He Blows Up Artists w/ YouTube Ads (Learn How) ft. Nard2hard of WAMM Promotions

As a music artist, you are a business. It ain't about who the best, it's about who the most known. When should artists start running ads? Immediately. Thousand views, ten thousand views. If you run an ads properly, you can hit these metrics pretty fast. How do I know who to target? To get popping, you gotta go where it's popping at. If you're a music artist, you gotta be able to afford it. That seems like a hot take, Nard. A metric that you want to pay attention to is wow. What is the most common mistake you see artists making on YouTube? I'll I'll tell you this. With almost three billion monthly active users, every artist should be figuring out how they can win on YouTube. Instagram and TikTok are great for building awareness, bringing people into our world. But the deepest connections between an artist and a fan are happening through longer form content that lives on YouTube. On today's episode, we sit down with Nard.

He's the founder of Wham Promotions, which is a digital marketing agency specializing in YouTube growth. If you watch this episode with Rachie Jackson on what types of content to make and how to use YouTube as a musician, and then you pair it with this episode with Nard talking about all things YouTube ads and growth, you're gonna be a fing beast when it comes to this platform. Even if you don't consider yourself a YouTuber, by the end of this episode, you're gonna have the confidence to dive headfirst into your next YouTube ads campaign. Let's get into it. Bro, let's take a moment of silence right now for my UNC Tar Heels. They're getting their ass beat by Duke. Yep. Let's go ahead and do that. But hey, we got Nard on the podcast. Wham promotions extraordinaire. WAMM. appreciate you coming on, man. Um, I think that this is a really important episode because we had so so we had an insider from YouTube, uh, Rachel Jackson. I don't know if you're familiar with Rachie, but she's artist relations or something at YouTube, and she really gave us a lot of great tips uh for our artist community to like understand how best to utilize YouTube as part of their overarching you know strategy. But I think you know, having you on the podcast, your expertise lies in really the digital marketing side of YouTube and how can we grow channels through paid ad spend that translates into organic reach, et cetera, right?

So I'm excited for this one. And if he sees like a flaw or something with YouTube, he can call that shit out because he's not legally obligated to represent the company. She was so politically correct. Like I like watched that interview back a little bit, and I was like, gosh, she was so nervous about her PR team, like calling, you know. We had to get it cleared by Google. Oh, she works directly with you. Oh, I ain't gotta hold nothing back. Thank you. And that's why we are excited about this one. Um, so I know that Wham Promotions, you know, and you specialize in uh other digital marketing efforts, right? Like you do Spotify growth and you know, meta ads, I think, and maybe TikTok ads, et cetera. But really, I do want us to kind of focus on YouTube for this episode, um, just because I think that it's a little bit like I think it's underserved as far as like all the digital marketing experts that are out there that that serve the music space. Even though YouTube is such a big platform for artists, don't you feel like everyone talks more about like meta-ads? Yeah, and yeah, I just think that like YouTube and kind of how to grow on YouTube is a little bit of a um like a not an it's not talked about enough in my mind, right?

Um, so but how do you think YouTube and you know Spotify growth and meta-ads, like where does YouTube fit kind of just like high level in the overarching mix, do you think? You know, YouTube is the second biggest search engine, right? Behind Google, which and it's owned by Google too. So that's like, that's it right there, right? Yeah. Um, but as far as like a selfish reason, like, the reason why I chose YouTube is because I started out as an artist. And I was trying to figure out how to market my music videos. You know? What was your rap name? Uh it started out as killer bee. Killer B. Kill a B. Kill a Nard. Because I kill a beat. Oh, okay. And then I switched it to Nard too hard because if you Google killer B, there's thousands. But if you Google Nard too hard, there's just me. We were just having a similar conversation about being able to be the first thing that pops up when someone searches. There's a one more time podcast that's like Italian and they're huge.

I don't know why. And Somehow their name is one more time. Which is English. It's the only English thing about their whole fucking podcast. The whole podcast is in Italian. Fuck. You guys, man. What the hell? Can we just can you just be one more time in Italian? Doesn't that make more sense? Yeah. So anyway. So you got into YouTube digital marketing because of your desire to like get more views. on your music videos. I'm gonna pop off on YouTube. I need people to see this. So it's like as an artist, you only know what you see. So I see all my favorite artists got millions of views on YouTube. And you want to, you know, do the same thing. So it's like, okay, how are they doing it? Okay, they got the money, they got the cars, they got clothes, uh, they got the ice. All right, I'm gonna do all that. Boom. All right, nothing happened. I'm like, damn, okay. Well, they got millions of views. I looked up YouTube promotion on uh youth uh Google. On YouTube. That would have been funny too.

And it say, buy thousands of views, right? Buy millions of views. Shit, we start buying views. And these are bots. Bots? We botting it up, because I'm like, are they are they using bots? Like, I don't know how this is working. So we bought the bots. So this is like, what, oh eight, oh nine. Oh, wow. So in our city that uh that we was, you know, that we started in, you know, we looking like we them guys, but people started calling us out, like, man, y'all using bots, y'all using fake views and all this stuff. So at this point, I'm like, man, something, it's something to it. So I remember watching a video, I don't know if y'all familiar with, you know, battle rap, y'all watch battle rap. Yeah. So loaded lux. I remember him, he had a video, and he was saying in the video, to get popping, you gotta go where it's popping at. So I'm like, damn, okay. So I'm sitting in Florida. So I'm I'm in the city, uh, Crestview, Florida, it's like on the Pan handle. It's not popping.

Not popping. It's not popping at all. Damn, bro. I just assumed based on the context of a story. it's not cool for you to say. Sorry, Crestview. Seriously, dude. He can say it. You fucking can. I was asking. No, that's real, that's real dude. Ain't popping. Okay. Um, but so first thing in my head, I'm like, all right, what's the closest place that I can travel to that's popping? Atlanta, Georgia. So we moved to Atlanta, Georgia, me and my partner. And this was my introduction into the other side of the music industry. So before I even got to the marketing side, I started to see the smoke and mirrors. So a lot of times, what you see ain't really what it is, is what I started to uh discover. Speak on it. So that's the first thing. So I'm talking about you'll see an artist that look like he got it, but he ain't really got it. So I'm like, so I'm like, okay, that's that's that's part one. Part two, I seen the relationship side.

But also I seen something to that. I was dealing with an artist, his name was uh Schoolie with the Tooley, rest in peace, he had passed away. But he had relationships with Rocco, Rich Homie Quan, uh, you know, just like people that's popping. But then I looked at his position, where he's at. So I'm like, okay, you can have all the relationships in the world, but if you don't have nothing going on for yourself, you're not really gonna be able to leverage the relationship. So that was the second thing I seen. It's not schoolie from Travis Porter, is it? Nah. Okay. Nah. Different Schoolie. Yeah, different schoolie. So the third thing I seen was the business side, the marketing. So this is when I started to look for a school. I was trying to go to like a music marketing school. I was trying to figure this thing out. But at the time, it did not exist. So I was like, all right, I'm gonna just go to school for marketing. So that's kind of started my journey. So I only got into marketing because I was trying to blow my shit up. You know what I'm saying?

So in the mix of that, we started to learn about you know digital avenues. So I got into uh Google Ads. And I figured out, okay, Google Ads is how you promote music videos, YouTube, Google. So I remember running my first YouTube ads videos back in like 2012. So, you know, I'm playing around, blowing money, you know, spending $80 here, $100 here, and then it just started working. You know what I'm saying? So I'll say about a year in, it just started working. Um in the mix of this, we started a recording studio. So we have a uh recorded studio, Wham Studios. And I started to get deeper into the Google Ads platform. So I started to do marketing for the studio and it started to blow. Like I'm talking about, you know, this is how I started to meet music artists. Because I had a recording studio in my house. It was in my kitchen.

That's it started in Duluth, North Georgia. And you know, at when I started, I was the engineer, and I was the, you know, man answering the phone, everything. I'm running the ads, all that. So I'm building my clientele base. Uh, one of my partners from um Fort Walton Beach, Florida, he went to school for engineering. He came to my house while he was at my house, because he was trying to help me fix something on Pro Tools. Because I actually, I wasn't a good engineer. I had an artist walk out on my session. Oh, shit. Because I was so horrible. So I'm like, bro, I need you to help me. As he's here helping me on Pro Tools, he's seeing my phone ring off the hook. He like, bro, what you got going on here? I'm like, bro, I don't know. I got the marketing going. He thought you were trapping. He thought something was going on. He thought something was going on. He was like, bro, are you the plug? Like, what's going on? But it was the marketing plug. it was just music artists trying to book studio time. So I was like, he was like, bro, we can team up, we can make this happen.

So at the time, I'm like, man, I'm only charging like 25 an hour. Like, bro, I don't know how we gonna make this work. We gotta get them numbers up. Yeah. So I just, you know, I put my faith in it, man, and you know, we we teamed up. Yeah. After we teamed up, things transformed. I'm talking about, I get them through the door, he's making them happy. I'm talking about master engineer. So six months later, we moved from my house, and then we got a building in Jonesboro. And that's where we at now. That's our headquarters. Okay. Um, you know, 180 um 1,500 square feet uh unit, got two recorded studio rooms, photography, videography, uh, you know, that's the space. But through that platform is where I started to meet music artists. Yeah. So that's when I started to really do marketing. I wasn't really like pushing and winning promotions like that. Yeah. So I see an artist, they serious. I'm like, hey, bro, do the marketing. You know what I'm saying?

If you need marketing. So that's how I started to meet, you know, independent artists, and then through that, I started to meet, you know, you know, artists that got names. Uh, my engineers, they had relationships with, you know, other studios. They had relationships with bigger artists. So I was able to, you know, do marketing for certain artists like Trouble, Lil Boosie. Um, and then, you know, things just started getting big. So, but yeah, it all started because I was trying to learn how to market my music. Yeah. This happened by mistake. It's such a genius model. We actually toyed around with getting uh like commercial recording studio space. I still, that's the dream. Like, I love when you shut up. Like It's pretty much what you like want to do. It's still my dream. So maybe he'll convince me to say yes to you. We might have to go out as far as Jonesboro. Yeah, apparently. But you know, it's possible. so if I'm an artist, right, today, I haven't done anything by way of like YouTube ads and you know, Google ads to drive my YouTube at all. Like, what's the first step?

Like, what's what's the initial thing that I should be doing? So the first initial thing is just post, right? So with YouTube, you you gotta have content to do anything, right? So you want to be consistent, but it doesn't always have to be music videos, right? So how they should look at it is you have your product, your song is the product. And the content is commercials that you're using to promote the product. So commercial one is a music video, commercial two, you got a visualizer, commercial three, you got a lyric video, you know. So just get creative. And then YouTube Shorts, they got YouTube shorts now, so you can be creative with that. What kind of YouTube shorts are you seeing work for music artists? So clips from the music videos, those are like the biggest thing. Uh number two, just them doing some creative piece of content, kind of similar to TikTok, you know, like you know, it is TikTok. It's the same, like every platform, even Twitter is now about to be rolling out some short form video, like out, you know, based same kind of idea.

That's what it's all about right now. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, content like that. Um, that's really what I'm saying. That's winning. Yeah. But just being creative, you know, that's the biggest thing. Like that's the biggest thing. That's the biggest thing. And self-awareness, like knowing who you are, what you're about, what do you like outside of music? Those little intangibles. Like, in if I was managing an artist, which I will never do, but if I was, I would say, you know, have your music videos, have your lyric videos, but like have a thing also that you're posting that is just unique to you and your personality and your message, you know, and your vibe. I think that I think that's really important. And it just boils down to self-awareness, I think, to figure out what that is, right? Yeah. So music videos aren't dead. Fucking? Go ahead. Fuck no, you can't like custom on the Earth show. Hell no. Oh. Nah, it's it's not dead, man. Um, it's just getting started for real.

Oh. Like, you know, what I've been watching for a long time, and every year, like it gets bigger. But if you look at videos that just like that's old, they got like videos on YouTube that's like 15 years ago, 17 years ago, you know what I'm saying? So YouTube's been around for a long time, right? So you'll think like, okay, at some point, just like MySpace phased out, right? Just like um, what else? Vine. Vine phased out. Facebook ain't phased. they got smart. They started, it's all right, Facebook, then Instagram came. If he wasn't smart, then you know what I'm saying, Facebook would probably be irrelevant. But he bought out Instagram. Yep. You know, he bought out what, WhatsApp, he bought out, he tried to buy, I don't did he try to buy TikTok. He might still. There's rumors, there's rumors. Yeah. So, but yeah, YouTube ain't going nowhere, because YouTube is owned by Google. Google and well, I ain't gonna say Google ain't going nowhere.

That's a different conversation. Y'all know what's so with AI. ChatGPT is becoming the new Google. It's wild. But uh anyway, I ain't gonna speak that in existence, but yeah, YouTube ain't going nowhere. Yeah. And and so, but music videos on YouTube like still are king. Hell yeah. So it's like at a snap of a finger, especially what we do as far as the ads. Like, okay, you upload a video, cool. Well, once you run an ad, you have access to billions of people. YouTube is really about to get bigger because of the streaming uh aspect of it, as far as like it's TV now. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, people are phasing out of regular TV. Like, people are like streaming. Like, me personally, I watch YouTube more than anything. And then the second thing is I watch Netflix, I watch, you know, but YouTube is my biggest source of TV. Then I look at my kids, you know what I'm saying?

Like, they watch YouTube. They don't even know what cable television is. Like no. Cable's dead. Bro, you asked them to like go to a TV guide or something and click through chat, like, no. They're not, they're looking at you crazy. So when should an artist start running ads? So I would say immediately. Immediately. So unless. If you can afford it. If you can afford it, but if you're a music artist, you gotta be able to afford it. Well, they gotta pay for a lot of shit, Nard. They do. But this is the thing about it. As a music artist, you are a business. So any business has to have some type of investment. All right, so you have uh, let's just say, all right, for example, you got a barbershop. okay, you got a hair salon, you got a lawn care company, and then you have a music artist. The similarities that they all have is they all require a startup cost. You can be the best barber in town if you do not have a startup cost to get the building, get the equipment, then let people know that you cut hair, let people know, okay, I'm here, come buy my services, then you're just another barber that know how to cut hair. It ain't about who the best, it's about who the most who the most known.

So as a music artist, you got your songs, you got, you know, you got your your mind, you got your skill set. All right, now you gotta pay for studio time so you can put it in the mix, you know what I'm saying? So you can create your product and then you can start promoting your product. So you have to. It is wild, man. I think like music artists are some of the only businesses that think that they can like avoid the paid ads thing. There, I think there's a natural thing that you know, music is such an art and it's so like right brain, I think, right? I forget which brain is which. It's one of those halves, but the business brain is just it's the other side of the brain. And I think so many of y'all are having trouble like trying to access both or be a master at both sides because you do have to treat it like a business at the end of the day, but you're also pouring your heart out into this music, and it's so emotional and real to you. How do you then switch, right? And start treating it like a business after you've had that.

Exactly. And and so if if I have a relatively newer channel, right? What types of ads should I be running on YouTube? You really want to run them all. You know, so what are they? What are the types of ads? Yeah, so you got a skippable ads, which is let's ex let's just explain. So I'm gonna break it off. Yeah, break it down nard, because we might it might be going right over our heads. I got you. So you got a skippable ad, which is also called an in-stream ad. So that's an ad where you're watching a YouTube video. Before that video plays, you see an ad that plays in front of that video. Okay. So most of the time you'll have about three seconds, and then that skip option will pop up. So the good thing about that type of ad is you can get in front of the world, you know what I'm saying? And you're forced to kind of you know get in front of someone, but they they can't click uh away. Uh and you need I assume you need to make the first three seconds insanely impactful. You do in that case, you do.

Because they can just yeah, and I and I and I get to that as far as strategies on that. Yeah. They need it. The next one is an in-feed ad, which is a discovery ad. That can be shown either on the home feed or as you watch a video, it can be shown in the little watch section or the recommendation section. And with that, it looks like a thumbnail. Like as you're watching looking at videos, it's going to appear as an ad in between those videos. So the good thing about that is you're not forced to click on that. So if someone clicks on that ad, it clicked on it because they wanted to. So that's good for engagement. The bad thing, never a bad thing, but the only negative side is those ads cost more than the skippable ad. Probably because they work better. Yeah. Because they work better, exactly. Yeah. So those are like your two main ones for music artists. And then you have a lot of different forms.

Another one that I would recommend, depending on the budget, is a non-skippable ad. So the non-skippable ad is where you're forced to watch at least 15 seconds of an ad. So with that, the pro is you have to watch it. So you got 15 seconds to grab their attention. The disadvantages is so expensive. Very expensive. Like how expensive are we talking? Um what kind of metrics have you seen for each of those three types? So we pay attention to cost per view. Okay. So cost per view on a skippable, I'm gonna give you the like the differences. Yeah. Uh cost per view on a skippable, and I'm gonna give you like the cheapest it could be. Sure. Uh, I would say a tenth of a penny. So 0.001. One. Yeah. Discovery, we've seen them to be as cheap as 0.004, 0.006. Um non-skippable, we done seen them to be like 10 cents, 20 cent, 30 cent, heavy.

Damn. So 100 times more. 100 times more. So it's like, and then the other thing is the type, like you have to actually create an ad for the non-skippable ad. Because for these, uh the the skippable ad, the in-feed ad, you can actually use your music video as the ad. So all the numbers, the metrics that's coming in is going on the actual music video. Okay, the views are racking up. Yeah. Okay. So are you testing like a bunch of different parts of the video? So at first, and then it depends on the type of campaign we're running, but majority of the time, we're just taking the music video and we're just creating different campaigns. Starting at like zero or starting at zero. So that's another thing. So some music videos have these long ass intros, man. And I'm I don't know. Don't I'm skipping it, man. Don't do that. Well, that's another thing. You can't tell someone how to make their art. though. If you're a newer artist, you probably shouldn't do that.

That's so depressing, though. Dude, it's so depressing, but I'm just, I mean, Jesus Christ. Shorter intros are better, but like make your art. Ben's gonna be the guy that's gonna tell you. Please don't make a long intro. I'm gonna say make your art and we'll figure it out. Can't there just be a make your art version that has a super engaging intro? No, then you're bastardizing the whole thing. You're literally telling me that the long drawn-out one is not engaging. It's basically what you're saying. If you have to a listener that is gonna sit there and experience the whole song as a real listener, man, it's tough. believe it or not, it's tough. Those forms do get views. They do get clicks. But if you had it organized and structured as an ad, or I what I'll say is the YouTube version, the YouTube ads version, you'll get a better click-through rate, you'll get a better playthrough rate. Maybe that maybe the album version has a long intro and the you the music video starts quicker. I don't know. Exactly.

Because you only got a couple seconds to engage them. Gotta grab them. You do want to make it, you know. Like as soon, this is what I recommend. As soon as the ad comes on, if it's if it starts with the beat, like let the beat like hit as soon as the ad come on. Yeah, you know, like don't have a drawn out like storyline in the beginning, and you know it's beautiful sometimes though. It is, it's important to the story. Not it's not good for the ad, man. But it's not terrible for the ad, dude. But it's the art, man. But if you just start now, you know, like you want to play the game the best you can. Just like if you're taking songs to the radio, you gotta have a radio version. Right. Thank you. And those typically start with the drums, come in at the beginning, like DJ versions, you know, they're made for a radio, they start quick. Exactly. I hope you guys are enjoying the conversation. I want to take a quick moment to tell you about our pals at DistroKid. You can't get your music onto streaming platforms without a distributor, and DistroKid is an excellent choice to handle that for you.

For the ridiculously low price of $23, you can upload unlimited music for an entire year that is less than two dollars a month. I tripped on two dollars walking down the street earlier. They have countless features to help you out on your musical journey. One of my favorites is splits. Instead of my collaborators hitting me up all the time saying, Where's my fing money? I can input everyone's percentage when I upload the music, and DistroKid will handle it. I've personally used DistroKid for many years and can genuinely recommend them as a great tool to get your music out into the world. And if you sign up at omtdistro.com, you'll get 30% off an already insanely low price. This is absolute peanuts for unlimited uploads yearly. We wish you the best with your creating. Let's get back to it. But so what should uh what should the goal be for like my first ad campaign? If I have a newer channel, I've got this fire music video that I want to run ads against, right? What should my goal be? Should it be subs? Should it be views? Like what what should be like the target that I start out with?

I would say milestones. Okay. You know? What do you mean by that? It's like, because it's never an end goal, you know? So the end goal could be in the head, like, all right, I'm gonna hit a hundred thousand views or a million views, but after that, you ain't gonna stop. You gotta keep going. Yeah. So that's really a milestone. So I would say, like, okay, set your first milestone as let's say a thousand views. Um views is kind of a good place to start, you think? Uh I would say both. Thousand views, hundreds of a hundred subs. Okay. You know, let that be a milestone. Next milestone, 10,000 views, thousand subs. You know. Um, and if you're running ads properly, you can hit these metrics pretty fast. You know, of course, you know, cost to run ads, but if you structure your ads to where your ads are performing at a high level, you know, it's starting properly to where as soon as the ads start, you know, the beat's going, or you know, the the vocals is going, you know, the the visual of it is like it's eye-catching, then you know you're gonna be able to catch them real fast. So, but yeah, I would definitely recommend just setting milestones.

Okay. So, what kind of ads for the the non-skippable are you seeing work for music artists? Because I think it sounds like the discovery in feed and then the skippable are basically just the music video, typically, right? Yeah. What are you seeing work best for the non-skippable? Is it still just making an ad from the music video, or are you are you seeing different things work? So this is when we're actually testing uh different things. So for music videos, we're gonna test things like uh the first part of the hook, first part of the verse. We may test like part of the verse going into the hook, uh part of the hook going into the verse, you know, just testing different things, and we're just looking at certain things like the click-through rate. Uh, we're looking at the playthrough rate. Um, so if the click-through rate is higher on one ad than the other, then that that'd be our winner. And then with those, we're just creating call of actions to where they can click on the full video if they like what they see. So you start small with a bunch of different starting points in the video, see what's working, and then throw the majority of the budget on that.

With non-skippable. On the winner, yes. Got it. How does it work as far as like are we spending equal amounts of money on all those different options? Or is it like a lump sum and then Google Ads is doing its thing to spend where it wants to spend? Like how does that work? So when we're creating a campaign, like you mean like creating a campaign from scratch? Sure. I mean, let's just say, you know, we have a hundred dollars to spend and we're doing the non-skippables, like testing out the hook, the verse, the second verse, the bridge, whatever, right? Are we spending $25 each on the four different options? Or is it like overarching $100 and then Google Ads is spending on whatever's working best? Or like how does that work? Yeah, so that's how we'll do it. We'll break it down evenly. Like we're doing four campaigns for $100, $25, $25, $25. Because if you're creating different campaigns, then you got control over the budget. Now, if you're creating one campaign and inside that campaign you have four ads in there, then you're allowing Google to control the budget. So they're gonna send traffic to the ad that they feel like is performing the best, you know?

So that's another way to do it. But at the same time, you know, do you truly trust Google in that way? Sometimes we don't. You know, like when we were running like ads on other platforms, like it's a perfect example. Um, this is like outside of the music, but we did an ad for a club in Memphis. So we're doing meta ads, we're doing Google ads, we're doing TikTok ads. So we're using the same creatives across all platforms. So on TikTok, they have one piece of content that is generating all the sales for the club. But on Meta, we're running the same content, but it's another piece of content that's generating all the sales, same creatives. So, and these are ads that's inside of one campaign. So it's not broken down in different campaigns. So sometimes I don't like the trust, you know, them making the decisions, you know, right out the gate. Um the more control you have, the better.

That seems like a hot take, Nard. Because there are some gurus out that are that are like pitching the whole like AI audiences and letting Meta and Google do everything for you, right? But so you feel kind of strongly against it. Faith in his skills, man. I I feel you, I'm just saying. I'm with that too. I think it's just different ways. It's Like, okay, TikTok. Yeah. We've really just got to the point where we've let TikTok like decide audience. Like, we trust TikTok with the audience. Meta, we've been getting to the point where we trust TikTok uh Meta with the audience. Okay. But when it comes to different aspects, as far as, okay, well, you know, you got this one campaign, and inside the campaign we got four or five different ads. Sometimes, you know, like they may, and then it's like, okay, let's say we have a small budget. Let's say the campaign is only getting a few hundred impressions.

They're sending the traffic to this one ad because it's, you know, it's been performing good. What if it didn't give enough time for another ad to actually work? You know? Yeah, you got it. There's almost a minimum you should try it out for. Yeah. So if you can get more control, because it's like, all right, what if you test it? What if on one campaign you got one campaign and you got four different ads and you let Meta do its thing, and then you create four different campaigns and all the creatives in its own campaign and let it, you know, run like that. What if, you know what I'm saying? The results is different. You know, like, so those are some things that we've done. Um, but yeah, I would recommend that, you know, as time moves on, I don't mind like technology is getting crazy. I trust the AI algorithm. But it's just certain things, you know, especially with music. You know, like music is subjective, right? Music is culture.

So sometimes, man, like I don't, I don't trust AI when it comes to audience for artists. I don't. I don't. Wow. I don't. Damn. Okay, so that's actually kind of a perfect segue. So if if I'm, you know, starting a campaign, how how do I know who to target? How should I like initially try and figure out the right target audience? So you got two ways to do it. So let's say one, you know, if you have like some data already, you can go inside your YouTube analytics and you can go into your channel analytics, not your video, be going into your channel analytics and then go on to audience, and then like if you're on desktop, like somewhere on the bottom right side, uh, it'll show you that the people that are watching your videos, it'll show you what videos that they're also watching. You know, it's huge.

Yeah, so that's the first way if you got data. But let's say you don't have any data. So who knows your sound better than you, right? So every art every artist shares some type of audience with another artist. They hate admitting it though. They hate admitting it. And it's like, I get it, man. I'm different. It's like, yeah. They never, I don't sound like anybody. Yeah, I get that. But it's not that. I phrase it differently. I'm like, what artists do you feel like may have a similar audience as you? Yeah. That's a nicer way. They maybe can admit that. He's literally saying the exact fucking same thing. I know, but you gotta be delicate with these artist types, man. You do. We're sensitive. Oh my God. You can't say, what artist do you sound like? Yeah, they ain't going for that. That's the phrasing. It's always the phrasing. They would literally stop the ad campaign, right? I'm not doing ads anymore for that. I don't sound like anybody.

Fuck ads, bro. So here's the thing. Once they decide what art what artist has a similar audience as them, then what they can do is they can take those. I try to get at least like three to five. You take those, you can get a YouTube uh tool. Uh I use browser AI, but it's called a YouTube scraper. You can put those uh artists' names inside the scraper, and they can scrape all the YouTube uh video links off of YouTube. You can take those links and you can add them inside your campaign. Because here's the thing. Whenever you're creating a YouTube campaign, you had especially a skippable ad. You can place your videos in front of any video, any YouTube channel. So you obviously would select the videos that people that are watching your video are watching these videos. Why wouldn't you put your ads on those videos, right? Exactly. You said browser AI? Browser AI.

Is that like an extension? Um or is it a software? Yeah, it's a software. Is it, yeah, is it free or does it you pay for it? It's all right. Should we look into it? You know what I mean? So y'all definitely want to look into it. Okay. There's another one that I would prefer to use, but I got banned. Oh. Because Bro no, you're wildin', bro. You might need that story. So it's free to a degree. So every all of these platforms. He passed the degree. Freedom. All of these platforms give you like a certain amount of credits for free. So they'll give you. Did you make a hundred accounts or what? I made a hundred accounts. Oh no. That's the first thing I thought of. Holy shit. Then they found you. Yeah. They they blocked my IP and everything. Holy shit. Can you use a VPN? I got one. I got like a rotating proxy. Like I go crazy with it. Y'all familiar with the rotating proxies? No, we probably should be.

Go ahead. Yeah, I don't know if we should be. I don't know. I mean, it's legal. So a rotating. The way You just said it was legal. VPNs are legal too, but they're typically ways to get around the things. Yeah. Go ahead. Tell us about it, Nard. It's like uh a rotating proxy is like a VPN on steroids. Okay. Okay. So with a VPN, you know, you can change your location at any given time, but your IP stays the same. That's right. With a rotating proxy, you can log in to a browser or you can put it on your full computer and you can change your IP address Oh, shit. anytime, every time. You can then I have a uh a device changer. Whoa. So now, okay, my IP is different, but it still says I'm on a Mac. Well, I can change it to where I'm on an iOS iPhone. I can change it to where I'm on an Android. I'm on Linux. I'm surprised you don't know about this type of shit. Yeah, I mean you're pretty sketchy online. I know VPNs, or this is next level. Yeah.

He's usually like the one telling me about all these like hacks and fucking Yeah. So is this something you know like to use for these scenarios? I guess so it's certain things that I use that I I I can't say publicly. What is the free? Did you mention what the free one is called? Do you want to mention? Yeah. Okay. I think it's called YouTube Scraper, honestly. If you Google YouTube Scraper, it'll probably be the first one I pick. Yeah. But it's so easy to do. Because it's that good. It's really good. And that's why you made 100 accounts. He's like, I need this shit, bro. He's a hustler. He's scrappy. Dude. That's the, but like, just sidebar, bro. That's what you need. That attitude is important. You need to be built for this shit, bro. Like you're gonna go create 100 accounts to get the free version of this super valuable tool. Like, how many of y'all are out there, like going that like, you know what I mean? That deep into it. bro. The problem is, I think some people are born like that. I don't know if it's so easy to teach, but you know, people are who they are a lot of times. And some of y'all might be doomed.

Yeah, I mean, he moved to Atlanta to just like chase the dream obviously. This guy moved to make this shit. Work. Are y'all ready to move? Yeah. Oh my god. I don't think they are. So, okay, so obviously we're going back to the kind of targeting, because I think this is super important. So, you know, obviously, happy dad. We love you. Um, so three to five artists that you think you're that their audience would be fans of your music. All right, we're gonna scrape YouTube for their music videos or their videos so that our ads run in front of their audience, essentially. Correct. Okay, so A, what if they don't pick the right three to three to five? Like, is that where just self-awareness has to so has to be there, right? Is there a is there a different way to like if I don't know even necessarily like I don't know, I'm just like trying to say if like if I'm not good at like thinking through this strategically, right? Or maybe I think like, oh, like Drake's audience would like mine. I mean, that's pretty fucking broad, obviously, right?

So, like, any way that we can get a little more oh yeah, yeah, okay. So come on, take us there, Nard. So the most basic way is you can target by placements, which I just you know that's how you, you know, you place the your stuff in front of other videos. Yeah, the other way is by interest. Okay, so you could target by interest. So everyone knows what genre of music you're in. You know what I'm saying? So if you're in rap, you're in hip-hop, you're in RB, you're in soul, you're a Christian artist, you're in rock, you're a pop artist, right? You know what genre you're in. Once you decide that, you can target by interest in the YouTube ad campaign. And you can just you can select your genre. Okay. So you start there. So once you start there and start running ads, then you can go into your channel analytics and see who are they also watching while they're watching you. So now once you get that data, now you can start building up your placements, and the placements is the videos. Okay.

So start kind of broad just by genre, but then ultimately it's gonna work out that like if I am actually watching Drake and then I watched your video, then you'll know that after the fact. Correct. Okay. Interesting. Um okay, so then once we start to build up like an audience, what kind of mechanisms do we have in place for retargeting? So this is good. So when it comes to YouTube, this is like all around the board. 70 to 80 percent of people that are viewing the video aren't subscribed. So what you can do is you can create a retargeting campaign. The retargeting campaign, you can set it up to where you can only target people that has viewed your videos but haven't subscribed. Mm-hmm. This is for them. Yeah, so that's probably the best way because you know, you got all these people that watched it but ain't subscribed. Well, if you watched it, that's kind of like a warm audience.

You know, are you tweaking the creative then? Like the ad? Are is there anything in particular that might, you know, specifically turn a viewer but a non-subscriber into a subscriber? So I will say this. Most of the time we're sending traffic from, you know, with the music video, right? Mm-hmm. So I would say do another campaign with another music video. Because let's say they viewed it but they didn't subscribe. So is it something about that music video that they ain't really like? You know? Maybe, okay. And this is me, like always use myself as an example because I'm a music head. So it's been plenty of times where I hear a song, watch a video, I'm like, okay, cool. And then I keep I keep going. It didn't really grab me. Mm-hmm. But the third or the fourth one, it got me. Yeah. I'm like, Dang, who, oh, I've been heard you. I just this song got me. So just keep uh staying in front of their face, whether it's the same piece of content, because also sometimes just because they like that uh they didn't subscribe, don't mean they didn't like it. You know, because they on YouTube, but their main platform may be Spotify.

What if they watched the video, they clicked the link in the description, and then they went to their streaming platform, they got the song saved, and now they good. Is there any type of like call to action we can add to these ads? Like, can we just put like subscribe now, you know, at the bottom? Or like because sometimes people just forget that they can subscribe and they I listen to just a reminder. Yeah. How do we maximize subscribers? Yeah, what's the best type of campaign to maximize? Is there like a subscriber campaign that we can do? So it's called a subscriber and engagement campaign. Okay. So it's and that's within Google ads, that's how it's called. Yeah, okay. It's called that. Yeah. But it's only available if you have your channel connected to Google Ads. So that's another thing. So whenever you create your Google Ads campaign, uh create your Google Ads account, you gotta connect your YouTube account to your Google Ads. If you don't, that campaign won't be available. Okay. So that should have we should have said that. I mean, maybe at the that was like step one. It's kind of like connect your account.

It was like it was like make a music video and then connect your channel that you uploaded the video to Google Ads. Okay, so can we can we edit that in? Put it put at the beginning. No, it's funny. We'll leave it. Leave it. But yeah, once you got it connected, then you can create the uh subscriber growth campaign. Okay. So with the subscriber growth campaign, it's you know it's pretty easy. You just gotta make sure your target is set up uh set up right. And then from there, you know, you just gotta make sure. Now the only thing with this uh subscriber growth campaign is you can't target with skippable ads. Why not? It's just the way it's set up. Okay, they won't allow, they used to allow it, but they took it away. So the only way you can target with this type of campaign is through interest and through custom audience. So you can do retargeting, you can target people that has did like certain types of action on your YouTube channel. Uh you can upload a customer list and target them, but the only other way you can do it is by interest. You know, you can target still by like geographic demo deal uh demographic, but you know, as far as like getting like dialed in, interest.

Yeah, so let's talk about the geo-targeting, right? Like, are you a big fan of city specific ads on Google? Yeah, okay. So, you know, we do it all from worldwide to down to the zip code. Wow. Yeah, you can get crazy, you can target neighborhoods. No, yeah, it's crazy. It's actually scary. Yeah. No, I mean, I think this is where I'm really tapping into, because I mean, you know, let's say to your point, maybe I've got my Spotify or Apple Music data, right? I'm imagining like if I'm newer on YouTube or I haven't really put a big focus on YouTube. You might want to look at the like top four cities or something, and like I would say probably start there, right? Like if if they're consistent across like my top listeners on Spotify and Apple Music, both say Atlanta, New York, Chicago, DC. Like I would, I mean, we'd probably want to start there, right? I don't know. It seems like a no-brainer, but yeah, that makes sense. It's worth mentioning, yeah, for sure.

That's exactly what we like to do. If we have an artist that has data, like it doesn't have to be on YouTube, it can be anywhere. Yeah. They got Spotify data, shit, social media data. True. You know, so we'll take that data and we'll add it into their YouTube campaign. You know, so they got you know, an audience in Chicago and Maine and Texas, we targeted in those same locations. Bro, imagine being popping in Maine. Maine. You think Maine's big for us? I think it's big for someone, and I think it's worth mentioning that like everyone wants to. I've there's this narrative of like you gotta pop off in your hometown first. And then what if Maine loves you? it's such an old school, yeah, I hate that, man. It's like the Suicide Boys, they were trying to win people over in New Orleans and they all hated them. And the Russia ended up being like the place that adopted them first, and now they're doing worldwide arena tours. It's like maybe Vietnam or like Nigeria or Puerto Rico is your place. Like, let's figure it out. You know, and then this is this data and and running ads and kind of spreading your seed around for lack of better words. I that's a weird way to put it.

Um, but I I think it is worth mentioning just as far as like you and I are even super guilty of this, bro. Go ahead. We're not up in our analytics, bro, like we should be. Yeah. And that like, I'm just being this is the honest moment. We'll be like, yeah, we're gonna have an analytics day. We'll just spend the whole day on analytics and then it never happens. That's the day happened. It just never happened to us. We like barely like we don't do it enough at all. Can we book it? Can we schedule analytics? days? Yeah. All right. Well, what you got free next week? Uh no, but but I think like, guys, look at your data, like go into every platform that you're on today, because they all have got it: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, like please, like pause the episode right now. This is like serious. I'm just seriously do this. Don't close the window. Yeah, don't close it. And subscribe to us. Subscribe right now, drop a comment and a like. Thank you. Um, but no, really, like, go check out your data. Because I do think that it can help you make such better decisions. Because, like, if you like, we get it.

Money's tight, you know, Like, just you can't just be, you shouldn't necessarily just be throwing money out there, right? To like figure out what cities are popping for you if you already have the data at your fingertips, right? Like, if you know that you're big in Atlanta across all of the platforms that you're on today, like if you're gonna start spending money on YouTube ads, like, let's be smart about it. Let's maybe start in Atlanta, because we know that we're kind of already getting a little bit of traction there. Um, so please take this as a time to go check out your analytics and start seeing if there's any like common threads, because if you go spend money with anyone who's gonna help you or do it yourself, right? Like, you're gonna want to spend in those places. Facts. Um, so yeah, that's huge. But on the subscriber goes side of things, like, do do subscribers matter? Hey, sorry to butt in, but you're an independent artist, right? You have great music that you want the world to hear, right? You know that organic social media posting is the best free way to get exposure and market your music, right? Most artists understand this, but they get paralyzed because they don't know what types of videos to make.

What do I post? Luckily for you, the One More Time podcast has gathered a list of 100 viral content ideas specifically for musicians that we're giving to you for absolutely free. We've seen these formats crush time and time again. They really work. Take these ideas, insert your personality, your music, and watch the views start rolling in. All you gotta do is go to 100 viralcontentideas.com and you can have the entire collection in your inbox in minutes. So sorry for the interruption. Please forgive me. Let's get right back into it. They do. They do. Because it's like based on data, let's say, all right, you get like, let's say a thousand views. Based on data, anywhere from like 40 to 60% of those views are gonna come from subscribers. But the other views is gonna come from non-subscribers. That's when you just like drop in regular content. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, subscribers is important, you know? Um, so you want to grow your subscriber base. I mean, if you notice the channels that have the most subscribers are the ones that's really getting a lot of traction. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Does it also help help with like how does all of this, because I think, you know, we've obviously been focusing on the paid side. How does all of this play into organic? Yeah, let's talk about, because I do think that we, you know, we had someone on to talk about meta ads, and we've had people on, or you know, we're about to have someone on talk about like, you know, meta ads to drive Spotify streams, et cetera. It's not always gonna be like a direct ROI that like I spent a dollar on YouTube ads and I made a dollar from YouTube or something, right? Never. I'd say it's probably never gonna be that way, right? Yeah. But in the long run. Yeah, exactly. In the long run, if it can translate to like organic type of stuff, it it could pay off. So, like, how how, how can we tell? Like, you know what I mean? Like, what kind of like data do we have, maybe to evaluate what kind of organic stuff is happening as a result of the paid? Like, what's the like I guess the connection between the two? So, two things. So, the biggest thing to understand is paid ads don't work without organic.

You know what I'm saying? Like, it just don't work. Organic meaning you gotta upload content. Like, right? That's like when you upload content on YouTube, when you upload long form, short form, you know, when you upload your YouTube shorts, like that's that's considered organic. You uploaded it, you know, you may send it out to your friends and families, you may send like a text blast, email blast, that's considered organic, right? But after that, that's gonna only go so far, but it's important, you know, because once you run ads to a video, if someone really like what they see, you know what I'm saying, like what they hear, they're gonna click on the ad, go to the channel. If you ain't really got no organic content on the channel, then what are you bringing them to? You know? So people that really like you know that content on YouTube, they're gonna like go through your channel. They're gonna go through, you know, like binge watch. You know what I'm saying? So if you if they don't have nothing to binge watch, then you know, you lost your opportunity to really convert that person. So it's important.

Uh a metric that you want to pay attention to, I think this metric is probably uh overlooked, is returning viewers. So that's very important. So it's easy to get new viewers. That's easy, right? Whether you run an ads or organic, like new viewers, you get it. But you want to pay attention to the returning viewers. So it YouTube shows you in your analytics, it shows you, it shows you two bars if you're in a like in the right section. I'm not sure where exactly where it's at. I think it's in like in the content section or the audience section, but it shows you two lines. First line is your new viewers, and as you hover over that line, the other line shows you the returning viewers. So, you know, we like to see anywhere from like 20 to 30% of a returning viewership rate. So as long as you got that, you're in a good, your channel is healthy, you know, because the new viewership is cool, but the returning viewers, that tells you a lot. So imagine no one's popping until they have people coming back and back and back.

So this is great stuff, Nard for sure. So, like what what can we do if our returning viewer percentage is low? Get better. Better content. I mean, better content. Because if they're not returning, because it's like it's easy to get people there, right? Or let's say you're running an ad to like a product, you know, like uh you're trying to sell a soap or drink, like, okay, you got them there, but they actually tried the product and they, you know, they didn't buy no more. What does that mean? Fix the product. Fix the product. Yeah. So yeah. I'm scared to look at this for us, bro. I'm scared. It's just to rip the band-aid. I'm scared. Can we wait till Nard leaves to look at this? Yeah. Well, I mean, we could use it help, right? I know, but it's like it's kind of nerve wracking, man. What if it's like 2% or something? Yeah, we gotta fix the product. So for music artists, it's like, all right, it's not only music videos. You know, you got other things that you can post up.

I know we talked about the lyric videos and the visualizers, but okay, what about behind the scene content? Behind the scenes of the music videos? You know, day in the life vlogs, you know, like these are things that engage people. Like if they like the music videos, then they're gonna wanna know more about you. They wanna like, they wanna get past the mystique. You know what I'm saying? So those type of content is really good for music artists to post. You know, that keeps people engaged, that increases your uh average view duration, and then overall your organic reach. Yeah, damn. I'm real, I'm seriously a little nervous. I got homework. All of y'all go check out the returning viewer data and hopefully yours is in that 20 to 30% minimum because um yeah, oh my God. Um, okay. What uh, all right, so if if if we had a thousand dollars to spend on a campaign, right? And I'm a newer emerging artist, how should we spend it?

All right, so a thousand dollars, yeah. You wanna split it up. All right, so we do 400, 400, 200. Okay. Okay, so with the 400, we're gonna run worldwide, and then we're gonna run US base. Okay. So with the first 400, we're gonna have it split up. So 400, all right, keep up. Yep. All right. So in the 400, we're gonna break it down 200, 200. Okay. So the first 200 is gonna be worldwide campaign, but then we're gonna do a interest based campaign. So we're just gonna target based on genre. Then the other 200, we're gonna do an interest-based campaign, but we're gonna target the United States. So that's 400. And this is off a 30-day campaign. Okay. All right. So the other 400, Yep. so we're gonna do uh similar campaign. We're gonna do worldwide for 200. Yep. And then we're gonna do US for 200, but these are gonna be placement. placement campaigns. Okay. So with the placement campaigns, you you need some type of data.

You need to understand, you know, your audience. All right. So you need to know, okay, what artist has a similar audience as me. Yep. Like if you don't know, just play around, just figure it out. You know, just choose some artists. Ask five people that you trust. Ask five people. And then here's another thing. This is another thing. You can actually Google a similar audience finder on Google. There's tools that kind of help you. What they'll do is you you throw your Spotify link inside of the software and it'll generate similar audiences. Ooh. So that's that's so that's a method. Yeah. So, all right, so you got that. So we're doing worldwide, we're doing US. So that's $800. Okay. The other $200, we're gonna create subscriber growth campaigns. So $100 is gonna go to a worldwide campaign, and then the other one's gonna uh go to a US campaign. And then we're gonna do interest-based uh targeting with these subscriber growth campaigns. So I will start there.

Now here's another thing. Whenever you're doing these uh campaigns, when you do the worldwide campaign, you wanna go into the location section and throw every location in the location area, all right? Um, what you don't want to do is let's say you're just targeting worldwide, that means you don't select the location, you're just doing worldwide. The problem is all your views is probably gonna come out of uh, you know, a country like India, you know, or Iraq, yeah, um, which is fine, it's music heads there, right? But you but you're not able to control the locations that way. Yeah. That way, if you throw all the locations inside of there, you're still doing worldwide. But if you notice all your views start coming from India, just remove that location, you know, or you can put a bid adjustment in there to where, okay, I want to put like a negative 90% bid adjustment on that location. That means that you're paying less for that view.

Yeah. So if it's gonna come there. And then for the US campaign, make sure you just don't because in the location you can choose US, you can choose US and Canada, you can choose worldwide. Don't just choose US, put all the states in there. Because you want to be able to control, because on the Google Ads uh interface, you're able to see what states the views are coming from. The state versus Yeah, versus just US. That's huge. That's a good one. that is big. That's a tricky one. Yeah. Now you're gonna see this data on your YouTube analytics, of course, but you want to be able to control it on the Google Ads interface. Right. So that's why it's important. But that's how that's how I would spend a thousand dollars, and then you know, let's just say if you had a little bit more, I'll throw in a retargeting campaign inside of there. Maybe like a hundred dollars, $200 into a retargeting campaign because you're gonna get people that's viewing the channel, right? But then you can as soon as they view you, you can automatically throw them into like a middle funnel.

So now, okay, you viewed it, but you haven't subscribed. I'm gonna retarget you until you subscribe. Yeah. So what what type of uh ads are we running? Because you mentioned the different types. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So with the $800, we're gonna do skippable and discovery ads. Okay. So is an ad type is actually about to like be introduced. It's called Demand Gen. So they're about to go away with uh like you having the option to kind of select your ad types. Demand Gen is gonna have them all, right? So it's gonna have skippable, it's gonna have discovery, and then it's gonna have YouTube shorts. So Demand Gen, you know, will be the ad type that you run for the $800 one. Okay. Uh when you do the subscriber growth campaign, you actually can't choose your ad type. They choose it for you. Okay. But they're doing a mixture of the demand gen as well. Yeah. And this is all against the music video, you would say? All against the music video.

Okay. With a thousand dollar budget, I wouldn't even mess around with a non-skippable ad. Nah. Yeah, I would just do the music video. But especially we're we're an emerging artist, haven't done this a lot. That's what we're gonna do. Interesting. Is there any type of music video that you like there's high budget music videos, there's very DIY, there's creative, there's traditional just in front of a, you know, in a studio space. Anything like that you've seen work really well? So in a music video? I'll I'll tell you this. The simple wins every time, you know. Um, like perfect example is Lil Russ, uh Lil Russell, my bad. Lil Russell, his videos are like, you know, simple. Sometimes they one shot, but they clean, they high quality, and they killer. Yeah, you know? So videos that are just like not saying simple is the way to go, but this is what I mean by simple. So simple as making sure that you're getting to the point right away. That's the most important thing.

As far as the creativity inside the video, I mean, it's subjective. You know, as long as the content is high quality, that's the biggest thing. The content has to be high quality. There's a huge difference between running ads on Meta and running ads on YouTube. You can shoot an ad with your phone on Meta, but on YouTube, there's no phone ads that's gonna work as good as high quality content. So just make sure it's high quality, get straight to the point, and then you know, whether it's creative, super creative, or whether it's just simple one camera angle and you just doing your thing, just make sure it meets those criteria. Yeah. All right, so you mentioned kind of like top of funnel, middle of funnel. Like, can you explain what a marketing funnel is? Because I feel like it even was kind of newer to me as of recently, and I feel like a lot of our audience might not really know what you even mean by that. Yeah. What is a funnel and like what's an example of a good musician, like artist funnel? Got you.

So when I break it down, I'm gonna break it down as far as just like in a format, not just like YouTube, but just in general. Yeah. Because a good thing is, well, not a good thing, but 10 years from now, the platforms that we market on now probably won't be the platforms we market on. You know, like who knows, right? So as long as you understand the fundamentals. But you got top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom funnel. Yep. So the top of funnel is like brand awareness, you know, introduction, you know, you introducing your brand to the people. So that can be paid ads, that can be organic. So with the paid ads side, you're running ads on your music video, or you're running ads on just some piece of content. But the biggest thing is you're not selling out the gate. You're just saying, hey, check me out. I'm here, it's what I do, right? Um, and that can be in the form of an ad or organic content, because organic content can reach people that aren't following you or subscribe to you as well.

So now your middle funnel, it can be a lot of different things. You know, that can be your stories, you know, that can be YouTube shorts, you know, that can be TikTok challenges, you know, that can be just you posting content, right? So it can be really anything. Really anything to get people to either binge watch your content or just stay tapped into your content. Spending time with you, essentially. Spending time with you. Perfect. Perfect example. And then the bottom of the funnel is when you're getting them to do something. Whether that is subscribe, follow, sign up for the email list, uh, join my community, stream my song. Stream my song. It's the sale. The sale. Yeah. That's the sale. So this is the thing, man. Um, nowadays I'm seeing a lot of artists that's like winning with the communities, you know. So that's like, okay, Patreon, you know, that's your Discord, you know, Telegram. You can create communities inside of these platforms, and you know, you can have people subscribe to these communities, you know, create you like a subscription program.

Now it gets deeper than just, you know, stream my song, right? Selling, it gets deeper than your music just being the only product that you have. I think it's almost a requirement in 2025. If your only bottom of funnel is stream my song, you're gonna have a tough time making any money in this shit, man. I'm sorry. Like, you gotta think about what else there is that makes sense with you and your brand and your music. That's a fact. Yeah, that's real. Like, you gotta have a product. Something else besides three tenths of a penny. You know what I mean? So with with YouTube ads, are you ever sending them off platform or is it always stay on YouTube? Oh hell yeah. We sending them everywhere. Okay. We sending them out of space. Oh, shit. That was crazy. We sending them to outer space. Hell yeah. Okay, give us a few examples of what you've seen work successfully. Where do you send them? Yeah, exactly. An artist's website? So that, right? Um, you had mentioned um, you know, the method of using meta ads to send them to Spotify, right?

Yeah. So we use uh YouTube to do that, right? So that's one method. So what we do is we'll create a YouTube ad, they'll see like, let's say a music video. Yeah. Um, when they click the call of action, they won't just land on like on a Spotify link. We'll send them to like a, you know, like a Link Tree, right? Uh we like to call them a customized landing page. So we like to use ToneDen. Yep. So um there's lots of them, Linktree, SmartLink. We like ToneDen. It's like real artist friendly. We've used ToneDen, yeah. Okay, they're good. So the thing that's cool about Tonedin, and most of these platforms is you can install a tracking code on that platform. So, but with ToneDen, you know, you can send them to Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, whatever streaming platform you, you know, you want to add in the mix. And once they see the one that they like, they click on it, now they have the opportunity to stream your song. But the biggest thing is the tracking code. Because now with the tracking code, you can track how many people actually click through from this landing page and they land it on one of these streaming platforms.

So, with that, we like to see metrics anywhere from like 40 to 50 percent as far as click-through rate. That's a really healthy campaign. Now, unfortunately, since you're sending them to a platform like Apple Music and Spotify, you can't track, you can't put a tracking code on Apple Music or Spotify. So you can only track the click-through rate. Now, if you unless if you don't have anything else going on, like if you don't have uh playlist marketing, you don't have like any other promotions running on that song, then you can kind of measure the click-through rate versus the actual play. So we like to see like we see anywhere from like a 1% to 10% playthrough rate from the Tone Den platform to the actual stream. So, but yeah, we do Spotify, we do uh ticket sales, you know, events, um merch, uh anything, man. And that's you know, from the artist side, of course, businesses, we do it all.

But from artist side as always, you know, whether we're sending them to the streaming platforms. We actually been playing with sending them to their own website. We got a couple artists that have their website set up pretty good. Uh platforms like um, what's the platform? Shoot, even. Y'all heard of even? Yeah, we interviewed the owner. Oh man. That platform is it. Yeah, they get it. Yeah. So sending them to a platform like that to where they have control and they, you know, they own the actual data. So if someone, if someone signs up on even, you'll get the phone number, email, you know, you'll really get some information about your audience versus just sending them to a Spotify and Apple Music link. So yeah, no, I think what I love most about like a toned Den is the ability, like you said, to kind of place like a tracking code in there. Cause can't you use that to also retarget? Yeah, that's the biggest thing. It's gotta be the like one of the biggest benefits of that. Yeah, so you can actually add that strategy in your funnel.

Yeah. So you got people that clicked on the toned in link, but they didn't click through. So you want to be able to retarget those people that hasn't clicked through all the way to stream the song. So yeah, that's the biggest thing, you know. The ability to track, but also the ability to retarget. Yeah, or the people who clicked through. Maybe we do hit them with the merch ad. Yeah, too. Because I mean, damn, they clicked through to the song from YouTube. They were pretty fucking hype about whatever I got going on. Oh, this sweater is pretty cool too. Sweater. I like sweaters. Anyways, Nard, we've entered the final segment of the podcast. Oh man. It's good. I feel like I'm like ready to go. Start my YouTube ads. Yeah. I'm ready to fucking hire Nard. Honestly, that might be the better way to go. I'm not even, we'll talk after this. I'm actually serious about that. It always goes with like the do it yourself, do it for me or do it with me. You know, it's like, what the fucking?

What's the best? man? We'll figure it out. Anyway, this is the rapid fire rampage. Nard, it's gonna be three sections. I'll explain them as we go. We're just gonna start with some short answer questions. Uh nice and simple. So, anyways, give us your best, just like short elevator pitch on why artists absolutely need to be taking advantage of YouTube. Convince me. I don't want to do YouTube. Talk to me. So, no marketing, no business. Right? Uh Dan Henry said it best. The one that is willing to spend the most on marketing wins. And this is the Michael Jordan of marketing. Right? So marketing is king. If you don't want to market yourself, then get out the music business. And YouTube specifically, like you have to. So with YouTube, you gotta push yourself on YouTube because music is just not audio, it's visual. Yeah.

So what's the biggest visual platform as far as like being able to convert a fan to long form? How many videos can you go back and watch 15 years later? YouTube versus Facebook and Instagram. Can you scroll down Instagram 15 years later and find a video on a you know what I'm saying? Like the search is what makes YouTube so powerful. Search. Search. The second biggest search engine in the world. Yeah, and you can literally sort by oldest. So if I actually wanted to watch my favorite artist first upload, you'd find out. I can easily do it versus, yeah, you're not scrolling, like I can't search is powerful. I can't go back to your first Instagram post, favorite artist. Moving on, my new favorite question currently. Trump has just appointed you to a brand new position of music industry czar. What is your first order of business? Oh.

First order of business. I am going to take a handful of artists and put them in position. Because if I got the backing of the president. The United States government is behind you. Yeah, like. You're gonna play favorites and choose a few artists I'm gonna bless them. I'm gonna bless them. Everyone else is like, what the corrupt the government is, bro. Even in this hypothetical situation, it's literally nepotism going on there. Yeah, I'm gonna have some industry plans for real. Yeah. This will be like the biggest example of industry plans, bro. I love it. It's a government funded industry plant. Gotta respect the honesty at least. Um you have your phone on you currently. Nope. As a good guest, should should not. Yeah, kind of okay. Moving on. Move along, Henry. Good try. What emoji best represents you and why? The cold face.

The blue cold face. Yeah. He's cold. Ice cold. Ice cold. Not cold blooded, but just okay. I'm fucking cold. He's nice. He's nice. Yeah. Okay, moving on. I like that one. What is the most common mistake you see artists making on YouTube? Where are they fucking up? For actually, no, that is the best word. Not promoting themselves. You know, that's the biggest thing. They'll spend thousands of dollars on the music videos. They'll spend all the money on the cars, the clothes, the ice, but they upload that music video to YouTube and they pray for a miracle. They just hope something's gonna happen And it don't happen. They send it to their friends, their family. They might email a couple people, they might DM a couple people, and then that's it. That's it. And it's not enough, guys. Bro. It's not enough. I this should be put into speaking of music industry czar, This should be put into law. If you have a budget for a music video, you should literally cut it in half, only spend half of it on the actual fucking video, and the other half should be on marketing.

I'm stamping that into law right now. I'm not mad at you for that. You are you on board? Will you sign the petition? I rarely am agreeing with you. Okay. God. We know it's a good idea. Both of us agree on it. That's how You guys know. Yeah. Trust me. Yeah, yeah. Some of our best ideas have finally been when me and Henry have been like, bet, let's do that. That's actually the one somehow. Um, Nard, you must choose one song to play every time you enter a room. Damn. You know what? There's got to be some cold shit. What's that song? Uh like maybe Rick Ross Hustling? You know, it's a song It's cold. that Soulja Boy song with Drake. We made it? We made it, yeah. We made it. Yeah. We made it featuring Soulja Boy. It's a Drake song called We Made It featuring Soulja Boy. Oh my god, from 2013. Inspirational. Only only on SoundCloud and YouTube, perhaps? Fire. He would pick a YouTube only, you know what I mean? Uh-huh.

Actually, checks out. Fucking YouTube guy. Okay, last one of the short answer. What is your favorite curse word? Hell. Hell. No one has said hell. Hell's good. That's great. We're raising hell. Yeah, yeah. Hell raising. Hell yeah. You got hell, you got lots of hell. Anyway, hell no. Moving on in the next section is the this or that. Nard, I'm gonna just give you two choices and you gotta pick one. Very simple. Starting with drums or melodies? Melodies. Drums or flats? Drums. Titles or thumbnails. Titles. Discover new artists or binge your favorites. Can I say both? Nope. Uh binge. Lyric video or vlog? Lyric.

AI generated insights or human creativity? Human. Ranch or blue cheese. Blue Ranch. What? Somehow I just agreed with him. Skirted the system. Yeah. Did you just make should we make that? Blue Ranch. It's kind of like Cool Ranch. Reminds me of like Cool Ranch Doritos. Because it's a blue bag. Interesting. Paid YouTube ads or YouTube influencer campaign. Oh, we didn't even touch. Oh my god. And YouTubers to talk about. Shit. Hopefully he'll maybe expand upon this answer, whatever you choose. Shortly. Let's find him. Yeah. Um. Wow. I like that topic. So paid. I'm gonna say paid. Yeah. Um, but what does it influence your marketing strategy like high level look like on YouTube? So here's the thing, man. Um, so it's definitely different than um social media. What we've seen that are good campaign on YouTube are the reaction videos.

Yep, I knew it. I knew it. I was like these motherfucking reaction channels, bro. Yeah, people love it. I know why do they love watching someone else watch a video? It's like watching other people play video games. It's on Twitch. It's the same thing. It is a weird like psychological phenomenon. This is what we're on now. So that's where a lot of the money goes. If someone is asking you to incorporate that into the campaign, it's pretty much. If someone was like let's get some influencers involved. you would say, let's get reactions. For YouTube, yes. Last one of the this or that. Go back to being a full time rapper or leave the music industry forever. Damn. not too hard coming back or what? Full time. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Nard too hard. Oh, wow. It's a cool name. I like it. I would check out Nard Too Hard's I'd watch his music video if it was served up to me in an ad. That's in a beautifully scripted ad. You were saying what I said, but powerful Contextually. hard hitting music video in the first three seconds. Fire.

I might just let it ride. The final part is the word association. I'm just gonna say one word, and you give me the first word that you think of right back off the top of your head. It's gonna be great. You sound worried. Don't worry about it. Starting with music. Shorts. Hot. Cold. Ad. Organic. Snow. Flake. Cash. Flow. Viral. Started as with an F. I don't know what else. Extinct. Ooh. You developed a stutter like I have. Was it wasn't a stutter actually? Starting with the run. Viral. I said viral. viral. Trumpet. Violin. Underwear. Tidy Whities.

Hearing a grown man call it Tidy whities is top notch. AI. Generated. Dolphin. Well. Cryptocurrency. A million. Podcast. Takeover. Lil Yachty. Wham. Bam. Wham, bam! Baby. There's your episode. Let's go. This has been Wham Promotions, Nard Too Hard, the YouTube. The YouTube ads guru. Appreciate you coming on, man. I think this was like super helpful for me and us at the podcast. So I'm hoping that the artist got just as much value as uh we did. Like, comment, subscribe, do all that fun shit. Until next time, Henry, what are we doing? Getting out of here. Peace.