Transcription
Seven years ago, I made the decision to start a YouTube channel to help more clients find me, and it more than tripled my business's revenue in less than two years. Since then, it's more than tripled again. So, if you want the shortcut—my exact funnel for how I did it—so you can 10x your own leads, clients, and yes, profit, I'm revealing it all in this video. You're going to learn seven simple steps to turn the broken marketing funnel that you're probably using right now into one that finds you clients around the clock, how you can get it done in just hours per week, and why results like mine aren't just possible; they're actually probable if you do it right.
Okay, so let's start off by talking about what I'm just calling the average sales funnel. Now, this may look really familiar; this may be what you're using right now. You know, some version of getting people through paid advertising, or you're on Instagram or Facebook, social posts, or even SEO—that one's really common. Your goal is to get all of these people to your website, right? Then, of the people who come to your website, a certain number of them are going to book a consultation, appointment, or a sales call. From there, it's a really iffy equation of how many people are actually going to be enticed to go for the sale at that point.
Here's why that gets really average results: it's because they're not warmed up enough. Remember, they were coming from social media or even SEO, where they probably just heard about you for the first time. If you get them to your website, first of all, not a lot of them are going to be willing to talk on the phone at all at that point. Of the ones who are, they may schedule a consult or a sales call, but they're really just fishing for information at this point. They're not super ready and primed to work with you as a business. Then, of the ones who do get on the phone with you, you're probably not a salesperson, right? You know your business really well, but unless you're great on the phone and like closing people, kind of shooing them and talking them into your rates if they're not the lowest out there, that can be a really big uphill battle. It was with me when I first started my web design business. I would get people through SEO; you know, I would rank high for terms like "web design Los Angeles." People would schedule a call with me, and I'd be on the phone with them just trying to explain to them why I was worth the prices I was charging, and they weren't even really that high. So, it definitely got average results for me. That is until I switched to the YouTube sales funnel, which has worked out exponentially better for me.
So, here's how that goes. It's a little bit different. It's going to start off with people going to YouTube, searching for how to do something that you can help them with. What happens is they do a search, your video will pop up for them, right? They'll watch that video, and a percentage of those people are going to then be moved to another one of your videos. Now, that can happen naturally or, even smarter, if you actually, at the end of the video, kind of direct them to the next video they need to watch. The point is you want to get them to watch more than one.
Here's why: because once people have watched a couple of your videos, this is what happens. YouTube is going to recommend more of your videos to them. In other words, they're going to do some of your marketing for you—actually, a lot of your marketing for you. This happens on the homepage. You know how you go to YouTube, and your homepage is kind of all lined up with videos that YouTube thinks you're going to like? The reason they think that is because you've either watched videos on that topic or, more likely, you've watched other videos by that creator. So, they've done the math: "Okay, they've watched three videos of this person already; they probably want more." So, they'll be shown on your homepage, and that kicks off a binge session, which is exactly what you want.
Once people are caught in that binge session and they're watching a lot of videos from you, it doesn't have to be all at once; it can be over the course of weeks or even months, but it generally happens pretty quickly. A certain number of them will think to themselves, "You know what? This person has great advice for me. I actually just want to hire them to do this for me." So, they're going to be curious enough to either, on their own, just Google it or follow a link from your channel or from your videos to your website. Once they're on your website, here's what happens: a number of those people are going to want to go for your consultation call. But it's not like in the old case where they were cold traffic and they just came and they weren't super motivated. These people are much more pre-qualified because they've been watching your videos. They're warmed up to you now; they know, like, and trust you already, and suddenly you've got a brand new client.
So, why does this funnel work so much better than the average funnel? Well, repeated exposure is the secret. Again, they've been watching your videos two, three, four at a time; they're binging your videos. They see you over and over again. Remember how in marketing they used to say someone needs about seven touchpoints with your business before they'll actually want to reach out to you? These days, it's even higher than that. But when it's video, that shortcuts the process and accelerates that process because when they watch three or more videos, no love and trust is built. They used to say "no like and trust." I like to say "no love and trust" because it really does kick things up a notch, and people really start to feel a bond with you once they've been watching a lot of your videos. So, I don't think it's a stretch to say "no love and trust" there.
Then, once they've been watching enough of your videos, they get really curious about working with you. They start to think, "Well, what if I could actually hire this person to do this for me? How much better would my results be if they just did it for me?" So then they watch more of your videos, and you're now their very first choice when it comes to finding someone they want to work with. Essentially, what happens is every single video you end up making is its own pathway into your business. They watch your videos, and that drives them over to your website, where they can actually become a client.
Okay, so now let's get into the seven simple steps to succeed on YouTube. Step one is going to be to find your focus. In other words, who are you making videos for, and what are you making them about? You really need to understand who your perfect client is to make this happen for you. The first things you need to nail down are the demographics of your perfect client. These are the easy things: age, gender, location, their occupation, stuff like that. That's the easy stuff to nail down. Where it gets a little harder and a little more involved is in the psychographics. It's harder, but this is where the real gold gets discovered.
Here's where you're going to want to really get a handle on what keeps them up at night and what do they struggle with the most. This is going to inform the types of videos that you're going to make because, remember, people search for them, right? They're having a problem; they search for the answer to it, and then hopefully there you are giving the answer. So, once you know the demographics and the psychographics, you need to develop a detailed audience avatar. This is just basically where you write it all down, including the demographics and the psychographics, so you can really understand the pain points of your specific audience.
From there, you want to research your niche. When you research your niche, what you want to do is see what successful channels are already doing in your industry. You know, what kind of content are they making, and how are they connecting with their audience? Check out the types of videos they're doing and pay special attention to which video types they're making that are actually connecting the most. You can see how popular each of their videos are, so if you see that they've done one that's really kind of catching on, you might want to do something similar to that.
Once you know the overall direction of your channel, you want to lay out your first 52 topics. Why 52? Well, because there are 52 weeks in a year, and I highly recommend creating weekly content—one video a week. That's what's going to keep you top of mind. So, how are you going to find these 52 topics to cover your first year? You want to start by just listing out all the common questions that your clients ask you all the time. What's on their mind the most? Just write those down and then use these questions as your very first video ideas. It's a great light lift way just to get going really fast; you just make FAQ videos—one video for each question.
But once you're out of ideas—like maybe you only can think of 10 to 20 FAQs—where do you go from there? Well, you got to do some keyword research. You got to figure out what people are actually searching for on the platform. YouTube's actually made this really easy with their inspiration tab. Once you're in, it's called the Creator Studio; there are different tabs. One of them is called inspiration, and it will show you exactly what search terms are the most popular. You want to focus on what your ideal clients are actually searching for. That's so important because if you ignore that and you just make the videos that you want to make, but there's no search volume for it—like no one's looking for it—no one's going to find your videos. That's the secret sauce here.
Then, beyond that, again, you want to check out your competitors. You want to see what the most successful channels in your niche are making videos about. That's going to give you all kinds of ideas, and you really want to try to find topics that they haven't covered or where you can offer something different. Here's the thing: you don't have to think of all this on your own. We're living in the age of AI, so I want you to definitely use AI for your ideas. Use things like ChatGPT to help you brainstorm more topics. You just got to use the right prompts to generate a whole list of potential video ideas.
All you got to do is really just chat with it as if you're talking to a really smart intern who can handle this for you. So, there's no real secret to it. Just go to ChatGPT, tell it what your niche is and what you think you'd like to make videos about, then just ask it for a list of anything that maybe you've overlooked. Then, you want to plan your content. You want to create a content calendar to schedule your videos out. This is going to be really helpful. So basically, you're just going to take all the different topics you've come up with, and you want to just put them in an order that makes the most sense.
What I would recommend doing is just starting with the ones that are easiest for you to make because getting started is the hardest part for sure. So start there. But beyond that, what you want to do is mix different types of videos to keep your content interesting. Let's say you're an accountant, right? You're going to be making videos about things like tax prep or bookkeeping or, you know, just general business financial advice. What you probably want to stay away from is clustering too many like videos together in subsequent weeks. So you'd want to do a bookkeeping one, then a tax prep one.
You know, for me, I do a lot of marketing videos. I talk about websites, I talk about YouTube now, I talk about just different digital marketing techniques. But what I wouldn't do is talk about, you know, Facebook ads for four weeks in a row. People might get bored of that, so you want to split it up. Now, in step three, we're going to be thinking about are you going to be focusing on short content or, you know, longs? I guess they're called shorts. So I call the full-length ones longs here just for shorthand. But let's just talk about the differences and compare the two of these real quick.
So, shorts are definitely quicker to produce, they're less intimidating, and they can attract viewers faster. Longs, on the other hand, are a lot more in-depth, they're better for building a loyal audience, but they do require more time and effort, no question about it. So, my verdict here: long-form videos are going to be way better for you for generating clients. So, I would really focus mostly on long-form content. But I will say, when you're first starting out, it's actually a really good idea to start building confidence and gaining traction with shorts.
So, I actually do recommend creating short videos at first just to get more comfortable with filming and editing. They're a lot quicker to do; you can just kind of whip out your phone. It just helps you start really easily because there's no expectation of high production value either. With shorts, actually, the ones that are way more off the cuff do even better than the more polished ones. So, it's great just to take your phone out; you can do these in your car. It's pretty good sound in your car; you can do them just anywhere you can think of.
So, start there. I would say maybe do like 10 to 20 of them and just schedule them out just to start building the confidence, building the reps to get comfortable on camera. Because I'm not going to sugarcoat it; it's a skill that takes a little bit of getting used to. But then from there, I want you to start thinking about transitioning over to the long-form videos because they're going to do you the most good, and you're just going to use the experience that you gain doing shorts to help you make your long-form videos even better.
Another cool thing about doing longs is you can actually repurpose it really well. So, what I mean by that is you can turn your long videos into multiple shorts just to be able to maximize your content in the work that you've already done. Then, you can share those shorts not just on YouTube but on other platforms like Instagram, TikTok, even LinkedIn and Pinterest allow you to share these short videos. You've already done the work creating the long-form video; now you can push it out even further to more people, which is pretty cool.
There's AI software that'll let you do this. There's actually one called Opus Clip that people kind of swear by. It's going to take your long-form videos, and it's just using AI; they're going to extract the most viral-ready bits that it thinks will do well on their own. They'll clip it, they'll add captions, all that good stuff, so you don't really have to do a lot of extra work for repurposing. But here's the thing I really want to impress on you: if you take nothing else away from today, you got to just start. You know, don't wait for everything to be perfect; it never will be.
It's kind of like—I don't have any kids yet, but they keep telling me there's no perfect time to have kids. I think it's the same with YouTube; there's no perfect time to start. Just use what you have. You know, here's the thing: look at these videos right here. Look at these setups. Is there anything super-duper special about anything in these shots? I would say there's not. I mean, they've just gotten started with what they have. And here's the thing: no one really cares what your background looks like or the fancy equipment you have, so don't let those be excuses that stop you from starting.
If you're worried about your on-camera presence—I know a lot of people are super scared of that; I know I was at first—the thing is, the more you practice, the better you're going to get over time. There's no way around it; there's no way you won't improve the more you do it. The cool thing that I always like to say is, at first, when you're at your most scared, the good news is no one's really watching yet. You haven't built up much of an audience. The more your confidence grows as you move along in the process, your audience will grow along with it, so it's kind of like a self-fulfilling thing there.
Okay, so step four: you've already got your topics, your ideas; now you need to think about how to package those ideas. The way to think about packaging comes in two different elements: it's your titles and it's your thumbnails. So, let's talk about titles first. When you're coming up with your titles, you need to use the keywords that your audience is actually searching for, and you also want those titles to be clear and concise. We talked about doing keyword research earlier, back a few steps, so you're going to want to take those actual search terms that people are searching for, and that's going to be your best bet—at least when you're first getting started—for what to title your videos.
At least half of it. Let me explain here. What you also want to add is some kind of a dramatic element—words like "best," "fastest," "easiest." So, we would start with kind of that more utilitarian, search-based title, but then you want to add something to it. So, if people are searching for, I don't know, "how to mow stripes into your lawn," right? That could be a good title, right? It does what it says on the box. But you can also make it a little bit better by adding one of those dramatic elements, like "the best way to mow stripes into your lawn," "the fastest way," "the easiest way." That just gives your title a little bit more punch to stand out against someone else who made a similar video.
But it gets challenging because you also want to try to keep your title under 50 characters just to make sure that it's not going to be cut off on devices. Especially on phones, it will get cut off if it's too long, so trying to keep it under 50 characters is a good idea. If you can't do all of these things in your title while keeping it short, I would recommend just keeping it simple and using the keyword in your title first and foremost, and then use your thumbnail to add the drama. Because again, packaging is your title and your thumbnail. You can add those modifiers and kind of make it feel like a bigger idea in your title or in your thumbnail or both.
So, real estate's tight in your title; just put the extra oomph into your thumbnail. So, let's talk more about that. Obviously, your thumbnail is going to be your first impression. People are going to see that even more than they're going to look at your title, and it should visually represent the key point of your video and be enticing enough to make people want to click it. Here's the thing: faces have been shown—especially ones, you know, showing happy faces or excited emotions—these are going to be really engaging and make people want to click even more.
So, you don't always have to use your face in a thumbnail, but it's generally a good idea to do it. You also want to keep it really simple, so if you're going to have words in it, I would say no more than two to three words, and you want to limit the number of objects to three to five so that there's no clutter. For instance, here in this thumbnail, we have three different elements: we have a hand, we have what looks like a calculator, and we have the text. And again, see? Notice it's three words of text.
Here we've got his face, we have these YouTube buttons, and we have the text—it's four words, but I'm not going to worry about that. Here we've got the person's face, the text, and an arrow right here as well. Keeping it to three elements is just going to keep it nice and simple. Think of it like a billboard, right? If you're zooming on the freeway past a billboard and it's got ten different things on it, you're not going to pay attention to any of them. But if it just has, you know, a picture of a burger, the McDonald's logo, and a short catchy little phrase that's memorable, that's going to stick with you.
The other thing you want to keep in mind with your thumbnail is you want to keep it consistent with your branding. What I don't mean by that is, you know, using your business logo. We don't want to do that; that's not what I mean by branding. Instead, you just want to focus on a really cohesive look that your viewers can come to identify you with your videos. So, just consistent style with using the same colors, fonts, and layouts for that brand recognition.
Take a look at these thumbnails from the same creator, right? They all have the same, you know, kind of blue text block and the image over here over and over again. Even the ones that don't really go with the others, they're still using blue and a face. For this one, you know, there's still the same kind of bookshelf behind him that we have in all the others, so there's definitely some branding elements going on. Even this one has the blue text block. They don't all have to match exactly, but they should kind of feel like they're part of the same family, if that makes sense.
Okay, moving on to step five, we're going to talk about scripting your videos now because once you've got someone, we've pulled them in with your packaging and your great topic, now we have to wow them with the actual content. There's an established way of doing that that works best, especially for education channels like yours would be. The first thing our script needs to do is reel them in with an engaging hook that needs to grab their attention immediately.
Some things I like to do are start with a strong attention-grabbing statement or, even better yet, a question that they would identify with. This could be something like, "What if I were to tell you there is a specific blueprint for fill in the blank?" Or, "Is your dog peeing in the house even though you thought he was housebroken?" Nothing earth-shattering, but if someone identifies with that question and they think, "Yeah, that's happening to me," they're very interested because they'll assume you have the answer.
Next, you want to assure them that you do have the right answer by clearly stating what the viewer will gain from watching the video. In other words, what are they going to learn if they stick around and watch the whole thing? You want to do this in the first 7 to 10 seconds. You would definitely want to hook them in; at least this part can take a little longer than that, but you want to grab that attention in the first 7 to 10 seconds.
Now, let's talk about delivering on the meat. So, what do I mean by the meat? That's the main part of your video where you're actually teaching your thing that the video is about. This can be very simple, right? Just teach it. I learned from—there's a creator named Ali Abdaal; maybe you've heard of him—where he famously said, "Every video is just a list," right? Either it's five mistakes or ten tips or, you know, three steps, that kind of thing. So, if you think of it that way, you can be very straightforward in your delivery.
However, it helps if you kick it up a notch. It'll make you more relatable, and it'll increase that no love and trust factor if you can use storytelling to your advantage throughout the video. Not all the time, but sprinkle it in here and there. What I mean by storytelling is you're going to use either personal or client stories to make your points more memorable. So, rather than just teaching on a point, you would do that, but then you would say, "And I remember the time when I was struggling with this. Here's what I did; here's what I figured out, and then here's what happened as a result."
So, you're personalizing it a little bit, and I really like using client stories too because when you talk about your clients in your videos, that solidifies the idea that, "Hey, this person actually works with clients; maybe I can be one of those clients," right? So, sprinkle in mentions of clients, client stories, how you helped them whenever they make sense.
You've hooked them in, you've taught them something in the meat part; now you need to create that binge session so they watch the next video. What you want to do is end with a really strong call to action. Okay, don't do what almost everybody else does in their YouTube videos, which is using wrap-up language—things like, "Okay, guys, hope that was helpful," because that clues people in that the video is wrapping up. Or, you know, "To summarize," don't do any kind of a summary of what they've already learned. I know it goes against what you learned in school: you teach it, then you do the conclusion, you kind of recap. You don't want any of that in your YouTube videos.
What you want to do instead is get them to watch the next video, and the best way to do that is to offer no kind of indication that this content is done. You instead just segue to the next video. So, you'd be focusing on how to train your puppy, and then at the end of it, you'll just say, "But of course, none of this is going to make any difference if you don't have the right kind of crate. Watch this video next, where I show you my top three picks for dog crates," something like that. So, there's no lull in the conversation; it's just teaching, teaching, teaching, and I'm going to teach you some more over here.
But of course, you're in this to make money and to get clients, right? So, that's where the 1/4 rule comes into play. One out of every four of your videos, roughly, that can be a more direct "go to my website to learn more" type of call to action. So, three out of four of your videos are now "watch this video," then the fourth one is, "And if you want to learn even more, if I can help you even more, click here, go to my website, schedule a consultation."
Now, we've already talked about using AI to help you find video topics; it can also help you with scripting too. I use it all the time to help me out with my own scripts. So, what you want to do is use tools like ChatGPT to help you brainstorm and create the basic outline for your script. That's where you start. You can even use it to help you refine your hook, right? The 7 to 10 second opening of your videos, so you can get suggestions for really strong opening lines to help you capture attention if you can't think of anything yourself.
But there's a danger to using ChatGPT or AI to help you with your entire script. You want to use it in the right way, which is generally to script with AI, then you want to refine it yourself. You want to add those personal touches to make it sound much more natural for you, right? So, what I do is I have it give me basically my first draft of a script, then I go through and I pick out little bits of, "Okay, I can add a personal story here; this reminds me of an old client of mine; I can kind of talk about that there." That's where you're going to get the most bang for your buck with AI. You use it to help you 80%, then you add the next 20%.
Okay, moving along to step six. This is where you've been going for a little bit; you're getting your feet wet, you're more comfortable. Now it's time to buy back some of your time because the thing is, for YouTube to work for you, you got to be consistent with it. It's definitely the key to all this working, but you don't want your videos to take over your entire life, right? You're running a business; you don't have time to devote to YouTube full-time. Good news is you don't have to.
So, there are a few ways that I personally save a lot of time in creating my videos. The first one is in batching my content. So, batching just means doing a batch of videos together rather than doing one-offs. I started doing one-offs when I first started my channel. I had a video this week that was going to come out next week, so this week I worked on this video; next week I worked on the next video. Well, I'm recommending you plan a month's worth of videos at a time when you start. I actually plan two months at a time.
So, you want to set aside time to brainstorm and outline an entire month's worth of videos; that's going to be step one. Then, you're going to script all those videos at the same time. That'll keep you consistent too because once you're on a task, it's so much easier to stay in that task from start to finish. Otherwise, what happens is, you know, we go into task-switching mode. So, let's say you were going to be scripting your video, then you were going to be shooting it later that day, and then editing it. Your brain has to do these minor shifts, and you never quite latch on to the new task.
So, doing all your brainstorming, all your scripting, all your shooting, and all your editing in silos saves a lot of mental bandwidth, and it helps you do a lot more too. So then, just record all your videos in one session and then edit in batches too. You're going to want to edit multiple videos during one session, so again, they can stay consistent. That'll help your videos kind of look the same too, so if you're doing a certain title treatment when you're doing them together, you're going to remember what all those little things were.
But all that to say, as soon as you possibly can, I want you to start outsourcing tasks like editing. Hiring a video editor is not that expensive, and let's face it, they'll probably do a better job than you will, especially if you're just starting out. It's one of those tasks that doesn't need you to do it. You should be concentrating your efforts on the tasks only you can do and let other people handle the rest.
To do that, you're just going to try to find some freelancers on platforms like Upwork or Fiverr. They can help you with editing; they can also help you with thumbnail design. That's another task that I don't necessarily recommend you do yourself because, again, the stuff that only you can do is bringing your expertise to the scripts and bringing yourself and your personality to your videos.
Okay, now we're on to step seven: optimizing your YouTube to client bridge. What is the YouTube to client bridge? Well, let's say you've got your videos over here and you've got clients over here. What's the bridge that takes them from here to here? That's what I'm talking about when I say that bridge. There are a few different ways that you can really make this work even better for you.
We've already touched on this one, which is building trust through those client stories. So again, incorporate those brief mentions of your clients and their successes in your videos. That makes your advice more tangible and relatable, but again, it also plants that seed that, "Okay, they work with clients; I want to be one of those clients." So, that's going to help ease people across that bridge itself.
You also want to showcase results, right? When you're discussing a topic in a video, reference specific results that your clients have gotten by following your advice. Not only is that good social proof, but it shows what you can do for your viewers if they pay you. And of course, you want to include links in all the descriptions of all your videos that go back to your website and on your channel page.
So, when you create your channel for the first time, there's an about section where you can add a link to your website. Make sure you do that. Then, in every video description, just make sure that at the end of it or somewhere in there, there's a little heading that says, "Want to work with us? Want to work with me?" and then you drop a link to your website so that people can easily, again, cross the bridge.
When you do that, you definitely want to use strong, clear calls to action in your descriptions. Don't just drop a link. In other words, don't just put the link to your website with no context. You want to say something like, "Book your free consultation" or "Learn more about our services," and that's going to help guide people directly to your site.
Again, for this to work really well, you need to create those binge sessions. That's what's going to get people from YouTube over to your website. So, what you want to think about once you've been going for a little bit—don't worry about this right away—but you want to focus on having a playlist strategy. You want to organize your videos into playlists that can guide viewers through related topics. Again, this is going to encourage those binges and keep people watching your content longer; that's what it takes.
Then, you want to use end screens and cards to your advantage. The end screen is what pops up at the end of a video. Remember we talked about what to say? Now you're going to want to watch this video next, like a little thumbnail will pop up then so that people can go there. That's all part of it. You don't just want to say verbally, "Go watch this video next," and make them find it. Of course, you point, and then the thumbnail's up there that they can click on. That's going to help keep viewers on your channel just where you want them, increasing that no love and trust factor we talked about.
But then, once you've gotten people to your website, it's not done yet; there's more to the story. You need to optimize your call-to-action button on your website so that should be waiting for them as soon as they get there. They shouldn't have to look for it; they shouldn't have to hunt around. It should say something like, "Get your free consultation" or "Schedule a call," and it should be bright, it should be bold, it should be an action term. It should not just be something like "Learn more." That's passive; that's soft. You want it to be really clear about exactly what they're going to be doing.
Then, once they've clicked that button and it's time for them to schedule something, you want to streamline that booking process. What most people do is they just have a form that people fill out. The problem with the form is people don't really understand what's coming next. So, I like to use a tool like Calendly that lets people just book appointments directly through your website. It's just a much more seamless process.
Now, I know how important it is to see examples of all the stuff in action to really be able to wrap your head around it, and I've got plenty to show along with real results you can expect when you do this the right way. So, to get that roadmap with all the examples and results you need, sign up for my brand new free masterclass, where I'm going to just give you everything you need to make this work for you in 2025 and beyond. So, just click right here to save your seat, and I can't wait to tell you everything I know about it. So, click here, and I'll see you over there.