- The first step is to understand your target audience.
If you've got a little bit of traction already on YouTube,
this is something you've likely already thought about.
Who are you going after?
But the mistake a lot of creators make
is that they don't really understand this person's story.
They're so focused on this person's demographics
in terms of age and where they live in the world
and median income
and they just think of like this general audience.
For you to know what your audience wants,
you really need to know who this is
and not just on a general level.
You need to know their story.
And when we say their story,
what we're saying is you need to know,
one, who is this person?
Two, what do they want?
Number three, why can't they have what they want?
Number four, what's at stake
if this person doesn't get what they want?
Those things are very, very critical
'cause ultimately, this person wants to experience
some sort of transformation in their life.
They're at point A and they wanna get to point B
but they don't know the path to get there.
And that path could be an educational value,
like something that they're like, hey, I wanna learn this
and if I learn this thing,
then I'll get from point A to point B.
Or it could be like an entertainment value,
where these people, they're like I'm bored
and I need something to do
or I wanna feel like I'm hanging out with some friends
and that gets them to point B.
Then you're gonna take that information
and you're going to craft a value proposition.
What value do you propose to deliver
to your target audience?
And that needs to be super abundantly clear.
Finish this sentence, subscribe because, A, U, S, E.
Subscribe because, what do you say?
And a lot of times, I'd be surprised how many creators,
even with substantial audiences are like, (inhaling)
subscribe because
and they usually say one of two things.
They usually say because,
they state what they do on their channel.
And they're like, subscribe because I do gaming videos
or I make family videos
or because we're gonna teach you
how to do spreadsheets better or something like that.
This is not very compelling
because when the value is like, based on what you teach,
then it's like you and a thousand other channels on YouTube.
We recommend is not just saying what you do
but also why you do it.
The what will get people intellectually kind of like engaged
but the why will get people
to start feeling something about the brand
and start getting emotionally engaged.
For us at Video Creators, we are targeting someone.
We actually gave this person a story,
we gave them a name.
Their name is Busy Benny
and Busy Benny was working in corporate America and loved it
because there was a lot of opportunity to grow
and climb a ladder,
but they got a boss that they just don't like
and is soul crushing for them now.
They quit their corporate job
and they're gonna go full-time teaching guitar lessons
'cause that's where they feel the most excitement.
That's where they feel the most alive.
But in the course of doing that,
they find out like, I can only do so many students.
I'm exchanging time for dollars
and I no longer wanna do that anymore.
And so he creates an online course.
He's like, I can sell this course to lots of people,
teach them how to play the guitar.
Then he starts a YouTube channel
and he learns that the more my YouTube channel grows,
the more my business grows.
The more courses I end up selling
and I can go from making a healthy income
with selling music lessons in person
to even scaling this even bigger with a business online
and serving even more people better than I could before.
That's who we're going after here.
We know this person's story,
what they want, whats at stake for them.
This is their full-time gig.
Their goal is to ultimately grow their business
so they can serve more people better.
And so our value proposition comes along.
It's like subscribe to this channel
because we help business owners.
And that's another one that it could be,
it could be the what, it could be the who.
We help small business owners grow a YouTube channel
that reaches more people and changes their lives,
starting with their own life.
Growing their own business
so they can reach more people,
spread a message that changes lives.
So, when we teach audience development and YouTube tactics,
it's with that person in mind
so that when that person, Busy Benny, finds our channel,
they hopefully feel like (gasp)
this is exactly what I've been looking for.
Where have you been my whole life?
You have defined your target audience
and you know the value you're trying to propose
and what that does for them.
You know their story and what they need from you.
Then that allows you
to finally craft a good content strategy
that combines these two things together.
Every video that I watch from this person
feels like it's for me
and the value is one that I want to consume
and every single video is delivering that for me.
So when you wanna know, like, what does your audience want,
you first need to know who's the audience,
then you need to know which goes along with what they want,
and then which is the value that you're providing.
So this is the target audience.
This is the value prop.
When you've defined those two things
and start making content
that delivers those things every single time consistently,
you end up attracting this audience
because you're giving this audience what they want.
And so instead of chasing your audience
and trying to figure out, well, who do I have?
Do I make this video for that person
or this video for that other person?
Because if you haven't defined this for them,
then people make up in their mind, this is why I'm here.
One person might subscribe for reason A,
someone for reason B, another for reason C,
another one for reason D.
And if this person is here for A,
they're like, yes, but then person B, C and D is like,
eh, eh, eh, because it's not for them.
You're like, oh, okay.
Well that video didn't do so good,
so let me do this
'cause there's some people here who want this,
so you do that but then that one's an eh, you know,
and it's really hard to get traction
long term on your channel
if you're delivering this value sometimes,
that value sometimes, this value this time
to this person, that person, whatever.
And before long, like your channel is one, gonna grow slowly
but it's also going to stall
because there's not a through line.
There's not a thread that ties everything together clearly
for your target audience
to know every time I get what I want
and the best way for you to be able to do that
is not to just try to always figure out
what your audience wants.
Its for you to decide,
I'm going after this person, I'm delivering this
and those people there by definition,
end up being attracted to you, your brand
and your content and your channel.
And then ultimately, 'cause you're Busy Benny,
to the thing that you're selling
which is ultimately going to give them what they want.
They're getting, like you here
are hopefully you're getting a little bit what you need
to have a framework now
for how to think about giving your audience what you want.
If you wanna dive into it with us,
you know, we have online courses,
we can do one-on-one consultation
where we can ultimately give you a path
to doing what you want for your audience every single time
and actually tracking the results and making it measurable
so you can see the impact it has in your business.
So this is really important,
but there's also other things
that other top creators are doing
that we've seen as a pattern that they're doing
to grow their channel and get more traction.
If you wanna see what some of those things are,
put together a video right here for you
that you can click on
and it's gonna show you some of the top things
that the creators are getting millions of views
and subscribers, what they're doing,
what they have in common to really grow their channels.
Click right there
and I'll see you in that next video.