Why Most YouTube Channels Stall - And How to Break Through with Liz Germain - EP15

🔥 Quick Intro

Most creators think they have a views problem.

Liz Germain explains why the real issue usually starts much earlier - with weak ideas, poor audience alignment, and not knowing what the data is actually saying.

She also shares why niching down can help sales, but eventually hurt audience growth on YouTube.

👉 Episode in a Nutshell

In this episode, Liz Germain breaks down how to grow a YouTube channel based on the real goal behind it - sales or audience size.

She explains why most creators actually have an ideas and analytics problem, not a views problem.

You will hear how she researches viewer psychology, studies winning channels, reads comments for hidden insights, and uses Shorts as a discovery tool instead of treating them as the main revenue driver.

If you want a clearer YouTube strategy, this episode gives you a strong framework.

⏰ Timestamps

00:00 - Why views problems are usually ideas and analytics problems
03:11 - How Liz built her first YouTube business
08:41 - Why YouTube became the highest ROI platform
11:47 - The first question to ask before growing a channel
16:21 - The four-stage growth method
18:28 - How to identify the right audience
22:49 - Why broad topics grow audience and niche topics drive sales
29:20 - The key metrics that actually grow a channel
34:42 - How YouTube Shorts should be used today
42:53 - What relevance really means on YouTube

💡 What you will learn

- Why chasing more views might be solving the wrong problem

- The one strategic choice that changes your whole YouTube plan

- When niching down helps - and when it quietly limits your growth

- How Shorts can bring in the right viewers without becoming your main focus

- What makes a video feel instantly relevant to the right person

🔗 Resources

- Channel Amplifier | Liz's training and mastermind for organic YouTube growth | channelamplifier.com

- Liz Germain on YouTube and social | Mentioned in the episode as a place to explore her case studies and content | @lizdoesvideo

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

In business, you hear all the time, niche down, niche down, niche down, uh, be very specific in what you do, but on YouTube it's kind of the opposite. You will hit a limit at some point, and the only way to break through that limit is to start going broader. So the first question I ask anybody who wants to grow their YouTube channel is is your main goal sales to your business or is it size of the audience? Do I want to grow an audience so that I can attract new business opportunities, massive influence, book more stages, be recognized, right? Or are we more focused on direct sales? Like we don't really care how big the audience is. We're just looking for the right type of viewer who has this exact problem because that's what our business solves. The most common thing that people struggle with is how do I get more views? How do I get more subscribers? So it's not that you have a views and subscriber problem. You actually have.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

You want to tell me more about that? What do you mean by that exactly?

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Yeah, so when people come to us and they want help with YouTube, they the most common thing that people struggle with is how do I get more views? How do I get more subscribers? And that's actually the byproduct of getting better at two very specific skills. The first one is ideation. So how do I come up with more relevant content ideas for the viewer that I'm looking to attract to make sure that they perform better? And then on the flip side, we need to also understand how to read your analytics data so that as you're experimenting and iterating with new ideas, you know what's actually working and what's not. So you know how to properly adjust so that you don't end up wasting time, money, energy on producing the wrong types of videos. So it's not that you have a views and subscriber problem. You actually have an ideas problem, meaning we don't know how to come up with ideas that are going to attract the right audience and keep them engaged and keep them coming back for more. And then 99% of the creators that I've ever met, um, which is a lot, it's like thousands of people, just because I do this full time for a living. Um, 99% of creators have barely even looked in there under the dashboard, right? So, like, what's actually going on with the click theory? What are our traffic sources coming from? Uh, what are our retention rates? How can we improve and make those small iterations to create exponential results down the road? So that's really what's going on with nine out of ten creators is you have a views and subscriber problem, you have an ideas and analytics problem.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

And I'd love to dig into that a little bit more because I know you've got a very specific process that you take people through to help them through that and help them align things properly so they can actually have really, really amazing results with your YouTube strategy. But before we do, I'd love to find out a bit more about how this all started for you because you had a very, very interesting journey and how that led to you working with people like uh, you know, Celine uh Johnson, Tony Robbins, uh JJ Virgin, even Dan Rattel, the software guy. Uh, some pretty amazing people that you've been able to work with and get some incredible results for them. How did it all start for you and how did you manage to end up there?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah, great question. It started back in 2012. Um, and I started a YouTube channel with my younger sister, and we were fitness instructors and personal trainers at the time. And we saw, you know, this was like right when Instagram was brand new. And so we saw a couple other brands that were, you know, doing like fitness challenges and they would do recipe guides and things like that. And we thought to ourselves, well, if they can do it, why can't we? So we started, we were just very passionate about health and fitness for women. And it originally started as let's have like a repository where we can send our clients because a lot of times after the workout, you know, they would ask for nutrition tips or they would ask for a written-down version of the workout so they could go repeat it on their own. Um, and so we started a blog and specifically to you know give our client, our in-person clients a better experience so they could go deeper. And then before we knew it, there were people, women from all over the world that were interacting with that blog. So we started all the social media accounts, Instagram was brand new, then set up the YouTube channel, and started putting some of those workouts online. And um, to our surprise, there was actually a lot of women that were interested in it. And while we we launched our first fitness, um, it was a six-week periodized progressive strength chaining program for women. And it was just an ebook, like we just put it together in a guide. And uh, we were hoping to get you know 10 or 12 people in there. Uh, that would have been a big win for us back then. And the first time that we launched it and announced it, because we had started to build up this little community on each of these platforms. Uh, to our surprise, we had over 10,000 women that enrolled in that. And we made, you know, a good chunk of money with it too. Because I think we sold that guide for I can't remember if it was$47 or$97, but it was under$100. And at the time, I was working like four or five different jobs as a trainer, biking around all across LA to get to all my different clients. And I was able to do that because I was young. But I knew in the back of my head, I'm like, this is not going to be sustainable when I'm in my 40s and 50s. You know, I can't be jumping around town to all these different things all the time. Um, and so it was a really eye-opening experience putting out good content that was there to serve a purpose and solve a problem for these women, and expecting one thing and having a totally different situation happen. So, what we ended up doing is for about the next four or five years, um, we grew up that brand, started attracting more brand deals, sponsorships, obviously, adSense um from YouTube started rising. The blog was also getting ad sent. Like it was just there was money coming in from all different directions. Then, of course, we had our product sales too. And then about four or five years later, my sister got married. And her husband, now, who she's still with him, uh, he was our cameraman for that whole time, which is kind of a fun fact that nobody knows. And so when they got married, uh, they decided that they wanted to start a custom van company. And this was like right at the peak of the van life trend kind of just exploding on YouTube. And they saw that obviously because we were working in YouTube every day, and they wanted to go travel. So they were like, let's build our own van and we'll document it and the whole thing. So as she kind of stepped off with her new husband into the van life space, roles flipped. And so I started supporting um on the back end to see, okay, we've we've grown this brand up. Can we do it again? Um, my favorite part of growing any brand um back in that, you know, pre-2020 days was YouTube. Just everything about YouTube. I loved it. I'm obsessed with YouTube. I watch it all day, every day. And I was thinking at the time, you know, I could keep doing this fitness stuff. Um, but there's only so many times I can answer the same questions because the science is there. You know, the science doesn't change very much over the years. Um, and I'm a very intellectually uh curious person. So this is the main thing that I love about YouTube the most, is that there's always so much information on there that you can learn. You can go, you could basically it's a YouTube university, you know, you can learn any skill on there, um, not to mention the entertainment factor of YouTube. And so I started asking myself, you know, do I want to keep doing this for the rest of my life? Um, I was getting a little bored with it. And thankfully, I had a lot of exposure to the YouTube world because of that first um business that we built. But I just realized, wow, I actually have way more fun helping them on YouTube than doing it on my own. Um, and the fitness stuff, I just felt like there's there's so much more, you know? And so that's how I really got into the YouTube world. And so after we built the first channel, we built the second channel like way faster because we didn't make all the same mistakes we did in the beginning of the first one. And then I got curious, well, we've done this twice now. What would happen if I tried to help someone else do this? And so I put together a little beta um group to help people with their YouTube channels. And in this time, too, I was traveling the world because we had all, again, we had all this AdSense money, brand deals, product sales, and it was all digital product sales. So there was really no fulfillment other than sending them an attachment on an email. Um, and so I took some time to go travel and really think about this decision. And in that time frame, it was about a year that I went and traveled the world. Um, so many people asked me, how are you just traveling all the time? Like, what do you do? I'm like, YouTube, um, because that's where we made the most revenue too. When she left, I had to get really smart on where's the max amount of ROI coming from the least amount of effort. And it was YouTube and Pinterest. And I think I realized in that moment, um, those are the two main evergreen platforms. They're not timeline bound. So it made a lot of sense to me. And I had a real, really big like aha moment where I was like, okay, well, if we're gonna be doing the content work anyways, why wouldn't we put it on a platform where it has the potential to perform for the next five to 10 years versus the next five to 10 days? Um, and so when I got back from my travels, I'd been asked so many times, what do you do? And the answer is YouTube. Um, and the follow-up question to that was always, well, how do you grow up a YouTube channel? How do you monetize a YouTube channel? I'm like, wow, there's a lot of people that really want to know how to do this. And so that's how um my agency now called VidFluence was originally born. It was like, well, we did this multiple times. Let's see how many more people we can do it for.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Amazing. And and like I said at the start, you've been able to help some pretty amazing folks. Do you want to mention just a couple of examples of things you've done for some well-known people, like you know, Shaleen and uh, you know, I think uh Kiala, uh Kenei, you've you've helped as well. Uh a bunch of others, Tony Robbins. Uh, do you want to mention a couple of results you've been able to generate for people?

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yeah, it's funny you asked this today, it's good timing because I was just a couple days ago reviewing some of the um top performing videos on prior client channels. And um over 200 times, one time, okay, it might be coincidental, two times still might be a coincidence, but over 200 times I've given a handful of, especially personal brand channels, ideas that have become their top viewed video of all time on the channel, even if we only chatted with them for like an hour. Um, and so with some of the client results, you know, I'm I'm under NDA, so I can't share all the details, but um that's something we've done over 200 times is giving people really good ideas that are gonna match the intent and the relevancy of who the viewer is they're looking to target based on their unique business goals. We'll provide those ideas for people, they go deploy them and execute them, and then the video just takes off and it becomes their highest view video of all time. Like that's a that's a really cool experience for me.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

And I I think if if uh we'll mention uh where you can go to find out more about Liz uh towards the end of this call. Uh, but I'm just looking at her website, uh, I mean her YouTube channel at the moment. There's a bunch of really amazing case studies there if you are interested in the people that she's helped and the kind of results you've been able to get uh for them. So definitely go and check that out. Wait for that uh link that we'll uh share with you soon. Liz, I want to uh shift gears a bit and talk about the process that you help your clients go through. Or imagine someone comes to you and they say, Hey, I I wanna uh I want to become YouTube famous, or not just famous, I I actually want to use YouTube to grow my business. Actually, maybe maybe there are actually two kinds of clients or uh potential people that you get people who want to become famous or people just want to you know drive their business and get sales. Maybe there's someone who wants to want to do both. But what do you tell them what's like like you've got a really good process that you help people go through? Do you want to take us through that process on a high level and maybe we can dig into any specific things as we go through it?

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Great question. Yeah. So the first question I ask anybody who wants to grow their YouTube channel is is your main goal sales to your business or is it size of the audience? And it's not that those things are mutually exclusive, but understanding what the actual goal is behind creating content and building an audience on YouTube is really important in this way because if the goal is sales for the business, we're gonna likely deploy more search-based strategy around the problems, challenges, and questions that the ideal customer has for that business offer, um, in addition to recommendation traffic strategy, uh, where YouTube is, you know, kind of pushing your content out there and finding more related viewers for it outside of just the search functions. Whereas if you are looking to create massive influence like the Alex Hermosis of the world or the Dan Martell's of the world, they're really focused on size. And so with that type of strategy, we do need to factor in more of a broad audience approach. So it's not necessarily going to be niche or topic specific. We're gonna rotate through and create, especially if it's a personal brand, we want to build that person's personality into the value proposition of what the channel is. Um, and so it creates two very different styles of content strategies on the channel. And it's the first thing that I ask is get get yourself very clear on what is my actual goal? Do I want to grow an audience so that I can attract new business opportunities, more ways to monetize massive influence, book more stages, be recognized, right? Make more sales, obviously. You're going to make more sales if you're more recognizable. Uh, so there is, you know, kind of some nuances there. Or are we more focused on direct sales? Like we don't really care how big the audience is. We're just looking for the right type of viewer who has this exact problem because that's what our business solves. Um, and so that's the first thing we start with is what is what is the actual business goal?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Liz, I just want to double tap on something that you mentioned. So between, you know, uh optimizing for sales or optimizing for audience. So you mentioned that if you go after the audience and audience building uh and maximizing that, then all these other things sort of fall into place as well. You get more and more opportunities and a whole range of things, including sales. So a question I have for you is why would someone want to just focus on sales with a YouTube strategy?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

A lot of times um if it's a very like specialist or very niche offer. Um so it can also be more relevant for company brands. So like if you have a product-based business or something like that where there's not really a face of the brand, um, those can oftentimes be more focused on like, okay, we just we want to be discoverable in AI LLMs, um, and we also want to be discoverable on Google and YouTube for whenever a customer or a lead types in, hey, how do I how do I fix my flat tire, for example? So it's very specific and tends to be more relevant when it's a a business brand and not so much a personal brand.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Okay, so interesting, interesting. So so say for example, I've got a you know, I've got a company called uh or a business called Vuobly. It's uh you know that helps you distribute your short form video to a bunch of different, you know, all the different main social media sites. Uh I have a choice there. I could I could either approach that from an audience building perspective or I could just hone in on sales for that. Would you recommend for that particular brand or that kind of brand that I I just go for a sales approach and then maybe build a personal brand alongside it that goes for the audience approach? Would would that be kind of like a a uh a playbook to go buy these days?

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yeah, you know, I may I in the case of something that got rates of software product, um, I would I would definitely be looking at should this be split into two channels. So one you have the the brand channel, which is the company channel, that goes through more use cases for people that have the need, already have the product, are struggling to use the product effectively. So you're you're sharing more help content on how to actually use the tool to the maximum. Um, the alternative would be the kind of creator industry, the creator economy, um, talking about broader conversations that are relevant, but doing it in a more personalized way. So it's not tool specific. Um and it's not to say you wouldn't necessarily have to split those off into two separate channels, but that would be the first thing that I would be researching is should we?

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Okay, awesome. All right, so I might have to look into that myself. Uh thank you for following. Yeah, we'll chat after. I'll help you make that up. Awesome. All right, so so that's the first thing is to decide is it gonna be, you know, what's the big focus? Is it for audience building, is it for sales? And you know, which which one is it? What's next after that?

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Next we go through uh something that we call our grow method. So it's four stages. We go through the groundwork, what's gonna get the reach, how do we optimize it, and then what do our workflows look like? So the groundwork stage, we're really trying to figure out who's the viewer and what do they like to watch most on YouTube. In that stage, we're really looking for patterns of top-performing content. Who are the top 10 to 20 creators that already own this audience on YouTube? Do we notice any patterns in the types of topics they cover, title formats, thumbnail styles, edit styles? Are there certain hooks that are going to work better with this audience or not? So it's getting really crystal clear on who is the viewer. And we're looking at multiple different aspects of the viewer too. It's not just the demographics like the age, gender, location data. Um, we're also looking at their psychological aspects. So those psychographic elements of what are their fears, values, triggers, beliefs, um, what keeps them up at night, you know, what are they, what are they binge watching on Netflix, like that, that type of thing. What are where are their interests really lie? Um, what type of language, how do they communicate with other people, um, things of that nature. And then we we try to put together a, you know, here's our avatar. Like this is this is the person that we're making the videos for. And from there, we become that viewer and we go and study what is YouTube putting in front of us when we're acting as if we are that viewer. Um, and so that's the groundwork stage is getting under a better understanding of who are we making the videos for and what are they being shown on YouTube when we tell YouTube like this is what we're interested in, who is getting those impressions? How are they getting the impressions and what are the patterns that we're noticing in that content?

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Then we move into the reach stage, which is all about sorry, uh Liz, I've got a I've got a question about that because I've been through the cycle a few times as well myself with different businesses I've started up. But one of the trickiest questions is that question of who, you know, who do you want to target? So so and and once you know that, then it becomes a lot easier. But do you have a step even before that to help you figure out the who? Like like how do you how do you decide or how do you um hone in on who it is that you want to attract as as a viewer for you on YouTube?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

The first thing that I would look at in this question is what generation are they from? Uh, because the way that Gen Z interacts with content is very is worlds apart from how Gen X interacts with content. It's worlds apart from how boomers interact with content. So I would start with the generational piece because that's gonna determine the foundational language and styles that we need to use in order to become relevant in the conversation of what they like. Um, so yeah, that's the first question. Second question I would look at is what genders are we going after? Um, are we looking at to drive mostly male audience, mostly female audience, um, or a combination of both, or are we gonna be gender neutral? Um, I think those two are really important, the the generation that they're coming from. And then, you know, how do they identify from a gender perspective? If we can get really clear on those things, a lot of the other pieces start to kind of just automatically fall into place. Because if you can think about a group of 20 to 30 people that you know in real life that share similar characteristics, uh, the likelihood that there's also 20 to 30 million other people that are just like them out there is very, very high. And so we try to understand those core elements first, especially is what generation do they come from? Because that's gonna determine even should we do long form or shorts or both. Um and then we look at the gender too, because that's gonna influence the design styles that we use for thumbnails, for example. It's gonna influence the hook styles, it's gonna influence the way that we communicate in the language of the script. Um, and so those two are really, really important to get to get clear on.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

And do you uh this might be part of your next uh the research phase, but do you uh like how how much do you hone in on a on a particular audience? Do you go like especially if you want to build a bigger audience, right? I I'd imagine you'd you'd probably want to go wider, you know, or go uh up in terms of your not niching down, you might be niching up to get wider audiences. Is that part of the groundwork stage? Or is that is that the next one that research one?

SPEAKER_00 20:29

That would be part of groundwork, yeah. So we're trying to understand, okay, are we going after sales or size as the primary goal? Um, what generation is our primary viewer in? And what is relevant in their lives? You know, if we're talking to somebody who's a stay-at-home mom, that's going to be a very different content strategy. We're going to pick very different topics than if somebody is a, you know, 45 plus year old dad running a uh a software business, for example. So um I think each channel is very unique, but how YouTube works is not necessarily like it works the same no matter what. Um, and the way I think of it is your YouTube channel really is a top-of-funnel marketing strategy. It's a way that people can discover you, they can interact with you around the clock too, even while you're sleeping, which is I I love it. I love that it's evergreen. And the more that your content is resonating with them, the wider it will go. So um, as far as the groundwork stage, we do want to get really clear on those things. And one of the easiest ways to, I'll give you a little bonus tip here. One of the easiest ways to get clear on who are those people is reading through the comments section of channels that you're like, when you look at their channel, you're like, that's the result that I want, right? So if you can think of two or three top performing creators in your space, whether that's a personal brand or a company brand or whatever, like find the channels that are already talking to that exact audience and go read through the comments. You will learn so much about what makes your viewer tick, what they like, what they don't like, um, all the things that are relevant in their real lives. And that the comment section are honestly where we we basically mine a ton of golden ideas.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

So I don't know if that answered your question. I love that. I have I do it does, and I have one more question about that before we move on. And and that is when you're when you're deciding about either honing in on sales or audience, is uh would you in general say that for for the sales option you would be niching down to get a much more specific audience and and hence much more specific keywords that you might be going after. Whereas for the audience focused, you'd be niching up uh if if that's I'm not sure if people use it that way. And so you you're going for a broader audience where there's you know broader keywords, broader uh topics uh that can capture wider audiences. Is that's like a general sort of approach you'd have?

SPEAKER_00 22:49

A hundred percent, yeah. Um the broader audience topics will tend to get more reach, but they're not great at sales to your offers. Um, so you want to think about the channel as a whole is a top of funnel marketing strategy, but within the programming of that channel, you have top of funnel content, you have mid-funnel content, and then you have bottom of funnel content. So your top of funnel content is all the like super broad topics. This could be relevant to a much wider audience than just your core avatar or core customer. Um, and we do that on purpose so that we can get the reach of the content. So it's easier for the more specific ideal client types to find us later because we're just dominating the YouTube homepage all the time. So top of funnel is very much super broad, but it's not always great for sales. Um, that's where your middle and bottom of funnel content strategy comes in. And bottom of funnel is where we would include much more search-based strategy. Um, we're speaking into the exact problems and challenges that the customer has that our offer solves. Um, but those videos can sometimes struggle to get reach on the platform just because they're so specific. So you you hit the nail on the head. If you want your content to reach a wider audience, include some of those more broader topics, especially trending formats or trending um, you know, kind of video titles and things like that, especially if you see other creators in your space uh kind of picking up on some of those trends. And then if you want more sales from the channel, then we have to go towards the bottom of the funnel, right? And look at, all right, what are the main problems and questions that people who are offered will actually be looking for on Google and YouTube to solve? And how do we create some content that will get them, you know, the first couple steps of solving that process, but not necessarily give away the cart with the horse because then they don't have a need to buy the product, right? So um, yeah, you would definitely the the broad if you want to go for audience size, we have to include more pop culture topics. We have to include um much broader, you know, kind of like you see this with Alex Hermozzi, you see this with Dan Martell. Dan Martel, I think I can share this because this is, you know, you can literally see it on the channel history. Dan Martel originally started his channel and grew um right over a hundred thousand subscribers or so um by being very bottom and middle funnel uh with SaaS products. Okay. So for anything related to SaaS, SAS uh cost of acquisitions, lifetime value of the customer, all the different, you know, kind of SaaS-based keywords back in the SAS days, um, were that was like all he did. Uh, and it was very specific to SaaS, founders of SAS companies and all of that. Well, he hit what we call an audience plateau. Okay. And this this tends to happen if you stay at the bottom of funnel or even mid-funnel, um, is you'll eventually max out the amount of videos that you can make, right? Like you've already made the video that ranks for that particular topic. So, unless you start cycling through and creating updated versions of that, you're gonna hit what we call an audience cap. And this is related to the total addressable market, which in marketing is known as your TAM. So the TAM on this channel is maybe a lot smaller, but it's the conversions are way, way higher. And so when people, and especially Dan, like Dan didn't want to stop at the plateau, right? He wanted to go all the way. So at that point, it's like, okay, well, we need to shift away from more of the search keyword specific-based topics that are all SaaS specific and get you moving into more broader topics. So you have um, you know, more relevancy with pop culture, breaking news stories. Um, he's doing a lot of stuff with AI now, uh, a lot of mindset conversations. Those types of topics are relevant to a much broader audience than just SaaS founders. And so that's kind of the linchpin that if you hit an audience plateau by just staying super niche, and this is this is hard for creators to really wrap their mind around, or business owners specifically to wrap their mind around, because in business you hear all the time niche down, niche down, niche down, uh, be very specific in what you do. But on YouTube, it's kind of the opposite. Like you will cap out because the TAM for super niche down businesses uh is very, very small. Like you will hit a limit at some point, and the only way to break through that limit is to start going broader. Um, so it's kind of the opposite in that way from traditional business advice. It's like if we want to continue the momentum, uh, we have to figure out how do we broaden the audience for this so we can continue to influence and reach those people.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Well, that that's absolute genius for me, Liz. Thank you for that. That's like worth absolute gold to me, and I'm sure everybody watching this or listening to this will say the same or think the same, especially if you've been in marketing uh and YouTube and video stuff for a while. Because the thing is, like you say, the the advice is almost always uh, you know, the niching down. Uh, you know, the further you niche down, the better, you know, and uh phrases like riches are in the niches, that sort of thing. Um and and I and I I I think it works, but like you say, uh for YouTube, maybe there is a different strategy, maybe a uh especially if you want to reach wider audiences, it's not so much about uh niching down, it's niching up. Uh or you know, I'm just using that. I'm not I haven't had anybody say niching up, I'll just came up with a phrase myself, but um it's going broader, you know, so you can you can capture a broader TAM uh totally addressable addressable market. So you're actually the first person to speak sense about that, saying, yes, there's value in both, but it depends on your strategy. Is it for sales or is it for audience growth? And and so you've got to decide at the beginning. And for me, like as a as a uh someone who's thinking about re restarting up my personal brand, uh, but I also have product brands. I've got you know, Splasio is one of my companies, I've got Vuobly, it's another business, uh, and I've I've got you know who knows what else is coming up in the future. For me, I'm thinking the personal brand can be more of an audience approach, and whereas the product brands can be more sales approaches, and so they have very different strategy. The one is niching down, the other one is niching up. Um, so I'm saying niching. Uh we say niche here in Australia. You guys probably say niche, right? So it's a little bit stable.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

It depends on what comes after, you know. Rich is in the niches sounds way better than niches.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Okay, okay, so that's groundwork. So thank you. We we we double tapped on that like mad, and and I'm glad we did. So uh you clarified something for me that I've I've actually been struggling with for well since the beginning, 20 years. So thank you. That's um really allowed me to see this in a very different light. So thank you very much. All right, so next is research. Uh so let's let's dig into that. So you've got the groundwork laid, you know you're gonna go after sales or audience, maybe both, depending on your strategy, um, for different channels. Uh, but what's next? So ground lying, you've you've you've got the groundwork, then research. What's next?

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Yeah, so next we look at so once we know whose viewer what do they like to watch on YouTube the most, then we start looking at how we're gonna reach them. Um, and so this is where we get into, and now it's great because we have AI support to go help us do all this stuff now, which is amazing because we used to spend literal weeks doing this, but now it's been collapsed down to just a couple days. Um, but we're basically looking on YouTube from the perspective of the viewer, knowing what we can and can't control. So there's four stages that you need to understand every viewer goes through when they're watching content on YouTube. The first is are they even seeing your videos be recommended? Um, we don't have direct control over that. It's called an impression. So that's what YouTube's algorithm does. It decides which videos should get impressions for which people. Um, the second stage from the viewer perspective is are people clicking on my videos versus the dozens of others that YouTube showing them? We do have direct control over that. That's called your click-through eight. The third stage is retention. So once they're on the video, let's say they clicked it, how long do they watch it? Do they drop off at 10 seconds? Do they drop off at 10 minutes? That's a big difference in engagement. Um, and then the final stage is after they're done watching that video that they first discovered, what do they do after? Do they leave and never come back? Do they go on to watch more related content on your channel? Or do they, you know, maybe we just we never see them again, right? It's like that was a one and none. And that's one of the limitations, too, by the way, that you should really understand. Um, when a viewer watches one video and leaves, that's a common side effect of a more search-based strategy. Because if you think of it, when viewers are using the search functions of YouTube, they're usually looking for the answer to a problem that they're having, a question that they have, a challenge they're facing. They're trying to solve that thing. And so they'll go and search, right? Um, but when somebody gets the answer, right, they watch that video and then they leave, they go to go fix the thing, right? They're not coming back and forming that relationship with you. So we want to really understand from the viewer perspective, this is what's actually going on. It's the impression, the click-through eight, the retention rate, and the return viewers rate. When we get better at the click-through eight retention rate and returning viewer rate, our impressions are guaranteed to go up because that's what YouTube wants. YouTube wants people to spend more time on the platform. So people are simply said, if people click and watch your content more, uh, you will get impressions from YouTube. And so in the reach stage, we're really looking at what types of topics, title formats, thumbnail designs, editing styles, et cetera, are already performing really well with this audience. And then we work to reverse engineer that into our own content plans. So we might notice things like there's been a trending title going around with a lot of the personal brands. It's it's the format of it took me 40 years to learn what I'll tell you in 10 minutes. Um, you've seen, I mean, it just literally go on YouTube right now and you can go look it up. There's dozens of videos like that from some of the top personal brands in the world. Um, that is a pattern. So we're looking for those types of patterns, and then we're looking to recreate, you know, what worked about this? How can we join the conversation, especially because topic clusters on YouTube or what we call buckets of videos, groups of related videos is really important when you get into later stages of more advanced strategy because we don't just want the one and done video unless it is like leading to a funnel of some sort, right? We we want people to be coming back, watching more of our videos, uh, you know, coming back regularly to the channel. And so we look for creators that are already successfully doing that, and then we're looking to reverse engineer what is it that's working about that. So we're putting together your actual action plan in that stage based on the patterns of top performing content.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Amazing. So that's so that's still the research phase. So you've done the groundwork, research. This is still part of the research, all of this, right? Because you mentioned reach as well. I thought that's like the next stage, or is there research and then reach is a bit of a course. So they work together.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

It's like, how are we gonna get how are we gonna reach the audience, basically? So we do a round of research to figure out how we're gonna reach them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Okay, good. All right. So so there's those tips. The groundwork, research, reach. Okay, and is there anything else you want to say about reach there? Because I think there was a fourth level as well, fourth stage as well.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Um no, that's pretty much it. Yeah, it's like the reach stage is really like how are we gonna reach the viewer, what videos are most likely to perform best with them, and really getting clear on especially what are the titles and thumbnails that we're gonna use. Um, we think in batches of 10 as well. Um, I'm not sure if that's helpful. This is for long form, but it's like, what are the first 10 videos that we can do? Can we have a little mix and match variety in there? So we're taking multiple swings at the fences, not just staying stuck in like one kind of core format, right? We want to be experimenting in this stage. Um, and once we figure out what your action plan is, and we go obviously produce the content, get it ready for publishing.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Awesome. All right. So so with this amazing flow or this process we've just gone through, uh how do you think uh we might be able to apply this to uh short form video in particular? Or let's let's hone in on just YouTube Shorts as opposed to all the other platforms as well, to keep the discussion a bit uh focused in. What what have you seen working well with shorts in particular? So uh maybe there's a case for someone doing both long form and shorts, but maybe there's also a case for someone just doing shorts. What have you seen that that works well in in your world and with your clients?

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah, so shorts have been through such an evolution on the platform since they first rolled out. Um, what we're seeing work best now is using shorts for discovery. So, not necessarily expecting that shorts are going to be the main driver of revenue on the channel. Um, they're not necessarily gonna be the main relationship builder just because of the nature of how short they are. Um, but we can use them very effectively for getting people off of the feed and pulling them into long form content. And so that's how I think of shorts is like, how do we create really interesting and more entertaining content that is gonna capture the right viewer, but also compel them to go watch more of our long form videos? Because that's really where you make the majority of the revenue. Um, so with shorts, sometimes, you know, most of the time, shorts are gonna pull in a slightly younger audience. So especially Gen Z and millennial audiences, if that is somebody that you're looking to target, like we should include some level of short strategy with that. But we don't want to just post shorts just to post shorts. What you're really looking for is how do I create shorts that are almost acting like a mini preview of some of my longer form content so that there's more crossover between videos. Um, because the way that shorts work, it's all feed-driven, right? So it's a totally different algorithm. Um, and that's something a lot of people don't understand. They work very, very differently. And the metrics are similar in the concept, right? Like instead of click-through rate, we have something called a viewed versus swiped away rate. Um, but they're the same types of concepts, it's just very different based on the format, right? So um with shorts in general, we're not just looking to create shorts just to create shorts, because especially for business owners, um, they are not the most profitable. Okay. Um, unless you're an entertainment creator and you're going like super mega viral, um, they're just not going to be where we move the needle on cash flow. Um, and so instead of just looking at it for posting shorts just to post shorts, we really want to try to figure out how do we use these shorts as a new entry point to get people off of the feed and back into the long-form viewing experience. So they're spending significantly longer amounts of time building deeper relationships, et cetera. But I think um the real question all creators need to ask on on this topic of should I do shorts, should I not do shorts, is well, who's the audience, right? So if it's Gen Z millennial, you probably need a short strategy. If it's a little bit older, um, it could be hit or miss, especially with like Boomer, Gen X audience. Um, they don't tend to perform as well as far as being like a new feeder to get somebody off the feed into long form content. Um, and they tend to work better too, and they have more of an entertainment element involved in them.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

So I've got a question uh about how you get people from watching your shorts to then getting them to watch your long form video. What's the what's the the best practice there at the moment? Because I know, like you say, shorts have been through many different waves. But currently, what's the best way to to achieve that? Like is it is it to uh to rely on the algorithm? So you you you basically publish a bunch of shorts and and so people start getting they start seeing more of your shorts, not not because they've subscribed or clicked on your channel or anything like that, but they start seeing more of your shorts and then eventually they subscribe and then that way they they end up watching more of your long form content. Or is the recommendation to send them straight to a longer form video that relates to that short form video? What's what's your take? Because my my view is that um or what I've heard a lot of people say more recently, especially not not in the olden days, but like two years ago, is that um more recently it seems like you know you've got to really think about the mindset that people are in when they're uh when they're watching shorts on on their mobile. They they're sitting there scrolling, they don't necessarily want to go and click on a link to go and watch a long form video going from the shorts feed into a long long form experience. What's what's your view on that and what do you think is the the the best playbook uh at the moment?

SPEAKER_00 38:36

Yeah, just to clarify, there are two kind of core types of shorts. You have the standalone shorts and then you have what these more like feeder shorts, right? So um I think it really depends again, it's always going to depend on who's the audience. Like they're gonna determine what we do and which strategy we choose. Um, but YouTube makes this really easy for you because in the back end in your YouTube studio, there is a feature that if you are doing shorts no matter what, um, even if it's a standalone short, there's a feature called the related video. Um, and so it's in the video details, it's on the right side of the screen. And you can attach the short to a direct link that will open up any long form video on your channel. Okay, so if it's a standalone short, we'll typically put those related video links towards some of the top performing highest watch time content on the channel. Whereas if it's a specific kind of feeder short, um, we are making sure that's attached to the full-length conversation that it was pulled out from, or that it's a trailer for.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

Okay, so a a feeder short is like a like a trailer. So for example, so can you give me some examples for like a feeder short versus a what did you call it, a standalone short?

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Yeah, so um when we so we had a client in the health space and um she had she had given a talk um about women's health stats. And I think we titled the short, we took the clip out of you know, kind of how she opened the conversation, which was talking about uh the statistics about women's health, and it was crazy health facts about women that nobody ever tells us. Um and so she was just kind of rattling off a numbered list of, you know, when women age beyond age 35, here's all the things that start physically happening and changing in her body. And some of the stats were like absolutely shocking. So that whenever it's like shocking, crazy, funny, highly emotional, those things make really, really great shorts. And so what we did is we attach that to one of her lead magnet videos too, because it's like, okay, we're gonna talk about all the crazy things that happen to your body after you, you know, surpassed level 35. Um, and by the way, if you're looking to help slow or prevent those changes from happening, we need strength training. So, guess what we did? We linked that video to a you know best strength training routine for women. Here's how to get started. And so it kind of walked through like, okay, this is why this stuff matters. So those people are pre-framed now because they know the risks of not strength training. Does that make sense? So there's a direct motivator. If that's shocking to you and you're afraid of that, it's like, well, let's make sure that doesn't happen to you. Um, and so that's how we kind of think of it is like, look for still look for shocking, you know, a high emotion, interesting facts, um, bold statements, really high energy, high more entertainment, right? It could also be more heavily educational, like that. Um, but it was punchy, right? It's a numbered list. Here's fact number one, fact number two, fact number three. Hey, and by the way, if you don't want this to happen to you, you need to start strength training right now. Then the related video is here's the best strength training, seven-day workout plan for women, right? Like that, it's just the natural next step. You always want to be thinking of what's the next best thing for the viewer to do and start creating those webs between your videos.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

Okay, right. So I think that's a nice distinction for me is figuring out what is the next best step for the viewer after they've watched a particular video from you. And maybe sometimes the next best step is for them to keep scrolling, uh, in which case you don't send them back to another video, but but maybe another time it might be worth them the next step being to go and visit your channel or go and watch a longer form video or go and you know uh eventually get to a landing page where they sign up for a lead magnet or you know buy your product or service. Brilliant. So thank you for that. Uh Liz, we've got to start wrapping things up. Uh but I have one more uh insight that I'd like to uh uh uh find out a bit more from you. Something you said in a previous interview. You talked about um that YouTube only cares about the relevancy of the viewer. Um sorry, let me just get this quote right because I wrote it down. So YouTube only cares about the relevancy of the viewer and the performance of the content. Did I get that right? Uh relevancy to the viewer. Uh relevancy to the viewer and the performance of the content. Do you want to uh just uh dig into that and unpack that a little bit? Because that really got my attention. And I think it relates to the overall picture that we talked about here in terms of you know, it's about the viewer and and and getting things right for them. But do you want to just explain that a little bit more for us?

SPEAKER_00 42:53

Yeah, so to understand this, you have to understand what relevance even is. So a lot of times when people approach their YouTube channel, they just think about here's what I want to say. And never once in there does it cross their mind, well, what does my viewer want to watch? Relevancy is the crossover between those two things. So there's what you want to say, but then there's what your viewer cares about. The the cross section of those two kind of core drivers is where we create relevance. So you it's what you want to say as long as the viewer cares about that, right? So um that's what we're looking for is kind of a content-to-person match. Um, is this is this important in their lives? Is this something that when they see this thumbnail, they can't not click on it because it's so relevant to them. Um, relevancy can also come into play with more pop culture um events, breaking news stories, um, you know, breakout trends, things like that. Um we want to be able to sometimes tap into those conversations or those crazy like Laboo Boo is a really good example from last year. Those, if you go and look at the Google Trends data, like for a couple months there, Labuboo was spiking through the roof, and then all of a sudden it's dead, right? That would be an example. Of a trend that was relevant for only a period of time. So we want to be looking at both evergreen kind of relevancy topics as well as breakout topics, too, things that we can jump on the wave and ride the wave for as long as that trend lasts. And then the performance piece is really where the analytics comprehension comes in because those stages of the viewer, did we get the impression? What's the click-through rate? What's the retention rate? Are they returning? Those three click-through rate, retention rate, and returning viewers rate, when we get better at those, remember, our impressions will go up. So the performance piece is really measuring how well are we doing in each one of those stages? Are we getting more impressions from YouTube? Is our click-through rate, you know, above our average baseline? Are we continually working to get the viewer to watch even one minute longer, even two minutes longer? Um, and then how are we creating those webs or groups of related videos? Are we properly linking them together, making it easy for the viewer to keep watching our videos instead of someone else's? Um, all of those elements are really where we start to boost the performance pieces because that's what YouTube cares about, and that's what YouTube rewards is when you're focused on those core elements.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

Awesome. Well, thanks for explaining that. Uh I must say, Liz, this has been one of the best YouTube analyses that I've ever had, if not the best, and uh really appreciate it. I've had so many insights from this. If people want to learn more about you, I know you've got an agency as well where you help people achieve results like we've talked about. Where's the best place that they could go? And do you want to talk about that a little bit more?

SPEAKER_00 45:35

Yeah, best place to start would be channelamplifier.com. That is the place to go if you're serious about getting better YouTube results, um, growing and monetizing your channel 100% organically. Um, it's a training and mastermind community of other YouTube creators that are all focused on uh growing their business and their platform on YouTube. So um channel amplifier is the by far the best place to go first. Um we meet weekly, we have a private Slack group, we're solving these problems with our creators every single day. And we teach you the exact same system that we use inside my agency where we're running the channels for some of the biggest brands in the world, like Tony Robin, Schleen, etc. Um, so that's the best place to get started because then we can teach you the fundamentals that you need to know, help get you plugged into the different workflows, the different AI tools that we have to help support you in going faster, um, and all the things. So that's the best place.

SPEAKER_01 46:26

Amazing. So that's channelamplifier.com. You can go check that out. And uh if I actually found this uh quite useful as well, just for myself. Uh, if you want to go to Liz's channel, I know Liz, you're not not super active yourself on social media, uh, but you're more active in helping other people uh with YouTube. And I think if you go to Liz's YouTube channel as well, you can see some of her case studies here that she's been able to help people with. Definitely worth checking that out. And in fact, I think in general, Liz's uh social media handle is just Liz does video if you want to find out more about her as well. But definitely go and check out channelamplifier.com to get more specific information about that. Liz, thank you so much again. Uh it's so great to see you again. And uh I really enjoyed this one. It was it's something YouTube's always been close to me, you know that. Uh I I've I've been on YouTube now for 20 years or so, um, and I just love, love, love this conversation. So thank you so much. I'm wishing you all the best.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

Thanks for tuning in. If you want to grow your influence with daily short form videos, Vubli makes it effortless. Post everywhere, be seen everywhere. Try it free at vobli.ai. I'll see you in the next episode.