This is because there is no process. Marketing (and advertising) is not an art. You need to know what your product is, who the buyer is, and the most efficient way to connect them together.
Less than 3,000 views across tiny channels with seemingly random creators, topics and locations? This is a waste of time and money.
Figure out who the buyer is first. Clearly there must be a certain disposable income level. What region buys the most? The USA? Europe? Asia? What are your customers interested in? Is it about Japan, or is it candy? Is it novelty gifts? Is it seasonal? Are there tie-ins to anime or music or some other Japanese export or culture? How big can the market even get and how do you know if you've hit saturation? These things need to be answered so you have a grid of interests and can focus on the most relevant audience.
Once you have that, only then can you actually come up with a plan to best reach them. Don't just send things out without a target audience. The advertising channel you pick (whether Youtube or not) is a function of your message, and almost every "viral" hit is either a game of chance (which you will lose) or much more orchestrated than you know. 99% of influencer marketing is useless and you do not have anywhere near the scale to break through it by force.
At the very least, try and talk to some (consumer product) marketers, there's plenty of advice you can get by just asking nicely, or even pay for a small strategy session. That will have far better ROI than this.
What are your thoughts on them getting featured on a relevant Instagram page with high subscriber count.
What about trying to get to the top YouTube SEO for search terms, "candy [...] Japan”, since his company is literally called that. If this feasible for a small budget?
I'm curious what it would take to pull off. Great insight, thanks for sharing.
Small edit - I meant to say marketing is more science than art. Definitely need creativity in ad campaigns, but like a good movie, there needs to be a solid plot and message to serve as the foundation.
Instagram is still wrongly focusing on the channel instead of audience. For example, if the buyers are younger people into fashion and food, and there are relevant profiles that showcase both, perhaps while traveling to Japan and showing how you can get the same candy at home, that might be effective. But you need the data to show that, not just assumptions.
Search is always a great way to advertise because you can target directly to people's intent as they type it in. Buying a few keywords around candy, japan, snacks, traveling, etc. is a good and affordable way to start. $5K spend on some ad strategies would provide decent data to start testing the market.
Just because an IG has a high number of followers doesn't mean anything. I'm not an IG marketer, but there are metrics that you can check like engagement rates and even those can be faked.
I only specialize in Amazon marketing but if my process is applicable to Adwords/Facebook, the startup method would be small tests with tiny budgets. If the article writer had made a video ad or just used one of these unboxing videos and tested it on Facebook, he would have gotten immediate actionable data.
He should have a Facebook pixel installed on his website and should have collected data on traffic as well as information on those who converted. Turn the data that you have to work for you. In Facebook ads, you can create custom audiences based on value. In marketing, there are ideas of superconsumers or customer segmentation. Who are your best customers? Why? You don't have to reinvent the wheel if you already have data. Just look at the data that you have.
You can put the data you have to work on Facebook. If you don't understand your customer market but have existing customers, lucky for you, Facebook can tell you and help you find more of them via lookalike audiences.
If you don't have any existing data and you are starting from scratch, then you can create audiences on Facebook ads and test them. Or better, ID your competitors and analyze or target their customers. I'm not a pro at Fb ads so this might be outdated but the idea I'm familiar with is testing $5/day ads. $5 day ad will give you a lot of data on impressions, CTRs, CPC or impression, conversion, engagement, etc. So you can easily test multiple audiences or ads and get data and numbers. Once you crack the magical formula where your ad is successful and all the numbers add up (customer acquisition cost), you light the ad on fire by boosting the budget and scaling it. The explosive growth part. That's what I do for my Amazon clients. I ID the best strategy to success, find the magic formula by making sure all the numbers add up to their goal, and then when I find it, I pour gasoline on it and dance around the flames as the money rolls in.
That's the basic idea for Amazon ads and maybe Facebook ads. But I know Facebook ads are amazing because there are so many tips, tricks, tools, strategies you can implement. For example starting with a video, getting engagement first, then creating a new audience based on those who watched the video the longest, etc. I have also heard that Google Adwords has way more bells and whistles than Amazon ads too.
Other people mentioned some of his mistakes, another mistake he made was not having a brief and agreement. Influencer marketing is a lot more complicated than here's my product, please make a post or video about it. Most people include a brief for what exactly needs to be in their post or video. A special format with guidelines on style. Key points that need to be made, time line, etc.
As someone who knows little about marketing, thanks for sharing your process and insights. This is a really fascinating field and I can see why it is so valuable to invest in upfront for the success and growth of your business.
Less than 3,000 views across tiny channels with seemingly random creators, topics and locations? This is a waste of time and money.
Figure out who the buyer is first. Clearly there must be a certain disposable income level. What region buys the most? The USA? Europe? Asia? What are your customers interested in? Is it about Japan, or is it candy? Is it novelty gifts? Is it seasonal? Are there tie-ins to anime or music or some other Japanese export or culture? How big can the market even get and how do you know if you've hit saturation? These things need to be answered so you have a grid of interests and can focus on the most relevant audience.
Once you have that, only then can you actually come up with a plan to best reach them. Don't just send things out without a target audience. The advertising channel you pick (whether Youtube or not) is a function of your message, and almost every "viral" hit is either a game of chance (which you will lose) or much more orchestrated than you know. 99% of influencer marketing is useless and you do not have anywhere near the scale to break through it by force.
At the very least, try and talk to some (consumer product) marketers, there's plenty of advice you can get by just asking nicely, or even pay for a small strategy session. That will have far better ROI than this.