1693 – The Ripple Effect with Ad Outreach’s Aleric Heck

Josh (00:00:04) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach, or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence.com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now Aleric Heck. Aleric. You are the founder and CEO of AD outreach, found in the web at AD Outreach. Com and keyword search. Com couple good domain names. And then, of course, your personal website, uh, which this is kind of rare. Not too many people get this, but it's your first name.

Josh (00:01:17) - Aleric. Dot com. That's Aleric. Com outreach. Thank you so much for joining us.

Aleric (00:01:24) - Thanks so much for having me on, Josh. I'm excited.

Josh (00:01:26) - Yeah. Well, you've got, uh, you know, you've got a few things here, uh, that you do. Can I just have you maybe explain in your words, uh, your impact in the world today?

Aleric (00:01:36) - Absolutely. So the impact that I love to have is, uh, what I call the ripple effect. And I really love to see the ripple effect that we can have when we work with businesses. And we can allow them to amplify their impact using marketing, using advertising, using video ads, which is really my specialty. What we can do is connect them with people that are looking for what that business does, what that person's unique gifts and talents and products and services are. And by doing that, we create a ripple effect of impact. And so I'll give you an example. One of our clients, Jared Ernie, he helps small businesses with their Google My business profile.

Aleric (00:02:14) - Right. So these are, you know, your Google reviews and that can make or break a local business. So you know, if you don't have your Google reviews in order, then you could be missing out on a lot of foot traffic. And so he actually came to us, you know, when a lot of things were shut down, uh, some of the small businesses used to be getting his clients. It wasn't really working as well. And, uh, and that was a few years ago now. And what he was able to do is work with us to actually have have us help him with YouTube ads to reach those local businesses looking to set up their Google My Business profile. And since that time, he's actually worked with hundreds of local businesses that have discovered him through YouTube ads that we helped him with. And if you think about it, that's what really inspires me. That's the impact is that's the ripple effect, because we're not just impacting Jared and his business and his family. And he's talked about, you know, the impact it's had for him.

Aleric (00:03:05) - He now is, you know, traveling all over the country in an RV with his family, having great experiences. But it's not just about him. It's about all the businesses that he impacts that he's able to connect with, with his services and really help them with their business. And then you think about those hundreds of businesses and then all the employees that they have, the communities they serve. That's what inspires me. And it's really all about the ripple effect of impact.

Josh (00:03:29) - Yeah. Um, and so what, uh, what do you see working? Well, um, in video based ads? Well, actually, before we get into that, why video over other, you know, text based content, uh, or, you know, just an image of someone holding up their new book and, you know, just kind of encouraging to click and buy their book or something.

Aleric (00:03:52) - Yeah. Well, one thing I love to say is if a picture is worth a thousand words of videos worth a million.

Aleric (00:03:57) - And the reason for that is you can really see someone connect with someone. You can hear them, you can see them talking to you. And that just creates such a bigger connection with that business, with that product, with that service, whatever it is, the person is advertising and marketing. And then you combine that. Right? And so that's what you would have in the past and on TV and some of these other areas. But the problem with that was it was a really good targeting. Right. You could just, you know, pick a few channels and then you have obviously all the social media ads where you Facebook ads and text ads, you you mentioned, you know, Google search ads and that has really good targeting, but it doesn't actually have that video component. The reason that I've specialized in YouTube ads, and I believe so strongly in them, is it takes the best of both sides. It takes video where you're connecting with your viewers. They're watching. Sound is on by default, which isn't the case in, you know, other platforms.

Aleric (00:04:50) - On YouTube. Sound is on, people are watching. There's, you know, video. You can actually demonstrate or illustrate your expertise or your products or your services, and you can target the right people at the right time. So you can actually target specific audiences to reach the right people on YouTube. And that's why YouTube ads are so powerful.

Josh (00:05:09) - Yeah. Um, so what would be an example of a YouTube ad that when you see it, you kind of roll your eyes and going, oh, come on, that doesn't work. Yeah. But yet you might be seeing out there.

Aleric (00:05:21) - Yeah. So I think that, uh, I'll give a good illustration of this. Right. It's the people that aren't the major companies aren't the major brands, but they try to create ads like a major brand, but they're looking for results today, direct response results. So you see some of these big companies, you know, Geico and Ford, and they have the 1530 second ads. And there's not really a clear call to action.

Aleric (00:05:45) - They're not actually providing a lot of value. Yeah. It's kind of the classic ad that you would expect on TV. Sure. And the problem with that is we have been trained our entire lives to tune those ads out. And it's really just. Reinforce that those ads have an impact. You, you know, hear these jingles enough times and then you create, you know, even subconsciously that memory recall, but you're not actually actively engaged saying, oh, I think I'm going to get insurance or buy a car right now. Whereas a lot of business owners, you know, who are small and mid-sized businesses that are looking for direct response ads, they want to run an ad, get a return today, have people go ahead and purchase. Well, you can't just play the same game that these TV companies are doing. What you need to do, or TV style ads are doing. What you need to do is actually create ads that speak to your audience and actually provide value. Educate them on your product, services, expertise, whatever happens to be, and then have a clear and concise call to action to get them off the platform.

Aleric (00:06:44) - So it's hook you draw people in, educate, you provide actual value, you demonstrate expertise, product services, and then you have a clear call to action so you can get them to take action today from that ad.

Josh (00:06:58) - Yeah. Um, and what types of clients do you typically work with?

Aleric (00:07:04) - Yeah. So a wide variety of different clients. Um, so we work with everything from people who are selling, you know, kind of information and services to businesses that are like mattress companies, uh, to, you know, people selling e-commerce and shoes to software. So, you know, funnel design software, a wide variety of different businesses and companies. And typically what we find works best is if you have something that is demonstrated or there's some type of expertise or education you can provide, because people go on YouTube for one of two reasons. They go on YouTube to be entertained or they go on YouTube to learn. And if you can really tap into when they're looking to learn and provide value, you can get really good results.

Josh (00:07:49) - Yeah. Uh, and in our tell me about, uh, you know, so obviously we've been kind of talking about the work that you do with ad outreach and, and would you call ad outreach kind of an agency is, is that kind of how you work with your clients?

Aleric (00:08:02) - So it's more of a consulting style company. So we come into businesses and we train their teams on how YouTube ads work. Uh, we help them script out their ads. We've got copywriters on our team that will, you know, script out ads, and then we have ad strategists that will go in and help set up those campaigns. But then we're also training the internal teams, um, to know how to be able to run them long term. And so what we found is that works really well, because that way you can have someone on your team that can eat, sleep and breathe those ads. Um, well, we are able to actually train them on the best strategy. And so that's where that's how we've been able to to work with thousands and thousands of different businesses, training them in YouTube ads and, you know, have their teams be able to have the skill set to scale up from there.

Josh (00:08:46) - Yeah. Um, all right. So let's talk about uh, and again, that's ad outreach comm. Um, and, and is this new keyword search comm? I mean, certainly we're talking about super supercharging your ad audiences with AI strikes me as something that's a little bit newer.

Aleric (00:09:02) - Yes. So this iteration of keyword search is definitely newer. Uh, over the last, um, about, uh, six, seven months or so has been, uh, the AI element of keyword search. But keyword search itself has actually existed for about two years. So two years ago, uh, originally we launched as more of an internal product that we were able to use for our clients. And we had some interest, you know, some agencies and people wanted to utilize it, but essentially, originally it was finding, uh, YouTube keywords using, um, uh, just kind of manual search. So it wasn't AI, it was just kind of, you know, manual keyword research, but it was specifically for YouTube ads and YouTube keywords that you could use to target ads, or you could use to to rank videos on YouTube.

Aleric (00:09:46) - And this is something that our clients needed already because we were, you know, targeting these YouTube ads in front of the right people. So we needed to do this keyword research, um, to be able to build out these audiences and put the keywords in the audiences. When I came out, I saw a massive opportunity. Not sure, not that it just came out, but like when it really rose to prominence last, last fall. And so I worked with my CTO, Greg, to really just re-engineer keyword search from the ground up. And what we were able to do is actually make what we call an AI audience builder. And so this is where what we do with keywords are completely transformed, because essentially what you could do is just go inside of keyword search, describe your business, uh, just in plain English, and click Generate Audiences. You can do that in 30s. And what it'll do is it'll give you all of the different YouTube keywords, uh, Google search terms, uh, for, for targeting, uh, it'll give you different URLs that people go to, which, for instance, you can set up what are called a URL, uh, affinity audience.

Aleric (00:10:47) - So anybody who's been to this site or similar sites, you could target them with YouTube and Google ads. It'll give you YouTube channels. People are likely watching apps they have installed on their phone. You can use all of those to target, and it does. All of it in literally seconds. And then you can sync those directly to Google Ads. So you just choose which targeting options you want, click sync to Google Ads, and then now you have a full built audience for YouTube ad targeting. And people also use it for Google search ad targeting as well in other Google targeting. And so essentially, yeah, that's what that's what keyword search is and how we added the AI elements.

Josh (00:11:22) - Can you think of any maybe product categories or service categories. Um, that maybe might not work really well. Um, in video maybe you've tried it and like, yeah, that one just seems to be a little tougher there for video.

Aleric (00:11:35) - Yes. I and and so and this is more specifically on YouTube. But I would also say, you know, video as well.

Aleric (00:11:43) - One big thing that I've seen is kind of very, very lower ticket e-commerce products or um, products that are either being dropped, shipped or, you know, where the margins aren't quite there. And those are just hard to advertising in general. But those are some of the rare cases where I might say, maybe go look where where, you know, the CPMs are a little bit lower, um, you know, the cost per per thousand impressions or the cost per, you know, for impressions are gonna be a little bit lower. Some of these other places, just because these lower priced items and also if it's things that aren't necessarily if it's more commoditized and there's not really an education component, then it's a little bit overkill to possibly do, uh, do the video, you know, do video style ads. And it might be better to run something like either Amazon ads or ads in different places, um, that are going to be more direct for what that what that product is. Um, that said, higher priced e-commerce, uh, you know, products, uh, definitely, uh, work well, and it doesn't even have to be that high of price.

Aleric (00:12:41) - Uh, typically what we see is if you can get your AOV close, close to, uh, or over $100, then you're going to see some, some really strong success on YouTube. But not a lot of not all products are in that price range. So the lower priced e-commerce products sometimes run into challenges.

Josh (00:12:57) - Yeah. Um, I want to congratulate you. So you just landed on the Inc 5000 for your third year in a row. You started at outreach in your college dorm room. Uh, and, you know, clearly, again, you've had growth, uh, pretty consistently through the years. So what are you doing that I mean, there are plenty of consultants out there that that work in this space. What would you say that you're doing that has led to your growth, where maybe others have maybe struggled with that growth?

Aleric (00:13:29) - Thank you. And I often give a lot of credit to my team as well. We got incredible dream team ad outreach that, you know, we all work together.

Aleric (00:13:35) - So it's it's not just myself. Um, it's the entire team as well. And to answer your question, I think the the big secret to our success has really been focusing and dialing in on YouTube ads specifically, and training other companies on how it works. So you talked about how that was unique. A lot of businesses, right? When they learn a strategy and they have it really mastered as they go, one of two routes, right? They either go the agency route where they typically will work with fewer, but, you know, higher end clients to dive really deep and manage all their ads. And at the same time, that adds a layer of complexity. It's not always the best for clients either, because it's essentially renting it. Right? So it's not actually having that company be able to integrate that into their business. But then the other side is there's kind of this industry of selling courses. But the problem is a lot of, you know, businesses, especially if they're more seasoned business owners, they know that, of course, it's not all one size fits.

Aleric (00:14:31) - All right. You need somebody to actually help you implement. And so what we were able to do is kind of forge a path right in the middle where we have a done together, you know, co-pilot process. We're working together to yes, there's elements that we do for our clients, like, you know, scripting out ads, helping them set up some of their initial campaigns. But then what we're also doing is we're also helping them, um, learn how the strategy works and implement it into their team and training their team so they know how to take and run those ads long term.

Josh (00:15:01) - Yeah. Excellent. All right, so, uh, let's let's talk about where folks go from here. Uh, you know, obviously, you provide a lot of value in the world. Uh, someone's been listening to our conversation. Um, what would you what would you recommend they do next?

Aleric (00:15:16) - Absolutely. So I've got a free gift for anybody who's listening or watching. Um, and what this is, is my full 19 page YouTube ad strategy PDF.

Aleric (00:15:24) - It's step by step. There's no fluff. Completely free. It's ad outreach.com/gift. That's a d o UT r e com slash gift. Uh, and you'll be able to go there and get my full 19 page YouTube ad strategy PDF. And if you want to learn more, there'll also be a link to book a call with our team. And we're happy to have a complimentary call to walk you through what we'd recommend.

Josh (00:15:47) - Yeah. And as far as, um, you know what what you want to see more of in the world, like, you know, it's like if you had one, you know, kind of call to action or kind of one thing is like, listen, business owners, if, if, if you don't remember anything else that I just shared with you in this whole interview, remember this one thing. What, what how do you think we could sum that up?

Aleric (00:16:10) - Yeah, I think that it's just how it's so powerful to be able to connect with people on video. Right? It's the second best thing to actually seeing people in person live and in person.

Aleric (00:16:22) - We think about it, you know, we're on this this zoom, you know, video interview right now. And there's so much opportunity for you to connect with your ideal clients on video. And I know a lot of businesses, a lot of brands, a lot of entrepreneurs are a little bit, uh, you know, self-conscious about getting out there on video or putting their products on video. But I would really encourage you to do it because video is the primary way to connect with people. When you can't be there in person. People can see, hear. You can demonstrate, uh, your expertise, your product, your services. There is so much power on video. And one of the reasons that YouTube and YouTube ads work so well is you can then take that video and get in front of the exact right people at the right time, and that can make some incredible things happen.

Josh (00:17:06) - I love it, Aleric. Heck. Uh, your personal website. I just want to mention this, uh, again, al recom al recom, uh, anything that like who would, who should who should go to that website.

Aleric (00:17:18) - Yeah. So anybody who is interested in some of the different things that I am building, we also have, you know, plans for a podcast and a book coming up as well. Those are going to be likely launched towards the start of next year, which can be really exciting. So they'll be launched together. And so I'm building up the personal brand, uh, is more of a recent thing as well. Also, in addition to, you know, appearing on more of these types of podcasts. So you can go to Aleric. Com and then of course there's keyword search comm. That is my I audience research uh, software.

Josh (00:17:49) - And one last time on the free gift to.

Aleric (00:17:51) - Yes. It's ad outreach.com/gift/gift ad outreach.com/gift.

Josh (00:17:58) - All right. Our great. Thank you so much Aleric. Thank you so much for joining us again. Founder of AD outreach and Keyword Search Comm. Thank you so much Alec.

Aleric (00:18:07) - Thanks, Josh.

Josh (00:18:14) - Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence.

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