YouTube Marketing Is About Sales Over Views
Today, I want to begin with an unequivocal statement about YouTube marketing: SALES trumps VIEWS every time. That’s right folks, it’s much more important for you to focus on generating actual sales from your content rather than painstakingly counting the number of views or followers you’re slowly accuring from social media promotion. Let’s look at a few reasons why.
Traffic Does Not Guarantee Revenue
If you do a little bit of research, you will find some folks who have as many as 10 MILLION channel views on YouTube but are barely making pennies in comparison to the level of exposure they are receiving. How can this be? Well, just because someone is watching their videos doesn’t mean that same someone will shell out actual cold hard cash to support the business.
The harsh truth is that simply monetizing your videos with YouTube ad space and letting the percentage points of a dollar roll in will only net you a small amount of revenue. If you have a video with 100,000 views, for example, and you just let it monetize with YouTube ads, you may only get $200 or so. If you consider the amount of exposure 100,000 views gets you, $200 is not a lot of money. Especially if you compare it to the successes of other companies who are prioritizing sales over traffic. You need to find a way to use that exposure to actually increase your income.
I know “someone” who has “only” 11,000 views on YouTube, yet he made $6,724 over the course of six weeks in over all business. So, how is it possible that someone with so few views (comparatively) gets so much sales, and the guy with a ton of followers and comments and views is getting shorted in actual funding?
Don’t Become “The Entertainer Guy”
This is because the person who has the most views doesn’t necessarily get the most money. To put it bluntly, just because you watch my YouTube video doesn’t mean you’ll actually buy my product. Often, people with a ton of followers and no cash are perceived to be “entertaining” and nothing else.
Being the “entertainer guy” is all about people using you as escapism, enjoying your little ramblings, and going on about their day. That’s not sales, that’s free entertainment. We live in an age where everybody is tossing around their attention to anything the mildly amuses them. But it’s doesn’t mean they’re paying for that amusement. When your viewers watch you and think, “Hey, look! There’s the entertainer guy who’s always entertaining us for FREE! Awesome!”, they’re unlikely to shell out the dough when you ask them for it.
When the “entertainer guy” tries to convert these types of viewers into sales down the road, it doesn’t work. They think you’re trying to pull a fast one on them: “Wait, what? Entertainer guy wants MONEY now?! You were the FREE fun guy! Stay that way!” This is not good for business and often at this point the entertainer guy is seen as trying to take value away from his viewers rather than offer a new higher end service. So, how do you differentiate yourself from the entertainer guy and actually become the person interested in the sale, the audience of buyers, and the target market that can actually be sold for revenue?
YouTube Marketing Is About The Opt-In To The Sale
First, the people who are interested in your stuff enough to purchase your products or services, continuously consume your content, and implement your suggestions are far more valuable than someone who is merely entertained by you. The 1,000 true fan phenomenon is real. Someone with 11,000 views and sales is much better off, in a business sense, than someone with 100,000 views and no sales at all.
It’s a bit of a myth that traffic is hard to get or that it’s the most important thing. Everyone’s asking, “How do you get traffic? How do you pile up on subscribers?” as if the traffic is going to make you money. The traffic is not going to make you money. Traffic does NOT make money. SEO is not a money making technique. Cold traffic is not a money making technique. Traffic is maybe 5-10% of your whole business. Sales and actually selling a product or service is a money-making technique. It is THE money-making technique.
Once you opt-them-in, through annotations, an email list, or whatever your best tactic is, you create your marketing funnel. With the funnel, you optimize your ability to lead people on your list to the sale. Pay special attention to your ability to get them on the phone, create a good sales letter, or (most ideally) getting a face-to-face meetup. Consider Skype meetups as well, they are highly effective these days.
Identify Your True Fans and The Rest Will Follow
You do this primarily by doing amazing content that is based primarily off of what people are asking on the phone calls. In other words, calibrate your content and “pitch” to what your ideal true fans are telling you they want. Once you do this, you create a solid foundation of real fans that believe in your vision – because it’s their vision too. These are the followers/subscribers you want. This is no longer just cold traffic, it’s optimized traffic, it’s your niche working in action. Your niche is infinitely more valuable than some random people who just laugh at your stuff and then click on a cat video.
Your true fans are going to share your stuff to their friends, on their Facebook news feed, on their Tumblr, and so on. Your true fans are the heart and soul of your brand – your random cold traffic is not. If you can create a funnel of true fans, it’s very easy to get promoted by other people, and your list grows almost by itself. I highly encourage you to follow this business model. It offers some of the most value to your customers while also being much more profitable than counting views or followers. Optimize your content, be effective, be engaging, and optimize yourself so your energy and drive is amazing. Optimize everything.
