The Art of Online Business

Use YouTube to Funnel High-Quality Leads to Your Business with Melissa Mitchell

• Kwadwo [QUĀY.jo] Sampany-Kessie • Episode 828

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Melissa Mitchell shares why a YouTube channel is essential for driving organic, high-quality leads and shares her expert strategies to make your channel a success. We unpack how to get started, optimize your content, and leverage YouTube's unique benefits to fuel your sales funnel. 



Find out How Melissa Mitchell Built Her YouTube Marketing Empire




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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the Art of Online Business.

Speaker 1:

Melissa Mitchell is here and I'm saying that because I keep butchering her last name, but we were just on the previous episode where she is the owner of Wondermint Creative and she's a YouTube video marketing strategist.

Speaker 1:

She has an agency in the coaching business which helps online service providers and coaches scale their online businesses using YouTube to build an organic lead engine that fuels their sales funnels with consistent, best fit leads, and just before we hit record here, I was saying, yeah, I'm really glad to have her on because you listening, your business is probably doing well and you either have started a YouTube channel kind of, but it hasn't taken off like you had hoped, or you just know that YouTube is the king of social media and you probably should diversify your content into YouTube because of how well I won't spoil it all, but YouTube is really good at building know, like and trust, as Melissa will tell you.

Speaker 1:

And the reason I have her on is because I believe your business needs a YouTube channel because there's nothing like it. Google is the biggest search engine in the world and YouTube is the second biggest search engine, and Google owns YouTube and, quite frankly, you're leaving money on the table if you have not started a YouTube channel. But it ain't easy, and so Melissa is going to share right, melissa, it's not easy, yeah.

Speaker 1:

It's not easy A hundred percent.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super excited for this conversation and hopefully that everyone listening gets some really good takeaways of what you can do right now to either scale the YouTube channel you currently have or you know how to get started creating one the right way, with the right strategy Cause I'm a big, big believer in it's all with the strategy behind the YouTube channel. That's really going to help you get that success and not just posting and praying right, which is sometimes, I think, what people are doing on YouTube and then get get disheartened when they don't see the results. So, yeah, let's, let's get started.

Speaker 1:

Cool If you didn't hear the previous episode and you're like, do they know each other? We do, absolutely know each other, and we recorded a previous episode called well, it's a segment how we built it, in this case, how she built her business, and we kind of dived into the genesis of her business and how she went from being a creative in corporate to a sales manager in corporate to ultimately quitting that job and starting off as a social media manager before going into the YouTube world and helping clients build their online presence with YouTube and get those sweet, sweet, sweet, organic leads that come from YouTube that trust you so much, by the way, once they've seen your YouTube videos and hop into your funnel. You so much, by the way, once they've seen your youtube videos and hop into your funnel. So we discussed all of that and that episode is already linked up in the show notes or youtube description if you're watching on youtube below, so you can click there and get to know her better after you watch this episode.

Speaker 1:

So I figured, I figured melissa. One of the first things I would want to ask you is what's that stake here? Like for the, for the listener who has dabbled in YouTube and maybe hasn't had their channel. I won't say take off, because you definitely do not. You don't need a channel to get tons of subscribers in order to fuel your business with healthy, organic leads, do you?

Speaker 2:

No, absolutely not. The big thing I teach actually is you can have a successful business with leads coming in with 100 subscribers, 200 subscribers. Let's not chase vanity metrics, because when you're a business owner, the leads and the money in the bank account is more important, right.

Speaker 1:

Okay, agreed. So what's at stake, then, for the person who has started the YouTube channel or has not ventured into YouTube yet, but they have a successful online business?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean you kind of mentioned at the beginning in the intro, there is that YouTube is owned by Google, right, and so it is the second largest search engine in the world.

Speaker 2:

And if you think about where do you go when you have a problem or you're looking for an answer to a question, you go to Google, right, or you go to YouTube at least I do, and I'm looking for tutorials and I'm looking for advice, or I'm comparing two products against each other or whatever, to make that buying decision.

Speaker 2:

And I think that's really the differentiator is not just that it's the biggest search engine, but that the intent behind the search is the true thing. That's important, because if you think about someone on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok, they're scrolling right, they're just passively scrolling because it's something to do, it's entertainment for the most part, but on YouTube they're actively searching. That's the difference. And so once you've solved their problem that they're looking for, you've decreased that sales cycle so much, because now they've consumed five, 10, 15 minutes of your content and then, if you've set it up strategically properly, you're pushing them into the sales funnel on the backend and that's simple as that, right, you could be off playing with your kids going on vacation, and all this stuff is happening for you organically. So that is, in a nutshell, what you're missing out on by not having a YouTube channel. It's passive sales, it's decreasing that sales cycle, gaining that know, like and trust, and without having to feel like you're chasing the rabbit of social media, because we all are sick of that.

Speaker 1:

At least I am, yeah, me too, me too. So okay, the listener or me started a YouTube channel because we are now sipping the Kool-Aid, so to speak, but we haven't seen that growth on our YouTube channel and we're not seeing those organic leads, what most likely could be holding us back.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, great question. It's a little bit of a loaded question because there could be multiple things, but I think the biggest yeah, the biggest thing that I would start to look at when I audit people's channels is what are your videos actually about? Like what is the overall strategy of your channel? Like what is your niche? Who are you trying to serve? What are you trying to funnel people into?

Speaker 2:

Those three questions if you can answer that from your YouTube channel, you need to. If you can't answer that, you need to. And if you feel like you're a little fuzzy around those questions, then that's where you need to dive in and be like okay, what is the whole purpose behind my channel in the first place? And then, once you have that figured out, take a look at your videos. Like is the video following those same questions? Like who am I trying to reach with this? Is it actually funneling them into whatever product or service or course or thing you have to offer?

Speaker 2:

Because if it's not, that's a problem, right? You're not going to get the right leads. And then you know are the topics actually relevant? Are your ideal clients actually searching for these things? And one of the big things I see happen, too, is that we get stuck in our own techno jargon of our industry, and so we think, oh well, this is a really good title because it's so intriguing to us. But what we don't realize is that the words we chose are things that our audience isn't even aware of yet, right, or maybe they don't search for that, maybe they search for a different variation of that word, and so that's where that strategy comes into play, of like, if you're not bringing in the leads, it's probably because your topic and your title are not where they need to be.

Speaker 1:

Okay, all right. So how do we contrast or compare YouTube with, say, instagram? Because I know the listener is either posting on TikTok or posting on Instagram for sure. Short form video content they already got that down as far as going for just digestible content, planning out a decent hook using trending audios and posting every day. But what is the name of the game on YouTube?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean the good news is that if you're listening to this and you're already creating short form video content, you've already gotten halfway through the battle. Like, you know what you're doing when it comes to creating a hook. You know what you're doing when it comes to, like, actually setting up your camera right and filming, and you're probably feeling a little bit more comfortable on camera. So some of those things are the biggest hurdles to get started on YouTube in the first place. So you're 10 steps ahead. So, good news, like, let's check that off Now, it's just okay. So you've created the hook.

Speaker 2:

Now we just need to fill the rest of the content, right? So instead of it being 60 seconds, maybe it's, maybe it's four minutes, eight minutes, 10 minutes, whatever that amount of time it's going to take to explain that piece of content. And then you want to also think about how can I create engagement throughout the video, right, asking them questions, keeping them engaged, making them watch till the end. So those are little things that are different, obviously, and there's an entire strategy around how to actually create this YouTube video with those things in mind. But the biggest thing is that you've already done half of the work with that hook, because we all know that's the most important thing. Right, we got to hook them in at the beginning, the first 30 seconds.

Speaker 2:

So, if you're already seeing success on short form, we just need to pull that into a long form video.

Speaker 1:

Is there a better method than well? Is there a specific way to translate the knowledge that the listener brings as an online business owner into youtube, so that their videos actually get get watched?

Speaker 2:

you mean like the actual presentation or the scripting outline. Is that what you mean? I?

Speaker 1:

mean, how do they pick of all the things they know and can help somebody with? How do they pick what like? How do they pick which topics to make YouTube videos out of?

Speaker 2:

Great, great question. Yeah, and this is actually I'm glad you brought this up, because lots of times the people that I'm talking to, and probably your listeners too, because they're successful in their business already, it's not that they don't have ideas, they have a lot of ideas and it's how do I pick that right idea? And so again it goes back to those three questions that I brought up at the beginning. Is you know, what are you trying to sell right now? If, depending on how you sell things, are you doing it monthly? Are you doing it quarterly, like what is that so are is that topic going to funnel into that thing that you're selling? And is it a relevant topic for your audience?

Speaker 2:

At the moment, there's I would say there's kind of two different buckets on YouTube. There's the evergreen content that people are going to search forever, like it's just no matter what time of year you post it, people are going to be searching for it. And then there's more of the trending topic, if you will, or the more time relevant topic. So, as an example, I have a client who helps with accounting. She's like a finance expert, and so she has some very relevant topics that we need to create content on a certain time of the year, right around tax time, we're obviously going to create content that's more specific to that after tax time is over. It's more like okay, now, how do we plan for the new year? So you might be in a business that's very similar, where you're going to have time relevant content. So that's where I would start first, pull out your calendar and pick the topics that are time relevant and then, when it comes to the evergreen content, again think about okay, what am I offering at certain times of the year? Or if you've evergreen sales, like evergreen courses or things like that, then it doesn't matter, matter as much and you can kind of pick it based off of how much search volume there is.

Speaker 2:

And that's where that planning and that strategy comes into play. So much search volume, yeah, so how many people are actually searching for that idea in the first place? So keywords if you've ever done blogs or any sort of google things, it's very similar. Keywords for YouTube are very similar because it is owned by Google. So you'd want to start with saying, okay, this is an idea or this is a topic I have in mind. Now you want to validate that idea to make sure there's actually search, meaning people are actually looking for that idea, and that's where keyword research comes into play, and so you can use tools like we talked on our previous episode a little bit about this, but TubeBuddy and vidIQ are some really great YouTube tools that you can use to see how many people are actually searching for this term on YouTube itself.

Speaker 2:

And the other honestly really good one that we didn't mention in the last episode was the YouTube search bar. This is something that people overlook so much and it's so simple. If you're just getting started, don't even worry about the tools right now. Like, literally, just use the YouTube search bar, because YouTube tells you it's going to auto populate when you start searching a term, it's going to auto populate in the dropdown things that are people are actually searching for, and this is YouTube basically saying, hey, yeah, this is a good idea, this is something people are searching for. And this is YouTube basically saying, hey, yeah, this is a good idea, this is something people are searching for. So that's a great way to get started and validate your idea right off the bat.

Speaker 1:

I like that. So YouTube, buddy, vidiq are good research tools. But right away to get started, just type what you like, type different topics that you know about into YouTube and see what shows up in the search bar, because if it shows up, somebody is already looking for it.

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent. Yeah, I'm like I have a big, big fan of the lowest barrier to entry, like sometimes we make things too complicated and where tools are great, but let's start with something simple and that you have all access to, and that's the search bar.

Speaker 1:

I like it, I like it. So this brings up a point, though, which I was kind of leading into with my previous question, about how do we know, of the things that we are well-versed in talking about, which to make a video about? Right, because the worst thing and I've made this mistake before and you shared in the previous episode some other mistakes you had made, but the worst thing is you spend time editing a video and you put it on youtube and then nobody watches it and you're like why, what is going on? And that could be because you made a video that just nobody's looking for.

Speaker 2:

um, yeah, 100 and, and you know, sometimes the thing is with youtube too, you and with all social media really is you're making your best, educated guess, right. And so sometimes videos will take off and do really well, and sometimes they won't. And so, if it doesn't, that's a learning experience for you to go back and look at the data and say why didn't this video do as well as my previous video? What can I learn from this? How can I make my next video better? And so that's a big thing. I think that a lot of people fall into the trap of is oh well, every video is going to go viral, every video is going to get, you know, 2000 views, 10,000 views, and that's just not true.

Speaker 1:

Like, even if only yeah, if only right.

Speaker 2:

Even the big YouTubers out there. If you look at very successful channels, they have some videos that just don't do well, and that's normal.

Speaker 1:

You have a program called the Sold Out YouTube System and you had told me that you had a framework called that. What was it? Leadflow? What framework?

Speaker 2:

YouTube Leadflow Formula.

Speaker 1:

YouTube Leadflow Formula. I'd like to make it a tongue twister for you. That's inside of your program, the sold out YouTube system. What I want to ask is what's? What's one other thing that people could learn from the YouTube framework, from from the framework that they could do right now to give their YouTube channel a better, a better let's say a better chance of success, to bring in organic leads?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a great, a great thing again is, if you have a YouTube channel already, is go back to your videos and look at the analytics. Like take a look and see what the data is telling you instead of, you know, making emotional decisions, which sometimes we can do. Right is go back and look to see. Look at your thumbnails. Do all of your videos have thumbnails? If not, like we need to create thumbnails. Number very, very important.

Speaker 1:

Go back and create thumbnails all right, I'm doing that too. You're like oh shoot, she called me out I ran out of time, okay, and there's a couple of videos in the past four weeks that don't have thumbnails, so I'll be putting those on there yeah, super, super important thing.

Speaker 2:

I like to think about your youtube video video in terms of like a package, right? So you have your thumbnail, you have your title and you have your topic, and those three things all need to work in unison together to give your video the best shot of seeing success on YouTube. So if you can go back and like, audit your channel, if you will, and look at those three things like is the topic relevant for my audience? Is the title using keywords and it's engaging and hooking my people in? And is the thumbnail engaging? Like, look, look at it in terms of search when you search that term and see, is my thumbnail better than the rest of the thumbnails on this page? How can I make it better? How can I make it more stand out more? Those things are what I do when I audit clients channels, and so you can take away those three points and go audit your own channel.

Speaker 2:

And then, if you don't have a YouTube channel and you're like, okay, well, it's something I can do right now to get started, I want you to just start a channel and I know that sounds like really simple, but I just want you to open a channel and start putting the banner up, put a profile picture up, figure out what your about section is, and that's just going to give you a little bit momentum of okay, it's started now. Now what's my next step? What can I do now? And if you want, I can give you the link to my YouTube fast track toolkit. It allows you to get your YouTube channel set up in two hours or less, so it's a really easy, easy thing for you to grab and so you can get that momentum right. Sometimes we just need that momentum of like okay, now I know what I need to do to get it started. It's up, it's pretty, it's, you're excited. And now we can move into the momentum of creating the videos themselves.

Speaker 1:

Okay, right on. So I will put that link in the description below, but I want to say, from a place of like, honesty and encouragement, youtube fast track template. I'm sure it's good, but I want you to share, please, with the listener your program, because when I first started my YouTube channel back in 2017, 2018, I found a coach and I bought a program because, like I definitely believe let's take the shortest route to success as possible, and that means, like, I need the whole strategy in a way that I can implement and follow, and you have an agency that works with businesses one-on-one with their YouTube channels. But you've also taken a good amount of that knowledge and packaged it into your program, right? So you want to share a little bit about that before we go.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. So. Yeah, like I said, I kind of wanted to create something that allowed people to get access to me and my framework without having to have the agency side, and so I built it all into my YouTube lead flow formula and it's a three phase formula. And so the first phase we really go into the strategy making sure we have that firm foundation of your channel itself and that sales funnel on the back end, right, because it's not just about going quote unquote viral on YouTube or having a million subscribers. It's really about how can I fuel my business with the best fit leads, those leads that are going to purchase from you and help you scale your business. It's like little sales people out in the world working for you when you're not working. So think about it like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly what we want, right? That is the first phase of the program.

Speaker 2:

And then the second phase we go into the YouTube flywheel and that's really the system of how to create videos. We go through. You know how to pick the topic, how to write your scripts, how to edit, how to repurpose, like all those things is inside of there, and it's a step-by-step formula that you can rinse and repeat over and over again. So it's like that flywheel that just works over and over again and then we go into the third phase, which is okay. So now I know how to create videos.

Speaker 2:

But how can I create videos fast? Because that's the biggest hangup for people is, you know, I don't want to be chasing that rabbit every single week Like, oh crap, I have to create another YouTube video because that's a mistake I made at the beginning. So this system shows you how to batch and create content in two hours or less per month, and that's four videos every single month. And I give you the exact workflow that I use for myself and for my agency clients and step-by-step, like plug and play into a project management tool, so you can really get this system up and working for you quickly.

Speaker 1:

Nice, easy to follow steps. I will link that up in the show notes below. Thank you, melissa, for, I guess, whetting our appetites for the listener. I already have a YouTube channel, who hasn't quite gone there yet with YouTube, but that we believe should, because I can say, coming from the other end, because I run paid ads for a lot of clients, the several clients of the many that I've worked with that have an established YouTube channel like I will just honestly say, nothing can beat those organic leads that are coming from their YouTube channels, even ads.

Speaker 1:

But it's true, though, because people will watch so many YouTube videos and they spend so much time with with you, and once they click down to the description and come into the organic funnel, like they're, people will watch so many YouTube videos and they spend so much time with you, and once they click down to the description and come into the organic funnel, like their no like and trust factor is so high, like in you, because they've consumed so much of your YouTube content. It's just the truth. Like I can do some great things with ads, but, like the one funnel that I have not been able to beat is the organic YouTube funnel coming from like an online business who just has taken the time to build up their YouTube channel. You know, and it's just as far as I'm concerned, it's unbeatable, and I'm a Facebook ad manager, so I just wanted to say that, as like it's worth it. It's worth it to get into YouTube and build that up. It's not an overnight thing, but it's absolutely worth it.

Speaker 2:

So thanks for sharing, of course. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be on here today.

Speaker 1:

Right on, right on. So, listener, you know where those links are and head down to the show notes below. For that, and thank you for being here and until the next time you see me or hear from me.

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Kwadwo Sampany-Kessie

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