Pod Insights MarTech Podcast ™ // Marketing + Technology = Business Growth Extracting Leads From YouTube Views About this episode Converting YouTube viewers into qualified leads is a persistent marketing challenge. Nate Woodbury, CEO of Be The Hero Studios and producer of over 60 successful YouTube channels, shares his proven approach for using YouTube as a lead generation tool rather than an ad revenue platform. His strategy focuses on creating highly specific search-optimized content that answers targeted questions, building relationships with viewers before implementing strategic calls-to-action, and offering value-aligned lead magnets including mini-courses, webinars, and downloadable resources that convert viewers into business opportunities. Show Notes Connect With:Nate Woodbury: Website // LinkedInThe MarTech Podcast: Email // LinkedIn // TwitterBenjamin Shapiro: Website // LinkedIn // TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth, and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iHereEverything.com.
0:25 Speaker 01 From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55% to 65% open rate.
0:36 Speaker 02 Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.
0:42 Speaker 03 Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours.
0:46 Speaker 01 If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.
0:53 Speaker 00 Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world-class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's the host of the Martech Podcast, Benjamin Shapiro.
1:15 Speaker 04 It's no secret the importance of YouTube for marketers is growing and growing and growing. In the past decade, we've seen the channel more from a dumping ground for user-generated content to the go-to platform for media consumption for every brand. From entertainment to how-tos, client testimonials, and now even podcasts, a presence on YouTube is table stakes for marketers. But here's the question most marketers are struggling with. How do you convert YouTube viewers into leads? I'm Benjamin Shapiro, and joining me is Nate Woodbury, the CEO of Be The Hero Studios. Nate has produced over 60 successful YouTube channels that specialize in using YouTube
1:55 Speaker 04 for business, and today he's going to explain to us how to turn your viewers into customers. Nate, welcome to the Martech Podcast.
2:04 Speaker 05 Thanks for having me here. It's a fun journey and I love teaching this stuff.
2:07 Speaker 04 You know, I'm excited to have you back. You were on the Martech Podcast back in the day when we were audio only. Oh my God, it feels like a million years ago and now podcasts are audio, video, social. We convert them using AI into newsletters and blogs, all sorts of fun stuff happening in the media creation space. And here you are trucking away, helping marketers and business people figure out how to use YouTube for business. Let's start off at the top and talk about your use case. How are you using YouTube to turn viewers into leads?
2:41 Speaker 05 The main thing that I want to help people understand is that there are two paths to success on YouTube. You'll hear a lot of advice from all these different YouTube gurus, but most of them are going down a path to ad revenue. They're going down a path to turning YouTube into a business where what I'm really good at is helping somebody who has an existing business and they leverage YouTube as a tool for lead generation. So when you hear all this advice out there, you have to differentiate. Is this advice for the path to ad revenue or is this advice for the path to lead generation? And they're drastically different approaches. I focus on search traffic.
3:22 Speaker 05 Search engines have really changed. Search engines used to be you have a website that you're wanting to get ranked at the top of Google and you put a lot of spam out on the internet to send authority to that website. None of that works anymore, thankfully, but Google is now a content search engine. So it works great now. You can create a piece of content that people are searching for. And search engines and AI have gotten so good that when we do a search, we are typing in a lot more words. We're being a lot more specific because it works. It gets us a lot better results. So when you can make a video, let's say that answers a really specific question, let's say it's a 10-word question or an eight-word question. It's way more specific than we could have done
4:04 Speaker 05 years ago. There's just hundreds of thousands of these really, really specific questions. Well, what you can do is you can find the questions that you Your target audience is asking, and that's a goldmine because you know exactly who they are, what they need, and you can make videos to answer their questions. So instead of having a nurturing play where we're just making content that we think our audience is going to like, and we nurture that audience and hope to grow it. Now it becomes a marketing play. We have a video that's intended for people who've never heard of us before, but we're pulling in these people through search. It's a game changer. It works extremely well.
4:40 Speaker 04 It's an interesting strategy, and I like the sort of bifurcation of there's media businesses and there's businesses that use media. I think that's really smart. And I think that often that gets confused for businesses because they think that they need to be creators. And people like me who are trying to build audiences in part for lead generation for our production business, but also we monetize through sponsorship and hopefully a little YouTube ad revenue here or there. But that practice of going through and using YouTube essentially as an SEO tool is interesting, but it begets the fundamental question today, which is, okay, cool. So I get people to click on my YouTube video that answers their question.
5:25 Speaker 04 Now I'm not just writing blog posts, I'm creating media. Then they watch my video. I think where most marketers are getting lost is the, but then what? Somebody comes, I've matched intent with content, but the conversion happens off the YouTube platform. Talk to me about bridging the gap there.
5:44 Speaker 05 I see this in my mind. I can't separate it is there's a two-step approach. So the quick answer is going to be what's step two? So I'll give you that for sure. But the reason I started talking about step one, step one is we got to build a relationship first. So, and this is different from a paid ad campaign, right? Paid ads, you're putting your promo content right in front of new eyeballs. But with this approach on YouTube, people find you through search and you're not pitching to them. You're not getting a lead at this point. You're just answering their question and you're building a relationship. I mean, imagine there's a real specific question. They watch a 10-minute video of You really going in depth and now there's this relationship. So now we go to step two. Step two is at the end of the video, you have a call to action.
6:29 Speaker 05 You have a simple free gift that you give them.
6:32 Speaker 04 Ooh, a gift.
6:33 Speaker 05 And there's typically two calls to action. One call to action could be, hey, now that you've watched video one, go watch video two.
6:38 Speaker 04 Right.
6:39 Speaker 05 And be specific, but then the second type of call to action is this free gift or this lead magnet. It's like, hey, now that you've learned this principle, I have a resource that I want to give to you that will help you implement this principle, or it'll help you learn it more in depth, like a free mini course or whatever. So because you've built that relationship, you've given them value. And if that lead magnet or that gift really relates to what they've been searching for, they're going to want that free gift. So they go to your landing page and they give you their contact information in order to get that gift.
7:09 Speaker 04 Talk to me about the delivery vehicle. You mentioned you're integrating essentially your call to action into your content, into your video. There's a couple of other experiences in YouTube where we go through this video. And at the end, we're going to say, hey, everybody go to be the hero studios and check out Nate's video starter course. We're going to talk about it. There's the promotional widget at the end of a YouTube video, your end card. There is your links in your description. Are there any other methodologies for moving people from YouTube into a lead capture magnet?
7:46 Speaker 05 So when it's a brand new channel, you're not able to put your own links into cards or end screens yet, which is a clickable link on the screen. And the numbers change now. Once you get to 500 subscribers and you get to 3,000 hours of watch time, you can join that partner program.
8:01 Speaker 04 Hang on, is it both 500 subscribers and 3,000 hours of watch time or one, it's both?
8:06 Speaker 05 Yeah, it used to be 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours, but in January that lowered down to 500 and 3,000. But you need both.
8:13 Speaker 04 Oh, well, that's nice.
8:14 Speaker 05 Yeah, very nice. What that allows you to do is a card is a clickable element that can pop up in the top left corner of the video. And it's a clickable element. You can have that link to your website or the end screen is the final 20 seconds of a video. You can have something appear on the screen to go to your website. So we use those. Once you're in the partner program, we'll also use the description. The description isn't really important for SEO. I mean, I'm the SEO guy, but everything that people tell you, that other people tell you about what's important for SEO on YouTube, it doesn't really work. You can leave the keyword field blank. The description isn't going to help you with SEO. But what the description will help you with is it's a sales page for you.
8:54 Speaker 05 If people are going to go through the effort to click on the hard to find little down arrow and open up your description, what are they looking for, right? If they're looking for a link that you mentioned in the video, make sure they find it easily. If they're looking for information about you or about your website, any other resources you have, just list it there in a way that's clean to understand. We'll also put in there timestamps that turn into chapters, and that's a functionality for YouTube. So we put stuff like that in there. But going back to the question of, so we certainly put it in the description. And then I like to buy a simple URL that I can redirect. So if my landing page is such and such domain.com forward slash free gift, I'm not going to say that lengthy thing. I might buy the domain natesfreegift.com.
9:39 Speaker 05 I've got several domains and you can't use any if your name is hard to spell. Like Angelique is a client of mine. I'm like, you know,
9:46 Speaker 04 Angie, it is.
9:48 Speaker 05 Yeah. So you buy a simple domain that's memorable. So when you're editing the video and you say, go to, let's just pretend natesfreegift.com. I don't have that domain. It would appear on the screen in the video. It's memorable. So if people want to type it in themselves, they can. We put it on a card or an end screen. In that case, the end screen, if it's the end of the video, and we put it in the description telling them, I will put that in the description below. So any way that you can get people there, the better.
10:16 Speaker 04 I can't get my mind off of, you can't put links in videos when you're just starting a new channel, which seems like a threshold for most marketers where they're just starting a YouTube channel for business. They want to redirect traffic, but they can't until they have 500 subscribers. I'm assuming the reason why that is the case is YouTube doesn't want a bunch of people just coming onto the platform, creating a ton of low quality accounts to drive traffic. Is there another reason why you think they're blocking people from redirecting off the platform?
10:48 Speaker 05 That's a pretty good guess. I don't know for certain, but that makes sense to me. There is a lot of spam, like in the comments section, there's a lot of garbage that goes on where people will create a fake account and go in and reply to comments as if they're the creator of that channel. So it makes sense that they've got some barriers, you know, they've got this platform, we can upload as much storage as we want and to put some limits and parameters, their partner program is the real deal. It's not a gimmick. The tools that they provide through the YouTube analytics is just unbelievable. Like if you compare that to analytics on Facebook or LinkedIn, it's, I don't know, a thousand times better. I would just say, let that be a challenge. If you're going to be serious about YouTube.
11:30 Speaker 04 I keep thinking about how much it costs to get around that where you use Google advertising, but YouTube's sort of integrated advertising platform. And it's, I think you said 500 subscribers. It probably costs a buck or two a subscriber. So there's a thousand bucks and then you got to get to 3,000 hours of watch time. So it's like a couple of grand to basically get into the partner platform, assuming you could use advertising to buy all those metrics.
11:56 Speaker 05 I don't recommend that route.
11:58 Speaker 04 Go on, tell me why.
11:59 Speaker 05 Well, there's two different things we're talking about here. And let me even take a step back. So if we talk about the difference between marketing and nurturing, marketing, the way I define it is you're getting in front of people who've never heard of you before. So what people call social media marketing, they're like, yeah, I've got all this content. It goes out all the time. So let's say they do a post to Facebook. Are they actually marketing or are they nurturing their friends? If they post on LinkedIn, are they marketing or are they nurturing their connections? Nurturing is very important to do. It's the next step after marketing. But think about your email list. You send out an email to all your email subscribers, you're nurturing. Same with a podcast, your listeners, right? So, well, then what is marketing? How do we market? And I kind of defined it or wrapped it up into three different ways.
12:43 Speaker 05 One is paid marketing, paid ads. You're paying to get in front of these new audiences. And there's pros and cons to paid ads. You can have a video go viral. Now, that's not really something you can control. It's pretty unpredictable if a video. It does go viral 99% of the time, and I'm just making up that number, but I think that's accurate. 99% of the time, it's not your target audience that's seeing the video. The third way is search. You can actually turn content into a marketing content just by making sure you have search built into it. So if I know what people are searching for, I create that content. Then that content will be in front of those people who've never heard of me before. So that becomes marketing.
13:24 Speaker 04 You're right, I'm trying to cut the line with my thought process, which is if I invest $2,500 into buying 500 subscribers and marketing my content to get the 3,000 hours of watch time. Then in my next video, after I've made that investment, I can put links in the video, which the video is great for nurture as well, but I also have the demand capture hook there, or at least an additional one, other than what I'm saying in the content and what's in the description. So I'm more like, you can buy your way out of those minimum thresholds to be able to have the other hook that seems to be the most relevant way to get traffic off of the platform.
14:05 Speaker 05 It might be worth a try. It's always, you can always experiment with things. I don't see it as being a big enough benefit because you can get a simple domain, tell people, click the link below, and perhaps you will get a small percentage higher, more people that will click and go to that page if it is more user friendly there. But at the same time, if you don't have a solid enough foundation of a channel to even qualify for the partner program, the number of leads and views and traffic are going to be minimal anyway.
14:33 Speaker 04 So let's talk about that. I want to double back to with marketers, understanding some of the lead capture mechanisms. How do we figure out if it's worth the investment? If I'm sitting here and I've got a thriving business, but I want to figure out if YouTube is right for me, what are the channels and what are the signals I'm looking at?
14:53 Speaker 05 I look at what is working currently? How are you currently generating leads? And what type of leads are they coming from? And if you've got a paid ad campaign that's working well, then potentially, and I'll give you some more criteria as well, but then potentially that would be a good place to just start sending these YouTube leads and expect a much higher quality lead. The other criteria, though, if you're focusing on YouTube search, traffic, how to content, answering people's questions is the best type of content to go after that. Well, does that match your business? Do you have an educational component in your business? Like for a public speaker or a coach or a consultant or a course creator? Do you have to educate people? Or do you educate people along the way? So that's kind of a criteria as well. But if that does apply,
15:38 Speaker 05 then you're going to be able to really build a relationship and generate a much higher lead quality that way. And you'll have momentum on your channel. So when you get to the point of that call to action, you have the audience that's there. You'll have enough subscribers.
15:51 Speaker 04 Let me boil that down, and I want to make sure I get it right because I think that's really important. If you're thinking about starting a YouTube channel, the things that you need to think about are, number one, do you have an existing funnel? Right? Can you make sure that your funnel is working through other paid advertising channels? So if you drive traffic, you know that the capture mechanism works. And number two, do you have something to say? Are you teaching? Are you educating? Is there something that people want to hear that you can say that's worth putting into a video? Am I getting that right?
16:22 Speaker 05 Yeah. And here's something to add to that. So are we turning YouTube into a business? Or are we taking our business and having YouTube assist our business and generate? So if we're the latter, if we have a business, well, what does that mean? That means that we know how to get customers. We know how to have sales conversations with them. We have a product or service that we're selling and we fulfill and we're getting good reviews. Right? So if we have a business, that's what we're talking about. If people are at the very beginning of all of the above and they're like, yeah, I want to create a YouTube channel that generates leads for my business. So does that mean you're creating your business at the same time?
17:01 Speaker 04 It seems like you're getting into the awareness building versus lead generation. Right? Are you using YouTube to get in front of people so they know who you are? Or do you have a business where you can take leads from YouTube? Give me an example of somebody that you've helped move from, I'm trying to build awareness to now I'm generating leads. How do you bridge that gap?
17:22 Speaker 05 I'll give you a couple of real examples that are really clear and we'll use big, successful ones. So Mr. Beast, the biggest YouTube channel there is.
17:29 Speaker 04 I've heard of him.
17:30 Speaker 05 Yeah, he does some awesome things. He turned YouTube into a business and he has such influence now that he's used to create other businesses. And that's even a side conversation, you know, his chocolate business or several of other examples. But with his YouTube channel itself, he's not using it as lead gen. He's nurturing, he's not marketing, he's approaching 400,000 subscribers. And when he posts a video, he wants you and me, and I'm assuming you're a subscriber like I am. He wants us to watch. So if he gets 100 million or 200 million views on a video, because he's generating that ad revenue. But on the other side, let me give you an example. You can look up Jason Schroder. He's in the construction space. He provides consulting to construction professionals.
18:13 Speaker 05 Well, when he started launching this how-to content on YouTube, he's not expecting these videos to go viral. He's not focused on views, but he's just answering these questions. So people find his videos, they learn, they really value because they just love his content. And we started launching one episode per week. After a few months, we increased to two episodes a week. This once later, we increased to five episodes a week. We've stayed there for a year and a half now. So at this point, we've put a lot of content out there and he tells me, and his business was already a seven-figure business prior to what he's telling me now, but what he says now is Nate, we have more business than we can handle because of this lead generation from YouTube. So that's really what we're talking about is he already had a business.
18:56 Speaker 05 He already had consulting that he was providing, but he had this content that he knew more and more construction professionals would really value, would really need. And so he's built this big base on YouTube, but it's become this lead generation source of people that just love him and value his advice and want to work with him.
19:13 Speaker 04 So what's the secret there? Using your construction example, going from awareness to lead generation? How did he bridge the gap from I now am a known person in my industry because I've got all these videos and people seem to like my content to they're calling me on the phone, they're asking for deals, they're in my pipeline?
19:34 Speaker 05 It can be as simple as a phone number. Stan the Annuity Man.
19:37 Speaker 04 Stan the Annuity Man.
19:39 Speaker 05 Stan the Annuity Man. You can check out his channel.
19:41 Speaker 04 Sounds like the nudie man.
19:43 Speaker 05 So he was just a regular annuity agent among many thousands of annuity agents across the country. He would answer real specific questions on these boring topics, but he made them cool.
19:54 Speaker 04 Hard to believe.
19:55 Speaker 05 Right. He's now America's number one annuity agent. And at the end of his video, he would put his phone number. That's it. He says, if you have more questions, here's my phone number. So I don't necessarily recommend the phone number approach. Go ahead and try that. But that's why I say, what is your business? What is your funnel? What lead magnets are you currently using? Can you experiment with a couple? So some examples that we use that are successful is it could be a mini course. Right. It's like, hey, now that you understand the answer to this question, I've got a mini course that I want to help you achieve blank. Or it could be a free plus shipping book. Russell Brunson from the ClickFunnels world, he taught us about the free plus shipping model over the last decade or two. And that's still working.
20:37 Speaker 05 But even when I say free mini course, low price mini courses actually work or low price digital products. It could be a live webinar. Hey, now that you understand this principle, I'm going to do a live webinar. We're going to take an hour and I'm going to teach you this, this, and this. And you'll come away being able to do blank. It could be a PDF download. It could be, hey, now that you understand the value of this real estate investing strategy, I've got a contract template that I use every time I want to give that to you. If you want to be able to download it, just click the link or go here, you know, they become a lead. So that's the key, just being able to connect the value that you're delivering to the free gift that you're offering. And now you've got to, you've still got to nurture that lead ultimately to have a sale. It's a larger sale, of course, you've got to have a conversation with them.
21:22 Speaker 05 But that's how you bridge that gap.
21:24 Speaker 04 I'm assuming that you use YouTube for lead generation for your business. Tell me the link magnets that you're using.
21:33 Speaker 05 So I do all of the above, except for the phone number. I do, I've got my free plus shipping book and I have the domain Nate's YouTube book.com.
21:41 Speaker 04 That's influence on YouTube for the people on the podcast.
21:45 Speaker 05 Yeah. Heroes guide to influence on YouTube. I've also got a webinar that I do, theleafstrategy.com. I've got a mini course. You get different results from different ones. I feel like I customize the topic of the video, like is this one where it would make the most sense to lead them to the book? And here's a kind of a side topic that might be helpful to discuss. When you send somebody away from YouTube to your website, YouTube doesn't like that because people are leaving YouTube. So you actually get penalized, but you can list what your own websites are and kind of reduce that penalty. Another side note, do not put Facebook or LinkedIn or other social sites in your description. Don't tell people to go there. That gets you a big penalty. YouTube does not
22:29 Speaker 05 like people leaving YouTube to go to Facebook.
22:31 Speaker 04 Ah dang, I think we have that in every single video.
22:34 Speaker 05 I'd remove them or stop doing them moving forward, but it's worth it, right? So if you list your website under your YouTube settings, you can put your website in there. So YouTube knows that's your website and it reduces that penalty. But what you also do that YouTube really likes is when you link one video to another video. Hey, now that you've learned this principle, you really need to go, you learn that next principle, go watch that video next. So if you do a mixture of both, you'll get rewarded for linking to other videos and you'll get a small penalty, but you're generating leads and you only need people to do that one time. So they leave YouTube to go to your website, they become a lead. Now if they're going to continue watching videos, they don't need to leave YouTube anymore. If they're going to go to your website, you're already emailing them, right? You're nurturing them through your email list. They already know about your website now.
23:19 Speaker 05 So hopefully that makes sense.
23:21 Speaker 04 My takeaway from our conversation is something that I feel like I've been preaching for a while, specifically about the podcast game and content marketing. There are ways to use a media asset to achieve different goals within your funnel. And for me, thinking about audio only podcasts, it used to be. You're nurturing your audience, you're promoting your content in your newsletter, you're increasing your reach, so you're hitting the top of funnel and you have an ABM strategy with the people that you're interviewing. YouTube is not much different. There is probably more ability to get people on platform, off platform with YouTube, but you really have to be strategic and understand what your goals are. You're not just creating content for content's sake.
24:06 Speaker 04 Each piece of content needs to have a specific goal in your funnel. This one's about broad reach and awareness. This one's a lead generation and you're figuring out your linking strategy based on that. All right, and that wraps up this episode of the Martech Podcast. Thanks to Nate Woodbury, the CEO of Be The Hero Studios for joining us. If you'd like to contact Nate, you could find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes, or you could see his YouTube content, or visit his company's website at betheherostudios.com. If you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit that subscribe button in your podcast app or follow us on YouTube. And if you'd like to be a guest on the Martech Podcast, head over to our website, martechpod.com.
24:51 Speaker 04 All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.
25:22 Speaker 00 Thanks for listening to the Martech Podcast, an I Hear Everything production. Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit ihereverything.com.
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