SaaS YouTube Ad “Battle” [Part 1 of 3]

In this 3 part series, we’re going uncover the lessons behind Noom’s $131 million USD in YouTube adspend, to build a roadmap to give Found a quicker path to success with YouTube ads.

The weight loss market is enormous: over $250 Billion dollars per year.

With all that cash at stake, what can upstart weight loss app Found (joinfound.com) do to:

1. Scale user acquisition after their recent $100M Series B funding round

2. Take away market share from #1 weight loss app Noom? ($3.7B valuation)

In this 3 part series, we’re going uncover the lessons behind Noom’s $131 million USD in YouTube adspend, to build a roadmap to give Found a quicker path to success with YouTube ads.

In the process, you are going to learn:

● How to find your own “go to market” YouTube ad targeting strategy…

● How to build high-performing YouTube ads, using your competitors as data-backed inspiration...

● How to launch & scale on YouTube by testing and iterating both creative + targeting...

● And much more...

Ready? Let’s dive in…

Why YouTube ads for B2C SaaS Growth?

When it comes to driving awareness, interest, and sales at scale for B2C SaaS products (and short sales cycle B2B SaaS like monday & clickup as well)...?

Right now there is no channel like YouTube ads.

(We’ve managed over $100 million USD in adspend at our YouTube ad agency?Inceptly. Much of that has been for SaaS products like these, which is our biggest vertical.)

Let’s take weight loss app Noom as one example.

Crunchbase?describes Noom as?“a psychology-based digital health platform used to provide intelligent nutrition and exercise coaching”.

YouTube ads make up Noom’s biggest top of funnel traffic source for new user acquisition, with?over $131 million spent on the platform.

So when startup weight loss app Found (joinfound.com) closed a $100M Series B funding round this December 2021…

…You better believe they are preparing to scale on YouTube big time, very soon.

But right now, if you look inside?VidTao?or?Similarweb, it doesn’t look like Found is running a single YouTube ad yet:

No YouTube ads yet?

No problem. We’ll have plenty of ideas on that very soon.

But first, a quick look at the big picture:

David (Found) vs. Goliath (Noom)

Opening up our comparison panel in SimilarWeb, we see that in the past 3 months,?Noom has over?28x?more traffic than Found:?

(Noom started in 2008 while Found launched in 2019, so Noom has a bit of a head start.)

Let’s take a closer look at the traffic channel breakdown for Noom:

“Wait, I thought you said YouTube was their biggest driver of top of funnel traffic?”

Not so fast there, tiger, let’s take a closer look:

• #1 channel?direct traffic?is all people who are typing in some variation of “noom.com” directly. They’re already aware of the app somehow.?
• And #2 & #3?paid & organic search?are nearly 50% branded terms. Which means these are searches where people are typing in terms directly related to “noom”, like the following SimilarWeb screenshot shows:

So this begs the question:

How is Noom driving awareness and action from entirely cold, unaware audiences?

It’s that #4 channel, YouTube.

YouTube advertisers notice again and again how YouTube ads drive results?beyond “just the click,” especially at scale.

Keep in mind that?even viewers who skip ads at 5 seconds are?600% more likely?to search for your product.

(Hello paid and organic branded search traffic…)

Here’s a quick diagram we made showing this in more detail:

Here is what the head of growth at another unicorn, $13B Grammarly -?who has spent over $300M on YouTube ads?- has to say about how YouTube ads have powered click-based results (and beyond):

“YouTube is definitely a powerhouse of a channel for us… It’s performing well as a direct response channel. It’s also providing a substantial brand lift. We’re seeing that there’s an overall broader brand awareness of Grammarly. We’ve seen that reflected in things like brand searches, which we’re then able to capitalize on with ads, as well as with organic listings."

- Yuriy Timen, Head of Growth, Grammarly

That might be great for Grammarly… But if you’re at Found, with no YouTube ads yet but looking to scale fast, maybe you’re thinking:

“So what? How do I actually get started scaling on YouTube?”

Specifically…

• Whom?are we going to?target?with Found’s YouTube ads?
• What video ads?are we going to create to convert these viewers into customers?

The clues, as always, are in the data.

Stay tuned for part 2?of this series where we'll dig into the data and find the answers for the first part of the question,?targeting...

What are your YouTube ad questions?

In the meantime though, what questions do YOU have about YouTube ads?

Let us know in the?Comments?section below, and we’ll make sure to cover your question in an upcoming post.

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