Scaling YouTube in B2B: User-generated content vs costly productions
Roy Naar explains how Workiz made YouTube a scalable channel for demand generation
At the start of 2020, Workiz, a SaaS-based business management software for the trades, was fresh off their round A. They completed it with a significant amount of funding in hand, intended to boost their growth rates.
At that time, Workiz had two major growth channels, Facebook and Google Search, both of which they had pretty much maxed out. They knew that to hit their targets, they needed a new scalable demand gen channel and had set their eyes on YouTube.
YouTube advertising was just beginning to take off, and they knew their target audience was there. There were dozens of YouTube channels dedicated to the trades, ranging from carpet cleaners showcasing their work to junk removal professionals offering tips to beginners.
In this (first!) guest post, I talk with Roy Naar, formerly the Director of Demand Generation at Workiz, who explains how he made YouTube into a scalable demand generation channel.
Costly production 🙁
It's well-known that the success of YouTube ads hinges on the quality of the creative. Unlike Facebook ads, which might work with a banner created by a guy from Fiverr, YouTube requires serious production.
And Workiz was ready to invest the necessary resources. They approached a professional studio to create a high-quality (and expensive) YouTube ad, à la monday.com and Grammarly:
Roy joined Workiz just as the production was wrapping up, inheriting these materials with the expectation of using them to make YouTube work.
The path to success seemed clear: Roy had considerable experience with social acquisition (having previously led the Social Acquisition team at Natural Intelligence), they had support from Google’s dedicated team, and they possessed a professional creative.
Nevertheless, it didn't work:
The click-through-rates (CTR) and view-through-rates (VTR) were significantly below Google's benchmarks. The campaign generated few signups and the cost-per-signup was much higher than what they used to pay on Facebook.
Despite numerous tests — cutting up the materials differently, adding text overlays, trying different copy for the posts, experimenting with various audiences — Roy eventually concluded that the creative simply didn't resonate with their target audience.
He also understood why: The ad centered on an office manager surrounded by files, a scenario far removed from the experiences of Workiz's target audience. People in the trades spent most of their time in the field, even while managing several technicians.
What further strengthened this perception was that they also created a shorter version of the creative for Facebook. Up until then they used static images, and were excited to have a video to test. And yet, the video severely underperformed compared to their existing creatives.
There was no way around it: the expensive production didn't deliver.
Roy knew he needed to crack YouTube, and he realized this would involve generating a new creative, one that would better resonate with his target audience.
What he didn't know was how to acquire such an ad. This wasn't just due to budgetary constraints but also because the world was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even if he managed to secure the budget, how could he carry out a production during lockdowns?
Enter user-generated content 🙂
Around this time, something else was happening at Workiz.
As is typical for an Israeli startup, Workiz was heavily focused on performance marketing and had invested little in long-term initiatives. However, post-funding round, they decided to start creating some thought leadership content.
They aimed to create content pieces with tips for building a service business and wanted to leverage their community for this. They reached out to various tradespeople, both their customers and those found on social media, asking them to contribute to content pieces.
One of the business owners they approached was Austin Hiers. Austin, a young junk removal professional from Florida, was also a budding content creator. He had a small YouTube channel with several hundred subscribers where he posted videos about life in the trades.
As soon as Roy noticed Austin’s own content online, he recognized the solution to his problem. He would ask him to create a homemade video for Workiz!
So Roy reached out to Austin.
On a side note, Roy mentions that his experience taught him that such outreach should be as personal as possible. Therefore, he wrote to Austin from his personal Facebook account, and made sure to mention one of Austin's videos.
Here is the original message:
Austin replied within minutes. He was eager to help, as it happened he was in market for a new business management tool for his own business! Roy connected him with a product expert to show him around the app.
Shortly after, Austin sent several video shoots that resulted in this ad:
This ad is far less polished than the previous one. The camera work is amateur, the edit is rough, and even though Austin is quite charismatic, he's not a professional actor.
Yet, Roy believed that this authentic vibe would make the ad successful. Austin looked and spoke like Workiz's target audience. He drove the same kind of truck they did and filmed his team and himself in the environments they encountered daily.
Roy was right. He quickly tested this ad on YouTube and was astounded by the result: it tripled the CTR and VTR compared to the original creative and reduced the cost per signup by a staggering 75%.
It was a huge success. Thanks to this video ad, YouTube finally became a scalable acquisition channel for Workiz, paving the way for a successful round B 💪