In this article, you’ll learn how to use YouTube to generate more leads and sales in your business organically. By using YouTube as your core platform, you can repurpose your videos for other social media platforms you’re using. If you’re tired of spinning your wheels creating new content for all your social media platforms and spending money on ads that may or may not convert in the long term, YouTube is where your focus should be.

We all know ads are a gamble; you must get the creative, copy, and audience right. Then you go through the dreaded testing phase, another term for guaranteeing you’ll be on the losing end regarding profits. Let’s not forget the iOS changes that threw millions of businesses into an automatic loss.

A solid marketing strategy that does not rely on paid ads but on building SEO (search engine optimization) and online visibility through YouTube is critical. 

By the end of this article, you’ll learn why focusing on YouTube videos for the core content of your business is such a powerhouse for gaining viral visibility that eliminates the need for paid ads. What if I told you that you only needed four videos a month to accomplish your goal of achieving that visibility and eliminating your ad spend? 

Read on to find out how. 

The Current State of Many Businesses Today

At the time of writing this article, we’re well into a global pandemic that rocked the world when it was declared in March of 2020. Right now, we’re on the verge of a recession. This double whammy does not bode well for many businesses. 

The pandemic caused businesses to shut down, shipping delays, and increased costs for supplies and goods. In addition, the pandemic has caused lasting effects such as decreased profits and looming debt for many businesses still hanging on in 2022. Add in a looming recession that leaves many businesses in a difficult position. 

Pre-pandemic paid ads may have been the bread and butter for your business. Still, the way the economy is now paired with the constant algorithm changes, ads aren’t a good option anymore because of the diminishing returns. 

In addition to the diminishing returns, higher ad spend is now needed due to all of the updates and inflation – the same $5,000 you spent to get a 3+ ROAS is now more expensive. As a matter of fact, in 2020, with an average ad spend of $20,000, you could expect to reach approximately 10,000,000 Facebook users. But the same budge right now will only get you seen by about 7,500,00 users. So that’s a pretty dramatic shift. 

It gets worse. 

We’re not just talking about Facebook ads here. All around, social media ad cost is increasing on all platforms. According to Hunchads.com, five major social media platforms are showing dramatic increases in advertising costs each year since the pandemic. 

Let’s look at the average CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) as of July 2021: 

• Google & YouTube: 108%
• Facebook: 89% increase with the average CPM of $11
• TikTok: 92%
• Snapchat: 64% 

With a recession on the horizon in 2022, do you think the ad cost will go up or down? 

If you answered, “up,” you are correct.

So what is the solution for solopreneurs and small businesses that can’t keep up with the ever-increasing expensive advertising costs?

Relying on generating leads for your business with paid advertising only sets you up for failure in the long term. Think of this, do you want your business to be a short-term venture, or do you want your business to be sustainable for many years to come? Do you want a stable business whether or not advertising costs increase, another pandemic hits, or your country is in the middle of a recession? 

Don’t Be Powerless When Hard Times Hit

One of the best business tips I’ve received is not to be reactive but proactive. Unfortunately, many businesses were tested in the spring of 2020 and had to be reactive to the situation at hand. Of course, no one could predict a global pandemic to the magnitude of the one we’re in the midst of, but proactive measures could have gone a long way to keep many businesses open. 

Proactive measures that we’ve learned from the pandemic include, but are not limited to, adding more digital products/services, keeping money set aside in savings in case of an emergency, and not being so reliant on social media platforms that have you worried about algorithm changes. 

If you’ve made it this far into the pandemic without much of a loss to your business bottom line, I commend you. But, if not, and you’re like millions of other businesses that have suffered unimaginable losses because their business was dependent on a platform that changes as much as the wind blows, then organic marketing with video content is what you need to generate a steady stream of traffic, leads, and sales to your business. 

If your business cannot receive steady organic traffic, you’re already losing when the next big thing (pandemic, recession, shipping delays, employee turnover) hits. In addition, many small businesses wouldn’t be able to survive another blow to their budget and bottom line if they were dependent on the whims of the next big social media platform for their business traffic. 

According to an article in Small Biz Trends, “No matter what the economy is doing, digital marketing such as SEO, SEM, social media campaigns, and email marketing will always be one of the most cost-effective ways to reach new customers.”

If you’re one of the many business owners worried about a recession, the article goes on to say, 

“A recession will only magnify the low investment needed to generate more leads and conversions via a sound SEO strategy. Digital marketing using SEO is very flexible, allowing a business to adapt to changing circumstances.”

The 3 Main Problems Many Small Businesses Are Facing Today

As a small business owner myself in the midst of the pandemic, I had to stop and realize that many small to medium-sized businesses are experiencing the same three problems in their business at this time. Most of the issues are related to getting leads into their overall marketing funnel. 

Problem #1 Increasing advertising costs with diminishing returns

As someone who has lost thousands of dollars from paid advertising in both of my businesses, I have firsthand experience with spending money and not seeing any returns on my ad spend. It’s not just my business considering the overall increase in advertising costs.

If you’ve done any type of paid advertising and had any kind of diminishing returns, it usually occurs in three stages: 

1. Increasing returns, when the output rises equal to or above input. 
2. Diminishing returns when output begins to diminish relative to input. 
3. Negative returns are when the output decreases below the input. 

When starting an advertising campaign and entering stage one, you feel good and feel like the advertising spend is paying off (or will pay off when you spend more). After stage one, the ad spend starts diminishing, and your first thought is to think you need to add more money, so everything starts to balance out again. Unfortunately, the more money you add in, the more negative returns you’ll get if you continue down this spiral. The negative returns could be from anything; platform updates, a shadowbanned account, a lousy offer; the reasons are many. 

Businesses can spend a lot of money on advertising and marketing but often don’t see much long-term ROI from the effort. The best way to avoid this is to stop paying for traffic in the first place. 

Implementing organic marketing strategies through SEO is much more affordable than paid advertising and is sustainable for small businesses in the long run. Five forms of SEO are much more affordable than ads, and YouTube covers four of the five.  

They are: 

1. Keyword research and targeting – the hallmark of any organic marketing strategy used on YouTube is based on keyword research and targeting.  
2. Local search engine optimization – refers to signing up for a service like Google My Business (GMB) for more leads from your local area. You can still use GMB to capture local leads if your business serves people worldwide. 
3. Content creation – the heart of YouTube is content creation. 
4. Link building – can quickly be done by linking your website to YouTube video descriptions and sharing your videos on your blog.
5. Mobile optimization – YouTube, by default, is mobile-friendly. And with the advent of YouTube shorts, even more people are hopping onto the short-form video trend.

Problem #2 Spending Too Much time Spent on Ineffective Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has to be the bane of most businesses. Where to post? How much to post? What to post? There is so much noise about the best practices in social media marketing. 

Some people say to focus on one platform like TikTok to go viral. Some people say to focus on Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. Depending on whom you listen to, you might get some great advice currently working for you. But, if that’s the case, I don’t know why you’re reading a report on leveraging YouTube and content repurposing to generate more leads and sales organically. 

Maybe you’re tired of hearing about what social media platform is trending now and want to see more steady, reliable growth. If that’s the case, using YouTube as your central “social media” platform will alleviate any issues you have with hopping onto dying trends to keep your business afloat. 

Problem #3 Lack of or Decreased Website Traffic

A lack of or decreased website traffic happens because you aren’t effectively marketing your business with paid traffic or organically. Paid traffic includes typical ads from social media platforms and ads from search engines like Pinterest, Google, or YouTube. Traditional marketing methods have become more expensive over time and simply do not produce the same results anymore. The COVID-19 pandemic has made everything more costly for small businesses.

While large businesses have widely used SEO, smaller companies now realize the importance of using it extensively. However, according to a study by The Manifest, nearly 70% of small businesses do not have an SEO plan. The reason is partly that seeing the benefits of SEO takes many months before seeing any return on investment. 

And yet, many small businesses struggle to understand what SEO is, whether they should use it, and how to utilize it for their business best. It’s time for smaller businesses to adapt to using SEO to drive targeted traffic to their website. You can drive organic traffic by using social media and search engines effectively. 

Companies are seeing a decrease in web traffic since they do not have a solid organic marketing strategy and would instead prioritize “quick wins” with paid ads. 

I wouldn’t just present small businesses’ most common problems without solutions. This report is using YouTube to generate more leads and sales organically and video content repurposing, so I’ll teach you how to get more website traffic later down the line using video and content repurposing. 

The Conundrum With Traditional Social Media Marketing

Before we go any further, let’s get the definition of social media. The Oxford dictionary defines social media as “Websites and applications that allow users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.” So when people think of social media, the names Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat come to mind. 

Some people may even lump YouTube and Pinterest into social media platforms, but they’re not. So what sets YouTube and Pinterest apart from the rest of the list? 

The fact that they are search engines. Any content posted on a search engine will have lasting results that keep giving year over year. 

Think about that epic post you shared with your network on Instagram 3 weeks ago. Can you find it on search when you Google? Is it still getting significant traffic? Most likely not. 

The power of focusing most of your energy on a search engine rather than a social media platform is that your content can be seen weeks, months, and even years from now, still bringing traffic to your business. 

I’m sorry, tweets, reels, TikToks, and posts on Facebook aren’t going to do that. But of course, those social media platforms play a role in your repurposing strategy, but your marketing efforts shouldn’t solely focus on them. 

Remember when Facebook and Instagram blacked out for about 6 hours, and everyone (well, not me) was freaking out? Businesses that did all their business on Facebook or Instagram were freaking out because of the potential loss of their Facebook groups and followers. 

Those who built their marketing platform on search engines and old-fashioned email lists didn’t think twice about the outage because they knew they could still connect with their clients and weren’t reliant on a finicky platform for that traffic. 

So, let’s finally understand why YouTube is such a powerhouse when it’s used as the cornerstone of your social media marketing strategy. 

The Power of YouTube to Generate More Leads and Sales

As I mentioned, YouTube isn’t a social media platform; it’s a search engine. It’s the 2nd most popular search engine, behind Google (YouTube’s parent company). YouTube being the 2nd most popular search engine in the world is why when you start your YouTube channel, your focus needs to be on keywords so your videos can show up on ding, you guessed it – Google. 

Unlike social media platforms, keywords are your best friend. I cringe when I hear of people starting YouTube channels for their business but don’t plan out their video content. 

Recording random videos and uploading them to YouTube won’t help you in the least. Instead, YouTube is to be treated like the powerful search engine it is, and it has to be optimized to work hard for your business 24/7. 

YouTube provides a ton of digital real estate for your business on the platform itself. Think of all the SEO (search engine optimization) you can rack up for your business when you add keywords to your video title, mention them in your video, and write them in the video description? 

If you’re an expert in your field and someone Googles specific keywords, with the proper YouTube optimization, your videos might pop up years later, still bringing you traffic. 

Bonus YouTube Benefit – The YouTube Partner Program

You now know the benefits of using YouTube as your organic marketing core platform to bring more leads, traffic, and sales to your business. But another cool thing about YouTube is that after meeting a few requirements, you can monetize your videos with ads and start earning passive income from creating videos. 

Requirements to apply for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP)

• Have at least 1,000 subscribers
• 4,000 hours of watch time in the last 12 months

The YPP is an excellent benefit for small and large businesses since you’ll be able to make money from organic marketing. The amount of money you’ll earn per month is directly related to the types of videos you create and the CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) of what advertisers are spending to show ads on your video. 

Some CPMs pay better than others, depending on the niche. I don’t want you to go into organic video marketing on YouTube thinking that you need to be in a specific niche to make more money in the YPP. Instead, think of monetizing your channel as icing on the cake; you’re already benefiting from being on YouTube in terms of traffic, leads, and sales. 

To quell your curiosity about the types of video content that makes good money, here’s a list of the top-paying CPM industries:

• Affiliate marketing ($12-$22 CPM)
• Trading/Investing ($8-$18 CPM)
• Dropshipping ($7-$14 CPM)
• Content creation ($5-$13 CPM)
• Personal Finance ($4-$12 CPM)

Don’t worry if your business industry isn’t listed as a high CPM niche; YouTube will work for just about any type of business regarding marketing. As I said, the YPP is just icing on the cake once you meet monetization requirements. 

All the Repurposing You Need Comes From Your Videos

I mentioned earlier that just four YouTube videos could be spiced and diced up into many different pieces of content that can be strategically spread out among your social media platforms. However, I didn’t tell you that depending on your platforms, those initial four videos can be repurposed into up to 72 pieces of content to share across social media (even more if you podcast!). 

For those reading and may already have an established podcast, you can reverse engineer it and add your podcasts to YouTube to drive more traffic to your website. Videos can be stripped of audio and turned into podcasts for those who don’t have a podcast. There are so many ways that you can repurpose a single video.

Video content is more versatile than you may think. 

We’ll get into the specifics of how all this works a bit later, but I wanted to let you know that not only is YouTube a powerful tool for your business, but so is video content repurposing. 

Now, I can hear some people talking about how they can’t record a video, don’t have fancy equipment (your phone will do just fine!), or how organic marketing will take far too long to get any type of momentum for their business.  

I will address all of your concerns and hesitations throughout this article to convince you once and for all that video content is king and YouTube is the powerhouse behind it all. 

Myths About Organic Marketing You Should Squash

As a business owner, you may have your thoughts about organic marketing – good or bad. For example, you may be in the camp that you’re OK with slower and steady growth vs. those who want to see results quick, fast, and in a hurry. Whatever your stance is on organic marketing through video, I want to cover some common misconceptions people have about this marketing strategy. 

Myth #1: Organic Marketing is Only for Businesses Who Can’t Afford Ads

Just because you can still afford to pay for ads doesn’t mean you shouldn’t market your business organically. The benefit of organic marketing is that when the ad budget dries up or doesn’t get as much attention and reach as it did before, organic marketing will still work for you in the background. 

Here’s the harsh truth about ads: 

• They’re not sustainable. Once you stop paying, your traffic dries up along with any sales you were making because of them. People will forget about you the minute your ads stop running. 
• They have a costly learning curve. Even the most experienced marketers were thrown a big learning curve when the iOS updates hit. You’ll spend thousands of dollars as you “test” out the waters to make any substantial profit.  
• Costs are rising. As I mentioned earlier in the article, ad costs are rising and growing quickly.

People will view your YouTube videos days, weeks, months, and years after you upload them. If you’re like most businesses, you want to stay in for the long haul and don’t plan on running your business temporarily. Organic marketing will work for you for many years to come.

Myth #2: Organic Marketing is Completely Free

Well, it all depends on what type of organic marketing you do for your business. But since we’re explicitly talking about organic video marketing, I’ll break down the costs of it. 

Starting a YouTube page is entirely free. The fact that you don’t have to pay to upload videos is remarkable because of the powerhouse YouTube is in building brand awareness for businesses of all sizes. So no cost there. But you’ll need to record your videos; surely you’ll need expensive equipment to do that? 

Nope. 

I tell all my clients who don’t have a professional video camera to record their videos with their phones. Our phones can record high-quality videos with the proper lighting and setting. 

For lighting, a basic ring light will cost you about $20 on Amazon. 

Next is editing your videos and the graphics needed for your channel. Editing videos and creating graphics is where the most money goes into organic video marketing. It’s not a good idea to upload your raw footage. You won’t get much traction on your channel if your videos aren’t edited for your viewers. It also comes off as unprofessional. 

You’ll need to have someone design your channel graphics with your branding (cover and video thumbnails) to make people want to click on your channel and watch your videos in the first place.  

Costs for editing and graphic design vary widely, but this is where the bulk of your money will go when it comes to organic marketing with videos on YouTube since you’ll be uploading regularly. 

In addition to the costs for the YouTube portion, if you want to repurpose your video content for other channels, you’ll need someone on your team (or us!) to do that for you.

Repurposing your video includes more editing of your videos (converting them to a vertical format) and adding captions for other platforms. In addition, if you like written content, the videos will have to be summarized to be repurposed in blog form. 

If you use email marketing in your business, the video content will be repurposed into email newsletters. 

If you want to repurpose your videos into podcasts, this incurs another cost for someone to strip the audio from the video and produce everything for your podcast host. 

If you’re active on Pinterest, you’ll need someone to design and schedule the pins. 

Let’s not forget the tools you may need to put in place to help you schedule all of your repurposed content across your chosen social media channels. 

Most likely, you’re already doing some form of content repurposing in your business – to what extent, I don’t know. But depending on how far and how much repurposing you do, there will be some added expense in terms of manual labor. 

Myth #3: Organic Marketing is Slow

The word slow is all relative. I’m not going to lie to you and say that organic marketing with video will get you the same results as using fully optimized ads. You and I both know that’s not how it works. 

But what if I told you that with the right strategies in place, you could gain thousands of subscribers in the course of a few months on your channel? Thousands of engaged people who are excited to hear about you and your brand and all the other videos you plan to release in the future. 

Your subscriber count will continue growing if you put out the right content. There’s no limit on how many subscribers you can get if you strategically use YouTube for your organic marketing.

Would that make the wait worth it?

These engaged subscribers are more likely to purchase from you because of the know, like, and trust they develop from watching your videos. In addition, video evokes a deeper connection with people because they can see you, hear your voice, and see your personality. None of this can be done with traditional text posts on social media.

Myth #4: You Can’t Scale With Organic Marketing

Out of all the myths I’ve covered so far, this has to be the one that comes up the most when I speak to other business owners about organic marketing. 

Any type of growth – paid or organic is linked to scalability. 

But let’s look at organic marketing and having people who are true fans of your brand follow you. These people who discover you organically do so because they are looking for the information you provide; they are not influenced by your ad that comes across their feed randomly. 

Because they were actively looking for what you offer, their purchase intent will always be higher than people who view your ads.

I advise my clients to take a multi-prong approach when it comes to organic video marketing – that means repurposing that video and its content on other platforms. This way, you can amplify your influence faster than just the growth you’ll see on your YouTube channel. 

Starting from your YouTube channel, you’ll see growth across ALL social media platforms you currently use, making the scalability factor faster. 

The Marketing World Is Changing

Let’s face it. You and I both know that the business and marketing world is changing rapidly, and those who don’t keep up will fall behind, and their business will suffer. 

In the aftermath of the pandemic, many businesses that didn’t have a solid organic marketing strategy in place beforehand are seeing decreases in web traffic. Even if they have enough money to run ads today, the current ad spend won’t get them the reach they had prepandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has made everything more costly for small businesses, so more and more are beginning to see the importance of organic traffic. A solid organic marketing strategy is necessary to see a sustainable increase in web traffic.

While most successful companies have a clear, well-established, and proven organic marketing plan, most small businesses don’t. There are several reasons why this is true, including the significant reason – SEO growth takes time. 

Let’s review a few of the marketing changes that are going on in the world as we know it today. 

Video Content is King

People are consuming more video content than ever before. Look around where people are gathered and note how many people are immersed in their phones. Most likely, they’re scrolling through TikTok or watching a video on YouTube. Videos are where business owners need to be if they want to be seen by the masses. 

Some savvy business owners are already on it because they see the benefit of video content and know that YouTube can generate more leads and sales. 

Don’t believe me? 

According to a study researching video marketing campaigns in 2021: 

• 65% of business owners wanted to build brand awareness, and 64% said video marketing helped them achieve their goals. 
• 60% of businesses said video marketing helped increase engagement with their followers
• 57% of businesses were able to boost conversions after they implemented video into their marketing strategy. 

I’ve already highlighted the reasons video should be a part of your marketing strategy, but let’s look at a more comprehensive list: 

• Videos allow for more explanation: Creating videos on your products or services to show how they work brings concepts to life, unlike standard text-based content. 
  
• Videos allow for more explanation: Creating videos on your products or services to show how they work brings concepts to life, unlike standard text-based content. 

• Videos build trust: The people watching your videos are more likely to trust you because they can hear you speak and see your personality. Because of this, videos also create an emotional connection with your audience. 
  
• Videos can generate more traffic, leads, and sales: When people are engaged with your videos on YouTube, they’ll naturally want to watch more of your content and learn how to work with you in the future. Adding details of your business like your website, freebie offers, and paid offers to your video description will increase your overall engagement rate for your business. 
  
• Video content is easy to repurpose: While you can repurpose any content, repurposing video content has to be the most versatile and practical to expand your overall online reach. 
  

We Live in a Mobile First World

Implementing video content marketing in your business is vital, but it’s just as essential to ensure your videos are fully optimized for viewing on a mobile device. 

YouTube videos are automatically optimized for mobile, but you can also take advantage of other platforms that use vertical video formats. Remember, video is king, and YouTube is its kingdom. You can’t replace the reach of YouTube with a social media platform like Instagram or TikTok. 

Although repurposing to other platforms is a strategy I teach my clients, the core platform everything should originate from is YouTube simply because YouTube is a search engine.

And Storytelling is Queen 

Through video, and only video, can a business tell its story and resonate with people who will become fans. Storytelling allows people to connect with you and your brand on a deeper level, unlike any other medium. 

You’ll influence, inspire, and strengthen your relationship with your customers by getting in front of the camera and telling your story. Storytelling also builds trust. 

I know it sounds frightening initially, especially if you consider yourself an introvert, but it gets easier the more you do it. 

If you’re not taking advantage of video storytelling, you’re miles behind other businesses implementing this practice into their brand.

One of the most outstanding books on storytelling is Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. Not only does Donald break down the philosophy of storytelling, but he makes it easy. Building a StoryBrand is not explicitly focused on video storytelling but will give you the framework for learning how to tell your story to your audience. 

Storytelling adds a human element to your marketing strategy. While some businesses are strictly focused on conversions, businesses that show their human side are more likely to connect with their audience on a deeper level. You must remember that humans are running your business, not robots. 

Whether you’re a part of a large corporation or a solopreneur, add the human touch to your business through video. Here are a few video ideas to add to your marketing strategy:  

• Talk about your entrepreneurial journey, not just the good but the bad times too. People like seeing people triumph through adversity because it gives them hope if they’re in a similar situation. 
• Tell the story about your background and what inspired you to start the business you have today. 
• Spotlight happy customers through a video collage of them sharing their experience with your product or service. 

What Will Happen if You Ignore This Marketing Trend

Building a business strictly on a social media platform vs. first putting your eggs in a search engine like YouTube will almost guarantee that your business is short-lived. 

No one knows what tomorrow holds, but we have learned from the past what to avoid in the future. Businesses want to avoid placing all their eggs in one social media basket, especially since we know platforms can have outages, delete your account, or go out of style overnight (MySpace, anyone?). 

If you haven’t realized by now, I’m a massive fan of YouTube for a few reasons: 

• It’s huge: YouTube has over 2 billion monthly users watching videos. That’s literally ⅓ of the internet! In addition, it’s used in > 90 countries and >76 languages, and over 1 billion hours of video are consumed daily! 
• It’s a search engine: Youtube videos appear on Google because you can optimize your videos with keywords to enhance SEO. If you optimize your video descriptions correctly, you’ll be able to drive traffic to your website, freebies, and paid offers through YouTube. 
• It also adds a social component: Although YouTube isn’t a social media platform, you can comment and engage with subscribers and people who view your videos.  
• The videos can be repurposed: Starting with long-form videos on YouTube gives you multiple ways to repurpose that content across all the platforms you’re actively using. 
• Free advertising: Aside from the costs associated with video editing and creating graphics, each video you post on YouTube offers advertising for your business and brand.

Let me get straight to the point, if you’re not using video and storytelling in your business marketing strategy, you will get out-priced when you spend money on advertising, leaving your profits lower than they once were. Rising advertising costs aren’t helping small to medium-sized businesses grow. On the other hand, if you’re willing to wait for slower growth and outreach, your YouTube channel will eventually snowball into something bigger than you could have ever imagined, bringing you business for many years. 

This sounds overwhelming if you haven’t done video marketing for your business through YouTube before. You’re probably wondering how it all works if you’re ready to venture into video marketing for your business. 

By this point, you’re probably wondering, “How do I get started?” 

I’m glad you asked. 

We have the solution even if you’re a complete novice when it comes to creating videos and establishing and growing your YouTube channel for your business.

The Ultimate Viral Visibility Process 

The core piece of gaining viral visibility with video content is utilizing the YouTube platform and branching out from there. When used correctly, YouTube will generate more leads and sales for your business. I will walk you through the process we use for each of our clients who want to leverage the platform for organic traffic growth with YouTube. 

Our YouTube channel management services are full-service to help our clients find their ideal audience by creating content that resonates with them and encourages engagement on the platform. The more engagement you have on the platform with likes, shares, comments, and watch time, the more visible you become on YouTube and Google. 

Step 1: Channel Audit & Set up 

Before we begin with any client, we conduct a deep audit of their current YouTube channel (if they have one) and set everything up for success. An audit allows us to analyze what’s currently working and what isn’t working to develop a strategy as we advance. A large portion of this step involves branding your channel so people will recognize your business. The branding will continue with the thumbnails for each of your videos (more in step 4)

We’ll set everything up from scratch if you don’t have a YouTube channel already. If you already have a channel, we’ll optimize what you have already to give new life to your old videos.

The basic set-up for a YouTube channel includes: 

Writing descriptions for the channel, playlist, and video 

Nothing’s worse than seeing a video you’re interested in, clicking on the channel name, and seeing nothing. Or even worse, a sloppy random channel description. Why would I want to follow someone who can’t tell me what they’re about? Of course, I understand many people out there have vlogs on YouTube. Still, as a business owner establishing your presence on YouTube, you should have your channel description written out, showcasing what you do and your channel. We do this by writing about your brand and intertwining specific keywords related to your business. 

Each video will also need a description. At this stage, we’ll write a template for your upcoming videos that includes all the calls to action, links, and other general information you want your viewers to have access to. Once videos are uploaded to the channel, we’ll add specifics of the video to the description. 

Segmenting playlists

An unorganized channel will not gain you any subscribers. If you already have a YouTube channel, we’ll organize your playlists so viewers can easily find what they’re looking for and optimize them with keywords so they’ll pull up in the search engines. Organizing your playlists will help you increase your subscriber count and overall watch time. 

Creating video intro & outros

The video intro and outros will be used on all of the videos on your channel. If you already have a channel and an intro and outro that you’d like to use, we’ll continue to use it. If you’re establishing your YouTube channel from scratch, we’ll create one based on your brand guidelines.

Creating a custom end screen

End screens added to the end of the last 20 seconds of a video are for your calls to action. The calls to action can be to subscribe to your channel, watch another video, or download your freebie from your website. End screens are meant to drive engagement for your channel to encourage people to take action.  

Adding a channel trailer video

A channel trailer video of about 3 to 5 minutes is suggested to introduce your channel to new people. If you don’t have a trailer video, the trailer video will be the first video we edit for you. Don’t worry if you don’t know what to say; we’ll give you pointers on creating a trailer video for your channel. We’ll just need you to provide the raw video footage, and we’ll take care of the rest.

Channel header graphics

The channel header is the first image people see when they visit your channel. We’ll create your channel header graphics according to your brand, so everything is cohesive. If you already have one you like, we can keep the one you have. 

Video Timestamps

We’ll update all your videos with timestamps if you already have an established channel. New channels will have timestamps added to all their videos once they start recording. To do this, we scrub through your video and manually add timestamps (or notes) about the topics of your videos. 

Timestamps help people understand what’s coming up in your video and encourage longer watch time since they can skim through your videos. Google also indexes timestamps, and your videos can appear in search results by adding them to your videos. 

Step 2: Keyword Research

This step overlaps with step one due to the channel descriptions and playlists’ descriptions. While we can complete the branding aspects of step one without keyword research, keyword research is vital for writing metadata (channel, playlist, and video descriptions) that will be found in Google and YouTube searches. 

In addition to completing research on our client’s businesses, we also do keyword research on competitors. This step gives our client’s an edge when it comes to ranking for video content that competitors may also be creating videos about. Our goal is to get our clients’ the most reach on their YouTube channel leading to more views, subscribers, and overall traffic to their business, which in turn will generate more leads and sales. One way to do this is to also complete keyword rankings on competitors. When done correctly, our client’s videos can be suggested when viewers are their competitors’ videos so that new viewers will click through to our client’s videos. 

There are three main reasons we complete keyword research when optimizing your YouTube channel; 1. To write the channel and playlist descriptions, 2. Incorporation into video content, titles, transcripts, thumbnails, and 3. For the content that you’ll repurpose from your initial core videos. All of these reasons allow YouTube to generate more leads and sales for your business.

We already spoke about the first reason, but let’s briefly discuss using keywords for your video content, titles, tags, and thumbnails. All the places where we’ll use keywords to optimize your YouTube channel are termed metadata. Every video you produce will be fully optimized from your targeted keywords so your target audience can find you on YouTube and Google. It’s essential that your videos are optimized and that you have a plan for YouTube channel growth. Each month we conduct a strategy session to discuss your YouTube channel growth and optimize your video content with the keywords as a starting point.

Step 3: Video Editing

Step three is where we get into video post-production. All that is needed from the client at this point (or ever!) is four videos. We open up a shared Google Drive folder where you’ll upload your unedited video footage, and we’ll take it from there. From that raw footage, we’ll edit the videos for YouTube by adding the intro and outro, editing mistakes, adding transitions, titles, an end screen with calls to action, and b-roll footage if indicated. If you’ve taken still shots, we’ll clip those out so we can use them for customized thumbnail images. 

If there are any specific pieces of content you want to be added to the video, upload the content to our shared Google Drive folder, and we’ll add them to the final video.  

Lastly, suppose you want to repurpose the videos for other social media platforms. In that case, we’ll splice them up into vertical formats and add captions if indicated so you can share them on TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook. 

A few tips for shooting videos for YouTube:

1. There’s no need for fancy equipment.  Smartphones now have the capability to produce good-quality videos. All required outside your phone is a tripod and ring light. A combination tripod and ring light can be found on Amazon for about $20.  
2. Look directly at the camera when you speak. Making eye contact with the camera always seems to be the hardest when people start recording videos because people want to look at themselves on the screen when recording. Practice makes perfect.  
3. Always work from a script or outline to keep from forgetting something important or getting off track when recording.
4. It’s OK if you look away from the camera briefly to glance at your script since those parts of the video can be edited. Just make sure you’re not speaking when you turn your head because the audio will be distorted and make editing harder since you’ll likely want to hide that you’re turning your head to look at your script.  
5. Remember to add so form of verbal CTA (subscribe, share, like, watch my other video on XYZ, etc.) to your video. YouTube likes engagement, which will help you get more channel watch time and subscribers. 
6. After you’re done recording your video, but before you hit the STOP button, hold a few still images that can be used for your video thumbnail. You can also use this time to say a few lines for your vertical videos so it’s easier to clip. 
7. Most importantly, when starting a new YouTube channel, upload at least five videos, so viewers have something else to look at if they like your first video—after this, staying consistent with your video publishing schedule is essential. 

Step 4: Thumbnail Graphics

All videos will have custom thumbnail graphics added before publishing to YouTube. The thumbnail is the first image people see before they watch your video, so it’s an essential aspect of the YouTube video production process. Thumbnails are customized to your brand so your channel will have a cohesive look and feel when people visit your channel. They will also contain keywords specific to your video.

Step 5: Channel Management

This is where the bulk of our work goes to get you more visibility on YouTube to get you the traffic, leads, and sales for your business. Channel management is very detailed and focused on SEO optimization and getting more engagement on your channel for more views and watch time. 

Channel management is not just about uploading your video to YouTube. Many minute details go into the channel management process for you to get the most from your channel. In addition, we incorporate content strategy with each client to maximize channel growth potential.

Uploading videos

The first step in this process is to upload the edited video to YouTube Studio. From there, the other steps in the process can begin. 

Adding the video thumbnail

After the video is uploaded, we can add the custom thumbnail created for the video.

Adding tags

With each video upload, we add tags (keywords) based on the video topic. We’ll customize the tags for each video we upload.  

Adding the end screen

The end screen must have elements uploaded for it to show up and work correctly. We’ll ensure it’s timed perfectly and has your specific calls to action to increase engagement.

Adding cards

Cards are recommended videos that show up during your video. We’ll scrub through your video to add cards of similar videos your viewers should watch. Adding cards encourages more viewer watch time for your channel. 

Writing the description

While we’ll have the basic video description from step one, we’ll write the video-specific descriptions based on keywords from the video. 

Writing the title

The title will be written based on keywords from the video for maximal visibility.  

Adding timestamps

Each video will have added timestamps so viewers can see what the video is about and skip ahead to parts of the video they want to watch. This step also involves scrubbing through the footage to determine where you speak about what topic and adding the text to the specific timeframe.

Scheduling the video

Once your video is fully optimized, we’ll schedule the video to publish to allow the YouTube algorithm a steady stream of content to promote from your channel. Scheduling videos regularly also lets your subscribers know what to expect from your channel.  

Step 6: Repurposing (optional)

If you opt for video content repurposing, we’ll take your four existing videos and create vertical video formats, blog posts based on specific keywords, and Pinterest pins. 

Vertical videos

Videos created in a vertical format are used broadly across many platforms; Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube Shorts, to name a few. So to expand your reach with each long-form YouTube video you create, we’ll take clips and convert them into vertical videos you can share across your social media channels.  

Blog posts

From each video, we’ll write a blog post based on the keywords from your videos. Unlike most content repurposing agencies, we don’t simply transcribe what was said in the video. Instead, we create a unique blog post from targeted keywords in your video that you can post to your blog with a link to your YouTube video to increase offsite SEO. 

Pinterest pins

If you use Pinterest for your business, you can opt for us to create unique pins for your videos. We will create five Pinterest pins for each video so you can share them on Pinterest. It’s recommended that you make 3-5 pins for each blog post you publish. In this case, the pins come from the videos you create, which are also repurposed into blogs. 

These pins are optimized for the keywords in your videos, and it’s recommended that you link these pins directly to your blog. The pins will drive traffic to your blog and by virtue to your videos on YouTube because you’ll also include the link to your YouTube video in your blog post. 

Step 7: Monthly Content Strategy

Monthly content strategy sessions have to be one of the most critical aspects of your YouTube channel management for growth. You won’t be creating content blindly. Instead, each month, we’ll review the top keywords on which your video content should be focused and video content from prior months to see what is working and what isn’t. 

We’ll look at channel analytics to analyze channel performance and set goals for the next month regarding what kind of content to create. During this time together, we’ll also discuss video recording techniques and outlines for future videos. 

What Business Looks When Using YouTube to generate more leads and sales

At this point, I’m sure you’re wondering what implementing a solid organic video marketing plan through YouTube will look like for your business in the future. It’s hard to imagine how everything works when you’re not in that space yet. So to give you an idea of how your business can grow using this strategy, I’m going to address how your business will benefit from solving the three business problems we addressed earlier in the report; increasing ad costs, too much time spent on ineffective social media marketing, and the lack of or decreased website traffic. 

1. High-value leads that convert to sales – remember spending tons of money on ads and crossing your fingers hoping that people will buy your product or service so you will have a positive return on your investment? With organic video marketing, people will be watching your videos with the purpose of intent. The intent, in this case, means that people are coming across your videos because they have actively searched for the topic. Another great thing about YouTube is that YouTube gets to know the content you create and puts those videos in front of your ideal audience. 
   
   People who come across your content with intent are more likely to buy from you. They will watch your videos, want to learn more about you, read your video descriptions, and then click on the link to your website. Since they already know, like, and trust you from your videos, it doesn’t take long to click on your offer and buy or book a call to speak with you. Do you see how this works?

2. Less time spent on content creation – If you’re anything like me, you like working smarter and not harder – meaning that you don’t want to constantly create content when you have CEO activities that need your attention. I got caught up in the content creation process by listening to any and everybody about what platforms I needed to be on and what content needed to be created. It was exhausting because no one was talking about repurposing one piece of content and using it many times. It was always about creating new content for each platform. 
   
   I was on this content creation hamster wheel like most small business owners are just trying to get seen in the online world – until I restarted a stagnant YouTube channel and started repurposing my video content. Planning, recording, and editing videos takes time, so I was not about to start all over to post on another platform each week. 
   
   I streamlined my process, and it got to the point where I was using the four videos I recorded per month across all my social media channels; Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, of course. After experiencing this process, I figured other business owners could benefit from implementing the same strategies shifting from dependency on paid ads to focusing on organic video marketing for a long-term marketing solution that will serve them for many years to come.
   
   While you can have a solid video marketing strategy by creating and posting videos on YouTube, repurposing your video content for other platforms is the ultimate way to get viral visibility. Of course, this will only work if you use a search engine (like YouTube!) as your central platform.

3. More traffic from an engaged audience – I touched on this in the first point, but over time, your channel will start bringing in hundreds, if not thousands, of new visitors to your website simply because your videos will work for you 24/7. Think of YouTube as your sales team that never stops.
   
   Videos you uploaded months or even years ago will continue to work for you because of the SEO optimization you put in when creating your videos. Remember all the opportunities your video has to be found with proper optimization; title, video description, YouTube recommended page, Google. There are multiple ways your video will be discovered that will then lead an engaged audience to your website. This is possible when you use YouTube as the core of your organic marketing strategy. 
   
   In addition to the typical ways someone would watch your video and go to your website out of curiosity, there are numerous ways to incorporate CTAs in the actual video to drive traffic to your website. With these CTAs, you can drive people to a sales page, a free lead magnet, or any other page (or video) you want your audience to visit. 
   
   You can amplify the traffic that comes to your business by repurposing your video content across other social media platforms so other people outside of YouTube can see your videos and other content that stems from the videos. 
   
   You’re probably wondering how you’d know about the traffic coming directly from YouTube. This is easily tracked by looking at your Google Analytics reports to see where traffic is coming from. 

Answering Your Questions

I know this was a lot of information about using YouTube and video content repurposing to generate more leads and sales for your business. But, after this point, you may have some questions about everything. 

But what if it wasn’t as hard to implement for your business as I mentioned earlier? When I said all it takes is you recording four videos a month, that’s what I meant. That’s it.

We’ll take care of the rest. 

I’ll answer some of the most common questions about using YouTube and video content repurposing for organic growth. 

Let’s get started: 

Q. I’ve never recorded a video before, can you help me? 

A. While we can’t physically help you record your videos, we’ll walk you through each step of recording your videos. You don’t need fancy equipment; all you’ll need is your smartphone and an external ring light. During our onboarding stage, we’ll cover video recording basics and continue to help you with tips on your videos as we have our monthly content strategy sessions.

Q. How long do my videos need to be? 

A. There’s no definitive answer to this question, but I’ll give you a few things to consider. First, never make your video longer than it needs to be for the sake of having a longer video. People will get bored and not stick around to watch your videos because they see that you’re dragging a topic along. Let’s also remember that most people in this day and age have short attention spans. 

If you want to monetize your channel and get as much ad revenue as possible, aim for videos that are at least 8 minutes long. This way, mid-roll ads can be added to your videos. If you are using Pinterest as a part of your marketing strategy, aim to keep your video less than 15 minutes so you can directly upload them in their entirety on the platform. 

For reference, we can edit raw footage 30 minutes or less under our standard packages. We can edit those videos for an additional fee if you require longer videos. 

Q. What if I don’t want to repurpose my video content and I just want to grow my YouTube channel?

A. You don’t have to repurpose your video content if you don’t want to. We can manage all aspects of your YouTube channel without repurposing your videos.  

Q. I already have a YouTube channel that is not optimized. Can you optimize my channel if  I already have videos uploaded?

A. Yes! We can take any existing channel and create a custom package that only includes optimizing the content that is already uploaded to your channel. Please keep in mind that we cannot re-edit any uploaded content. We will focus on doing everything we would do for a standard visibility package (keyword research, optimizing titles, descriptions, adding cards, organizing playlists, etc.) except for editing your existing videos. 

Q. Do you run YouTube ads?

A. As an agency that focuses on organic growth, we do not run YouTube ads. 

Q. Can I get my YouTube channel monetized using your service?

A. Yes, any form of YouTube optimization will naturally increase your subscriber count and watch time. We cannot guarantee any specific growth rates as all channels,and video content is different. However, while working with us, we can ensure that we will do everything within our control to give you the best shot at channel growth. 

Q. Do you have a minimum retainer? 

A. Yes, our minimum retainer is three months, after which you can cancel anytime with a 30-day notice. It takes time to see results when you want to use YouTube to generate leads and sales for your business. On average, we see videos pick up traction about three weeks after publishing.

Q. Are there any set-up fees for YouTube channel management?

A. Yes, all visibility packages involve a set-up fee for us to get started on optimizing your channel as quickly as possible. Please click here to see a list of our packages.

Q. What is the process for editing videos and requesting revisions? 

A. During our onboarding process, we’ll start by editing one video first to see if we can capture your style. If all is good, we’ll edit the remaining three videos for publication. After that, we offer one revision if needed on subsequent videos, and you’ll have the opportunity to request revisions after the videos have been initially edited. You’ll have to be responsive to requests so we can ensure your videos are ready to publish on a regular schedule. 

We ask all clients to submit all four videos for editing at once so we can keep a consistent publishing schedule. Therefore, we will not begin the editing process until all four videos are uploaded to your Google Drive folder. 

Q. What types of businesses do you work with? 

A. We work with coaches, consultants, and service providers spanning many industries from education, health, authors, and more. Most any business can use YouTube to generate more leads and sales for their business. We do not work with businesses in the adult and cannabis industry. 

Q. I have a lot of podcasts that I’d like to put on YouTube. Is it possible to upload my podcasts to YouTube?

A. Yes! We can reverse engineer the process and convert your podcasts into YouTube videos for extra exposure.  

Q. This sounds great! How do I get started? 

A. The first step is to book a call to see if we can help you with your YouTube channel goals. Our packages are customized based on your specific needs, so if you need YouTube channel management strictly, we can do that vs. full-channel management and video content repurposing plan. 

Book your call with us here: https://bit.ly/s822YTP 

Summary

I want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to read this article. Hopefully, you’ve learned something new about YouTube and the power of video for your business. If you only take away one thing from this article, I want it to be that the more engaging your videos are to the viewer, the more they will engage with your company and product. This will ultimately lead to a greater conversion rate in your business. 

As with any type of advertising (organic or paid), you need to be mindful of the videos you create and ensure they are relevant to your product or service. If your video content isn’t relevant to what you’re selling, viewers will be less likely to watch it, leading to low engagement with your channel and business overall. You will also generate poor conversion rates if people only view low-quality videos. 

Also, take into consideration how your videos will be produced. For example, are there any special effects or special effects shots? Can you use sound or just images? Are you going to include music in your videos? From all these considerations, determine what type of content works best for your business and audience needs and aim to produce the best quality content possible.

Creating high-quality content can only be done with a plan. Once you decide what type of videos to create for your audience, use a YouTube Marketing Plan for each segment.

Developing a solid marketing plan to use YouTube to generate more leads and sales for your business takes a lot of planning. So to take some of the headaches of planning your video marketing plan, I want to offer you my YouTube Content Planner as a gift. It’s a detailed planner covering setting up your YouTube channel and planning your video content for the next 90 days.