[Top Agency Series] The Anatomy of an Effective YouTube Ad with Aleric Heck of AdOutreach and Keyword Search

Aleric Heck is a YouTube ads expert and the founder of AdOutreach and KeywordSearch.com. He has been in the online marketing industry for the past seven years and has helped thousands of business owners scale and grow their businesses using laser-targeted YouTube ads.

Aleric and his team have helped clients generate over $200 million in sales from YouTube ads. His ventures have been recognized as some of the fastest-growing companies in the industry, with AdOutreach scaling to eight figures and ranking number 60 on the Inc 5000 list. Aleric is also known for his innovation in leveraging AI technology to supercharge ad audiences.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [4:46] The role of YouTube and video marketing in driving sales
• [7:23] The benefits of using KeywordSearch.com for your business
• [10:35] The benefits of incorporating innovation days into your business strategy
• [14:52] How to effectively work with a remote team and foster collaboration
• [21:44] How to effectively manage client expectations during the onboarding process
• [30:40] Why having a robust CRM like HubSpot is crucial for client management
• [11:07] How hackathons can help in developing new strategies and ideas
• [36:33] Common mistakes people make with YouTube ads
• [37:34] The three elements to creating an ad: hook, educate, call to action
• [47:33] The impact of mentorship and mastermind groups in business growth

In this episode…

Are you a brand looking to reach the right audience through online platforms? How can you leverage YouTube ads to bring your products and services to the notice of the right persona?

Aleric Heck shares his journey from starting a YouTube channel at a young age to becoming a YouTube ads expert and running two successful companies. He discusses the power of YouTube and video marketing and how he leverages AI targeting to reach the right people at the right time.

Aleric also talks about the evolution of Google and YouTube media buying and how AI has changed the game. He shares how KeywordSearch.com, a tool initially built for their clients, has grown into a standalone company that helps businesses target their ads using AI.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, join host Dr. Jeremy Weisz, as guest Aleric Heck, shares some insights into how he scaled his agency to over eight figures and the importance of relationships in business. He also discusses the value of podcasting as a marketing tool and how providing true value in video ads can drive sales.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Aleric Heck on LinkedIn
• Dr. Jeremy Weisz on LinkedIn
• AdOutreach
• Keyword Search
• Inspired Insider
• Rise25

Special Mention(s):

• Jason Swenk on LinkedIn
• Todd Taskey on LinkedIn
• Kevin Hourigan on LinkedIn
• Ron Popeil on LinkedIn
• Brian Kurtz on LinkedIn

Related episode(s):

• [Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital on Inspired Insider
• Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast on Inspired Insider
• [Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech on Inspired Insider

Quotable Moments:

• “We scaled to eight figures, later number 60, on the Inc 5000 list of the fastest growing companies last year.”
• “Innovation is not just about having a new idea, it’s about creating a culture where everyone feels their ideas are heard.”
• “Entrepreneurship thrives when you’re surrounded by like-minded people.”

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:01  

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz  0:22  

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of InspiredInsider.com. I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Aleric Heck, he runs AdOutreach.com and KeywordSearch.com. And we’re going to get into those in a second. But Aleric, I always like to mention other episodes people should check out of the podcasts. It’s just part of the top agency series. Jason Swenk built up his agency to over eight figures and he sold it. And then he started a group that is actually buying up agencies. He also runs a group that coaches agencies, Todd Taskey is another one. He kind of pairs, he’s interesting, you’ll like his episodes, he has a second best podcast, he will take agency, introduce them to private equity for selling.

And sometimes people make more on the second bite than they do on the first because when the private equity sells again, they make more because they will get equity into the private equity company. So it’s really interesting. He has agencies that have sold their companies and they’re talking about how it worked. And that’s the second best podcast, Kevin Hourigan who runs Spinutech, he’s run an agency since 1995. So we talked about the evolution of the agency like we’re gonna talk about with Aleric actually, you know, he has a software company now on the back of his agency. MailChimp started as an agency and then created MailChimp. I think they sold for over a billion dollars. I don’t remember. So hopefully that’s for you, Aleric with Keyword Search. Brian Kurtz is another one I’ve had on a couple times, Aleric actually spoke to Brian Kurtz’s group.

And Brian talks about the lessons learned from sending over 1.3 billion pieces of direct mail and helping boardrooms grow to over $150 million. And so Aleric really is, you know, the two powerful things direct response and video. Right. And that’s what you do, you help people grow with that. Ron Popeil, the king of infomercials. Also check that episode out. That is also kind of the power of video and direct response. But before I formally introduce Aleric and what he does, this episode is brought to you by Rise25 and at Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect their Dream 100 relationships and partnerships, how do we do that we actually are an easy button for you to launch and run your podcast. So we do strategy, full strategy, accountability and full execution.

We call ourselves kind of the magic elves that work in the background and make it look easy for the hosts in the company. You know, for me, you know, the number one thing in my life is relationships, I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way than to profile the people and companies I most admire on this planet over the past decade, and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, you can go to Rise25.com. And I’m excited to introduce our khakis, YouTube ads expert and founder of AdOutreach, as well as KeywordSearch.com. And over the last seven years, Aleric has taught 1000s of entrepreneurs and business owners how to grow and scale their business, using laser targeted YouTube ads.

And collectively, him and his team have helped clients generate over $200 million in sales from YouTube ads and scaled his own business to over eight figures. You know, that’s his agency business. He has a separate business where he actually started, you know, he, you know, got to learn his chops. Right, you know, you looked about five years old Belarc in the video, so you must have been doing it for years. But he actually started on a YouTube channel and started growing it and wanted to scale his own YouTube channel. So he’s eating, he’s eating his own dog food, growing that business, he still has that business, that YouTube channel. But he has scaled his own business to over eight figures. Agencies also created KeywordSearch.com that helps people supercharge their ad audiences with AI. Now this is where I stopped talking. You do most of the talking. But thanks for joining me.

Aleric Heck  4:15  

Oh, thank you so much, Jeremy, I’m so excited to dive in. Really appreciate that as well. And definitely excited to dive into the journey and every step along the way. Well, it wasn’t quite five when I started out that YouTube channel, but I was 12. So pretty young. It was, you know, back it, you know, back in 2009. And, you know, starting from an early age and just kind of went from there.

Jeremy Weisz  4:35  

Yeah, I mean, that’s really where you kind of cut your teeth in it, but talk just for a second about a little bit more about AdOutreach and what you do there and then we’ll talk about Keyword Search.

Aleric Heck  4:46  

Absolutely. So in terms of AdOutreach, what we do is we help businesses use laser targeted YouTube ads to generate consistent leads and consistent sales. And so essentially what we found is that value driven In Video Marketing performs the best on YouTube because what you can do is really create true value on the ad and reach people when they’re in what we call a learner’s mindset. People are on YouTube to learn either to be entertained or to learn, you want to reach the people that are looking to learn. And then we can reach them at the perfect time by crafting a value driven video ad, and then reaching them using AI targeting. And we’ll get into Keyword Search in a second.

But using some of the software that we built, we can actually make sure that we’ve reached the right people. And so this is essentially what we built with AdOutreach. We scaled to eight figures, later number 60, on the Inc 5000 list of the fastest growing companies last year. So really exciting. And we’ve got a great team here in Austin, Texas. And we work again, like with a wide variety of clients, I know you’re showing some of that here as well. And then on the Keyword Search side, what we saw is we were having all these clients coming in and originally we just built this specifically for our clients. But we’ve since expanded to have this be really its own company.

And what we do is we help businesses on the Keyword Search side, use AI to find the perfect audiences to target their ads with YouTube and Google ads. And so essentially, KeywordSearch.com has started out as mostly keyword research for YouTube. And so you can find all the best audience error best keywords to target with your YouTube ads. But as YouTube evolved, and also as AI evolves, we realized that there was an opportunity to help people use AI to target ad audiences. And if you’re familiar with Google and YouTube and media buying, you know that everything is shifting to audiences these days.

So essentially, these audiences have the ability to go and target people based on their interests when they’re looking up on Google or YouTube websites that are going on. And so what you can do is use AI with this tool to actually pinpoint the exact right people you want to reach based on what they’re looking up. And this tool just makes it easy. Just type some details about your business, we do all the heavy lifting using AI in our algorithm to find how to reach that audience with your ad platforms.

Jeremy Weisz  7:05  

Let’s talk about this. I mean, this is a big decision to make, or to have another company, right, it shifts focus. Also, probably a lot of some of your secret weapons are baked into this software. So what made you decide to release it to the public?

Aleric Heck  7:23  

Yeah, so it’s a really great question. And what I would say is, I actually think it’s a really valuable lesson for different entrepreneurs to look at and is always really innovating. And if you’re not the one who disrupts yourself, then someone else is going to do it for you. And I think that’s really the mentality that I had when I created Keyword Search. Because when I saw it originally, it was a tool, we kept it more private, right? So you’re kind of alluding to the fact that we built it originally. So that we had a tool that did the heavy lifting for targeting, and we just had it for clients.

And that’s what it was for, you know, we launched Keyword Search a couple of years ago and started working on it a little bit more than that around maybe three years ago. But we launched it two years ago, it was just mostly to our clients, and about nine months ago is when we decided to actually branch off and make it really its own business and really scale and grow with the AI element. But originally, we built it because we just needed the tool, right, we were doing all of you’re spending all this time on manual keyword research. And I wanted a tool that actually went out and I saw there were some existing tools in the marketplace that actually tried to acquire a few of them, when they turned out they weren’t for sale. And I had some ideas for how to improve them anyway, so I was gonna acquire and improve. That didn’t end up happening.

And so I got connected with my CTO, Greg, who’s fantastic. And so we actually ended up building Keyword Search from scratch. And originally it was to target all the different keywords on YouTube. But then as AI rolled out, we saw an opportunity to use AI to actually go in and build out these audiences and do it in minutes. So we ran a study on the average time it takes for somebody to go from typing in details about their business to having an audience synced with Google ads. So is there a direct Google Ads integration for YouTube or Google search ads, and in the future, we’re looking at, you know, other platforms potentially, but you know, for the direct syncing 2.6 minutes, which is pretty remarkable.

It used to take hours to build these types of audiences or campaigns or do all the research. And so now it’s compressed. But the reason to answer your question, why I do this is, I still have of course, the core focus is still at Outreach. But with Keyword Search, there’s an opportunity to use AI to help our clients and even help other people or agencies actually target their ads. And it’s almost like we can build the tool. And this can create its own momentum and growth. And so I actually see a big opportunity for Keyword Search to potentially even Eclipse you know, that’s what we’re doing and AdOutreach because of its ability as a software to go in and target the right people.

Now obviously It’s not at that point yet. But I think there’s really opportunities to grow it. And if we didn’t build this, somebody else would build it and probably not build it as well. So we wanted to come in and actually build it better using our years and years of knowledge around YouTube ads, and Google ads, and also using, you know, our team of developers to actually go and build this up. And, and so that’s what we ended up doing. And, now we’re taking it out to the masses. So that, again, people might come over here, they might be clients on the consulting side, just different ways to help people improve their ads. And we’ll talk about

Jeremy Weisz  10:35  

that, because I want to know what you saw with these other things that didn’t have exactly what you needed, and and what you need to actually bake in to improve. So we’ll talk about that in a second. But, you know, I love to hear a couple things on, you know, how you grew your agency. And one of the things which relates to this is you do this kind of hacking or innovation day, and I’d love for you to share that. So other agencies can think about how they can implement the same thing. Oh, that’s great. So

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