Embracing Marketing Mistakes
Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the world’s leading irreverent podcast for senior marketers who are tired of the polished corporate b*llshit.
Join Chris Norton and Will Ockenden, founders of the award-winning Prohibition PR, as they sit down with industry leaders to dissect the career-ending f*ck-ups they’d rather forget. The show moves past any pretty vanity metrics to uncover the brutal, honest truths behind marketing disasters, from £30,000 SEO black holes and completely failed companies, to social media crises that went globally viral for all the wrong reasons.
We don't just celebrate the f*ck-ups; we extract the tactical blueprints you need to avoid them yourself. If you are a business owner, or a CMO looking for a competitive advantage that only comes from real-world experience, this is your weekly masterclass in resilience and strategy.
- Listen for: Raw stories from top brands, ex-McKinsey strategists, and industry disruptors.
- Learn from: The errors that cost thousands and the recoveries that saved careers.
- Get ahead by: Turning other people's nasty disasters into your unfair market advantage.
If you have a story to tell and would like to appear on the show, tell us your biggest marketing mistake and drop us a line.
Embracing Marketing Mistakes
Too Many Topics, Too Few Clients: David's YouTube Marketing Mistake
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David thought his YouTube channel was flying tens of thousands of views, rapid growth, big smiles all round. But behind the buzz was a costly mistake. By turning his finance channel into a jumble of lifestyle, language and fitness videos, he confused his audience and killed his conversions.
In this episode, David joins Chris Norton and Will Ockenden to share how he turned his “carnival channel” fail into a business lesson every marketer needs to hear. Discover why more views don’t mean more clients and how clarity beats clicks every time.
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So what what's the what's the biggest mistake you've made in YouTube then, David?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so as I said in the beginning, um well actually so my previous channel, as I said, it was a finance channel originally, and I did a huge mistake I seen with too many big channels as well. And I call it this the Carnival channel. So since I'm in Brazil, um carnival, so it's like what I mean is like it's going all over the place. So I had this finance channel, but then I was like, okay, it's kind of always the same. Let's try something else. So I did this video about how to how I learned a language, like the lazy way, and it went so well. It got like 27,000 views, is what my best video performing video. Uh my second best video only had like 4,000 views. And then I started to do a little bit of lifestyle here, a little bit of how I uh health here and some experiments, and uh so I was like, okay, this is not a pure um
Defining the “Carnival channel” mistake
SPEAKER_01finance channel anymore. So now I basically have on this channel now a group who subscribe because of the language channel, then I have a group who subscribe because of the because of the finance side, and then I have a uh a few people subscribe because of uh the health stuff I did where I didn't eat sugar or I tried to do a fitness routine. So it's like if it's like a party, it's gonna be like super confusing. You're gonna see like these three groups, and this is what many people are doing as well. You know, it's like, okay, I'm a sales coach, cool. I'm gonna teach about sales. Let's tell them, let's do a vlog, show them how I make my coffee. They say, yeah, okay, some people like to watch vlogs, they're gonna watch vlogs, but the people like to watch sales videos, gonna watch sales videos. I said, Oh, let me talk about how I manage my private life after work with my wife, and so I talk about my my relationship
Mixing niches and confusing subscribers
SPEAKER_01with my wife, and uh, AI is cool, so let me talk about AI. That's a different channel, isn't it? Yeah, then it's like getting all over the place, and um, this is not gonna work. And another thing is, as I said, I had this video, 26,000 views. Nice. The problem though is it made like zero dollars. Our clients having videos with 500 views, and they're making like $15,000 out of it because they're having three uh high-ticket clients making out of this. So, this is what I had to learn as well in the beginning when we helped this CEO. As I said, it's like, hey, we got you like 60,000 views just with two videos. You monetize now, like you're getting now a little bit of extra money. Uh, it's I know it's not much, but hey, why not? Um, you're getting recognized by YouTube. It's like, yeah, but that doesn't excite me, really. It's like, what do you mean? It's you're having great results on YouTube. It's like, yeah, so I had to learn, okay. This is actually for business, it's like it's totally different how YouTube works than for let's say YouTube as influencers. You know, as an influence, you need all the views, you need to just to be seen. So sponsorships and all these things, you get your ads sent. But yeah, a business, we need to tackle the lead side, and I think this is the most effective side if we're doing like hey, we only focus on the audience, we're only doing like we do in every four months or
Views versus revenue: the hard lesson
SPEAKER_01so, or every three months, we're doing deep dives where we give everything out for free and try to bring people as many many people on our our landing page, and um, we can also see that we had I think it was April, we had with our um sales coach, we had our best month. There was like 12,000, uh 12,000 um long-form views. I was like, wow, cool. We started at 4,000, so we tripled the views, and everything was going well, the leads were going better as well. And then we had July, we had a month, we only got like 9,000 views, so I was like shocking, like, ah, damn, 9,000 views. So he was like, Oh, what happened? What happened? It's like, well, this is actually our best month. And he's like, What do you mean? It's like we had a record in leads this month. He's like, Wow! So more views doesn't mean more views. And this is something I think most of the people need to learn. I had to learn, and um, I think, yeah, there are too many people still screaming out brand awareness, brand awareness, you need more views, you need more views, but uh more views don't translate into more revenue at the same time.
SPEAKER_00So, um, aside from YouTube mistakes, have you ever made any other mistakes in your career over the years, um, work-related or otherwise, that you can think of that you'd care to share?
SPEAKER_01Uh, I think all the time, probably. I think most about marketing is always about learning the mistakes. I mean, I'm I'm still pretty new into the entrepreneurship if I think about it. It's like I've been now two years into it before I just was a wannabe entrepreneur where I was just binge watching Alex Hamozi stuff. Uh yeah, I think the the biggest mistake is in the beginning, I didn't know exactly what my audience wanted. So this is a big problem. So if I talk like, oh, okay, I'm gonna show you how to get more views on YouTube, or this is how to make it better title or better thumbnail, it's like, yeah, people, well, I still
Leads over brand awareness
SPEAKER_01think I have this a little bit, I'm still kind of figuring this out. It's like I don't want to be seen as a YouTube guy.
Broader career mistakes and positioning
SPEAKER_01This is the big problem because at the end of the day, I'm trying to get you more clients, so this is my big promise. And I seen some other like I I had on LinkedIn the headline, like, oh, I'm gonna get you more clients on YouTube or through YouTube. Well, first thing is I felt like I was fighting more my competitors than actually trying to speak to my clients because like I see too many people, as I said, they are all talking about I get you more views, I'll get you more views, I'll get you more views. Okay, how okay, I do a little bit of editing, I do a title and thumbnail for you. I said, Yeah, I'm not like this, I'm focusing purely on the on the return of investment side here. And then it's like, okay, okay, I'll get you more clients on YouTube. And then the second thing is most of the people who are posting content on YouTube, they're not just posting content on YouTube, they're also posting on LinkedIn, they're also posting on Instagram. So it's like they don't care if a valid is coming from LinkedIn or from Instagram or from YouTube or from a referral. They're happy. A lead is a lead, right? So yeah, this is still something I have to to work on. How can I be,
Not “the YouTube guy”: framing the offer
SPEAKER_01how can I cut more through the market with this message? And yeah, like now, yeah, this still still something I'm I'm working on is how can I be not just a you like how can I be different from just a YouTube guy? And how can I can I make YouTube the no brainer to everyone who's posting also on all these other platforms? Like they don't know all these things I just said about like YouTube is the biggest trust builder and YouTube doesn't suppress links, it's actually helping you because YouTube says, Yeah, we're helping businesses and all these things. Still something in the work.
