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What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

candyjapan.com

171–180 of 263 posts

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#171
post #29

The ad was terrible. It explained how Candy Japan works. I don't care how Candy Japan works. I want the why should I buy Candy Japan. It should have focused instead on the candies that you can get. Delicious, weird, unique candies only available through this service.

I disagree. He targeted a specific audience linked to manga and anime. It's likely that demographic already knows the kinds of treats this service would likely offer. They just need to know there's service out there that will get them to you easily and regularly.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#173
post #145
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that is intentional. Sentence missing from the blog post is still up on the reddit post[1]: > Here's the end result. If the video tingles your weeaboo senses, that's intentional, as I want clearly uninterested people to skip the video as fast as possible. I'll explain why next. ... > Now you might understand why I want to get people not in my target audience to skip – it's cheaper because you don't pay when…

> In other words - you're probably not in the target audience. > Not saying I agree with why he is saying you shouldn't be in his audience (you're clearly interested in Japanese candy) but maybe you're not because you have an interest but would likely still cancel earlier than his normal audience. (which would have a much higher lifetime value making the numbers much harder to run) My wife loves Japanese candies and…

Sure but keep in mind that a much higher percentage of anime fans would like the candies than the average YouTube viewer. So essentially the cost per interested user decreases since even though people like yourself miss out, overall the wins per dollar go up.

It's a good strategy. In theory he could spend the money saved from people like you skipping the ad on a different ad that targets a more general market and end up with more wins overall.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market research is the easiest way to solve these problems!

What if you provide a discount code in the ad that’s unique to the ad? Subsequent ads have slight lower discounts so there’s an incentive to use the code from the first ad they saw.

Not being able to find a discount you saw can be pretty frustrating. Less important in this case as employers often pay for these conferences.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market research is the easiest way to solve these problems!

What if you provide a discount code in the ad that’s unique to the ad? Subsequent ads have slight lower discounts so there’s an incentive to use the code from the first ad they saw.

Might work for some people, but the probability that I would even remember the first ad had a code - let alone the exact string - is minuscule.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#176
post #96

could people with a love for Japanese candy do for me what Candy Japan couldn't, mainly suggest some great things to try? I've ordered a ton of different black licorice/salmiakki from Scandanavia and Germany (fazer salmiakki filled chocolate bar? oh my Lord yes) and need another adventure!

Possibly somebody else will be able to help you, but I'm going to have to say that in nearly a decade of living here I haven't really found anything really mind blowing in terms of candy. Which is not to say that Japanese sweets aren't amazing - do a google image search of "wagashi". The problem is that these aren't candies and they don't really travel that well. You pretty much have to come to Japan to try them.

When I was living in Canada I managed to find some things. For example daifuku (mochi rice with sweet bean paste inside) is amazing (I especially like goma daifuku, which is unfortunately not popular where I live). Manju (steamed buns with sweet bean paste, etc inside) can probably be frozen and shipped. But it's just not really that good when not fresh.

For actual candy that's available almost everywhere: Pocky is nice -- not exactly mind blowing, like I said, but pleasant. Where I live "matcha chocolate" is popular and worth trying. It's basically coco butter with ground green tea in it. There are even various versions of Kitkat with green tea flavours. Actually Kitkat flavours are pretty crazy in Japan -- some of them are even good. My town is a test centre for Kitkat, so I get to try all of them (as well as Coca Cola -- Peach Coca Cola is horrible, just in case it makes it out of here).

Basically, as far as I know (and would be glad to be proven wrong) Japan doesn't really have a long history of candy making, so the candy you are likely to find is basically just variants of candy that came from other places. There are some exceptions, but I can't imagine the traditional candies I've had being particularly popular for anything other than nostalgia (for example pressed soy bean sugar).

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#177
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The product always needs to be good. But targeted ads such as on Google allow entire categories of businesses to exist." With regard to niches, my experience has been the opposite. If your niche is small enough, you can't properly bid on adwords for rare keywords because they are flagged as "low quality" and you are forced to either abandon those keywords or pay 10x for them to show. This, of course, defies the enti…

I don’t know about the 5 to 10 search a day volume level - I was quite a bit above this. But I agree that if they don’t serve that volume level well, it’s sad and aggravating. That should be something that can really help people who are out of other options. Might it be a privacy issue? If an ad can be targeted to that level it can be used to address a single individual.

> If an ad can be targeted to that level it can be used to address a single individual.

Alec Brownstein did exactly that by ad targeting his favorite creative directors' names some years back in order to land a job. It worked.

https://mashable.com/2010/05/13/job-google-ad-words/#GvW9atl...

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#178
post #116
post #29

The ad was terrible. It explained how Candy Japan works. I don't care how Candy Japan works. I want the why should I buy Candy Japan. It should have focused instead on the candies that you can get. Delicious, weird, unique candies only available through this service.

Spot on. Old talk by Simon Sinek presents it pretty well, start with the why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4&t=3m20s

Really enjoyed that video, thank you.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely - "marketers" these days don't grasp the concept of brand building. I'm not sure that's true. Some people are just working on a different scale. Brand-building is fine if you're Coke or BMW or McDonald's. You have millions to spend, you can saturate channels, and then people might actually think of you in preference to your competition when they're in the market for a drink or a car or a burger. On the othe…

I agree that the work of marketers differs from scale, but it doesn't justify bad decisions. I don't agree that brand-building is fine just for major brands, where they fight for small % of a saturated, well defined, market share. Like you said, it's all about scale, and actions of a bootstrapped startup should adjust to it - not to be spending thousands on Youtube campaigns (picking up this post example). If you wan…

you should focus on media and placements where you have a higher percentage of people that a near to take immediate useful actions - maybe a video platform to consume video content is not the best choice to start with.

Where would that be for a candy subscription service? I mean, people looking to buy candy probably just want one packet right now, not ten spread somewhere over the next few months.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like that was more of great product than a successful advertising campaign, even if it did help.

advertising is about telling people about your product. If you don't have a great product, it won't sell, no matter how much ads you put out there.

This is usually true but sometimes not. For example products like Grey Goose vodka make billions of dollars despite being indistinguishable from other quality vodka even by self-professed experts.
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