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AMY PORTERFIELD: Welcome back to another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your host, Amy Porterfield, and I am thrilled that you are here with me today.
Today we’re going to dig into some list-building strategies. However, I’ve got a twist for you. We’re going to talk about list building on YouTube. In fact, we’re going to talk about something even more specific, building an evergreen list-building machine onYouTube.
When I say evergreen I mean something that’s going to happen over and over again automatically. You don’t have to hustle so hard to build your email list. If you’re anything like me and you heard the word “YouTube” you might be thinking, “No, no, no. This one’s not for me. This is about video, in fact, this is about YouTube. I’m not using YouTube that much,” and you don’t do a lot of video.
Listen, stay with me here. As I interviewed my guest, Sunny Lenarduzzi, a YouTube boss (let me tell you the girl knows her stuff), I started to think, “Wow, this is incredibly doable.”
You know my goal is to do more video. I have been doing more and more of it and I’m encouraging you to get out in front of that camera and make sure you’re showing your face and are inviting your audience in at a more personal level by creating videos that are real and transparent.
You can really show your personality as well as teach people what you know, teach them what they need to know in order to get results or in order to transform, or whatever you might do.
I don’t want you to dismiss video and I sure as heck don’t want you to think that just because you don’t have a huge YouTube following that this list-building strategy is not for you.
Those are all my disclaimers. I have a lot of great stuff to cover with Sunny today so you definitely want to listen in.
Let’s talk about my guest, Sunny Lenarduzzi. As I mentioned, she is a YouTube boss. In fact, she has a following of over 170,000 subscribers and she’s helped her clients go from zero to 100,000 subscribers and build their email list from zero to 28,000 in less than ten months resulting (this is the important part) in multiple six-figure businesses.
Forbes listed Sunny as a must-watch YouTube channel that will change your business. That’s pretty impressive.
Today Sunny’s going to share her proven three-phase method to creating a YouTube evergreen lead machine without using paid advertising. If you’re on a shoestring budget, if you’re just getting started, if you don’t have the budget to spend on Facebook ads or YouTube ads or any ads, for that matter, you want to pay attention.
This is going to be a mini training format so get ready to take a lot of notes. For all of you who are commuting right now or are taking me along on your walk or you are working out (I love it) then don’t worry because I always provide a full transcript with every single episode.
If you go to https://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/225 scroll all the way down to the bottom of the show notes and you will see a link for transcripts and you can get all of the details there.
Before I dive in, this episode is sponsored by my free masterclass, How to Confidently Create Your First Profitable Course in 60-Days. If you’ve been thinking about creating an online course or if you’ve had a course idea in you for a while but you’re just not sure how to get started this free masterclass is definitely for you.
Go to https://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/courses to sign up.
I won’t make you wait any longer. Let’s go ahead and dive in.
AMY: Sunny, thank you so very much for being on the show. I am excited to have you here.
SUNNY: Oh my gosh, it is such an honor. You’re the first podcast I started listening to ever so this is such a surreal full circle moment for me, so thank you for having me.
AMY: Oh my goodness. I absolutely love that. I feel very, very lucky to have you on the show because girl you are on fire. You are truly a YouTube boss. You are killing it out there. I know your business has been growing like crazy because I’ve been watching all of your videos and I’ve been seeing what’s happening.
To get you on the show and you are the perfect person to talk all about evergreen list building with YouTube, so thank you for that.
SUNNY: Oh thank you. I’m honored and I’ve definitely had a pretty funny experience growing my list with YouTube and an interesting journey and I know that I can teach your audience a lot about it and how to do it the right way off the bat.
AMY: That leads me to my first question. How did you get started with YouTube and was it something you just fell into or were you really intentional about it? Can you tell me about your story with that?
SUNNY: Yeah. I call it a really happy accident. Basically, what happened was I had a social media consultancy where I was working with clients all over the place, really, and in all different niches.
I absolutely loved social media from the day that it even became a thing. I remember playing around on Twitter and playing a round on Facebook. I just fell in love with the fact that you could talk to people one to one and build these really deep relationships and those people would then be a part of your journey moving forward.
Coming from someone who was actually a journalist before I fell in love with the online space because I liked that you could deliver information but also integrate it with your audience real time as opposed to just talking at people. You were talking with people.
I did this social media consultancy for about five years. I have all of these different clients. I’m doing campaign management. I’m actually doing community management. I’m doing the posting and doing everything. I’m doing strategy.
I love it but as any consultant knows, or solopreneur knows, you hit a ceiling. I truly thought I would never want to have a team and would just want to keep doing this by myself forever.
I hit a point where I had so many clients through word of mouth that I couldn’t possibly keep doing it by myself forever. I basically had a moment of wondering how to clone myself or duplicating myself and starting to scale this.
My first thought, out of pure desperation, was all of my clients were asking me the same things over and over again. I didn’t have to go to meetings and I didn’t have to get on phone calls.
If I could make one tutorial I could send to all of them at once they could just learn from that. That’s what I did.
At the time it was March 2015 and Periscope, the live streaming app, had just come out. Periscope and Meerkat were in competition and all of my clients were asking me how to use live streaming to build their businesses and build their lists and all of those other kinds of things.
I thought I would sit down, window, webcam. Check, check. I don’t need to put too much effort into what I look like because this is just going to be sent to my clients. I filmed the video and did a whole tutorial on how to use Periscope to build your business. I sent it to my clients, which I had about ten at the time, and I didn’t think anything of it because my YouTube channel where I uploaded the video was basically dormant. I had no subscribers. I had no branding. All of the videos on there were either personal family videos or really old demo reels.
That’s what I mean when I said I thought nothing of it. The next day I woke up and I had 2,000 views on the video.
AMY: Oh my gosh! Were you like, “Wait a second! It was for ten people.”
SUNNY: Yes, I was very confused. I also wished that I had put a little more effort into what I looked like. First I was like, “What just happened? How did this skyrocket so quickly? Why do I have so many comments?”
It was a really big lightbulb moment for me and such an interesting pivot in how my career transpired and my trajectory. It was a total lightbulb moment where I started reverse engineering how this happened.
I realized that YouTube is obviously a search engine. It’s the second largest search engine in the world owned by the #1 search engine in the world. At this time Periscope was a trending topic. Live streaming from mobile was a trending topic and I was the first to create a video on it and people were searching for it in a higher volume than normal.
My video on YouTube at that time was the only video on the topic. Obviously more and more people started creating them afterwards but I automatically ranked #1 and because of all of the search volume around it all of these people were finding me and discovering me for the first time.
I basically did the tutorial just for my clients so I had nowhere to send people. I didn’t even bother doing a download or list building or anything but that’s really the turning point where I wondered what would happen if I started getting intentional about it and did just one tutorial based on my client frequently asked questions each week for the next year.
In that year I grew to 50,000 subscribers and three million views. I always say to imagine what would happen if in the next 12 months you went from working with ten clients and only using word of mouth to build a business to being discovered by three million people. My life changed.
AMY: Yes.
SUNNY: Yeah. So that really was my starting point with YouTube and how I started to reverse engineer the success about one video and apply it to every video moving forward.
AMY: That is so good. I love that you just gave it a shot not even thinking it would be something big and then what’s really important is that you paid attention and thought, “Wait a second, there’s something magical that just happened here and I’m not going to ignore it.”
It wasn’t a fluke or anything like that. Even if it was a fluke you didn’t know so you needed to test it out and try some more. I love that attitude around that.
My next question was going to get right into YouTube to talk about all of its benefits and why you think we should be doing it and all of these questions I have for you, especially because we’re going to get into a step-by-step process to grow your email list with YouTube.
But, at the time of this recording, literally days ago, IGTV just released. With that I thought before we talk about YouTube I’ve got to ask you, because so many of my students brought this up, does something like IGTV (we all know Instagram is a big deal and it’s getting even bigger) take over YouTube?
Does YouTube become extinct or is it not that important anymore? Do the two coexist? I really want to know from you. I know you’re a little biased but I also know you use Instagram. What should I think about all of this?
SUNNY: What a crazy time to be alive, first of all. There are new things all the time. I find it really funny because I feel like whenever a new platform comes about people forget the fact that there are so many cross talents and cross-promotion opportunities on every platform.
I feel like I’m platform agnostic at this point. Yes, I know YouTube and YouTube has been the thing that’s really built my business at the core of it. But I’m on all the platforms and I love Instagram. I think it’s a great opportunity for entrepreneurs. IGTV is just another format to deliver your genius.
When I found out about IGTV I was super excited. First and foremost it’s mobile focused. It’s that vertical video that people are consuming on mobile, which so many more people are consuming video content on mobile than they were before, so it’s really exciting.
I’m just playing around with it at this point and I’m paying very close attention to what people are doing on IGTV. I wanted to just say it’s not going to take over YouTube and I don’t think any platform at this point, with everything being so well established, I think we’ve gone through the phase of “this” platform came out so it’s going to kill this one.
That’s not really the case anymore. Now platforms that are out there and are the big giants are really just getting better and better and better. I think Instagram looked at what is happening on YouTube and the search functionalities and wanted to see how they could start integrating that into their platform.
I think it’s a great opportunity for more searchable content on Instagram but at the end of the day, like I said before, YouTube is owned by the largest search engine in the world so unless Google is taken out, which maybe one day I will look back on this interview and say, “Yeah, that’s going to happen.”
Until that happens you don’t have anything to worry about. For me there is no better search engine than YouTube and Google. Every single day are you going onto Instagram and searching for how to grow your list or how to get more YouTube subscribers or how to become a life coach or whatever else?
You’re not really looking for those things at this point on Instagram. Instagram doesn’t have the built in functionality that YouTube does as a search engine. What I see IGTV has a huge opportunity for and what I’m really paying attention to is that it’s cool because it’s a testing ground.
IGTV is not the same platform as YouTube in the sense that your content’s going to be there and working for you every single day in that evergreen style that I’m going to break down on YouTube in just a second.
You can test content on IGTV and see what really resonates with your audience and then make a full production style video on YouTube that’s even more polished and that is going to be an evergreen content that’s going to rank in search results and it’s going to perform for you and continue to build your list every single day.
Something that we’re testing in our strategy now with IGTV coming out is we’re making miniature versions of my long-form videos on YouTube and putting them on IGTV. We’re doing a mobile friendly vertical version that’s two minutes long versus a 15-minute full video on YouTube.
What’s happening here actually, I think the great thing about IGTV is that it’s elevating your content on other platforms like YouTube so you’re getting even more in depth and doing even more core style videos on YouTube with a full set of information and you’re using IGTV to draw more eyeballs to it and drive more traffic to those full-length videos.
That’s how I really see it. I also see IGTV as an amazing opportunity to release exclusive content that you could only see on IGTV in a longer form story. I think that’s another really great way to use it.
There are so many fun things that you can do with it and I know it’s only going to continue to evolve. But no, I don’t see IGTV taking out YouTube by any means. I also think that you have to understand that the skill set you build on a platform like YouTube is transferrable to IGTV and vice versa.
That’s how you want to look at all of the content platforms. They are all just a platform at the end of the day to build your content. But the value of your content has to be good in order for it to be seen anywhere.
AMY: That’s so good. I’m so glad you talked about that. It was timely and relevant and we couldn’t ignore it so thank you for that.
I’ve heard you talk about the two before and I feel like you are really clear on how the two can coexist so thank you so much for that.
SUNNY: Pleasure.
AMY: Here’s a question I have for you. We’re going to get into the steps, I promise guys, but first we have to start out with figuring out what type of content is most searched for and best suited for YouTube.
You talked about this whole idea of the search functionality of YouTube. I’m curious, is
it mostly tutorials and how to videos? One more question, I’m going to give you two in a row. I’ve heard you say that entrepreneurs and influencers should use YouTube very differently. Can you speak to that as well?
SUNNY: Absolutely. They basically go hand in hand. I say entrepreneurs use YouTube very differently than a content creator who is trying to become famous online or be an entertainer of any kind is that YouTube is literally free advertising. That’s a simple as I can put it.
As an entrepreneur we solve problems and answer questions. We make things that are going to help people and elevate their lives or elevate their businesses. YouTube is a platform where people are searching every single day for how to solve their problems and get their questions answered.
You just have to show up and be found and I’m a prime example of that. When everyone was trying to figure out how to use Periscope to build their businesses I put up a video and I have 2,000 people watching that video overnight and wanting to learn more about it.
From there I can develop a program or product or course directly related to that video and I know that I have a built-in audience for it. The reason I say it’s so different is that YouTube is not like any other platform in the sense that people aren’t necessarily going there and looking through a feed.
People are going to YouTube and Google, and I invite you to think about your own habits when you go to those two platforms, when you open Google you type into the search bar. That’s the first thing you do.
That’s why it’s really important to focus on that educational/tutorial style content in the beginning. It’s going to build the most momentum for you. I’ve had clients who try to go the entertainment or vlog style route and it’s the hardest way to get momentum. You’re not attracting your ideal customers.
As an entrepreneur you have to think about it as not looking for viral views. I like to define viral as an acronym: Valuable Information based on intel Relevant to your ideal customer and Authentic to your brand and that you are Leveraging to build your list, build your business, sell your products, and sell your services.
You are not thinking about going viral. You’re thinking about adding value and having a conversion point to send your viewers to in order to continue to build your business. YouTube videos work for you for years to come. I have a video I made three years ago that’s generating 300 leads a day for me on my email list.
AMY: What? That is good. I love it. This is really valuable because I have students and listeners in all different niches. I just wanted to make sure people are clear on what type of content would be the best use of their time to create on the YouTube platform.
You’re going to walk my listeners through a step-by-step method you use to create an evergreen lead machine on YouTube. I was thinking, for the sake of this episode, can we use an example of a coach of some kind? I have a lot of coaches in my audience that eventually want to create online courses and move away from the one-on-one to one-to-many.
Right now they are coaches and I thought we could use that as an example as you walk us through the step-by-step method.
SUNNY: Absolutely. I work with a lot of coaches and it’s a great niche to be in to build on YouTube; so yes, that works for me.
AMY: Okay, cool. The method you use is called the Discovery and Attraction method. You say it’s broken down into three phases. Can you walk us through Phase I?
SUNNY: Absolutely. Basically, the three phases I break it down into are, first and foremost, you want to create profitable content. Again, this is a big difference from trying to create viral content or just entertainment-based content.
Profitable content is meant to increase your reach and revenue without having to rely on paid advertising. You can use that to add fuel to your fire but I built my business entirely organically using this first step of the process which is creating profitable content.
How do you figure out what is profitable content? I have a four-step strategy that I use and it’s the research process. If you’re going to take one thing from this please, please, please, research before you record. It is probably the most important part of creating this profitable content that’s actually going to generate revenue for you as opposed to just adding value to your existing audience. It will help you get discovered.
How I create profitable content, the first thing is that I paid attention to the clues in the beginning. I listened to frequently asked questions. Those right there are great places to start for topics you can create YouTube videos on.
Why? Because like I said, YouTube is a place where people go to get their questions answered. If you can answer those questions in video form I can guarantee you there is an audience out there searching for it.
If one person is asking you this question and they are an ideal client you probably have 100, 1,000, or a million other people out there who are looking for that same answer and haven’t discovered you yet but are waiting to find an expert on the topic and would love to work with you once you answer that for them.
Frequently asked questions is the first place to go. I highly recommend, if you are listening to this right now, to start thinking about some questions people ask all the time about how you can help them or what you do best in your business.
The second step of this is looking at competition and community hubs. Look at people who are in a similar space as you who have a similar target audience to you, especially if you’re in the beginning stages of your business. This is so vital because it means you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
I find a lot of times when people start thinking about video content they don’t know what to make a video on and they get stuck. The best thing to do is just to look at the clues again.
Success leaves clues. Look at the people who are influencers within your space or who have the same target audience as you. Pay attention to the kinds of content they have across platforms that has gotten a high level of engagement.
Maybe it’s an Instagram post. Maybe it’s a Facebook Live stream. Maybe they have a YouTube channel and you can find their most popular videos. You’re not copying their content because you’re able to add your own intel to it and make an even better version that’s even more relevant to your target audience and build up your rankings on YouTube through that.
Take a look at competition. Take a look at community hubs, anywhere that’s maybe a Facebook group or a forum of any kind that has your target audience in it. Look for the questions people are asking and the content they’re engaging with the most. Again, that’s a clue for you as to what’s going to be some profitable content for you.
The next thing is trends. The one caveat I will say here is that trends are great because you get an increased momentum and an influx of views, especially if you’re one of the first people to make a video on the topic. But, the only thing with that is that it’s usually not going to last forever and it’s usually not going to be that evergreen lead machine.
If you have a trending topic or there is something that’s being highly discussed or talked about in your industry it is a great opportunity to increase your reach and visibility.
The fourth piece, which hands down is the most important part of this strategy…
AMY: Oh, okay.
SUNNY: Amy, keywords. I call this your traffic-building title. You don’t want to just slap up a title on your video. You want to do the research to find the right keywords.
Keywords are what people are searching for and key phrases are what people are searching for. Can I give an example?
AMY: Please.
SUNNY: Okay, prime example here. I have a client who about a year ago, last February, she started working with me and she enrolled in my YouTube for Bosses course. She made one of her first videos and wrote in my Facebook group a post that said, “I made this video and did all the research. I followed all the steps, FAQ, competition, community hubs, trends, and I’m just not getting any traction on the video.”
I told her she wanted to edit the title slightly and put the question in the first half. The question was something around interview questions because this person was a career coach. It was how to respond to a certain interview question.
She put that specific question verbatim as how someone would search it in the front half of the title instead of the back half. With that one switch her video went from having basically no traction and getting lost in the YouTube sea (I want you to think of it as a sea because you want to rank at the top and float all the way up to the top of the sea in order to be found amongst millions of search results), from that title switch on that video she now has 7.8 million views.
AMY: Oh my gosh!
SUNNY: It has generated, I believe, 13,000 email subscribers organically that are targeted.
AMY: What?
SUNNY: It’s really important to pay attention to how people are asking questions. What is the search? How are they searching it? How are they asking it? What’s the exact verbiage they are using? That right there is a huge clue as to how they would be typing it into YouTube and Google. That’s going to help you get found.
AMY: Just tell us one more time what she switched to get that. Say that example again.
SUNNY: She put the title as kind of a generic title. It was something like how to answer “this” interview Question, but she didn’t put the exact question in the title. I’m blanking on what the question was right now.
Actually, I might have the exact example. I’m just going to try to find the exact example.
AMY: While you’re looking I’m going to tell my audience something because I have something on my mind. As Sunny’s talking about keyword and doing research and the competition and the community hubs, if you guys follow my podcast then you know we just had Neil Patel on Episode #221 talking about SEO.
He gave us so many amazing tools to figure out who our real competition is and how to do keyword research and also to find out which articles from our competitors are crushing it so that we can model something like that.
I feel like everything that Neil talked about in Episode #221 can be applied to what you’re saying here with this whole idea of the research process.
SUNNY: I completely agree. I freaking love Neil.
AMY: Right, he was so awesome.
SUNNY: He is an absolute genius, and 100%, a lot of this is cross-over strategy. It’s really important. The title is the biggest thing because if you don’t have your keywords in your title it’s going to bite you.
I found the exact title and the exact switch. The front half of the title of her video was a good answer to this interview question. It didn’t have the exact question that people were asking so now she switched the title to, “Tell me about yourself.”
That’s the question people are asking in interviews.
AMY: Oh my gosh, that is totally a question you always get.
SUNNY: Totally. And it’s hard to answer. So she said, “Tell me about yourself,” in the front half then, “- A good answer to this interview question.” That video has now attracted 7.8 million views which is pretty crazy.
AMY: That’s so good.
SUNNY: She’s gone from 50 subscribers a year ago and she self admittedly said it was mostly friends and family. Now she has 263,000.
AMY: That is awesome. This Phase I approach is a four-part research process. Again, FAQs, competition and community hubs, trends, and keywords. Again, if you pair episode #221 with what you’re learning here with Sunny then Neil and Sunny are the perfect match for you hitting this out of the park. It’s so timely. I’m really excited about that.
Are we ready to move on to Phase II?
SUNNY: We absolutely are ready to move on to Phase II which I am pretty excited about. This is the fun part.
AMY: Okay, talk to me about this one. I need to know.
SUNNY: This, for me, is the fun part because this is where you actually go from content to customer. This is where you figure out how to convert these views. That’s probably the biggest question I get, “How the heck are you taking people from YouTube and actually converting them into customers for your business?”
The main way I do this comes down to your scripting process. I just have to ask this question first to kind of preface it. Have you ever looked on YouTube or searched on YouTube for an answer to a question or problem and maybe there’s something recently you’ve searched and you stumble upon a video and start to watch the video and it takes two minutes of the person explaining who they are, why you should watch it, and you’re like, “Can you please just get to the point? I don’t understand.”
AMY: I am terrible. I lose interest and I try to find something else.
SUNNY: Right. You have to think about how people search and also think about the fact that this is free advertising in the sense that in the discovery and traction method people are discovering you through search by searching the right keywords that you’ve made a video on.
They have no loyalty to you at this point and they have no relationship with you at this point. They are discovering you for the first time and this is the prime opportunity to get them so attracted to you that they stay in your sphere and become part of your loyal tribe and customer and fan base for life.
How you do that is the scripting formula I use. I call it the hot script formula. It stands for Hook, Outcome, and Testimonial. For the first 30 seconds to one minute of your video instead of sitting there and explaining why someone needs to watch the video (you never need to do that on YouTube because people know why they need to watch it. That’s why they’re searching for it) you just need to get right into the hook, what you’re going to teach them.
For example, if I’m going to do a video on how to generate leads from YouTube the first thing I’m going to say within the first five seconds is, “Hey welcome to this video. Today I’m going to teach you exactly how to start skyrocketing your list building using YouTube.”
I am done. That also gives them the outcome, what they’re going to learn from the video. Then the testimonial piece is saying that I’ve taught over 2,000 entrepreneurs how to use this method and one of my clients actually built her list from scratch to 50,000 subscribers within ten months organically using YouTube and they were targeted leads.
That is a perfect testimonial. This is a two-fold process. First, you’re getting people into the content immediately and you are reassuring them they haven’t landed on a video where they are going to be told a bunch of random things for five minutes. They’re actually going to get to the meat of what they need to know.
They are going to stay on the video and, like you said, they’re not going to click off. You also position yourself as the expert and a person with actual credibility by giving them the fact that you’ve worked with other people on the strategy or you’ve seen success in the past.
That’s the intro piece. Once you get through that you want to get into the sequential steps of exactly what you’re going to teach them, the meat of the content, and then the final piece of the puzzle, and this is where you go from content to customer, you have two calls to action.
The first call to action is to get customers. I call this your conversion call to action. Similar to a podcast, which you can use for list building as well and we’ve done the same on my podcast, you want to make sure people aren’t just listening to you and then peacing out and then forgetting what you do and what you’re good at.
This conversion call to action, for example, I have a video that is bringing in hundreds of leads for us every single day and it’s three years old. That video is on how to get more views on YouTube.
It is ranking on the first page and I have a guide associated with it. It is the “Views While You Snooze YouTube SEO Guide.” It’s directly related. I teach them the “what” in the video and put the “how” into the guide.
I show exactly, step by step, how to do YouTube SEO in that guide. Like I said, people are downloading it every single day because they are finding that video on a daily basis through search because it’s on Page 1 because we followed all of the steps in creating profitable content in Phase I of this.
The second call to action is the engagement call to action. This is why this works so well together. You get the customers. You get the tribe. You get people off of YouTube and just watching your video and forgetting about you and you put them onto your email list. You can also send them to your Facebook group to get community support around whatever your niche is.
You can also convert them over just to send them to your website. If you have a pixel set up on your website you can retarget to them. We do that as well. There are so many ways to convert people from viewers into tribe members and eventually customers.
That’s one way to do it. The next step is the engagement call to action. The reason you need to do this is because if you get no engagement on your videos you’re not going to be discovered and you’re not going to attract the audience long term.
The evergreen strategy is that you have to boost your engagement in the first 24-48 hours of your video and that gets you ranking higher in YouTube so that when new people are searching for how to build your list on YouTube they are finding me on Page 1.
I’m the first option they click on and all of the sudden they discover me and then they are attracted into my world and into my list and intro my Facebook group. All of the sudden I’m everywhere to them and I’m the only person they want to look to for YouTube advice.
AMY: When you say engagement I always thought for YouTube that it meant views. Is that what you mean by engagement? People watching?
SUNNY: Yes that’s one of the pieces of engagement but what I actually mean are the signals which are things like likes on the video. Comments on the video are really, really important. Then shares and subscribers.
How many people subscribe to your channel after watching the video and how many people are sharing that video across social?
AMY: That’s great to know. I could assume those things mattered but I really, genuinely thought the only thing that mattered was the video views. How do you get those extra engagement pieces to count? How do you get people to engage?
SUNNY: Basically, you do your hook, outcome, and testimonial in the beginning. You go through your sequential steps. You get your engagement by asking for it. I position it at the end of my video.
At the end of my video on how to build your list using YouTube you can say something like, “Now I’ve taught you the steps to build your list using YouTube but you have to get found in order to actually build your list so you want to get my YouTube ranking guide. Click the download below.”
Then you say something like, “If you did enjoy this video I would love to know so I can start to make more content like this and help you build your business faster. Give me a like below if you enjoyed this video. And don’t forget to subscribe for new videos every single week on how to be your own boss and build your own life (which is my tagline), and then make sure you share the video with any of your fellow bosses or anyone who might enjoy this content.”
Also ask them a question. I have a video on this hot script formula on my YouTube channel and I talk about how I got 40,000 on one video. It was a really simple process of asking an engagement call to action in the middle of the video that’s simple.
We have to remember that not everybody eats, sleeps, and breathes online marketing. That’s shocking, I know.
AMY: I don’t understand what you’re talking about.
SUNNY: But, they don’t. So you’re going to have customers out there who don’t necessarily natively know how to use YouTube. You have to tell them and remind them and in the middle of my videos I say things like, “If this is making sense to you write ‘boss’ in the comments below.”
All of the sudden that starts to rack up and it also gets people over the hump of commenting on YouTube. It can be intimidating because they don’t even know how to use the platform and they don’t know where they’re supposed to comment.
You integrate them slowly into engaging with your videos. All of the sudden those same people are leaving really lengthy responses. They are watching every video you post and you are building a tribe and community which is there for every video you post each week and it’s helping you boost your rankings to be discovered by even more people.
AMY: Got it. Did you say you have a YouTube video where you show this in action?
SUNNY: I do, yes.
AMY: I’m going to link to it.
SUNNY: I have a video called YouTube for Entrepreneurs. I believe that’s the title of it. It will explain this exact process to you and I have a lot of videos on similar concepts to this so I’m sure if you start there you will probably surf into watching a few things.
AMY: Guys, in the show notes I’m going to link to some of the videos that relate to what we’re teaching here so you can see Sunny in action. She’s going to walk you through at an even deeper level. I’ve seen so many of her videos and they’re fantastic.
SUNNY: Thank you.
AMY: Cool. So, now are we ready to move on to Phase III?
SUNNY: We are. The one thing I want to say just in Phase II that’s really important, the whole reason we do that hot script formula is that the #1 metric now on YouTube of successful videos and videos that are going to rank #1 in the search results (which is where you want to be) is watch time and retention.
High retention equals high return or high ROI as an entrepreneur. The more of your video people actually watch the higher your video will rank because YouTube is going, “Wow, people are watching the whole thing. This must be the best video on this topic.
We should rank it #1.”
You want to keep people on your channel. You want to keep people binge watching your content and you want to keep people watching your videos for as long as possible so you get the higher rankings. That’s why the hot script formula works so well.
AMY: Guys, remember that I provide a transcript of every episode and so if you want to go back and make sure you really understand that hot script it’s going to be in the transcript.
Perfect, moving on to Phase III. Give it to us.
SUNNY: Okay. Phase III is the evergreen traffic machine. That is the really exciting part about this. You have your profitable content, which is literally acting as a magnet for your ideal customers and your ideal audience because you’re solving the problems they have and that they need solved.
They are coming in through the profitable content. You have your calls to action in place. You have the right script in place to get you ranking high and discovered by people every single day.
Now, how do you make this an evergreen traffic machine? It really comes back to those rankings. If you have engagement on your videos you’re going to achieve first-page rankings.
I have kind of hacked the system and I was able to compete with people who were on YouTube a heck of a lot longer than I was by using this exact strategy. What I did, I basically call this whole thing the attraction strategy.
They have already discovered the attraction strategy. It starts at the top with YouTube. YouTube is where you start. You start with your profitable content piece and then you send them to your conversion point. Once you finish uploading your video on YouTube, within the first 24 to 48 hours the most important thing you do is to distribute the video.
The reason for that is if you’re just uploading a video on YouTube and hoping people find it you’re not going to see much traction. You need to leverage your warm audience to start building those signals (likes, subscribes, shares) so that it tells YouTube this is the best piece of content on this topic and it’s new, fresh content which YouTube totally rewards and will rank higher than older content.
That’s going to help you achieve that first page ranking and the top ranking. You publish the video on YouTube and I immediately send it out to my email list. I put it on Instagram as a teaser. I put it on Facebook and post it on Twitter. I post it on Pinterest and put it out on LinkedIn.
All of my warm audience is notified first about my new videos. Then this creates the machine and a total unfair advantage. Then my audience will go and watch the video. They will like it. They will comment on it. They will share it.
Again, that tells YouTube this is a really good new piece of content, “let’s rank it #1.” Once it’s ranking #1 you’re getting cold traffic all day long. You’re getting people who have never heard of you before and discovering you for the first time, and the example I can give of this, which we tested out last summer because I wondered how far we could really take it if we made a specific offering or course just related to one of our YouTube videos.
We created a piece of profitable content, which was how to create a course. I did a video on that topic. I said, “This is how I created my courses. These are the five steps to creating an online course.” That video is ranked #3, I believe, or #2 out of 32 million results on YouTube.
AMY: Oh my goodness.
SUNNY: In the first 24 hours that video racked up an audience, potential database of 10,000 people across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Instagram Stories, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. When I posted it across those platforms that’s the amount of engagement I got.
I thought, “Okay, cool.” We had about 10,000 people who have engaged with this video and they have gone over the list. Not all 10,000 converted to the list but the people that did were highly, highly targeted people for our eventual offer.
We then created a traffic machine because the video is ranked #2 out of 32 million results. Any time someone looks up how to start an online course I happen to be the second result and over the year I’ve racked up about 40,000 views.
Imagine if even 2% of those 40,000 views turns into an email subscriber, which is the next point, I created a guide for figuring out if you have a profitable course concept. We created a checklist that is associated with video and then we obviously created an offer around that.
It was basically a live masterclass on how to create a course. We just did this as a test and in the first four days of launching this at a $97 price point, completely organically, starting from YouTube we generated $23,000 in profit.
AMY: Wow. That is fantastic.
SUNNY: It works at all levels. I think that’s the really important thing for people to understand. Yes, that was somewhat of a smaller price point. $97 is still a good investment but I have clients who sell $25,000 offers and programs. I have clients that sell $10,000 packages.
Of those clients this is still working for them because they are nurturing a relationship and getting people to convert into email list subscribers or going into their funnels from their videos.
One of my clients with only 1,700 subscribers on YouTube, because they are targeted subscribers they are not going after that viral audience because it’s a targeted audience, he generated $750,000 in revenue for his business within six weeks of implementing his strategy.
AMY: I’m glad you brought that last example up. Some people are listening and they are thinking you got #2 out of over 30 or 40…
SUNNY: Yeah, 32 million results.
AMY: They are like, “Of course you’re going to do good but I’m not going to get #2 out of all of those,” but you just gave us an example of somebody that had 1,700 subscribers. Were they #1 out of millions?
SUNNY: He was ranked #5 in multiple keywords. He was ranked #1 in a few of those keywords. Basically, he teaches more of an ad strategy so he does more paid ad strategy. For a few of his videos he was ranking in at the #5 spot. Even at #5 he was still being clicked on.
AMY: That’s so good. I guess I really want to get real with this. I’ve seen your success stories with your students. I’ve seen that they are creating real businesses and making really good money with their YouTube strategies. I’m guessing some people are thinking, “Alright Sunny, you have 170,000 subscribers so of course you’re going to always rank really well. But I don’t have nearly as many so is this going to work for me?”
SUNNY: This will absolutely work. I have so many people who come into my program who are starting from scratch. I have one gentleman who started the program a year ago and he doesn’t even show his face on camera. Everything he does is through animated videos. He’s talking about software development, of all things.
Using this strategy he is ranked #1 in several categories because he is leveraging every single piece. I think what you really have to understand is that no one is doing every single piece of this process unless you have a “me” behind you saying, “If you don’t do it it’s not going to work.”
He has one video that has over 170,000 views on it and it has translated into thousands of email subscribers for him and he’s just launched his first course. He didn’t have any kind of online business a year ago and he sold 55 slots right out of the gate because he had built this targeted audience through YouTube by picking the right keywords.
I also want you to understand that this is probably the most important part of figuring out how to rank #1. When you are starting a brand new YouTube channel I certainly don’t want you going after massive search topics. That’s not going to help you get found.
I suggest to every single person when you are first getting started or when you have a dormant or small channel to pick topics that are between 100 to 1,000 searches a month in search volume. The tool to use to really identify how to do this is called Keywords Everywhere. It’s a free plugin on Chrome.
It will show you, no matter what you’re searching in YouTube or Google how much search volume there is for that topic per month. You are looking for between 100 to 1,000 searches a month.
The search pool, which is the amount of results you are competing against, you want to keep that as small as possible. So you want to keep it under 100,000 search results because then you have an adequate amount of search volume and you are competing against 32 million or 50 million results when you don’t have the authority within your space.
You start in the shallow end. You start trying to get wins in smaller competition pools. You want to pay attention to the length of time the top ranking videos have been up for. If they’ve been up for years and years and years you have a great opportunity to rank #1 because YouTube wants fresh, new content in each category.
If you can make new content there is a gap that you can fill in. It is 100% possible, and I’ve seen it time and time again. For example, the student I was talking about earlier who had 50 subscribers a year ago and she has the video that has 7.8 million views, again, she started with 50 subscribers that weren’t engaged and weren’t her target audience but she followed the steps of using profitable content and picking the right titles and keywords and she continues to get found and picked up in searched and suggested videos as well.
That’s the great benefit of this as well, if you pick the right titles for your videos not only are you going to be found in search results you will also show up on the right-hand side when someone searches how to get more views on YouTube I can pretty much guarantee if someone clicks on one of my competitors or someone else in this space, and I truly don’t see anyone as a competitor because I think we’re all in this together, but when they click on someone else’s video on that topic I can pretty much guarantee every single time my face and my video is on the right-hand side in suggested.
AMY: That’s so good. I love that. I took some notes and I’m going to summarize real quickly and you tell me if I nailed it. And don’t be shy if I didn’t.
Phase I is to discover profitable content topics for your niche through the research process you shared with us and then follow that up with creating great content. #1?
SUNNY: Perfect.
AMY: Real quick, I have a question with that. If we’re just summarizing Phase I does the length of the video matter?
SUNNY: It does and it doesn’t. I know that’s not the best answer but I explain it, most importantly on YouTube, it’s really important to understand you don’t need to explain the “why”. I mentioned this earlier but if someone’s looking for how to build their list you don’t need to tell them why they need to build their list because they wouldn’t be searching for it if they needed to know the “why”.
Don’t include any fluff or any filler. Don’t include any “why” or anything that explains why they need to know it. Just get right into the meat of the content. That’s why the hot script formula is so, so, so important.
You want to keep it as tight as possible. However, having said that, I have videos that are 15 minutes long and people watch the whole thing because they need to watch the whole thing to get the answer they are looking for.
AMY: Got it.
SUNNY: It depends on what you’re explaining. The biggest thing is not to include any filler.
AMY: I kind of jumped the gun with that question because Phase II is that you are going to script and produce YouTube videos for high conversion using the hot formula you shared with us. HOT is Hook, Outcome, and Testimonial.
SUNNY: Yeah, hook, outcome, testimonial. Exactly.
AMY: A question for you. Tell me again one more time where does the list building come into play with that script?
SUNNY: The list building comes into play in the conversion call to action. You create a video very similar to how you do your podcast.
AMY: That’s what I’m thinking. Yes. Good, I’m on the same page.
SUNNY: It’s very, very similar. You create relevant downloads, guides, opt-ins, PDFs that are completely relevant and related to your video. It’s a very similar process and you can walk through this in real time. If you look up any of my videos on YouTube you will see at the end I’m going to direct you to some sort of opt in lead magnet or download.
That gets you into my world and we can connect further and build a relationship out of that and I know there will be people listening because there is a lot of talk about this that are thinking if they send people off of YouTube then YouTube will penalize you.
They will but they won’t at the same time. I have kind of gotten around this because a lot of people in the past would just strictly send people off of YouTube on every video but what I’m doing now is alternating my strategy. I’m keeping people on my channel by sending people from one video to the next.
If you watch “this” video I recommend you go watch “this” video on my channel too because it’s totally complimentary to this. In that next video I’ll have a download associated with it. I am increasing the watch time but I’m also sending people off of YouTube to grab a download or go to my website to be pixeled or whatever it might be.
The conversion call to action comes into play at the end of the video.
AMY: That makes sense. Finally, in Phase III you leverage your warm audience to increase your rankings on YouTube right away. That makes you discoverable by cold traffic who is searching for an answer to their question or a solution to their problem that only you can answer.
SUNNY: Exactly.
AMY: I am such a good student.
SUNNY: You are. Well done. I think it’s important to understand that even if you don’t have an audience, because I get this question a lot too, you don’t have a warm audience. There are other ways around that.
Even if you don’t have a warm audience to begin with focus on the rest of the steps of this process and start finding places to share your content and videos. That’s why, for us, when we created my YouTube for Bosses course we have created all of these different engagement hubs that are niche related.
We have a business hub where everyone can engage with everyone’s content and support one another. You can find audiences through free Facebook groups. You can find them through forums. You can find them through websites.
You can start building your targeted audience that way to share your video with. You don’t have to have this massive warm audience to begin with. You just have to start building it so you have somewhere to distribute your content.
Even if you have five followers on Instagram that’s still five people who know you and will want to support your content.
AMY: Perfect, I love it. Thank you so very much for these steps. I love that they are clearly defined. They make perfect sense. I’m going to link to some of your videos so people can see it in action. But, where can my listeners find out more about you?
SUNNY: The best place to go is to SunnyLenarduzzi.com and you will find so many resources on there but probably the best place to start, which will outline the exact process we followed for my one client I mentioned who got that 7.8 million view video and built her list completely organically and has just blown up her business in the last year is our Zero to 100,000 Subscribers Guide. You can get it at http://sunnylenarduzzi.com/subscribers.
AMY: Perfect. Thank you so much Sunny. I’m so glad we got to connect here.
SUNNY: Thank you for having me.
AMY: There you have it. Wasn’t Sunny so fantastic? She is such a great teacher, step by step, which you all know is my style so I absolutely love it. I hope this episode got your wheels turning.
Whether you’re going to go all in with YouTube marketing or add it to the mix as a platform to repurpose content that you’re already creating elsewhere don’t miss out on the opportunity to use YouTube as an evergreen lead machine.
Don’t forget that this episode is brought to you by my free masterclass, How To Confidently Create Your First Profitable Course in 60 Days. If you’ve been thinking about a course for a while, if you might even have a course idea but you’re not sure if it’s going to fly then make sure to get on my free masterclass and I’ll walk you through the step-by-step process to get your course up and running.
Go to https://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/courses to grab your spot.
One final thing, are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not I want to encourage you to do so today. I’ve been creating some bonus episodes and the only way you’re going to hear about them going live is if you are subscribed to my podcast.
Take just a few seconds, hit the subscribe button. Most of you listen through Stitcher or iTunes or iHeartRadio so hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and I cannot wait to see you again same place, same time next week. Bye for now.
