Treating YouTube Like a Lead Gen Machine is a TRAP | Ep. 50

I know that many businesses view YouTube as a powerful lead generation machine. But the truth is, if you treat YouTube solely as a lead gen tool, you'll actually stifle your channel's growth. In this video, I'll break down the real key to using YouTube for business growth - it's about building a thriving community, not just collecting leads.

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Transcript

I know you've heard that YouTube can be a really powerful lead generation machine for your business, but the brutal truth is that if you treat YouTube like a lead generation machine, all you're going to do is essentially ensure that it never becomes one for you. Like it's going to kill your growth. Today I wanna break down the real puzzle of using YouTube for business growth. We're gonna go way beyond just using it for lead generation, and I wanna help you build something much more powerful. If you're new here, my name is Meredith. This is Video Brand Infusion, and I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business so that you can build a thriving video brand, grow your audience, and be the go-to person in your niche. Yesterday in the Wendy's drive-through, I had the most bizarre experience. I took my 14-year-old daughter and her friend to a baseball game to watch one of their friends play. On the way home, they wanted to stop at Wendy's. And let's be honest, I did too, because have you experienced the new Wendy's Frosties with like chocolate sauce on top? They had a Girl Scout's thin mint version that was so good, and now they have a brownie batter version. I was in the mood for a sweet treat. They wanted burgers and fries. We ordered, we pulled up to the window. But there was a gentleman doing the drinks and putting the food together. He was the guy that works at the window that hands you your food. As he was getting our stuff together, he was actively being fired. His manager was telling him, you can go home now. He said, why my shift's not over? And the manager said, 'cause you're fired. He's handing us our food, telling his manager, just let me do my job, dude. Now, I don't know what went on before we got to the window. I don't know what his work history has been. But it did honestly seem like he didn't wanna be fired. He wanted the job. He wanted to do the work, and he told the guy, just let me do my job, dude. As I was making notes for this episode, that's the story that stuck out in my head. That's actually the phrase that I kept coming back to. Just let me do my job, dude. One of the mistakes that I see often, not so much with my clients and students, but people that I run into at business conferences or marketing conferences, what I observe is this idea that YouTube is this ultra-powerful lead generation machine, which it is, and it can be. But the mistake that I see people making is treating it like that's all it is. It's a lead generation machine, like it's some kind of an ATM or something. So if you've got a great business, you have a great offer, you know you have a course or a program that converts when you get it in front of the right people, and you know that YouTube has massive reach, so you can use YouTube to get your stuff in front of more of those right people. Yes, YouTube can be an incredible engine for audience growth and list building and generating revenue. I've built my business that way. But if you've been approaching YouTube in this hyper-focused, getting the leads transactional kind of way, I wanna help you get out of that trap so that YouTube actually wants to recommend your content to more and more people for you. Now I always find that thinking about building a business or growing a business, there are multiple pieces of a puzzle, right? When you first start, you start with one piece, you find another piece, you add a third piece, and you're trying to kind of get the right pieces in the right place. You need them to fit together; they need to be cohesive. And you're always adding onto it to ultimately make an image, like make a cohesive picture of something that you're proud of, that you want to work in, that you want to work on. For an online business, some of those puzzle pieces are like your offer. What does it do for people? What's the promise? What is the price? How do you deliver it? What is the sales system? Do you do webinars? Do you have a YouTube funnel? Like what I do? Do you just email your list and let them know the doors are open, which is also something that I do sometimes. There are pieces of the offer puzzle, there are pieces of that sales system puzzle, so it would make sense that in order to feed your sales system, in order to get people to your offer, fill your calendar, fill your course, generate consistent sales of your programs, there are some pieces of the puzzle for the content that you create to make all that stuff happen. You already know that YouTube is the most powerful way to grow your audience online. It's easy to think that the final piece to the puzzle is, I just need leads. I'll just make my YouTube content and the leads will come my way. But the reality is if you only ever approach it as this is the leads piece of my puzzle, you're missing out on the entire power of the YouTube algorithm, which is fueled by community, audience, and viewers. I have a step-by-step process for this inside of my YouTube funnel course, but let me kind of give you the basics here because step number one is, it sounds kind of kindergarten level for a YouTube strategy, but you have to have clarity on your niche. If you already have an offer and you already have a sales system, then you probably already have clarity on your niche. But for YouTube, we want to make sure that you know specifically who you are creating content for. What are you helping them achieve? Why do they want that, and why are you the best person to help them? If you can answer those four questions off the top of your head, you've got that puzzle piece nailed. It's perfect. If you can explain those four things to a complete stranger in a way that they understand, then again, you've got it nailed. It's perfect. The second piece of the puzzle is something that, in my experience, has been really difficult for certain people to grasp. By certain people, I mean people who have only ever seen Instagram as the one right best platform for growing an audience online. For some reason, people who focus on Instagram have a really hard time grasping what I'm about to say. It is incredibly easy to grow your audience on YouTube and attract leads on YouTube and build a community on YouTube when you become the subject matter expert on the mistakes your ideal clients are making, the objections and obstacles that they're running into when they're trying to reach the desired results that they want, the problems they are having, the alternative solutions that they might be seeking out and trying and not having success with, and the tools they're using, the physical products, the software that your ideal clients and customers are using day in and day out and struggling with and trying to use, and still not getting results they're looking for. They're going to YouTube to find the answers. When you are the subject matter expert on all those things, you become the thought leader, the go-to person in your niche because you are impossible to ignore. Every time they search for something on Google, you are the one that shows up. Every time they search for something on YouTube, you are the one that shows up. Every time they search for something in ChatGPT or Perplexity, or Claude or Gemini or Grok or whatever's coming next, you are the one that is referenced. I literally had somebody two days ago leave a comment on one of my videos telling me that ChatGPT recommended that they go watch my video on Descript. Thank you, ChatGPT. Appreciate that. When you have your niche clarity and you know the mistakes, objections, and problems that your ideal clients are using struggling with, searching for, thinking about, and discussing with their friends, the final piece of the puzzle is to create simple long-form videos once a week on those specific topics around your single niche: simple videos, specific topics, single niche. Show up with answers, show up with solutions, show up and give to your community and your audience and let those people self-select that they want to work with you further. Let those people decide to get on your email list and download your freebie, your lead magnet, watch your webinar, whatever it is that you have going on. There's an infinite number of possible puzzle piece combinations to this, right? But none of those pieces matter if you don't have an audience, a community, and a way to attract people to your offers. YouTube can be that lead generation machine, but you have to treat it like a community. You have to show up, give value, teach something, let people see that you are the subject matter expert and the thought leader in your niche so that YouTube sees you're contributing to the platform and it wants to push your videos out to more and more people. If you've been using YouTube as a means to generate leads and build your list, you're in the right place for sure. If your channel's not growing, then you are kind of stifling YouTube and making it so it's really hard for it to do its job, like YouTube is telling you, just let me do my job, dude. If you have good, strong lead magnets and they're just not getting out to enough people because your channel's not growing, it might be because you're missing a few of the YouTube fundamental pieces of the puzzle, and I covered that in the very last episode, episode number 49, how to build a binge-worthy YouTube channel without spending forever creating videos. I'll put a link to that episode in the show notes. The next time you drive past a Wendy's, I want you to pull in and order a small chocolate brownie batter Frosty. Let me know what you think.