Module 2 - Know your client or offer

Why do you need a discovery session before running YouTube ads?

Because at the groundwork stage it is very important that you know your client inside out, along with their offer. Your client will understand their business at a level you will probably never get to, because you are not in the business day in, day out, and you do not understand how it is changing from one week to the next.

The discovery session sheet is what helps you get to understand your client inside out.

What should you capture about current performance?

Start by understanding what their current digital marketing performance actually is. What are the web hits, what are the average order values, are there any seasonal differentiators through the year? I cannot say that word.

What is the current lead cost, and what is the lifetime value of that customer? That essentially starts to tell us how much they may be able to spend on media, and whether the lifetime value of the customer is greater than that initial first sale.

Then what is their average cost per click across different platforms, what is their CTR, what are the best performing keywords right now, and do they have any existing agencies you are going to have to collaborate with? We capture all of this because it sets the scene as to what is currently happening online, where they are performing and where they are not, before we get ahead with YouTube advertising.

Who inside the client's business should answer these questions?

All levels of the business, not just your day to day contact. If we are dealing with a marketing director, we would want them answering, but we would also want someone in finance or the CEO involved, and someone from customer services.

That way you glean information and extracts from every level of the business.

What objectives and challenges should you ask about?

Ask for the business objectives and the financial objectives, because that is where the foundations are laid. It may be that they are building a business they want to sell, or that they want to increase their turnover by half a million pounds, or that they want to break into a new market, or they have a new product that brings them into a new target market.

Then get to their challenges. Do they have a lot of competition? Is it a dying trade or a rising trade? Is it the next best thing that everyone is going to be after? Really get to understand their challenges and the top line information, so you can start to advise correctly when it comes to their YouTube advertising. That will start to paint a picture for you.

Why do mission, vision and values matter to a YouTube campaign?

Because they shape your recommendations on campaign creative and scripting. This is the slightly fluffier stuff, but when you get into mission, vision and values you might discover that the environment is really important to a business, or that having a lot of diversity is.

Then there is their USP, and what really taps into their customers' emotions. What is their just do it? That varies from business to business, and they do not always know what their just do it is. It is really interesting how, when you get into the detail here, clients start to rethink who they are, how they portray themselves internally and how they ought to portray themselves externally.

What do you need to know about their customers?

Find out who their typical customer is, and who they wish it was. Are they male or female, what age bracket are they normally in, is there an opportunity for a new kind of customer where they have seen early seeds from a different target market, and what other customers do they want buying from them or converting with them?

Where do those customers live, why do they buy from the business, and why do they not buy? Is it because they can find products cheaper elsewhere, or a better service elsewhere? What are the key barriers to purchase?

Often, if something is very low cost, there is a low purchasing decision, so it is easier to get that conversion. If it is a high purchasing decision, ask what customers are thinking about and whether they are getting enough information to help them with a decision that will take longer. Also ask how the target market is given confidence as they are taken through a funnel, because that is what gets the purchase over the line. That is why shorter funnels work for lower purchasing decisions and bigger funnels are needed for bigger ones.

How do you use SWOT with a client?

Ask the client for their own view of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, then compare it with yours. As an agency we tend to come away and think, we know what we think, but what do they think?

It really creates an area of debate, because we then highlight areas they may have missed and they highlight areas we may have missed. It is a really interesting exercise, and I think many organisations do not do a SWOT analysis enough.

Then move on to a SWOT of competitors, so you start to benchmark how they sit against them. Do at least three. Three is sufficient. Sometimes you will get a customer who only wants to do one or two, and they will do their main competitor, but I think it is really healthy to encourage at least three. What you start to see is that the threat and the weakness of one competitor is actually the opportunity for your client.

How do you work out where a client sits in the market?

Get them to plot themselves on a brand axis, so they can see where they sit. If they are an exclusive vehicle manufacturer, filled with leather seats, with great horsepower and performance, and it costs a lot, they are probably going to sit in high quality and high price.

Get your customer to fill that out and they start to understand their place in the market, and that is going to help shape any creative and scripting.

Then move on to brand values, and the four proof points your client considers to be their brand values. Is innovation really important to them, for example? It may be that they have recently won an award in that area. If it is important to them, then it is important that the innovation gleams through the creative, so those messages really cut through to the end consumer.

What external impacts should you map?

Run a STEEPLE with the client, covering social, technological, economical, political, legislative and environmental impacts. Ask them to think about what is affecting the business right now and what could affect it in future.

This can be quite an arduous task for a client, because there are normally lots of different impacts and things they may never have even thought of. It is another good reason to get all aspects of the business involved, so you really understand what they see as their potential impacts, and that helps shape the advice you are about to give them.

What else do you need before you can advise them?

Ask what other marketing activity they have planned, and get access to their data. Do they have big campaigns coming up, and how will those sit alongside the YouTube advertising campaign you are going to run? Are there any new products?

From an agency perspective this also helps you understand where their priorities sit around the campaign you are working on with them.

We then ask clients to share access to any marketing plans and strategies, any research and insights reports, Google Analytics access, ads account access and digital campaign reports. We would always do this with a signed NDA, and I recommend you do too, so that you are setting the right impression.

Once you have had access to all of that and they have filled the sheet out, take it away, digest it, and then go back to them for a collaborative workshop where you talk through the whole discovery session. That is when you really start to understand the pinch points of your client and the pinch points of their customer. That is how you get to know your client, their product and their offer in detail.