Thumbnail Strategy 101 | Milan Bozic | Full Battery Media

In this episode, I sit down with Milan Bozic, a thumbnail strategist who has spent the last two and a half years working with some of the biggest names in the health content space to break down exactly why most creators are leaving massive growth on the table by ignoring their packaging. 

Milan walks me through why thumbnails are so much more than pretty designs, they're mini containers that serve as the first point of connection between a viewer and your video, and they need to do two things exceptionally well - stand out from the competition and create a curiosity gap that makes clicking feel irresistible. We dig into the psychology behind what actually earns a click versus what gets scrolled past, how color, emotion, facial expression, and text size all play a role in how your audience perceives the quality of your content before they've watched a single second of it. We talk about the difference between genuine curiosity and cheap clickbait, why A/B testing is not just for the big channels and how one small change in packaging can be the difference between a hundred views and a hundred thousand.

If you've ever put serious time and money into a video only to watch it underperform, this conversation will completely change how you think about the work that happens before you ever press record.

When you look back at your last five videos, how much time did you actually spend on your thumbnail and title compared to the edit itself. and do you think that ratio is working for you?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Most of the guys, you know, think that thumbnails are just, you know, designs that need to be pretty a lot more than that, which I had to learn the hard way, you know. Basically thumbnails are, let's say, they're meaning containers. They're supposed to be the first link between the viewer and your video. So they need to show what's happening in the video and they need to, you know, make it interesting so the viewer actually wants to click on it. So it's basically grabbing your video and making it as appealing as possible in just one picture. Now there's a ton of ways to do that.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

I love the idea of a meaning container. Because that to me is like really deep, even though it's simple, like, but it it really is. It's like, I'm gonna give an example. I'm gonna make myself sound old here. Dude, I used to love the old movie posters. You'd go to the theater, and before a new movie came out, you'd see the poster for the coming, the stuff that was coming out. And like there was a guy named Drew Struzan. Struzan, I can't remember his name, but he did everything. He did the Indiana Jones poster, the Star Wars posters. He did all of those things. And he put all of this stuff in there. Like there was so much that was contained, but you could see it and go, wow, while I look at that, I know what that movie's about, even before I go and watch anything, even more so than a trailer. Like you see the image and you go, wow, I've got what's happening here. Most creators think thumbnails are all about design, but like, what is it that they're actually trying to do? Well, welcome everybody back to the Full Battery Media Podcast. This is our round two. We tried to talk yesterday, but the internet said, fuck you guys. So we're back today trying to do it again in a better way. Uh, can you tell people who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

All right, I'm Mylan. I've been a thumbnail strategist for the last two and a half years. I worked most in the health niche with some of the biggest creators, Paul Saladino, Dave Asprey, and Dr. Karen. And yeah, basically focusing on thumbnails, titles, and yeah, getting into idealization uh too recently.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

How did you start down this path? Like, what was it that made you say, hey, this is what I want to be doing, and this is how I'm gonna do it?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, I've been messing with Photoshop for a long time. And then my friend actually started video editing, and he was really successful at it. And I was like, okay, let's try something out. And yeah, basically just got it into thumbnails, started doing just the designs at first, and yeah, evolved from there basically.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

That's awesome, man. Well, you know, it leads my question like, what does make a great uh great thumbnail, man? How I want to I want a thumbnail that actually does something. What do where do I go with that?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yeah, I mean, most of the guys, you know, think that thumbnails are just you know designs that need to be pretty, but there's a lot more than that, which I had to learn the hard way, you know. So yeah, basically thumbnails are let's say they're meaning containers, they are supposed to be the first link between the viewer and your video. So they need to show what's happening in the video and they need to you know make it interesting so the viewer actually wants to click on it. So it's basically grabbing your video and making it as appealing as possible in just one picture. Now there's a ton of ways to do that. You know?

SPEAKER_00 3:33

I love that. I love the idea of a meaning container because that to me is like really deep, even though it's simple, like, but it it really is. It's like I'm gonna give an example. I'm gonna make myself sound old here, but like, dude, I used to love the old movie posters. Like, you know, you would go to you'd go to the theater, and before a new movie came out, you'd see the poster for the coming, the stuff that was coming out. And like there was a guy named Drew Struzan. Struzan, I can't remember his name, but he did everything. He did the Indiana Jones poster, the Star Wars posters. He did all of those things. And he put all of this stuff in there. Like there was so much that was contained, but you could see it and go, wow, when I look at that, I know what that movie's about, even before I um, even before I go and watch anything, even more so than a trailer. Like you see the image and you go, wow, I've got what's happening here. And you know, it leads to my next question because most creators think thumbnails are all about design, but like, what is it that they're actually trying to do?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Okay, the thumbnails are supposed to do a few things. Primarily, they're supposed to stand out between the competition and the homepage. You know, when there's like 15 thumbnails to the homepage, your needs to stand out so the viewer actually sees it. Another thing is it needs to be interesting, it needs to create a curiosity gap. You know, there's a lot of you know, those thumbnails that is how to make, you know, a million dollars a month. That is a curiosity gap, you know, for some audiences, you know. It needs to raise a question. Now the title is there to deepen that curiosity gap or that question, you know? And it's there to if the thumbnail is alright, it's uh creator with you know a number of how he transformed his life, let's say a before and after. The title needs to be something along the lines, how I transform my life in a year, you know? So it deepens that question from the thumbnail.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

And I I love the idea of the curiosity gap too. You know, it's like if I see like a water balloon that's right here in front of someone's face, you know, like my brain is gonna try to go, well, dude, what's happening next? I'm pretty sure that that dude's gonna get really wet in a second. But you wanna see it, you know, you want to see to confirm or deny what's gonna happen, you know. And I I love that that you gotta get them curious, otherwise, you know, it's not gonna go anywhere, you know?

SPEAKER_01 6:13

And uh yeah, that's the main thing about the whole packaging. It needs to be intriguing, it needs to raise a question, and the video needs to answer that question. That's the whole deal between, you know, the video and the actual packaging before it.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Well, one of the things too is like, um, what separates a thumbnail that gets ignored from one that earns the click? You know, how you get two different thumbnails. What's the thing that actually makes people go, well shit, I'm gonna click on that?

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Totally. And yeah, uh, there's a lot of YouTubers that focus too much on the competition in their niche. You know, somebody starts, let's say, uh, let's say a health channel. He's a doctor and he wants to start a health channel. There's a ton of doctors, and there's like a million and one thumbnail on the topic of, let's say, heart disease or you know, anything like that. Hair, you know, regrowth. But your thumbnail needs to take an idea, an inspiration from the thumbnails in your niche and make it better. You need to take it one step above so you actually stick out against, you know, the competition and actually stick out on the homepage.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

I love that. You know, because it's like I I love the idea of like you do need to, you gotta stick out because people have options. Like there is so much, there are so many options that people have. And like what you're I saw this one clip the other day that was of old dating videos from somewhere, and it was people trying to introduce themselves, and God, it was painful to watch. And it was like, it was like from the 80s or something. Someone was like, My name is Jimmy John, and I like to work on my trucks 18 hours a day. If you want to marry me, you better like trucks too. And I was like, God damn, that's fucking awesome. Yeah, I you know, at the same time, I was like, did Jimmy John ever find love? I really want to know. Did Jimmy John find love? But I I I hope that he did, man. But you know, one of the things too, when you look at those old dating videos, it it like sometimes they were fails, you know, and you wonder what was it in the packaging? You know, or you go back to the old high school photos. I mean, you're younger than me, but my old high school photos, they were horrible.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Grade school photos were even worse. 80s, man. They had a photo here and they had another. You were down here and they had another version of you up here going like this. It was terrifying. It was like this dual photo. I'll have to send that to you. And for people that don't know, I'm gonna put that in the podcast. You'll see it right there. But like the idea was are you selling, are you selling this thing? Like, because you gotta get that that that I don't know, that that secret sauce, you know?

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yeah, totally. And a similar idea behind this also is, you know, with Facebook ads, with image ads, you also have, you know, the click-through rate, and you also need the curiosity gap. And it's it's all basic behind that curiosity gap and sticking out against your competition. Those two things are the primary objective for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

It is, it is, you know, and it's like one of the things too, and this is what my question, though. Is it all about click-through, or are people respecting the art as well? Because like for me, with my team, when we're making a thumbnail for my daughter's YouTube, especially, I want that shit to look good. And even though, like, well, this one didn't perform as well, but I was like, but it looks better. Is the is art like more important, or is it all about click-through, you know, at the end of the day, what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Like, quality of the design, definitely, and the art and the actual, you know, prettiness of it definitely has an impact, you know. And it's not as important, you know, as making it interesting and appealing and you know, everything else. But design definitely has that something when you see it on the homepage. If the thumbnail is high quality and made, you know, properly, you get a sense of, okay, this video will be good. This is something, you know, educational, this will be entertaining, you know. It's just you get the sense of quality from the thumbnail. If you're getting what I want to say there.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

It it is, man. I I mean, I am sorry. My wife today, all right. So we have some dogs, and one of our dogs is smaller, so she can't drink out of the water bowl for the big dog. And so I said, we gotta think about something because our poor little dog is gonna like just be so thirsty all the time because she can't reach the water bowl. So we were we were looking at different things, and my wife went online and bought this product, and it came today, it was a piece of shit. And it just like we opened it up, she's like, it might be good for it. We both looked at it and we were like, what the hell is that thing, man? That's just ridiculousness right now. It's not that nice. And she was like, Yeah, this is horrible. And we were trying to figure out what it was, but like on the page, it looked so much better. But when the product came, it was horrible. But one of the things is you could look at it when she opened the box, and I just was like, I know that's cheap. I she's like, Well, maybe it's gonna be nice when we put it together. I was like, No, I know that's cheap. You could just see it because there was something about it, versus you get something that's higher quality, and I don't know what it that thing is, but you can tell that there's quality in it. And I feel I feel the same when I look at a good thumbnail. You know, I when I see a thumbnail that really hits, it has this thing, you know?

SPEAKER_01 11:43

I don't know how to put my finger on it, but it's like I mean, you basically got clickbaited, just not on YouTube with that dog bowl. But yeah, I agree. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

I I agree, man. I I think clickbait is a powerful thing, you know. But I want to ask this how much do you how much do you think a video's success is determined before someone even presses record? How much do you think that that thumbnail is determining the success of the video?

SPEAKER_01 12:13

I wouldn't give all all of the you know props to the thumbnail. I would count the title there as well. But it's really it's so much more than most people think. Because you can even see if you go on any channel, you can see the video that's packaged better in Data, it didn't get, you know, a bit more views or you know, two times more views. If your video is drastically better in packaging, it can get, you know, 20 times more views, 50 times more views. So it's really, really impactful on the you know how your video does. It's just a small change. Yeah, a small change can be the difference between, you know, a hundred use and you know uh 10,000 use.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Oh man, I I love that. Um there was a couple years ago, it was on um what was it on Craigslist? It was this description of this car. I'm trying to see if I can find it. It was a couple years ago, I I'll have to search for it later, but like it was the most horrible description of a car ever. Like this guy described this car. He's like, All right, so this is what this car has been through. He's like, This shit ain't pretty, but this is what it's done. Like, and he just described this cool story. And what was amazing was that the story got all of this, it went viral in the a long time ago. And like it got viral because it was so descriptive, it was so funny. And like the guy had was like, people were offering the guy who wanted like three grand for the car. People were offering him, I think, like 15k or something, man. They were just like, everyone wanted that car, and he was like, Oh man, there's so much demand because he knew how to how to package. It was clickbait as well. It was like the earliest clickbait that he just had this crazy story that got people engaged. But the clickbait was to call him, to engage him, to email him. But you know, it was powerful to me because I saw early on in that like the power that a great image can have, the great story can have. And I think that like the the power of a thumbnail is can you tell a story in an image? Can you take one snapshot and put the elements together that creates a story, you know?

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Yeah, and definitely there's there's a ton of formats of thumbnails, and some of the thumbnails are just, you know, it's being you in action, you know. There's a lot of formats on thumbnails, and there's particularly one format, if you're doing something crazy in the video, skydiving or you know, jumping off something, or you know, running versus you saying bolt. You can just put a picture of you, and then you know, let's say a great soccer player or a great tennis player, and the audience will know who that is, you know. If it's in action, if you're fighting against someone, if you're playing against someone, you get the sense of what the video is about just from the thumbnail. And that's a big thing in thumbnails, also.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

I love that, man. When when when you're sitting there, when you look at a struggling channel, and what's the first pattern that you usually spot? You see a channel and they're just not doing well. What is the thing that you go, we need to this is something they've got to fix?

SPEAKER_01 15:25

I mean, I'm going to be repeating myself like 10 times again. But truly, like when most YouTubers know they need an editor. Most YouTubers need know they need a good video, a good intro. But not a lot of YouTubers actually put their focus on the titles and thumbnails. You know, so actually, a lot, a big percentage of struggling channels are struggling just because of that. You know, maybe they're competition or just YouTube has evolved in that way that you know everybody has perfect titles, perfect thumbnails, and they they just cannot stand out against them. Yeah, I'm basically checking, okay, how much effort are you putting into the ideas? How much effort are you putting into the actual packaging? Are you doing just one thumbnail or maybe two thumbnails, three thumbnails? How many titles are you experimenting? And yeah, that's like the first thing they do.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

It's interesting. I I used to work in Hollywood with big movies, and one of the things that was wild about that, you know, the department that always gets shit on by everyone else was the sound department. Like really, it was so oh dude, it's crazy. Like they're filming, and the camera team gets all this time, they're like just filming all this stuff, and the sound's like, hey, can we get a couple minutes here just for room tone? And everyone's looking at them like taking all this time. They're like, we're just trying to like make this good quality. It feels so bad for the guys all the time. But one of the things that's like, but then when you get into when you get into post and suddenly like people's like, why is the sound so bad? Well, because you didn't really think about that when you were recording, you didn't give it time, you know. And like that's the thing too, is like I find um I when I have clients come to me and they're like, We're we're creating videos for them, like, great, and we edit this great video. And I said, What are you gonna do for the thumbnail? Like, well, I'm gonna have my my son do it on Canva. And I was just like, Oh, oh God, yeah, well, have fun with that, you know. I don't know how that's gonna go. But like one of the things that I was blown away by was like the true I was watching this video about like really it was on LinkedIn, and this kid that was a really good thumbnail artist was doing a video like analyzing the difference in thumbnails, and I was just like, the psychology going into it, the colors, there's so much thought into the little things, you know, and what's the biggest mistake creators make with with titles and thumbnails? What's the biggest thing that they're messing up?

SPEAKER_01 17:55

There's a lot, a lot of rules for everything. As you said, you can go crazy in depth in everything, you know, the faces, the emotion add to the thumbnail, then the colors. Each color has an emotional, you know. A lot of YouTubers I would say I would say they just don't put enough effort in it because there's really okay, you need a thumbnail, a picture. It's you know, a picture at the end of the day, but there's so much behind it that links to the human brain, to the human psychology that just creators just do not go into that at all. And there's also the title. It's the same thing with the title, it's like a few words, but you can just rearrange that, let's say, seven words in so many different ways that can make it so much more appealing and so much more curiosity, you know, inducing. And that's just a skill, and you need to practice that. You need to see what bigger YouTubers do, you need to see what your audience likes, uh, see what works, see what doesn't, and then just double down on what works.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

It's interesting too because I think that people want results right away. But I love this is one of the reasons I love that YouTube now has A-B testing built in. Because like sometimes you gotta test to see what works better. You know, you gotta try to to put things out there because I think that one of the I think people are scared of failing. People are scared of making mistakes, and when you invest a lot of time and money and energy into a video, you don't want to see something hold it back. But at the same time, I think people have to realize that like when you grow, when you create, there is a process to understanding your audience, to learning what works, and even more importantly, learning what doesn't work. And sometimes learning what doesn't work is like your superpower, you know, you get to sit there and go, oh, well shit. All right, now that I know it doesn't work, let's figure out what does, you know.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, and you can really really go in depth in that. I uh started working with a doctor a few months back. It's a family physician, you know, he works primarily, older people watch him. And the big thing for him is thumbnails do not need to be complicated at all, but the text on the thumbnail needs to be extremely, extremely big, and it needs to be similar to the title. And we figure out okay, your audience average age is 65 plus. They probably cannot see the title very well. And the text on the thumbnail is actually what they read first, and they will go off the text of the thumbnail straight into entering the video.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

See, that's fascinating. That's fascinating as hell to me, man. Because like I look at thumbnails and I don't think about all that. Like, I don't like but you have to. You have to it's like you know the one of the things that's it was interesting for me. Uh I remember a couple years ago I had this car, and you know, it was really great. I love that car until one day it didn't start. And I just was like, What the hell? My car's not starting. And my friend was a mechanic, and he's like, Well, you need a new starter. I know the sound, you your starter died. And so I was like, What's a starter? And he's like, All right, well, it's this little thing that goes on the bottom, it's a little electrical motor that turns and that turns the engine and it gets the car to turn on. And so I was like, Oh shit, I didn't even know that that existed. And so he's like, All right, we're gonna go get one. And we went down and he took me to the like the wrecking yard and I pulled one off. I put it into my car. It was one of the most like cool things I've ever done. It was a lot of fun. But I didn't realize that something so small could be so important to the functioning of a vehicle. Like, and like when you're creating this stuff, a title title feels like an afterthought for so many people. What do we post? What how do we label this? You know, what is the thumbnail, thumbnail? Okay. Do I have small words? I remember my um one of my wife's editors was creating a thumbnail and she kept doing all these thumbnails that had these really soft, like, like letters that were like really flowy. And I was like, I can't read that shit. I said, if I can't read it, like I don't know how anyone else is gonna read it. Like, you can't read it. And she's like, Well, what should we do? I said, make it bold. And she's like, but it's not so pretty. And I was like, well, right now people are gonna skip the damn song because they don't even know what it is. But I want to ask this too, because there's such a balance, you know? But how do you create curiosity, like you said before, that curiosity gap without being just clickbait, you know?

SPEAKER_01 22:39

It really does not have to be clickbait. For example, a lot of a lot of YouTubers know the thumbnail format, it's before and after. You know? And there's really if you put as you as uh Mr. Beast and Patty Galloway said, if it's a good video idea, if you put crazy effort in it, clickbait is an after clickbait is an afterthought. There are videos that just I've you know I took down like 50 pounds in three months. You don't need clickbait for that. The thumbnail is going to do all the work there. But most YouTubers do not go, you know, that into most creators don't go to that step, let's say. But you can just word the video and the thumbnail. Okay, so let's say the title of the video is The Best Food for Losing Fath. You know, there's a ton of videos about that topic. And you can create that food, you don't you don't even need to show that food. You need to package it around, okay, it's hidden. Or you can package it around losing fat. That's not clickbait if it's losing fat, you know, because clickbait would be, I don't know how to word it, but let's say I lost 10 pounds and then in the thumbnail she has a six-pack. But you can just, you know, make it around the topic that people will see that okay, she didn't lose actually that. The video is actually about food. It shows a transformation thumbnail that could be possible for someone if they implemented that food into their dad. So it's basically looking at different angles of attack, let's say, which you can take inspiration from and adapt it to your video.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Yeah. Well, one of the things too is like I was watching this great masterclass on the on but from Kim Kardashian, and she was talking about like, yeah, what you're trying to do is monetize attention. You're trying to figure out how to grab attention. And, you know, there's a lot of ways to do it. But at the end of the day, um, are you trying to find a way to provide some type of story that has either an emotional payoff or value? You know, because those are two different ways to do it. And like if you go in there and you can kind of try to find a way to provide value, you're more likely to get people to stick around, you know? Like there's much more likelihood that people are gonna like, hey, you know, uh, what is this? And yeah, especially if you're doing like, I think about like a Mr. Beast type video, I don't know it if it's the value or it's just the interesting payoff of the emotional like happiness that people get. But you know, if someone's like, you know, a video on heart disease, well, you know, if you have a uh a thumbnail that actually goes, you know, oh wow, that I know from seeing that thumbnail is going to provide value to me. Um it, you know, this is where it leads to my next question of like, if someone's creating these thumbnails and if someone only improved one skill this year to grow their channel, should it be the storytelling or the packaging? What do you think is more important? I mean, obviously both are important, but what do you think you would focus on?

SPEAKER_01 25:46

I never gotten deep in storytelling. I'm gonna be completely honest. Uh it's it revolves around retention, right? And I would say more people have that nail down and are better at that than the actual packaging. And again, your thumbnail needs to complement the video and the title. So if your thumbnail is completely, let's say, as you said before, clickbait, or it is just not related to the video, people are gonna enter in no no matter how good your story storytelling is. If the thumbnail is bad, not related, or clickbait, people are not going to watch something they didn't click for. So that would I was still focused on packaging because it's lacking behind, definitely behind. I would say story.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

I uh I uh I I started I got my uh full battery media hats made, and I got it's trucker hat. I got them made in two colors, and my friends are like, why are you getting hats made? I'm like, because they're freaking awesome, and I like wearing them, I like repping myself. But it was like, I remember my friend Bao. Bao, I'm gonna shout out to Bao. Bao is probably one of the best branding people I know. Now, Bao had a band named Ming and Ping. Ming and Ping was an interesting concept where he played two characters in the band. One of them was pre-recorded, him, and one of them was live. So he would do these shows with like his twin, but it was both him, and one of it was like singing on a track, and one of it was singing live. And it was a very creative show. Now, I'm gonna say something here that is super horrible to Bao. I don't think Bao can sing for shit. Um he's not a great vocalist, he's a great songwriter, his music was really good, but what was amazing was that he was amazing at packaging. And so he had Ming and Ping shirts, there was Ming and Ping dolls, he had Ming and Ping bags, Ming and Ping, everything. And like people that were his fans were ravenous about everything that was included in the package. And the package was what kept people around. Like, I remember going to all of these other cities, and his band had this underground following, and we would see Ming and Ping gear everywhere, like at the time at the height of his band. And it was wild because I was like, Bow, are you who's getting this made? He's like, I'm making most of this stuff myself, man. And it was pretty wild, but he he was so dedicated to the packaging that it helped his success, you know? It was wild like that.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

I just wanted to say, yeah, merge is just the move.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Right? Well, how can people have better packaging? What are some of the elements that you think makes a better packaging? Besides just thumbnails, what are what are some elements of packaging that you think everyone should be doing?

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yeah, definitely. Like packaging, first of all, you know, we can go over the YouTube banner, the YouTube profile picture. Those are those are not as important. They still need to be high quality. Good. The banner needs to show what you do on the channel. It needs to be interesting, it needs to maybe have some links to your socials. But that's the end of that. Not many, not much psychology in those. But basically, one thing I would always recommend use the A-B testing tool. Even if it's a small change, even if it's just two titles, always use the A-B tester and write down how everything's performed. Try to find patterns. There's always a pattern. You will find a winning concept eventually that you can reuse a couple of times that will guarantee you basically good videos if you stick with it.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

I love that. It's you know, I think that not I know so many like smaller YouTubers that sit there and I've heard them say to me, uh, I think the A-B testing tool is for bigger channels. And I said, no, everyone can benefit from that. Like, get out and play with it and use it because A B testing is such an important part of business, and it helps you see, it just helps you see like what's working better. And maybe this is one of the things that I was blown away by is that stuff that I thought was unimportant or people didn't like was actually performing better. And that was one of the beauties of A B testing is that I realized that my judgment was kind of holding stuff back and that I needed to kind of approach things from a different perspective and give fans and people options, you know?

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah. Yeah. And it's basically there is some truth to A-B testing, is for bigger channels. You know, if a sh creator is on the smaller side, he needs to make big variations in the titles and the thumbnails because small things just changing like the color of a shirt or something like that. It's maybe you may be gain a few percentage, you know, like a 1 to 2% better click-through rate, but it's not anything substantial. Creators with tens of millions and millions of views, that's like 5% change in video can be the difference, you know, between thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands even of views. But if you are a small creator, the bigger the variation, it will be better for testing and knowledge long term.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Well, and how do you test thumbnails and titles without destroying your momentum, you know? Because if you're changing things too much, can it really throw you off? Or you just have to understand that you win some, you lose some?

SPEAKER_01 31:21

No, definitely. Uh I had a couple of clients that love to change their thumbnails every half an hour, but no, that's not the move. Do you have tools currently for both the thumbnails and titles? But the thing first is I would first thumbnails, I would test thumbnails first. So it would be two to three thumbnail variations that are close to completely different. So one approach could be positive, one approach could be negative, and one approach could be just curiosity, just raw intrigue. You see which thumbnail did the best. After that, you do three titles, three completely different titles. You grab the best from that. And all of those need to be spaced out, like 12 to 24 hours, let's say. And that's how you get the winning video. If the video is going crazy well, you can micro-optimize it. So you can try the changing shirt or changing the emotion of the face or changing the background of the thumbnail from the of course winning well from the first badge. But yeah, that's how you do A B testing the right way.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

I love that, man. And at what point does like but I mean, like with your doing this, at what point does brand consistency matter than more than pure click-through? Because like you said, like smaller channels can get away with big variations. But like when you get to be a larger channel, do you have to really well this is our look, this is our style, or do you think that's a danger that maybe even big channels should be changing it up more often, you know?

SPEAKER_01 32:53

I would say it is a danger because a lot of creators, especially businesses that get into YouTube, are so into that we need to have this color and this layout and this lighting and everything like the same. But you can try it out a few times, but the the audience, the regular guy who watches those videos, who is the biggest part of the algorithm, is going to get tired. Or maybe it's just too bland for him. So, really, you YouTube is a platform that needs testing. To find, to actually win at it, you need to test a lot of things. But at the end of the day, Callaway is one creator that has branding perfectly. He always has a similar background. He always wears the same like hat in the thumbnail, and he always has his face in the thumbnail. Those are all branding elements. Your face is the branding. The clothes you wear, the color of them is the branding. The font you use is the branding. You don't need to always stick to the same colors, same fonts, same layout. That just hurts the the variety and that hurts the testing.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

I love that. I love the idea of like people being willing to change it up uh because I feel like people get so stuck in uh doing the same thing again and again and again. Um because it's like I I find myself I have to be really careful, uh, because I like am the type of guy that this is horrible. Like for the longest time, I would eat the same food at like all the time. Like you go to a restaurant and like, oh, we've got 45 different dishes, and I'm like, I'm getting that one. Why? Well, that's because of what I had last week. And the danger with content is that can bury you because you know, you gotta figure out what is something that you don't try new things because maybe you're doing the same thing, and that thing is not what the algorithm is rewarding at that time, and you gotta play with it. And not that it's all about making the algorithm happy, but I mean, if you want to be making it ahead in content, you gotta figure out what's being promoted and what's kind of trending right there. Like, let's be real. But you know, I want to ask you this like, because if you were starting from zero today, um, you're helping a creator start at zero. You know, what would your thumbnail and title strategy look like for the first 30 days? Where where are you taking people?

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Yeah, definitely. Actually, quite recently with that doctor I was talking about for the older audiences like had that. He was having, he had around 50k subscribers and he didn't post for like two to three months. Before that, he had a team with, I would say, pretty bad packaging in general. We we I got a piece of paper and a pen, and I've gone basically across the whole niche and try to search for the person that's the closest to him. Okay, that's the person who we need to look up to. That's we're not going to steal from them. We're going to take bits and pieces from their content that worked. We are going to re-arrange them and make something new from them. Then I've gone into similar niches. So if it's a doctor that focuses on family physician, focuses on older folks, folks, and in general around the health of your heart, I will go to maybe someone who focuses on nutrition, or maybe someone who focuses on exercise. And you can take ideas, thumbnails, title formats, you can take inspiration from all of that and make something new that has the bits and pieces proven to work in other channels. And you can check it out on YouTube everyone. It's Dr. Mitch Rice. He currently has 90, I think, 5k subscribers, something like that. He's closing on 100k. But yeah, we really we had a couple of videos past a million views for him. And yeah, it's been amazing. Actually, we figured out a format from thumbnails that just works. So we're basically abusing that currently.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

That's awesome, man. But yeah, I think that once you figure it out, it's like you have that thing that you can lean on. And it's like I think that people enjoy that. I I know that like you see that with restaurants. That sometimes early on in the restaurant, they got to figure out what their menu is. You got to figure out what foods work. But then once the audience are like the people coming to the restaurant, go, dude, the hot dogs here are so good. Well, maybe they serve burgers too, but the hot dogs start pulling people in. And, you know, when they get bigger and they start doing more, you know, certainly you can sell other products. But once those hot dogs are good, man, you know, that's a great way to kind of get people on board. And I think that like that's one of the things for me that a thumbnail to me is like and a title, they're the way to kind of bridge a gap. Because think about it this way you're you're meeting a stranger. The person in front of you is a complete stranger, and you have to sit there and tell them, I want you to give 10 minutes, 15 minutes of your time to me. And you have to prove to them that you're worth it. And I think the thumbnail is this great like place to show here is the value that I will provide you. And you know, for for heart issues, you know, the the three things that you can do to help like live an extra 25 years. Dude, I would watch that video in a heartbeat. No pun on heartbeat, but you know, I would watch that video right away because it's gonna have value, you know? So, but you're how do you show that in the thumbnail?

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Yeah, as I said, the big thing for that channel was actual text and showing the title. So it was just the title says, as you said, it's like three things that could improve heart health. You need to have something extremely similar but shorter version of that in the thumbnail. And then you can have the doctor there, and then maybe a person, you know, measuring their their blood pressure and yeah, things like that. You just need there's not uh a crazy way to portray that. You know, a person with 70 years old won't click on a doctor who's you know dying in a thumbnail, like Mr. Beast in a coffin. But you need to portray they need to relate to it. Having a doctor in his suit, you know, with the stethoscope around his neck, looking serious, looking clean, with a nice haircut, that to them gives them a sense of branding, gives them a sense of security, it gives them a sense of okay, this guy knows what he's doing, he can help me with this. So that's a big branding thing for him that we did.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

If someone wanted to learn more about the work that you're doing, where can they go and look for you?

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Yeah, I have a Twitter, it's at DSendi, and uh yeah, that's basically where I hang out the most. Also have a LinkedIn that's Milan Bozic Bozik, and yeah, that's it.