YouTube advertising strategies ft. Shash Singh (Inbound Success, Ep. 203)

Who is YouTube Advertising right for, and how do top brands get big results from it?

This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Linx Digital founder Shash Singh breaks down his approach to YouTube advertising. Shash and the team at Linx are YouTube ad specialists. It's all they do, and as a result of that specialization, they've been able to get great results for a wide variety of brands across a range of industries.

In this episode, Shash explains how YouTube advertising works and shares the ad formats that he believes deliver the biggest bang for your marketing buck. He also digs into details around how to film your ad, how long it should be, and how to set up audience targeting.

Check out the full episode to get the details. (Transcript has been edited for clarity.)

Resources from this episode:

• Check out the Linx Digital website
• Check out Shash's YouTube channel

 

Shash and Kathleen recording this episode.

Transcript

Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and this week, my guest is Shash Singh, who is the CEO of Linx digital. Welcome to the podcast, Shash.

Shash (00:32): Thanks for having me on here. I'm really excited.

Kathleen (00:35): Yeah, this should be a fun conversation because we are going to be talking about YouTube advertising, which is something that I have touched on a little bit in former interviews, but we really haven't dug in to any level of depth. And I do feel like there's so much potential there, but also so much potential to screw it up if you don't know what you're doing. And so I'm really excited to pick your brain. But before we do that, can you just tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and Linx digital and how you came to be doing what you're doing?

Shash (01:06): So basically I got started with YouTube ads five or six years ago. But one of my friends, he runs a fitness program and fitness coaching business, and his business is called Body. And he basically wanted me to run YouTube ads. And at that point, I'd never run paid ads ever in my life before. So it was an interesting experience, but within two weeks we were profitable, and I think within three weeks, we're scaling to $5,000 a day ad spend. So it was pretty impressive in terms of how powerful this platform was. And after that, I kind of fell in love with YouTube advertising, did it for a bunch more clients, started an agency about it, and now we do trainings about it. So basically, [I’ve] just kind of really enjoyed going in deep into this platform.

Kathleen (01:49): And so does Linx digital really only do YouTube advertising, or does it do other things as well?

Shash (01:56): Well, we occasionally do some Facebook advertising or some little search advertising, but our core focus is YouTube ads. So that's what people come to us for.

Kathleen (02:04): I love that. I love that you've been brave enough to sort of plant your flag in the sand and say, this is what we're going to do, and we're going to specialize in it. And we're not afraid to go really niche. I think that these days with digital marketing things change so quickly and the only way to really develop deep expertise is to focus. So that's awesome. All right, so let's get into this topic of YouTube advertising. I guess I would start with who is YouTube advertising, right? Because I have to imagine there, are certain types of businesses or certain audiences you may be able to try to reach that are a better fit for it than others.

Shash (02:44): Honestly, at this point, I'd say YouTube, that's going to work for a lot of different types of businesses. Even B2B, B2C e-commerce courses, anything really lead generation for local. The main thing you have to keep in mind is, can you make the numbers work? Right? So, for example, if you're selling an e-commerce product, you want to sell something that's a little bit higher price, because if you're selling something that's $20, it's most likely not going to work in a way that's profitable for you. On the other hand, if you're selling an $80 e-commerce product, I usually have a much higher acceptable cost per acquisition, and that kind of makes those numbers work. So that's the key thing there in terms of audiences at this point, pretty much everybody's on YouTube. I believe one of the fastest-growing segments on YouTube is actually older demographics, right?

Shash (03:33): So I don't think it's an issue of like, oh, is this person on YouTube? Even if you're in B2B, right? You can actually use some of these advanced audiences that Google has. For example, they have custom audiences where you can plug in a competitor's URL and basically Google will go and try and find people that are similar to that. People who visit that website. So we've even, for many B2B companies basically it can work quite well. And we've worked with some SAS companies as well that have done really well with YouTube ads. So really [it] can work for a lot of different businesses. Ultimately, [you] just want to make sure that you have a solid funnel and a backend and the numbers work out for you.

Kathleen (04:12): So it sounds like almost any type of business could use it. And then you said something which resonated with me, which is everybody's using YouTube, right? I certainly [know] everyone from my 14-year-old son, who is on it basically [using it] all day long, to myself, like I watch things on there as well. So I think it's safe to say that we're all familiar with YouTube as users, but advertising is a very different side of YouTube. So could you just talk a little bit about that? How is YouTube advertising set up? What are the different types of ads? We'll start there and then we'll see where that takes us.

Shash (04:55): So you do have a bunch of different ad formats. The ones we like to focus in on are the in-stream ads. So the in-stream ads are basically the ads that show up before you're about to watch a video. So let's say you click on a video and before you have another ad show up, it's the five seconds to skip. Basically, you have five seconds and then you can skip afterwards and that's the main format, right? And that's basically the format that gets the best results for us. Now, there are other ad formats, for example, this responsive [kind] which kind of shows up in a bunch of different places, but typically most of our budget is spent on those entry ads. And then there's a lot of other formats as well. Right? So we have the, basically for the in-stream ads, what we do is we use TrueView for action, which is really focused on getting conversions, but there's also ads like bumper ads and for six-second in-stream ads that basically you can't skip, there's non-skippable 15- and 30-second ads as well. So there's different ad formats, depending on what you're trying to do. If you're doing direct response TrueView for action, in-stream ads are what you want to do.

Kathleen (05:57): TrueView for action. OK. I have a lot of questions. All right. The first one is, why do you focus on in-stream? What is it about in-stream that you feel is so valuable?

Shash (06:11): Well, I mean, it gets results now that are just like discovery ads, which are kind of like, you know, you'll click on it. It shows up in the search results, you click on it, and it will take you to a video. However, in-stream just works really, really well. Right? Like it's pretty much in every account. It's like the majority of our budget because it just performs so well. You're basically able to just go in and grab people's attention and be able to compel them to take action. And YouTube has put a lot of, Google and YouTube have put a lot of resources into making that whole in-stream ad format work really well.

Kathleen (06:41): Okay. So you mentioned Google, Google, and YouTube, the relationship there. You know people who are listening I'm sure have done lots of advertising on different platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook. Many of them have probably done Google pay-per-click. What's different about the YouTube advertising kind of interface and management?

Shash (07:03): So basically the YouTube ... so obviously Google owns YouTube and because of that, you're using Google ads as a platform. So if you're running search campaigns, display campaigns, YouTube campaigns, essentially [you’re] doing it from the same account, same place. So that makes things a lot easier. And one of the benefits of Google owning YouTube is you get to use Google's massive source of data, which is the world's biggest search engine. And the world's second-biggest search engine is YouTube. So the massive scale is something that really is cool with YouTube ads, especially because you can go and leverage the data from Google in the sense of somebody can search something on Google.com and, you know, they could search, for example, the best enterprise software for small electricians, right? And you could target that search term on YouTube. So you could show that person an ad on YouTube. So that's really powerful because a lot of times these search terms on Google.com are extremely expensive, extremely, cost per click is very high, but then if you reach the target, basically if you're able to target them with a video ad, you're going to be able to get significantly cheaper click costs. So these custom intent audiences basically are incredibly, incredibly powerful. And one of the key reasons why I love YouTube ads so much.

Kathleen (08:17): So you use the Google ads interface and there, it sounds like there are a lot of different ways that you can set up targeting. You mentioned targeting for keyword search intent. I'm familiar with a lot of the other ways that Google allows targeting. Can you use those same targeting approaches, such as custom audience match lists lookalikes, what are the options there?

Shash (08:49): So as I mentioned, custom intent, which is basically a type of custom audience where you target people based on what they search on Google. There's custom affinity, which is a custom audience based on a URL or even an app that you can put in. So you could literally put in your competitor's URL and Google will try to find people that are similar to that. And the reason they can do that is because they have all this data from Google analytics from basically, obviously search engine, etc., where they have massive troves of data to make these assumptions and help you with these audiences. And these audiences often are favorites, and on other audience types include keywords. So basically, based on the metadata of YouTube videos, so the title, the description, and so on, where you're able to target videos that are about a certain topic.

Shash (09:39): You also have placements where you can specify the target channels are videos. So if you have a competitor and they have a YouTube channel, you can show your ad in front of them, which is really, really powerful if you're basically trying to get your competitor's audience base right into your funnel. And then there's in-market audiences, which is Google's basically audiences of people that are interested in buying something. So there are in-market audiences for let's say, automobiles or home and garden, or beauty, there's like all kinds of categories, right? So you could dig in and this, I believe there's even like hair, hair extensions for hair lashes. So you literally have so many audience types. There's topics, which are videos about certain topics, like broad topics there's affinity, which is basically based on interests. So it's like, oh, these people are interested in XYZ. And then there's also similar audiences, which is kind of Google's version of lookalike audiences. So there are a lot of different options. And a lot of times in certain pumps, some work really well, some don't work well, but because you have this vast number of options, there's definitely a lot of different things you can do with that.

Kathleen (10:50): Wow. So you mentioned earlier, cost. How does the cost per click compare on YouTube to maybe other forms of Google ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.? 

Shash (11:05): So the cost per click, for example, as compared to Google search, it'll be significantly lower. As compared to let's say display, it's going to be more expensive because it displays usually far less qualified clicks. And as compared to Facebook, it can really depend on niche. Some niches, it can be a little bit lower, some niches, it can be higher, but the traffic is very, very qualified. Typically [I] find that YouTube graphic ads works well. And usually, they're long-term buyers, people who are usually very interested, especially if you're targeting them with a targeting option that you know they're basically, let's say they're watching a video about that topic, right? That's a really good lead.

Kathleen (11:42): Yeah. Interesting. So, I mean, it sounds like it makes sense to consider for almost any business. I think the thing that might seem intimidating to people is like, it's video. Right? I’ve got to create a video, correct? Like if you're doing an industry ad, you're creating video for your advertising, right?

Shash (12:01): Absolutely. That's something that scares a lot of people. But it's actually not that hard. So, for example, if you're running an ad for, let's say, a software company, right? It's not that hard. You could literally take kind of a, you know, basically a selfie video as like a selfie iPhone camera, and then pair that with a lapel mic and be able to shoot simple ads. There are a lot of people who run software that have been able to do that. Now, obviously, you can go the whole production route, basically what Grammarly or monday.com have done, but you can just start simple with a selfie video ad. So the key thing to understand is you've got to start somewhere and that video, in general, is a huge competitive advantage today. If you're not using video, it's basically one of the formats of communication that's just the most effective and consumers love video, right? There's been so many studies on it, landing pages with video typically perform better. Product pages with video, perform better. People kind of want to see and watch basically video of what they're about to buy because you get so much more information than images and touch. So it's absolutely something that you should dive into. And basically any business that has a core competency, then [with] video, typically their marketing efforts just do so much better.

Kathleen (13:18): So you talked about using your cell phone camera and a lapel mic to create video, but I have to admit I'm skeptical because I feel like, yes, it's easy to do those kinds of videos, but I also have to believe that there are certain things that you need to do to create a video that's really going to drive conversions because it's not about just getting your video out there. It's obviously about inspiring action. So can you break down what you found in your experience makes for a high-converting video?

Shash (14:54): Absolutely. So you need to follow a structure and you need to basically be able to hit those persuasion triggers. The first piece of that puzzle is the hook, right? Like you've got to grab their attention. Basically, the way you want to think about it is you need to like basically grab them by the throat, would be like “pay attention.” So the way we do that is really often say a controversial statement, or we'll call up, call out our [inaudible] audio. Or we'll call out our ideal audience with their major pain point, right? So we'll say something like, “Hey, are you” … let's, let's go with a local electrician example, right? I don't know why I came up with that idea, but let's say, “are you a local, are you an electrician that's just tired of your expensive software bills for a program that you don't even know how to use?”

Shash (15:43): And then basically that step and you've grabbed their attention. And it's also something that kind of calls them out and they're like, “oh yeah, this ad is for me.” Maybe he has a … there might be a solution to this pain point I'm having right now, right? So the key to any YouTube ad is really knowing your customer's pain point and being able to really grab their attention with that pain point, right? So they're motivated to keep watching. And after that, what you'll want to do is you will want to start building some authority and credibility. You'll want to show them how your product works and why they should even consider basically checking out whatever you're giving them. And you'll want to make sure that it's very strong calls-to-action. So to continue on with the treadmills as an electrician …

Shash (16:29): So let's say, “Hey, are you a local electrician that's just tired of overly expensive software that you don't know how to use and that's buggy. And it's basically not helping your business in any way?” And then the second part of that I imagine would be something like, “So I used to be a local electrician, and that was a huge pain point for me until I decided to build my own software specifically for us, because, you know, I'm an electrician as well. And so I decided to build this software called whatever. And we basically talked to thousands of electricians to figure out how to build the best solution. That doesn't have, let's say this common issue that they have typically that their software [has] or this issue,” and then actually show them the product and perhaps show them that.

Shash (17:24): Imagine if you could just, let's say, call up all, or imagine if you could send out a quote and just one easy click, right? And imagine if you could, let's say, be able to get your subcontractors to bill you in one easy system, right? So now you're actually showing them what that is about. So from there, you'll go into call-to-action and tell them, “Hey, if you want a free trial click the link below.” Or for example, what we do a lot is send them to some sort of case study. So one angle you could go with this is if you want to see a free case study on how we use this tool to double the revenue of our business in less than a year and all the tactics and strategies we use, then that's a big to do it.

Shash (18:07): So a lot of this, you know, as you brainstorm it, you come up with it, but you kind of have that base structure, which is [inaudible]. You want to call your audience out. You want to show them the products and its benefits. You want to build some party and building, right? Like why is a, you know, for e-commerce products, right? Often I've seen some of them use research or others have used personal experience, right? Like, “I've actually done this,” or “I've been in your position.” So that's one way of building a party and credibility. Another way is, “Hey, I've helped over 5,000 people with this problem.” And then from there, your first call to action, where you tell them, “Hey, click the link above or below to go get this free training, free trial, free you know, basically lead magnet, case study, etc.” 

Shash (18:51): And then from there, you might want to show some social proof and show them that, “Hey yeah...” Maybe show them basically a sliding wall of testimonials and the videos. So like half the video [can] just be testimonials, or you can even clip in videos of happy clients, like quick 10 second clips. It could even be potential, you know, other forms of social proof, like you've featured in Forbes magazine, etc. So from there, you can have another call to action because you always want to have at least two calls to action, and you want to tell them, “Hey, click the link below to go sign up for this free trial.” And the key here that you’ve got to understand is, once you actually start running basically YouTube ads, you will get a good feel for it. But also the biggest thing to do is you’ve got to be, you’ve got to do preparation for us, right? So number one is use this tool called vidtao.com. t And this is a completely free tool. That's what we use to find really great video ads. So we will just use that and be able to just basically enter in a competitor's name [inaudible] to video ads. And then you can see how many views that ad got. And typically if it's gotten a ton of views, you know that that ad has done really, really well.

Kathleen (20:08): Oh, that's a good tip. It sounds like timing is really key. So you mentioned, in the beginning, having a hook and is that because with in-stream ads … I mean, at least my experience has been like, you have a certain number of seconds before the person is given the option to skip the ad.

Shash (20:25): Yeah. So you have five seconds before they're given the option to skip that. So you want to really grab their attention in the first five seconds.

Kathleen (20:31): So you have to have the hook quick. You know, don't bury the lead, as they say in journalism. Okay. And then I also would imagine from a timing standpoint, that overall length of the video is pretty important. Like have, do you see people drop off after a certain amount of time? Is there a standard length that you think performs really well?

Shash (20:54): I would say we've had ads from 45 seconds to three, four minutes long work. Typically what I say is the ad is as long as it needs to be. So don't try to artificially make it longer. But if you need to add more length, do cover the key persuasion points or cover the key benefits of your product. You may need to add a little bit more to it, right? Because some products are software may just need more explanation, right? So some might be super simple and might only require a 60-second ad so that ultimately the length is something you can test, but the key is you don't want any fluff in there. If there's fluff, you want to get rid of it.

Kathleen (21:34): And is your call to action always at the end? Or do you ever have anything sort of in the middle?

Shash (21:39): Typically two calls to action at the minimum, sometimes even three. But typically one call to action that's maybe somewhere in the middle, right? Like at least 30, 45 seconds in, and then you'll have the second and third calls to action be a bit later. They could be different, but usually, you'll, if you're, let's say, sending them to a case study, right? You, there's probably only like a couple of different ways to say, click the link above or below to go check out this case study, right? You could do different variations, but it's like in the first one you could focus on “click the link above or below to check out this case study where we show you how we doubled our client's revenue with a strategy.” And then the second one could be perhaps another benefit point: “click the link up or below to see how the reduced amount of time our client works in his business by 50%,” right? Like, if you have perhaps multiple parts of the case study, you can kind of play on that and use different CTAs to basically get clicks from people who are looking for different things.

Kathleen (22:42): OK. So let's say somebody does this. They get their video, all done, they get it set up, they have their audience ready to go, and then they go to launch the ad from a budget standpoint. How much do you think somebody should expect to spend in the beginning in order to have a viable chance of the ad being successful?

Shash (23:02): So with YouTube ads, I would recommend a minimum of $100 a day as a test budget. That typically gives you some good data fairly fast., If you're trying to be more aggressive, you can go up $200, $300 a day. Usually, you'll want multiple ads. So the one to test the ads, the hubs you can look at, and you can edit them in that way, you can get some variations and you can see which hook grabs the most attention. And then, but we typically will also recommend that, okay, you want to have a couple different bodies, right? So we might have two different pubs, two different bodies, that's four variations. And that allows you to kind of have a much better idea of what's working and not working. And then based on which ad does the best you can go and modify the landing page to basically be congruent with that messaging.

Shash (23:51): Ultimately it comes down to testing a lot of ads and then tweaking your landing pages to be able to figure out what's working and not working. Or sometimes you'll get lucky, and your first kind of ad and landing page combination just works amazing. If you've done a lot of Facebook ads and search ads, it's going to be a lot faster for you because you already know the process of testing kind of creators. You already know how media buying works. If it's your first time doing media buying, it's probably going to take a little bit longer.

Kathleen (24:17): So that was going to be one of my questions. So it's like, once you get it all set up and it's running, how much time should you give it before you make that keep-or-cut decision?

Shash (24:29): That's a good question. Ultimately what I would say is it depends on a few things, right? The first thing is, before you even run ads, you've got to figure out if it's realistic to make YouTube ads work for your offer. What we find is higher ticket offers for e-commerce offers that a higher price, info product offers at a higher price or SAS products that are, either you have some way of collecting money upfront, or you have, you know, basically you're okay with spending a couple of months of basically revenue from the recurring to get that right. So if you're selling software, you know your lifetime value is like $900 and that's over nine months, let's say it's 99 a month. So nine months or 10 months, that's $900. And let's say, it's the average cost per acquisition for $100 a month.

Shash (25:23): Customer [inaudible] is $350. So if you have venture capital, then that's a no-brainer deal because you know, you're going to make $900 and you spent $350. However, if you don't have venture capital. Then that makes it really tricky because you don't have three and a half months of cash flow to basically put into it. So what you need to do is figure out a creative solution and usually software companies that have been able to do that, what they do is they'll typically either do a bundle. So you'll have maybe a year upfront or they'll perhaps have a training or some sort of front-end offers. So what that, what I've seen software like ClickFunnels do is they will literally have a $997 info product that has their front end offer and then ClickFunnels bundled in the back. And I've seen this with multiple different niches.

Shash (26:05): It's basically you have the training program, but maybe a couple months of the software. And then, because you're collecting a thousand dollars up front, you're profitable on the front end, and then you also have the recurring on the back end, and that's just purely a way of how you structure your offer. Now, on the other hand, if you're trying to just, you know, basically let's say you have a 10-month-based customer retention rate, they stay for 10 months and you make $900 from that. But the issue is that you're spending $350 to get them and you don't have the capital for that. Then your YouTube is not going to work for you unless you figure out either a venture capital or you figure out how to structure your [offer] in a way where you collect that money upfront. So what's really, really important is just figure that out before you run ads.

Kathleen (26:49): OK. That makes sense. And then once you're running your ads, what is your kind of routine for how often do you check back in and kind of watch performance so that you're able to tweak and optimize?

Shash (27:03): I'm checking every day. So every single day go in and chat. So basically the way we optimize is on the ad level. So, you know, there's the campaign level: Does the ad group level? And then, this is the ad level. So we usually just look at all the ads and if an ad starts getting out of KPIs, then we'll just pause it.

Kathleen (27:19): Okay. All right. So let's shift gears for a second and we've talked a lot about how it works and kind of what you should be doing and watching. Let's talk about some examples because you've worked with a number of different clients. Can you share some stories, success stories, or examples of where you've done YouTube ads and what kind of results you've been able to get with them?

Shash (27:41): Yeah. So, for example, B2B, they ran ads for a software company called Helium10. I think they probably spend like a couple of hundred thousand dollars over their lifetime. And it was a pretty good traffic source for them, fairly profitable in terms of their long-term customer value in terms of companies that are more in the info-product space. So if you, nobody's a really good example because basically, I got in there, started running the ads, and we're spending a new year's $5,000 a day and making $10,000 to $15,000 a day back. And it also got him Device Magazine because the ad was just so interesting and so controversial that he was kind of talking about it.

Shash (28:28): I see. So it was a nice little bonus as well on top of the profit. So that's a great example of where, not only did the ad generate really great direct response results, but we also ended up getting a lot of branding out of it because a ton of YouTubers started making videos about its ad, a ton of people on different farms started talking about him. Everybody just started talking about the ad, and, you know, it led to the point where the organic growth from the ad was probably just as powerful as the pay pros from the ad. Other clients we've worked with, the Amazing Selling Machine, the renter ads, for a couple of years. And yeah, YouTube was just a huge, huge basically revenue source for them, generated multi-millions from YouTube. And ultimately just came down to, they had a really good funnel and the ads were really good.

Shash (29:16): So we scripted a lot of these ads and then they will just execute it because they just had a videographer and the founders, Matt and Jason, would just jump on the camera and shoot ads. They were really good about it. They've all finished ads. So that's a great example as well. So yeah, basically different niches, Indestructible Shoes, for example, that's an e-commerce brand. So we were able to generate $1.2 million for them with e-commerce YouTube ads. So e-commerce can work as well. E-commerce is often easier because of the fact that there's less competition. You just got to figure out the video part. So you've got to put more effort into the video for them. We found a production agency that we partnered with to create video ads and those video ads just absolutely did so, so well because they were well thought out, well-produced, you know, kind of just, there was effort put into it, right? So if you're doing e-commerce YouTube ads, you do have to put effort into it, unlike with Facebook, where you can just put an image ad on there.

Kathleen (30:11): Yeah, that makes sense. What do you see as the biggest mistakes that brands make when they start doing YouTube advertising?

Shash (30:19): So usually the biggest mistake I see is they've tried to take their Facebook ads, creative and strategy, and use that for YouTube ads. So Facebook ads, campaign and optimization strategy, audience strategies, and then also the creators where, you know, on Facebook, a lot of times you can run like the super simple video ads, just slide shows, and there's no voiceover, there's just some music on the background and they do well on Facebook, but on YouTube, they don't work, because on YouTube, number one, people expect the human touch, right? They, at the very least, expect a human voice, even if there's not a person in the video, even if it's not after they want somebody that's guiding them through this video, right? They don't want it to be kind of just like background music, because of the fact that everything on YouTube has basically a voice, you know, even music videos have a voice.

Shash (31:07): There's usually somebody that's, a lot of commentary videos that people will share their screen or, you know, show a video game while they're commenting or they'll do animation with a voiceover or they'll have live action where they're basically in front of the camera, even if it's selfie-style or if it's just them pop in front of camera. But this all is that human element, right? And a big part of that is when you're running a YouTube ad, right? The video ad isn't muted by default, while on Facebook, a lot of times, you know, you'll see a video ad on the newsfeed and they're all automatically muted, right? You have to click the button to listen to [inaudible]. So that's something that just makes a huge difference, where you need to make sure you have that voice or human element to it.

Kathleen (31:48): Is it important to have captions on your video ads and YouTube?

Shash (31:53): It's worth testing? I don't think it's absolutely essential. It does help as a visual aid. It doesn't even necessarily need to be like captions of every single word you say, but it could be literally like key emphasis moments. So you could emphasize that, but we've definitely used a lot of captions in our video ads and that definitely helped significantly. And in split tests, we've run. However, in certain ads you want to just make sure it doesn't look, you know, if you have a really cinematic app, typing captions on the bottom that are hard-coded and it's, it just looks can be distracting. Yeah. That's for sure. 

Kathleen (32:25): Interesting. All right. We're going to change gears again because I have two questions that I always ask my guests. And I'm curious to hear your take on these. First being, of course, we talk all about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days?

Shash (32:46): Marketers? Huh? That's a great question. I would definitely say in terms of pure marketing genius, I like Alex Becker. He's got really good marketing skills, some of the best I've seen. Yeah, I think he's just really good at understanding human psychology and being able to hit those triggers and pain points and being, you know, not necessarily being the most sophisticated marketer, but being the most efficient and effective. Like he's very good at that. So I really, really liked his marketing methods. I also think [audio lost]

Kathleen (33:34): You just cut out when you said your second one. So can you start over when you said, “I also think” and just start there?

Shash (33:43): Yeah. So I also think that my second pick would be Ryan Deiss and the whole DigitalMarketer crew. They just do such an excellent job. They're really, really good.

Kathleen (33:53): Yeah. They're great. I know those guys and they're very sharp and Ryan is a real go-getter. Awesome. All right. Second question. Most of the marketers I speak with, their biggest challenge is just keeping up with everything that's changing in the world of digital marketing, staying on top of, you know, the new regulations, the new algorithms, the new tools, the new strategies. How do you personally keep up to date and keep yourself educated?

Shash (34:19): So, I mean, the number one thing is you just gotta be inside the ad concept because that's where you're gonna see stuff first. Number two is obviously, I would say just having the network of people who do the same thing. So for me, I talked to a lot of YouTube marketers. So on top of our own media buyers, I talked to guys like Tom Breeze, and l basically other experts, Brian Moncada, for example. And these are guys that I often communicate with. Then, you know, basically being in that circle, you kind of get that information first because sometimes you might dig into an issue and bring it to [their] attention, or sometimes they'll do it. But typically, if you surround yourself with marketers who are doing the same thing, you'll get it a lot faster.

Kathleen (35:13): Great. All right. Well, if somebody is listening and they have a question for you or they want to learn more, what is the best way for them to connect with you online?

Shash (35:26): So the first resource I would check out is our YouTube channel. If you look up Shash Singh, so S-H-A-S-H and S-I-N-G-H. So we’ve got a lot of videos there. That's probably the spot to kind of just learn stuff, and that other resource I would if you need to get in contact with me, check out our website, which is Linxdigitalagency.com. And I can throw links to that as well.

Kathleen (35:54): Awesome. And I'll put those links in the show notes for anybody who's listening. So head there to get more information. And in the meantime, if you are listening to this episode and you liked what you heard, or you learned something new, I would love it if you would head to Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice to leave a review. That's how other listeners find us. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, Tweet me at @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me, Shash. This was really fun.

Shash (36:25): Thank you for having me.

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