Meredith 0:00
Are you waiting to launch your YouTube channel until your course is ready to go? Or are you waiting to create your course until your YouTube channel is up and running or has a certain number of subscribers? This is episode two of the video brand infusion podcast in this episode is for you what comes first building your audience or building your course. My name is Meredith marsh and the video Brandon fusion Podcast is your resource to infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business for consistent sales of your course or program without ads, or constant selling, or spending hours on your webinar presentation have like seven people show up. I'm almost afraid of this exact topic. Because this question of what comes first, should I start building my audience first are my channel first? Or should I wait and create my course first? And the reason why I worry about this question. And even really bringing it up is whenever this becomes a topic because this question does come up with my clients and customers and inside of my membership. When this question comes up, I'm always worried that whatever answer you hear, if your situation or circumstance, or what you have created so far for yourself is anything other than what somebody else says is the right way to do it, then you're gonna go, Oh, crap, I'm doing wrong, I should stop what I'm doing, and do what they say to do. Because I'm doing it wrong. And I totally get this, it doesn't feel good to know or to think I'm doing this wrong. And it always feels good to think that you're doing something. Right. Right. But like there's this belief that if you do everything right, if I know that I'm doing everything right, then I can't fail. It's impossible to fathom doing everything right. But is that always true? Like, is it always true that if you do everything right, you'll never see failure? Haven't you ever taken the wrong turn and still ended up getting to your destination? Right? Or have you ever followed directions exactly, only to run into a roadblock or a detour or something that you weren't quite expecting? And you didn't get to your destination? Even though you're doing everything right? My opinion is that either way is the right way. As long as you're moving forward, as long as you're moving, you're doing it the right way. However, there is a key component that links these two seemingly opposite directions together, it kind of feels like opposite directions. It feels like Korean audience and then building a course is the opposite direction of creating a course. And then building an an audience, right? Like it kind of feels like one is headed west, and one is headed east. But really, it's more like two roads that are converging on one destination, if you think about it, which is a thriving business, consistent sales of your course or your program or your service. And it's a thriving business and a thriving audience, right, it's all converging on the same point. So if the destination if the destination is the same, then they can't possibly be going in opposite directions, which means there can't possibly be one way. That's right. And one way that's wrong, but there are three components that both of these roads must have in place in order to each of these be reaching the destination. And like I said, the destination is your thriving business, consistent revenue inside of your thriving business so you can stay in business. So even if you're headed in a forward direction, if you think about this, you're headed in a forward direction, you're taking action on your business, you're growing your audience, or you're working on your course or whatever it is that you're doing, you're moving forward, right. And there might be some misguided actions that you might take along the way, little failures here and there little oopsies little well, I didn't know that and little learnings along the way. And those things might slow you down. But let me explain why. This is huge. Because whether you're working on building your audience right now, or you're working on building your course right now, or you already have your course consider these three things. Number one, are you offering something in your free content and or your course that people already want a solution that people already know that they want? This is kind of like an invisible roadblock that pops up for almost every client that I've ever worked with even I'd like my peer mastermind group, almost everyone I've ever talked to that has an online business, this little roadblock, this little pothole, if you will, pops up for everybody at some point, because especially if you're just starting out, there comes a point where the content that you're creating either attracts an audience or it doesn't like you publishing your videos, and your channel is either growing, or it's not. Or you create a course, or program or something, you put it out there. And people either buy it or they don't. And it's really, really easy to get stuck in that pothole, and ask yourself,
Meredith 5:43
it must be something wrong with the niche, oh, this just isn't a profitable niche. Or there must be something about me or my content, or my videos or my personality that people just don't like, or this particular type of audience, they just don't like to spend money. And that's the key thing to both of these paths, the audience first path, or the course, first path, your job on either of those paths that you're on, is to discover what it is that people really want, that they already want, that they already know that they want. So that you don't really have to convince somebody that they want it, or convince somebody that they need to have this thing, you know, or have the solution in their lives, and you build your audience, and your course around the components of that. And from my perspective, I feel like, in my experience, the only way to get it wrong, is by taking wrong turns on paths and getting distracted, and not asking yourself the right questions about the destination that you're trying to get to. And the destination, the desired result that your ideal customers and viewers are trying to get to, to stick with the road trip analogy here. Imagine if you're trying to get somewhere and you did not have a map, and there were no road signs at all. But there were some kind of like checkpoints along the way, where you could stop and ask for directions. What's the first thing that somebody is going to say to you, if you stop and ask for directions? was the first thing they're gonna ask? Where are you trying to get to? Where exactly are you going? So key number one, the solution that you have to offer in your content, as you're growing your audience, and in your content that's in your paid offer must be something that people already know that they want. Number two, I can't tell you how many times myself, my mastermind friends, my clients have thought something is broken or wrong. It just isn't working. Like no one is buying my course, I'm not getting signups to my email list or like my channels not growing, I'm not gaining subscribers. And there must be something wrong is not working. When in reality. If you look at the numbers, actually everything is working as intended, but you're just not getting it in front of enough people. This is one of the reasons honestly, why I think YouTube is the most powerful way to grow your audience. Because you have 2 billion people is it like I think might even be two and a half billion people now to get your content, your stuff in front of every metric on your channel, every one of your website metrics, your landing page conversion rates, all that stuff together, tells a story together. And when you're only looking at a results metric, like oh, I only gain two YouTube subscribers this week, or only made one sale of my course this whole month or something, you're only looking at part of this story. And nothing about what you're seeing is fixable without the rest of the story. Because if you gained two new YouTube subscribers on your channel this week, and you got like 10 views on your channel this week, that's not a bad conversion rate. That's actually a really good conversion rate. So your job is to make more content that gets more views 10x 100x 1,000x those views and you'll 10x 100x and 1,000x your subscribers. It's a math equation. It is a little bit of an oversimplification. I will I will admit, but you get the idea, right? People can't subscribe to your channel if they can't find your videos. And so if you only ever make this determination of what's working and what's not working on just the one metric, just the one results metric that you're trying to reach those subscribers are those sales are those leads without looking at the rest of the picture then you really honestly you have no idea you can't make the determination if something is working or not working. If you only made one sale of your course this month? Well, how many people saw your sales page? Was it five? Did you get one sale out of five people, because that's 20 out of 100. You know, so get 100 people to your sales page, you'll have 20 sales. But the problem is not all, you only got one sale, it must be a failure. The problem is, you didn't get enough people to the sales page, see how the more numbers you look at, the more clearer the picture really is. You don't have to be a numbers person, I could go off on a little tangent about math right now. But you don't have to be a numbers person to make the numbers tell a story so that you can make decisions about what's working and what's not, what to change, what to tweak what to improve, and what is actually working and just leave it alone and send more people to it. Well, I'm not a math person, the numbers confuse me, I don't know what I'm looking at. There's really only just a handful of numbers that paint a picture and tell a story. And if you get one sale out of five people that saw your sales page, there are people that would die for a 20% conversion on their sales page, you've done something very, very, very, very right. But you wouldn't know that unless you look at all of the rest of the numbers. And so if you're not a numbers person, you're gonna have to be a numbers person, at least for a little bit, at least just for the handful of numbers that you need in order to know what's working and what's not. If you want to grow your business, if you're in business, you're a numbers person, whether you're paying attention to the numbers or not, the numbers that are happening, and knowing what they are is what's going to help your business grow. So following the story that your numbers are telling you is like asking for directions, which is based on the destination, a destination that you want to head to, instead of looking at the map, and looking like oh, that looks like an interesting place. Or seeing all the billboards and saying oh, that looks like an interesting place. And then now you've taken an exit, and you're headed in a completely different direction, because you didn't stop and ask for directions, and actually pay attention to what your destination is. I'm like going way off on a road tripping tangent here, but I think you get the idea. And this brings me to point number 3/3 thing that must be in place, whether we're talking audience first or course first approach, I have a friend whose course sells really, really well. And he runs paid ads for those leads. And a couple of weeks ago, something wasn't set up correctly, like tech wise. And he spent about $2,000 on ads that didn't result in any sales at all. Now, I don't know what the problem was with the tech setup. Okay, like I don't I don't know what it actually was. He figured it out, got it up and running. And now it's working. But considering how well his course converts, and the price of his program, I know that it really wasn't a matter of losing out on two grand, it was more like a loss of 10 to 15 grand because that's what his would be sales would have equated to you know what I mean? So, every one of the people who did not end up becoming a paid customer that he paid $2,000 For are still on his email list, which means they might not have resulted in a sale right away because of the little tech glitch. But weeks or months from now. Eventually, they will now I can turn this into a lesson on making sure your tech is set up before you send paid traffic to it. I could make this a lesson on how great it is to have organic free traffic from YouTube that you didn't pay. Two grand four did not end up having any sales. But what I really want you to take away from this is that your email list is a critical component to your long term success as a course creator, and as a content creator. 92% of the sales that result from my YouTube funnel are from people who clicked on a link in my email follow up sequence. So the audience first or program course first. Either way, now is the time to build your email list and YouTube is perfect for this because you have a steady flow of traffic 24/7 Your videos are working for you 24/7 You can use your list to boost views on your channel which helps your channel grow ultimately, and you can actually optimize your channel and your videos to build your list. So that as your YouTube audience grows, your email list grows and we're going to talk about that in the very next episode. But building a set it and forget it YouTube funnel is the simplest way to generate consistent sales of your online offer. So in Episode Number one, I broke this down exactly my exact YouTube funnel system, what it looks like how it works, how to create one for your business so that your course can sell itself with the simplicity of organic evergreen traffic from YouTube. So you can say goodbye to painstaking launches. And just focus on creating connection and community with your audience, your clients or customers. So you can dive into Episode One for all of the YouTube funnel goodness. And in my next episode, we'll talk about optimizing your channel to build your email list.
Meredith 15:39
If you liked this episode, come on over to YouTube to follow me there. So you can watch these episodes for an even more dynamic experience with you know, like facial expressions and stuff. Just search my name Meredith Marsh on YouTube to find my channel or head to the show notes for this episode, and you'll get a direct link. Also in the show notes, you'll find a direct link to episode number one where I lay out my entire YouTube Funnel System, which to be honest, is better on video if I do say so myself. Either way. I'm glad you're here. I hope you stick around and I'll see you soon.
