"YouTube for Business" Roadmap for Consistent Course Sales with YouTube | Ep. 78

Turn Your YouTube Channel Into a Funnel: Wondering how to make YouTube work for your business in 2026? I'm breaking down some of the components of what I think of as my "YouTube for Business" Roadmap for 2026 to transform your entire channel into a sales funnel that brings in clients and course sales... on autopilot. We’ll cover the power of authentic video marketing, the snowball effect of consistent content, and why now is the time to go all in. Let’s build a business that lasts, together!

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🟣 Video Brand Academy: https://videobrand.link/vba 

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🎧 Video Brand Infusion Podcast: http://meredithmarsh.co/podcast 

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👉 Consistent Sales of Your Course with YouTube: https://youtu.be/GBhulsp0s-4 

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Transcript

This is of course, the perfect time of year to set some things into motion in your business so that. They work for you throughout the entire year so you get a return on that early action, and we're gonna dive into some of those things here. In this video, I wanna share with you some of the components of what I consider to be a.

The YouTube for business roadmap for consistent course sales or sales of your membership, your program, your digital product, or even your services because 2026 introduces some interesting new conundrums. I guess that I think if you're paying attention and if you go all in on YouTube, you will be able to turn those conundrums into opportunities.

So if you're looking for consistent revenue in your business. From the efforts that you put into YouTube, this episode is for you. I'm so excited to dive into it. It's episode number 78, a video brand infusion. My name is Meredith. I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business so that you can generate consistent revenue and become that binge worthy video brand that go-to person in your industry.

And I am. So excited to be helping you with this in 2026 because I have something really fun planned, but I'll talk about that in just a second.

Now one of my personal, um, goals or intentions for 2026 is to grow the business without growing the amount of time I spend on the business, right? Um, everyone wants their business to grow, but most people don't. Wanna do it by spending more time.

And so many business owners are in that same boat. Knowing that. Video marketing and creating video content is so powerful, but also so time consuming. I'm seeing a lot of people go straight to ai. You know, there are some really powerful software options out there for, you know, essentially creating an AI avatar of yourself that looks like you and talks like you and has the same, um, kind of mannerisms as you and.

The nerdy side of me is like, wow, that is actually so cool. There are so many use cases for like, how that could be beneficial, um, how that will be beneficial down the road even for businesses like yours and mine. But I think using AI generated content. As yourself or to be a representative of yourself is a really poor choice.

 I'm talking about your, the content you put on YouTube, your marketing content, like the area of your business where you are attracting an audience, leads, clients, customers.

I think humans want to connect with other humans, and in my opinion, from my experience in my 10 years on YouTube and in business, the human connection is like the most powerful thing about video marketing.

It's like the next best thing to being in person with somebody as far as. Making a connection with somebody, you know, more than just, you know, establishing no, like, and trust, but actually making a human connection. Video marketing is the next best thing to being in person. And when you take the human out of it, I, I mean, what are we doing right?

Like, what are we doing We might be saving time, but I can only imagine we'd be sacrificing, um, a whole lot of other things, including possibly our sanity. Because who, like who are you attracting with your AI generated avatar? I like doing business with people who I feel that there is a connection to not just somebody who's willing to make a transaction with me.

And the reason why this is, uh, this is one of the things that I see as a conundrum that is also an opportunity if you're paying attention, is because. As marketers start to outsource themselves on camera and become less human creating less connection, it's gonna be so much easier for your ideal audience, clients and students to find you and connect with you as a human as long as you keep showing up as a human.

This is exciting to me because. When I first started creating videos on YouTube, I was very much like, it was sort of ingrained in me that your videos have to be polished. They have to look a certain way. You don't make mistakes. You edit out all of your mistakes, all of your mess up. And so there's a lot of time spent in setup.

There's a lot of time, there was a lot of time spent in editing. Um, and. Money spent on gear and equipment and things like that.

And you know, yes, I do have gear and equipment and I do spend time editing, but I mean, I used to spend 10 or 12 hours editing a video 

the truth is if you know anything about me, I do make a lot of mistakes in my videos that get edited out, not so much mistakes or mess ups of words. But where I just like go off track and restart my sentences and that kind of thing, that stuff gets edited out.

And I think we've seen, you know, the, this like long kind of transition from the fancy setup to people using just their cell phone to create their content, even just for their business, which I think is amazing.

And that kind of lends itself to this like human authenticity showing up without a big production, without like a production team or anything like that.

and that like authentic low production value, um, vibe is. Proof that you are just a human.

and so a huge component of what I consider to be the YouTube for business roadmap for 2026 is showing up. Showing up period, right? Showing up on camera, showing your face. Letting people hear your voice, not the AI generated or AI synthesized version of it, just so that you can save time and create more content.

It's not about creating more content, it's about creating more connection. it's gonna become easier than ever. It. If you show up in your full human form with all of your mistakes and imperfections and low production value and, and all of that, I'm excited about that because it means you don't have to go out and buy a bunch of gear.

You don't have to spend 12 hours editing your videos to make them perfect. Your job is to simply become a stellar communicator in your content. Rather than a high production value, flashy look at me like, um, web celebrity. 

And this term the quiet rich came to me. Um. With a little help from Gemini, not gonna lie. I instantly resonated with it because it's so easy to get, um, sort of mesmerized by, um, like these celebrity entrepreneurs, web celebs who have these big businesses and these huge followings, and they're doing these big launches and it's easy to get mesmerized by thinking.

Oh, I have to be that to be successful, I have to be known by everyone in my industry. I have to be loud, I have to be everywhere. I have to be this like, um, sort of like perfect, but not a hundred percent real version of myself. Uh, almost like playing a character in a lot of ways. 2026. Is the year that you decide, I don't wanna do that.

And maybe you do, maybe you do wanna be like, maybe you do want millions of followers and a big, um, like kind of footprint online. And if that's you, that's great. That's wonderful. Love that for you. I love the idea of having a quietly successful, peaceful business where all you have to do is show up. For your audience, show up for your clients and customers.

And because you have the systems in place, because you have the funnels in place, because you have

a business that serves your clients and customers, even when you're not there. It takes so much of the pressure off in 2026. I think because of AI and because it's so easy to IFI everything in your business these days, I think 2026 is the year you say, oh, I don't have to have a bajillion dollar business to be successful, to have a steady, stable income in my actual life.

I just have to show up and be real.

Now being that it is the first month of the year as I record this video, but even if you watch this in the future, I want you to just anchor something in yourself. Um, right now, the biggest mistake that I see from some members who come into Video Brand Academy or clients that I work with is they give up way too soon.

On, not just on YouTube, but on their business, on their ideas as a whole. And if you want YouTube to work for you, for your business to generate those consistent leads and sales in your business, you have to give it a good chunk of time to build. Momentum, and you've probably heard me say this and you've probably heard every single YouTube, you on the planet say this, YouTube is a long game, right?

What I think a lot of people hear when they hear YouTube is a long game is that it takes a long time to grow your channel, to build your audience to like see results happen. What I want you to hear when you hear YouTube is a long game is that it means it lasts a long time. It doesn't have to take a long time, and by the way, you have no control over how long it will take for you to see results.

You do have control over the actions that you take over time to build that momentum and the system and the process that you follow to make that momentum happen faster, which is what we do inside a video brand academy. But YouTube lasts a long time. That's a long game that I'm talking about. I'm not talking about YouTube being a marathon of like it's hard work, hard work, hard work for 26 something miles, just so that you can say, I did it.

I'm talking about YouTube paying off for you over the long haul. Meaning consistent leads. Consistent sales, consistent revenue in. Your business. That's what I mean when I say YouTube is a long game. And when I first started my channel, I was, um, you've probably heard me talk about this before, but I had a full-time job.

I had two little kids. My husband had like a weird, um, job hours. And I had this idea to start some kind of like a content creation. I really wanted to start a blog. That was kind of what I set out to do. But I was in this like space of every hobby that I ever tried. Maybe not every single one, but almost every hobby that I ever tried, I gave up on after, you know, a couple of months I would go down a rabbit hole, I would hyper fixate.

And now, now we know the term hyper fixate. Um, back then it was just like going down a rabbit hole. and then I would never follow it through after a month or two, or three or four, and for some reason, this idea that I had in my head to start a blog and start a YouTube channel and do this whole thing, for some reason, what I had in my head was I so very badly want to make this work.

How do I prevent myself from giving up? How do I prevent myself from going down the rabbit hole and then saying, nah, nevermind. I don't really feel like doing that. I focus so hard on. Wanting to create something that worked that I could say, yes, I did that it's working so that I could keep doing it. And I asked myself, what do, what, how do I prevent myself from like, um, burning out on it and just deciding to never do it again?

ultimately, I told myself, do this every week for a year, and then decide like, you can quit if you want. You can decide This isn't for me, this isn't working. I don't like it. If you. But if you really wanna see if it works, and if this is something you wanna keep doing, give it a hundred percent for a year, which for me meant publishing one video a week for a year, and then decide is it working, is it not working?

Do I wanna keep doing it? That's all I did. I just made the decision, I'm gonna do this every week for a year and then decide.

So nowadays I think of this as committing to the commitment. It's not committing to like, oh, I'm gonna go after some outcome. 'cause when I first started, I had no idea. I didn't know. I didn't know what kind of outcome or results or goals or anything to set. I was just committed to the commitment, committed to the showing up every week and seeing what came of it.

Right. And so now when I have, um, goals or intentions that I'm not super clear on what the result might be from it, I just think your job is to commit to the commitment. It's not to commit to the outcome, it's to commit to the commitment of doing the action of doing the thing, 

Now for me back then, 2015 is when I started publishing videos every week on YouTube. And then by the end of that year, I had 2000 subscribers on YouTube. But remember, I set out to be a blogger, so I was just like, I wanna grow my blog and make enough money from that. Um. To be able to quit my job.

Now I didn't know how I was gonna generate revenue.

but I didn't focus on any of that. I just focused on committing to the commitment for 12 months. And if there's one thing, well, I want you to take away all of the key points from this video, but if there's one thing that I want you to just decide right now, It's that if you decide to go all in on YouTube and really utilize all of the features and all of the benefits of having this longevity platform, throwing leads your way consistently. If you go all in on YouTube, go all in for 12 monthsAnd look at the actual data, not just, I'm gonna do this for a little bit until I get sick and tired of it, because you're probably not going to get any kind of result that you want from it if you only give it a couple weeks or a couple of months. That's just the nature of YouTube. But remember, a long game means long-term results, not long time to get results.

and speaking of going all in on YouTube this year, I wanna let you know that I put together the. Most fun, most epic three day workshop for you that I'm running at the end of this month. It's called All In On YouTube 2026. And together we're going to build your Evergreen sales machine with YouTube. this is a completely free event, but you do have to register for it So I'll put a link down in the description, um, or the show notes. gonna turn your YouTube channel into a magnet of consistent sales and leads to your course, your program, your digital product without paid ads and without having to do webinars.

this is what I've been building. This is the business I've been building over the last 10 years. Starting from having no idea what I was doing to, um, having lots of roadblocks, lots of potholes, lots of mistakes.

I wanna help you kind of skip over all of that stuff and just start. Bringing in a consistent flow of leads and sales in your business so that you can have a steady stream of income in your life.

So if you wanna go all in on YouTube this year, or even if you are thinking about going all in on YouTube this year, but you're not quite sure, make sure you register for the All In on YouTube 20 26 3. Day workshop that is happening at the end of this month. Like I said, I'll put a link down in the description below.

If you're watching this after that workshop has happened, still go click that link because I'll probably have a little something in there for you too. Now let's get back to this YouTube for business roadmap concept because if you, if you're anything like me, I do like to consume like the, like grow your channel this year type of content from all of the gurus out there. I think you probably know who I'm talking about.

Um, you know, there's a handful of YouTube gurus who are very. Uh, very, very skilled, but also have a lot of experience and a lot of expertise with growing your YouTube channel. And here's what I find really interesting about that, and this is something I'm going to dive much deeper in, into, in the all in on YouTube, um, workshop.

These YouTube guru channels are very, very good at. Educating you and growing your audience with YouTube, and they're also very, very good at growing their own business by educating you on YouTube, but very, very few of them are educating you on growing your business with YouTube. Do you know what I mean?

They're all like, grow your audience, grow your audience, grow your channel, grow your channel. And they're building their business, but they're not telling you how to build your business. They're telling you how to build your channel.and one of the really tough lessons that I learned a couple of years ago, um, in this. YouTube content creation online business space is that if I focus on growing my channel and growing my audience, then I'm not focusing on growing my business. And guess what happens? The business doesn't grow. Channel gross business doesn't

Amazing how that works, right? Like what a shock, what a surprise. and what I discovered through educating myself on things like sales psychology and messaging and like marketing and positioning as a whole.

If you take the YouTube ness out of it. It's no different than the messaging, the marketing, and the positioning of any other business.

once I started integrating or like kind of infusing video brand infusion, sort of born out of this concept, once I started infusing. Sell psychology and messaging into my regular everyday YouTube content. That's when I started to see that as my channel grew, as my audience grew, my business was growing.

so the way that I think about this for an online business, for a, a business where YouTube is like your primary platform where you're growing your audience and where you are bringing in your leads and sales, is that messaging is the way that you connect.

You and your offer, your product, your course, et cetera, the way that you connect you and your product to your ideal clients and customers problem that they're trying to solve. It's the way that you connect those two things messaging is. The reason why I'm able to grow my audience and my business bring in leads and sales consistently without having to run constant webinars every month, a webinar here, a webinar there, or without having to constantly be selling in my videos.

Messaging is the reason I'm able to make consistent sales and generate consistent revenue without constant selling. And I'm so excited to dive more into this messaging component in the YouTube for Business Workshop that All in YouTube 2026 workshop, which I'll link to down below,

Now, as I was putting my notes together for this video, I asked myself if I was making this video for like someone who already is inside Video Brand Academy or somebody who already is a client that I'm talking to face to face. What is something that I want them to hear, that I want them to know, that I want them to like?

Internalize and sort of, um, accept about YouTube. I've already mentioned some of them. It's a long game and you have to be a real human on camera and infuse your messaging into your content. But one of the, um, one of the things I keep seeing in conversations that I'm having, not, not all the time, not every person, but I keep seeing this, um, idea.

I'm Some people are starting to approach YouTube, like, I'm going to go all in on YouTube. I'm gonna start my YouTube channel as a business, and then I'm gonna take my existing sales funnel that's over here, that's off YouTube. I'm gonna plug it in. I'm just gonna like, boop, plug it right, right into YouTube.

And I think there are some ways of making that work, but. The way that I teach YouTube, the strategy that I teach inside a video brand academy, and what I'm gonna be obviously diving into in the All In on YouTube workshop is that in order to really harness the power of YouTube, that like the algorithms, really what you're doing, what you want to be doing is turning your YouTube channel.

Into a funnel. Not plugging your funnel into your channel, but making the whole channel become a funnel for your business.

the problem with saying, okay, here's my channel and here's my funnel, and we're just gonna plug these two things into each other, is you start to like. Back yourself into a corner a little bit in terms of what you post on your channel. Because if you only have this one little connection to like, this is my sales funnel and this is it, this is all I got, then you can't really create content outside of anything unless it like.

Leads people directly to that specific funnel. When your whole channel is a funnel, every video that you post feeds the whole funnel. it's like, it's like a snowball, right? It just like compounds. It gets bigger and bigger. Not because you are putting in more effort, but because you're adding just a little bit to it every single time.

the idea of here's my channel, here's my funnel, let's plug them in, is a, it's a very, like Facebook ads, meta ads, way of thinking about it.

And it misses so much of the value and the benefits of building your binge-worthy video brand on YouTube.

Now I do have a video coming up in, I think a couple of weeks about the different types of YouTube funnels that you can create with your channel to turn your channel into a funnel. Um, the backstage YouTube funnel is what I do and what I teach inside of VBA. There's also a playlist funnels. I've tried that before and I'm gonna kind of break down.

I'm gonna break down the breakdown of why ultimately, I switched from the playlist funnel idea to this backstage YouTube funnel idea, and we'll get into that in a couple of weeks and in the workshop as well. But I want you to start thinking about the bigger picture of. Turning your channel into a funnel rather than plugging your funnel into your channel.

Because the strategies and the tactics that you use as you create your new content, as you kind of like put fuel in this engine that you're creating, that's how that snowball kind of starts to 

happen. Now, I've talked about the spiderweb strategy before on

 But the spiderweb strategy is like a planning tool and a growth strategy. every growth strategy that I teach inside of Video Brand Academy is based on the foundation of this spiderweb strategy, creating this spiderweb effect.

And this is really important for. Those of you who you are an expert in your field, you know what you're talking about, but your channel numbers are small.

You know, you have like 12 subscribers. You're getting like 12 videos, 12 views on your videos. And so even though you know what you're talking about, if someone is like, doesn't know you, doesn't know your stuff, doesn't know if you know what you're talking about yet, it can sometimes be really easy to kind of get into your head about.

How am I really establishing myself as an expert on YouTube when I only get 12 views on my videos? That's why the snowball effect in the spiderweb strategy is so important

because it's not like. You publish a video, you get one view. You publish two videos, you get two views, you publish three videos, maybe you get 10 views. It's more like you publish 52 videos over the year, and the videos that got one, two, and three views when you first publish them are going to slowly get 10, a hundred thousands of views over time because as you build on the snowball.

You are bringing more people to your channel and to you. It's not like you're always only gonna have 12 views on that one video. You know what I mean? You're gonna have 12 views maybe when you first publish it. You gotta start somewhere, but over time, you're bringing people to your channel, you're infusing your messaging into your content and creating that snowball effect And as long as you don't give up too soon, your videos are gonna get more impressions and more views the longer they are on the platform.

And this, my friend, is one of the reasons why I am such a huge proponent of YouTube over Instagram or. What else is there? LinkedIn or TikTok or Facebook where the content you publish gets views and then stops getting views on YouTube. Your content can get views and then keep getting views for days, months, years down the road.

Those views turn into leads, those leads turn into sales, and the snowball effect happens because you turned your YouTube channel into a funnel.

Not because you got on a content creation hamster wheel and fed the Instagram feed and the LinkedIn feed and the Facebook feed and the TikTok feed. It's because you built actual assets for your business that pay you back over time. Can you tell, I'm so excited about this. We're going to go into so much more about this in the All In on YouTube 2026 workshop happening in a couple of weeks.

Don't forget to put a link down in the show notes and the description. It's completely free. Just drop your email in there so that you get the official invite.

because 2026 is the year that you stop waiting for something to happen, waiting for someone to knock on your door with a big. Payday and you make it happen. You make it happen by generating consistent sales of your course, program, digital product, or otherwise online offer.

and it all starts by going all in on YouTube in 2026. is gonna be good. You're gonna love it. And more importantly, you're gonna love what you create from it. At the end of 2026,