant than, than LinkedIn. We've only been publishing it for a very short time. Um, but, you know, I was looking at the drop off rate in terms of the video itself, and it was, it was dramatically, it was a huge steep dive in the first three seconds or whatever. Um, It, it just seems very, uh, funny. I guess with 90,000 people looking at it, um, you know, it could still have a steep drop off and still do quite well as a, as a lead gen tool.

[00:25:00] Dennis Yu: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:01] Chris Schwager: Um. But, uh, you know, Yeah, I, I'm, I'm just kind of curious whether you've been asked this, uh, question before, but I, Is it as big as what people are saying? Or is it there are a bit of smoke and mirrors, a bit of, a bit of toying with the, with the metrics and the numbers to get people addicted effectively?

[00:25:23] Dennis Yu: There's no question that TikTok has addictive algorithms that their intention is to feed you things that will keep you there. Right. And it's, some people say it's so good, it's like TikTok can read your mind, but in terms of a marketer, advertiser, I don't think they're inflating or trying to skew the metrics to have you believe that you're getting more traffic than you actually are. If you've got a hit, that's great. Try to get more of it. And I'm a stats and analytics guy, built the analytics at a search engine, so I'm very much into the data and I have not seen anything yet that would cause me to believe that they're like twisting or inflating the numbers. There's a lot of people to get nothing on TikTok cuz they don't know how to tell a story. They don't know how to make video or there's, they're just repurposing a YouTube video on the TikTok and wondering why that doesn't work.

[00:26:07] Chris Schwager: Does the algorithm change for paid ads versus organic videos?

[00:26:11] Dennis Yu: It's going for watch time, just like YouTube. But obviously with paid you can choose what the objective is. So you can choose video views, you can choose engagement. You can choose leads. You can choose conversions just like you can on Facebook. So if you can get it to work on Facebook, you'll get it to work even better on TikTok.

[00:26:28] Chris Schwager: We'll be back in a short moment with Dennis Yu.

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[00:27:15] What are the common misconceptions about TikTok, and obviously probably not across the Australian market, but uh, what are the misconceptions that serve as barriers for businesses to try out the platform and what should people do about it?

[00:27:30] Dennis Yu: It's the same Chris in every single market. Australia, America, big small business services versus products.

[00:27:37] People think that they can't win on TikTok because they don't wanna do singing and dancing. And maybe that's what it was initially because it was the musically app and doon and other things where you could sing along or do duets. But now what's working is sharing your expertise. So if you're an author, speaker, coach, agency owner, freelancer, share your expertise as one tip.

[00:28:02] Here's one tip on how to look good on video. Here's one way I set up my lighting. Here's the one thing you need to do before you get on camera. Here's just one tip, 15 to 30 seconds. People don't understand that that is what people are connecting with. They're connecting with you. They're not, They don't care about your hair. They don't care about singing and dancing. So that misconception about singing and dancing is causing a lot of people to not be on the platform, which is actually great for us cuz there's less competition. .

[00:28:32] Second thing is people think that their audience isn't there. So we said earlier that Facebook in 2007 is a lot like TikTok in 2022. Think about the things that people were saying about Facebook in 2007. It's just for kids. It's a social network. I can't drive leads. The ad platform is crummy. It has different bugs in it and whatnot. They're saying all the same thing about TikTok.

[00:28:55] And guess what? The fastest growing, growing demographic is 40 plus the average age on TikTok worldwide I wanna say is like 35. It's incredible. And there are people, I know my buddy Caleb Williams is selling life insurance policies on TikTok, but he's doing it by selling expertise. He's talking about principles that are in his book, like the and Asset. I have friends of mine that are selling disability insurance or things to senior citizens, like yeah, they're senior citizens on TikTok. Now are they creating content? probably not as much, but they're definitely there. The vast majority of the audience is lurking. They're watching, but they're not the ones creating.

[00:29:35] And so we have this kind of 99-1 dynamic where 99% of the people are consuming and 1% is producing. But just cuz you look at the people that are producing, maybe they're younger, maybe they're more attractive, maybe they're more charismatic. That doesn't mean that the rest of the audience is just like the people that are producing. For example, you look at tv. The people that you see on tv. that that's, those are not the people that are watching tv.

[00:30:01] Chris Schwager: And it's probably a similar thing to, to those looking at creating a YouTube channel, looking at LinkedIn advertising and marketing. Unless they publish, unless they are actively doing something, they'll never know. Because they're always had this stigma attached to the platform thinking, Oh, it's just for teenagers. So it's, it's funny you should say that because I mean the people that have actually inquired, a lot of the people that have inquired are prolific on TikTok and when you look at their channels and what they're marketing with, you know, I've got, there's a mold guy that goes around and assesses molding, cuz we've had a lot of rain in Australia recently.

[00:30:35] And it's just like, wow, okay. That gives definite perspective. And the, and the people that are inquiring aren't young people. They are, you know, in their mid, mid age, sort of forties age bracket. Um, and they're going for it, you know, they're really given it a good crack. And so I think, from what I'm understanding from what you are saying is like, you know, drop the stigma because it's hot property. Get on there and do what you need to do. Don't be disheartened by potentially the lack of inspiration, perhaps around the, the content and or the, the engagement that you're getting from that content. And just keep consistent.

[00:31:11] Dennis Yu: If you wanna get billions of views and be some kind of celebrity, great. But my objective, just like everyone else, it's a professional services company, or as a consultant or a speaker. I wanna reach my audience. I'm not trying to get 50 million followers. Like my friend Ethan Ostroff, he's a personal injury attorney and he does something called mass tort. So people who get cancer, for example, from using the Roundup Weed Killer.

[00:31:34] So he's making videos saying, Hey, have you been using Roundup weed killer in a, in your garden and did you get cancer? We might be able to help you. Contact me. I'm Ethan Ostroff, and you know, so he, so all of these different things where, there's people use a particular product and they get injured or they use a particular chemical and they get cancer or whatnot.

[00:31:56] This guy has generated hundreds of cases just from TikTok. You should look him up. Look at how he does it. It's Ethan, E-T-H-A-N, Ostraff, and he's the TikTok lawyer. And what his technique is is just like what we see here. For those that are just watching or he is just filming direct to face off of his cell phone and it's just like he's FaceTiming with somebody.

[00:32:17] He's looking in the camera and saying, Did you, uh, you know, do, did you, do you live in this particular city and did you get cancer from drinking the contaminated water from the coal mill or whatever it is, the coal plant that's there, we might be able to help you out and help your, Or does one of your loved ones, it's direct to face and he's making a direct... and it's not professionally edited. It's not like a movie production thing, it's just him holding his cell phone talking to you and making it, and, and these videos are all like 15 seconds long. It's not like a whole five minute explanation, which is what's called the rambling old man syndrome. He gets right to the point's, very interesting, and then you'll see he'll post tons of these.

[00:33:00] Last week I was with the video editor of Alex Hormozi. Alex Hormozi is arguably the number one entrepreneur right now in social media. And he, this guy also does the video editing for Grant Cardone. So now you have number one and number two in entrepreneurship on social media. And this is what he told me, which I, part of the first part I expected in the second part, I didn't, When they're making videos to try to sell a program or sell courses or sell services, people might.

[00:33:28] Grant or Alex are very good on camera, very charismatic. So they, they'll record the body, which is, Hey, we came out with this new program called Video Made Simple, Or you know, whatever it is, right? Talk about that. Just like you did. But then the beginning, the first three seconds, which is the hook. They'll record five or six different variations of that.

[00:33:48] And then the call to action, which is the part at the end. Now come sign up, join us now click on the link below, find out more what you can do, you know, whatever the, the thing is at the end on, hey, you know, take action. They'll take combinations of these five hooks, which are the beginning pieces, one body, and let's say three calls to action, and then mix those combinations.

[00:34:10] And now you have 15 different video. And then they'll this then. So that part I knew about, cuz we do that too for a bunch of people. But here's the part that shocked me, Chris. He said we take those videos, all those combinations, and we post them all at once. We don't even space 'em out. We don't, Oh, but shouldn't you only post once per day or No, just post them all at once on TikTok, just like you can do it on Twitter.

[00:34:34] And then he logged into TikTok and he showed me the performance. Of some of the latest posts that he has where he is literally posting like 15 or 20 of the same thing where it's just combinations that I just told you. And invariably, one or two of them will do well and the rest won't. And even though they're all posted the same time and the one winner will get a million views and the other ones will get like 10,000 or whatever it is, and then they go back and they analyze and they inspect why did this particular one do so much better?

[00:35:04] And it's always that little detail and you'll always be, if you look, it's not random. If you look, you will find what that thing, and there always is a reason. It's not like, well, the algorithm just kind of decides, or those stats aren't real or No, you just need to be really smart about the analytics. So that's how that driven billions of views by, by being very math data oriented, they're constantly looking at the data and learning from the data.

[00:35:29] Chris Schwager: That is unreal. That is unreal.

[00:35:32] Dennis Yu: And I've seen it hundreds of times. This is not just like they got lucky one time and had a viral video. They have, they've produced hundreds of videos that have gotten a million views each.

[00:35:42] Chris Schwager: Yes. They worked hard and they got very specific about that first three seconds. Right?

[00:35:47] Dennis Yu: So they record five hooks. So, you know, let's say we, we create this podcast. You and I, Chris, are talking about some stuff we want people to listen to our podcast about what to do on TikTok. Well, there could be, I could think of five different angles that we could use as a hook to bring people in.

[00:36:00] But will I know which one is the hook that performs the best? No, I'll be completely wrong. You have to test it. The worst thing is most podcasters, they never even record any hooks. They just say, Here's my episode of, you know, with Dennis, you or whatever, and then it'll get into traffic. Right.

[00:36:16] Chris Schwager: And so just, just finally, I know you've got to, uh, take off, but monetizing?

[00:36:22] Dennis Yu: Best way to monetize is have a product or service, not from trying to be a celebrity and getting sponsorship deals, or trying to get, you know, millions of views and making money as a creator or outta the creator fund, like Facebook and Instagram, and even YouTube has a creator fund. YouTube just announced a hundred million, well, I don't know if it's available in Australia, but they're paying out a hundred million dollars to creators to give them a boost to help them as they're making their videos about how to cook a steak or whatever it might be.

[00:36:51] The best thing to do if you wanna win on TikTok is have an existing business that already works because TikTok is not going to solve your business strategy. If you don't have a strategy, advertising or trying to go viral will not create a strategy for you. You have to have a clear market fit, something that people love, a product or service people love.

[00:37:13] You know who that audience is. You know why they like you. If you come in with an existing business. Facebook ads is an amplifier of what's already working. TikTok is a fantastic amplifier of what's already working. YouTube will give you more of the same kinds of customers who already buy from you, but if you don't have that clear fit of who's buying and why they're buying and your product or service that people love, thinking that you can run ads to figure out a business strategy, is a very painful mistake to make.

[00:37:45] Chris Schwager: I love it. I love it. I'm, I've been mesmerized for the last near 40 minutes, so much great content. There's so much for us in terms of our, uh, advertising to think about as well. Back to just very quickly before we wrap up, back to the seven different hooks on seven different videos and and testing them out. And you said you launched, they were launched all at once. Was that all on the same platform and all organically?

[00:38:15] Dennis Yu: Yep. All organically and figure out which one worked best organically.

[00:38:18] Chris Schwager: So you are saying that then the history of that particular channel would have literally seven, seven of the same looking video.

[00:38:26] Dennis Yu: I said, Well don't you wanna whitewash it where you find which one was the winner and delete all the other ones? He's like, It doesn't matter cuz they didn't get any views and people don't scroll that far back anyway. And so we scroll through Alex and those are these other guys and we see lots of these ones that didn't win.

[00:38:39] It doesn't matter cause if it sucked, nope, nobody sees it.

[00:38:43] Chris Schwager: It's not like creating the the pretty sort of wall that Instagram has. Its literally dump it te and use it as a testing, testing ground.

[00:38:53] Dennis Yu: Just put it out there. I mean, love or hate Gary Vaynerchuck. He said something that I thought really struck me last week. He said, the reason people aren't making videos on TikTok is because they're afraid of being judged.

[00:39:07] Chris Schwager: Yeah. Human nature.

[00:39:08] Dennis Yu: That's exactly the issue. The the issue is not like, Well, I don't know what to say, or, I don't like my hair, or I don't wanna sing or dance or TikTok's for kids. No. It's simply the fact that you don't wanna be judged.

[00:39:20] You're afraid you're gonna put something out there and you'll get crickets, which is probably gonna happen. Or your video's gonna suck. Or you're not as attractive as that other guy, doesn't matter.

[00:39:29] Chris Schwager: Action creates action.

[00:39:30] Dennis Yu: Amen, Chris.

[00:39:33] Chris Schwager: And Dennis, this has just been very inspirational to us, particularly where we are at the moment in our advertising journey.

[00:39:40] Tell us how your audience can reach you.

[00:39:42] Dennis Yu: Google me.

[00:39:43] Chris Schwager: Google.

[00:39:43] Dennis Yu: That's when I knew my days were over at Yahoo. When the people on my team, other engineers on my team were saying, Just Google it. I said, do you know what company you work at? That's like being at the Honda dealership and saying, Oh yeah, just drive a Toyota.

[00:39:57] No, no, no, we work at Honda. You should, But trying to tell people to Yahoo, it didn't, you know, it doesn't sound quite the same.

[00:40:03] Chris Schwager: Got it. Well, if you wanna learn more about TikTok advertising or Dennis Yu uh, make sure you have a look in the show notes as well. Um, and he'll be there to, uh, to help you and answer all your questions.

[00:40:16] It's been a fun podcast, this one particularly for me, and I hope you as well. Using TikTok for your business may seem intimidating, but with the right strategy, you'll get the viewers you are looking for. Thanks for tuning in. That's all for this episode of Video Made Simple podcast. Thank you, Dennis Yu.

[00:40:36] Dennis Yu: Thank you, Chris,

[00:40:38] Chris Schwager: and see you next week.