How B2B Companies Can Turn YouTube Into a Lead Generation Machine | Featuring Samu Kovacs

You're now watching B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast hosted by Allen Kopelman, powered by Nationwide Payment Systems, the number one solution for payment processing.

Hey everybody, welcome to today's episode of B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast, where we talk about entrepreneurship, business, sales, marketing, AI, everything business and entrepreneurs. And if you're a business owner, this is the podcast for you. And I'm proud to say that B2B Vault is in the top 100 on Apple Podcasts for entrepreneurship and business. And that's a really exciting milestone that we hit. And I'm happy to be here today with our guest, Shamu. Shamu, right? Kovach. Okay. And no, he is not related to Shamu the whale in Orlando. Because he asked me, he goes, some people ask him if he knows about Shamu. And I said, it's the, it's a big giant whale that's over there in Orlando at SeaWorld. And, uh, no, that's not, he's not related. And he has a really interesting story, and we're going to dive into it. And, um, so tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do, and then we'll get into the discussion.

Yeah, 100%. Allen, thanks for having me. Yeah, I'll try to keep the introduction short. So my name is Samu. I run a YouTube agency working with B2B companies, mainly agencies, and then software companies and startups, helping them with YouTube. What that means is we just help them with the entire process of creating organic YouTube videos. So the type of videos that you see when you open YouTube, those educational videos that you see there, we just have them create those videos from A to Z. We have them with the strategy, the ideation, scripting, editing, thumbnails, all of that stuff. With the end goal of not only establishing them as the authority in their specific niche, but also attract their specific ICP and turn them into leads. So YouTube can become a lead generation machine for their business. So yeah, that's in short what we do, but very happy to go into heavier details in this and just provide a ton of value.

All right, so when we were talking earlier, he is a very young entrepreneur at 20 years old and started this at 16. So like, what did your parents say when you said, oh, I'm going to start a YouTube business?

Yeah, so it was, yeah, 4 years ago when I was 16. I was just like, I think it was summer and I was stuck in my room and I was thinking just like, I have a couple years left in high school, but I don't want to continue going to college, so I need to do something. So I was just like, okay, what is my skill set? And I, at that time, I was able to edit videos at a decent level. So I was like, hey, why don't I just try to get some clients on video editing and try to, you know, edit them some videos and make some money online. So I started out and like I made my first, you know, dollar online. It was like a crazy, crazy feeling. And like, for like at the beginning, my parents didn't even know. But like slowly as I was like, you know, going away in my room, working longer and longer hours, they were kind of noticing like, hey, there's something about that. Kid that is a bit weird. But yeah, I was just like relentlessly kind of pushing it as a freelancer at the beginning. And then like slowly, I think I kind of told them like, hey, I'm doing this on the side. And they were like super supportive and like happy, but they didn't think much of it at the beginning. But like, as I was kind of scaling, we should say, and like transition more into an agency, that's where they like noticed more and more. And now they are obviously like super, super happy and everything.

Um, you know, when it comes to YouTube, it's definitely a struggle for, you know, the average person to figure out YouTube. And also, you know, like when you talk about marketing, you know, marketing B2C or just marketing funny videos like MrBeast, right? Like smashing a car with a train, which is expensive, but you know, not everybody, you know, gets to that level., right, to go do those, you know, the funny stuff or the jokes or whatever, parody videos. Or somebody that's selling B2C, you know, selling cosmetics or whatever it is that they're selling to just a consumer. B2B marketing is totally different. So tell us a little bit about like what you do like for B2B that's different.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I mean, most people when they think about YouTube, they think about like MrBeast, Logan Paul, all those crazy videos and explosions. And that's really the opportunity when it comes to B2B because most B2B companies have not woken up to the fact that YouTube is a reliable, can be a reliable lead generation channel for a lot of them. Like for B2B, there's like LinkedIn, there's like ads, outreach, all of that stuff. But YouTube kind of gets neglected and they think that, okay, that's for like kids, you know, watching these crazy videos. But the thing is that we are seeing is that like YouTube is on a crazy, crazy ride and like just a crazy wave when it comes to B2B, like more and more B2B prospects are on there. More and more people are watching videos and also more and more companies are just recognizing that. And that's kind of the wave that we are riding as well with our clients. And it's really like our goal with our clients is not to make them like famous, like MrBeast, get them 100,000 subscribers or something like that because they are B2B companies. The only thing that they care about is just generating more revenue. And the way we can do that is by making sure that with the content that we are creating for them, we are attracting their specific customers. So we are not going broad, we are not, attracting like consumers, we are attracting the specific businesses and those roles that they are targeting inside those businesses with the content that we are creating, this educational, most of the time educational content and helpful content. And what that does really is just it makes them niche famous. So like in their small world, in their small niche, they do become famous and known. And that's really the key that unlocks not only the lead generation part on YouTube, because then these people will start watching them, these ideal customers get nurtured and then continuously turning to leads, booked calls, signups, whatever. But also on the other hand, like that thing of just them building out their brand on YouTube and making sure that they are a trusted voice that translates into all of their other channels. Like people who are maybe stumbling across them on LinkedIn, they will remember that, hey, I've seen their YouTube videos, they are the experts. So like I already trust them a lot more when they receive a cold outreach message from that company. They've seen that, okay, this company has a ton of YouTube videos that are very, very helpful and just they're the thought leaders in the industry. So like it makes all of the other channels powerful. And that's really like what we've seen, just why YouTube is insanely powerful for B2B companies if done right.

So tell us, what's the— how do you create the perfect B2B YouTube video? Is there a secret sauce?

Yeah, definitely there is. It's, it's, it's— I wouldn't say it's complex because it's like relatively simple, but there are a lot of steps because, you know, when you think about, let's say, a channel like LinkedIn, for example, it's like you're there, you can write posts, and that's it. When it comes to a whole YouTube video, like, there are so many components. Like, first you have to think about, like, hey, what is the video idea? Just coming up with the concept. Then how do I title this? How do I make the thumbnail? How do I package the overall video? Then there's the scripting part, like, how do I structure the video? What do I say in the hooks? The actual content of the video. Call to actions, editing, SEO, all of that stuff. But for all of these steps, there's a simple kind of playbook that we follow to make sure that we maximize the performance and make sure that we optimize it for just generating as many leads as possible. So yeah, I mean, I can just quickly go through it. The first thing and the most important thing actually is just coming up with the right video idea. That's like 60% of the success on YouTube is just coming up with the right ideas. If you don't have the right idea, you can make the best, the most perfect video in the world, but like no one will actually click on it. You won't attract the right type of people. So that's the first step. As a B2B company, the easiest way is to first of all, like understand very, very deeply like who you're exactly targeting, like what's your ideal customer, who is that person and the pain points that they have and the desires that they have. Because the way we are attracting these people is by serving them videos and serving them content that is helpful and that solves their pain points or gets them closer to their desires. So that's like the fundamentals. Apart from that, once you have that and maybe you have some pain points listed, you want to make videos about that. So let's say you're a startup that helps companies do cold outreach. So you're like a cold email software, let's say. The right type of videos that you should be making would be targeting the business owners, the businesses who want to start cold email outreach. So you would be creating helpful content about how to start cold email, the right way to do cold email in 2026, the best cold email strategy, all of that stuff. And that's always a very simplified way of looking at it, but that's, that's the basics. And then what you also want to look at at this stage is just there's a ton of data on YouTube about what has already worked. You can look at a bunch of other niches, business owners, other companies that have crushed it on YouTube and just see their exact ways that they made videos and the best performers and then get that data and apply it to your own strategy. That's also something that we incorporate. And yeah, once we have the idea and the title of the video, Obviously there's the thumbnail, which is a very— like, it's more of an art form rather than like a science, but there's obviously like very key things that you want to be mindful there. Really just the main thing is the thumbnail shouldn't give away what the video is about, like what the video covers. It should just show people like what the topic of the video is, so it catches people's eyes, but people need to want to learn more basically in order to actually click the video. So we don't want to just like give them the the conclusion of the video. We just want to get them excited. We just want to get them excited and really just transfer that, okay, what they can expect from this video and then they click on it. Once we can get the click, then there's the whole part of just how you script and structure YouTube videos. So for them, for scripting, really the way that it works the best is just breaking it down into steps. So like that's why you see in YouTube videos like the 3 steps to, you know, send cold emails or like the 5 ways to get rich or things like that because it's a lot easier to follow. That's always like the roadmap that you want to build. That's always how we structure videos. And then of course you need to place call to action strategically throughout the videos so you can actually convert those people that are watching. And then there's the editing component of it as well, which, for example, something that we handle as well. Like with editing, you don't have to think about explosions or stuff like that. For B2B, you need a lot cleaner style. Like it needs to be clear, professional. It needs to more so just visualize the concepts that are being talked about in the video rather than—

Exploding credit cards and stuff.

Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I mean, that's it basically. Like you go through these steps and at the end you get to the end where you've like done everything right. You can finally push out a video. And as you do it more and more and push out more and more videos, because YouTube is evergreen, it like starts compounding, and that's really where the magic starts happening.

So how does that, you know, like when people posting Shorts and things like that, like, you know, what's the magic length of like a short video?

Yeah, so what we found is like on YouTube there are two types of videos you can do, a Short, which is like the vertical one, and then a long-form YouTube video, which is like, you know, this podcast or like these 10 to 15-minute videos. What we found is Shorts don't really generate any leads for B2B businesses. Like, it's very hard to actually get someone's attention in 30 seconds and then nurture them enough so that they convert into a lead and actually become a customer. So what we've been focusing on with all of our clients now is just doubling down on long-form videos. And in terms of the length, the ideal length is 8 to 15 minutes. There will be some videos that are a little bit longer than that depending on the topic. But what we found is, yeah, the sweet spot is around like 8 to 15 minutes.

Yeah, because it's— people have the Shorts, it's like people have like a very small attention span.

Yeah, exactly.

And then, you know, unless you— unless it's some kind of crazy topic, you know, they're just scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, right?

Yeah, they are in scrolling mode, whereas like the people who are watching these 10, 15-minute videos, they are mostly in like learning mode and like research mode. So it's very, very different, like the type of people that you can get with that.

Right. So like what's the, you know, are there cases where like YouTube is not a fit for a business?

Yeah, there is. So like, especially in B2B, like there are these, you know, some B2B businesses are super, super niche. Like they have a very specific ICP. Let's say there's a procurement company who targets, I don't know, other businesses between the employee size of 50 and 100. Like, that's a very, very specific ICP, like super niche topic. And if you were to check the search volume of that on YouTube and the demand of that on YouTube, it will be very, very small. That's not to say that they can't make an ROI with YouTube because, you know, they can even capitalize on that small demand and still find their ideal customers. But usually for these types of companies, it's a little bit harder because yeah, there's just not enough demand. But what we found is that for 90, I would say like 80 to 90% of B2B companies now at this point in time, there's enough demand on YouTube. Like YouTube is the second largest search engine. So like basically everyone is on YouTube, like it's the second largest after Google. And so everyone is watching YouTube. So for most companies, it's just a matter of like, do you have the right strategy or not?

So like the people want to, you know, it's interesting, you know, like with videos, there's been a lot of AI like video talk, right? But now, surprise, surprise, New York, California, and then I think up to like 20 states recently passed some laws about these AI videos. And you have to start putting disclaimers that those are AI and not like a real person. So I wonder if YouTube is going to start removing that or warning. Everybody that they have to put disclaimers into there when they're uploading, right? Add a disclaimer. So when someone's having a YouTube video, do they want to sit and listen to me talk, oh, about chargebacks or something like that? Or do they want to see like, um, you know, like a slideshow and somebody's talking and showing like slides or a demo? Like, what are the, what are the more interesting things that B2B companies can do?

Yes, in terms of format and what we're seeing working best, always what's just dominating is this educational style of video where, yes, you're like sitting down speaking in front of the camera and then there you either use slides, so like just either screen sharing or like, you know, different slides and a presentation to just deliver the points a little bit easier, visualize things. That works very, very well. Like all of these, you know, screen sharing videos are like becoming more and more popular on YouTube, these Loom style videos as well. They are performing very well in certain B2B niches because again, like B2B business owners or professionals just want to get the value, like they want to see it and they don't need like this fancy stuff, the crazy editing. But also what works very well is just like even if you just don't do anything, just speak in front of the camera and then like have the right editing that can actually visualize what you're saying in a way that is professional, on brand, and can actually help the viewer understand the concept that you're talking about and just deliver that value, then that's also what's working very well.

Yeah. So education is number one.

Yeah.

Providing education. And what's the craziest, like, what's like the biggest, the video that got like the most hits? Is it a video you made or one you made for a client?

Yeah, actually it was one we made for a client. So we signed a client called Taylor Heron. Last Q4. So like, yeah, basically end of last year. He's running a cold email agency. And when we started working together, like he was basically at like 500 subscribers on YouTube, barely any videos, no consistency, but he already had around 20,000 followers on LinkedIn. So he was pretty big on LinkedIn. That's where he was getting all his clients from. But he said that, hey, Shamu, I want to scale up my YouTube. I know that there's a very big potential there. There are people crushing it in my niche on YouTube in the cold email space. Let's start working together. So like we just got started. We initially used his already existing LinkedIn content as like the materials for the YouTube videos because we already saw like what was proven on LinkedIn. So we just took them, created, turned them into YouTube videos that are optimized for YouTube. And like even at the initial months, like he started booking calls right away for his business. He's targeting like mid-market B2B companies with his business. So like that was his ICP and he like started booking calls right away in the first month. But really what, like there was one video that just went crazy, like it just went blocks. So that video was about, was about Cloth Code, how to use Cloth Code for cold emails. Obviously a very hot topic right now, but he was basically the first one that talked about this on YouTube. Like we just saw the topic initially getting traction on LinkedIn and nobody has talked about it on YouTube. So he was like, okay, this is our opportunity. We made a video about like how to use Claude Code for cold email or lead generation. And that video just went like crazy viral in the cold email space. Like it's one of the best performing videos over the last like few months. And that video alone, I believe booked him over 50 calls directly from YouTube, like 50 sales calls. Obviously that turns into, I'm not sure how much revenue, but like he's selling packages between like $5,000 to $10,000 per month all the way to like multiple 5 figures per month. So like it's very high ticket. But then what he did as well is that like he saw that that video went crazy and he took that same video, turned it into a LinkedIn post, turned it into a tweet as well, and put both of those out. And both of those became also the best performing posts on all of those platforms. So like it became his best performing LinkedIn post, his best performing tweet. And those again, like just generated a bunch of leads, a bunch of booked calls. So like in combined, that video, if you like calculate everything, it probably booked over 100 calls, like just that one video. And again, for his ticket size, he's selling like very high-ticket B2B services. So it just, it was just a crazy moneymaker for him. That was probably like the craziest kind of results that we achieved.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, listen, nobody has to see, nobody knows the secret. It's like there was a singer a few years ago and he wrote a song about Applebee's and he did a little dance with his daughter. And it got millions and millions of views. And they asked him, oh, well, how did you do that? He goes, I don't know. Just made the video and went viral, right? Yeah.

I mean, yeah, we try to be a little more calculated than that, but I mean, it— that's how the internet is sometimes.

Yeah. So like, how is, um, I mean, like, I, I see a lot of it. I see a lot of platforms that do like AI video editing and things like that. We've tried a few of them out. None of them were like very— none of them were like very good of editing videos or coming up with shorts or things like that. So, you know, where do you see like that? Where do you see like AI and like videos? Like, and also it uses a lot of tokens. And I know with Claude, they're recently cracking down on everybody who's using their platform and You know, I had one friend of mine who built a whole slew of agents and get a nice note from Claude. Yes, last month, the last few months, you used 9 billion tokens. And they said, they said, if you want to continue, you can't use whatever he was using, which was like the Claude for $200 a month. They said you have to switch to the API and pay for tokens. When he figured it out, it was like something like $5,000 to $7,000 a day. I was like, wow, because I've been seeing like all these AI companies that I get emails every day, you know, in my email and on LinkedIn from people doing all kinds of AI lead generation, cold email, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And their pricing, their prices have gone through the roof, or they have low pricing. And then you see this on the side about Oh, you have to hook up to Claude and then you have to deal with the tokens yourself. And I think that that's becoming very costly to business owners. And especially like, you know, most of the people that listen to this podcast are small to medium-sized business owners and they can't afford to spend $300 a day on AI or $5,000 a day on AI. So like, and also like all these headless, they call them headless videos where there's like these fake AI people.

Yeah.

Do you think that's going to go away with all this legislation and laws? I mean, how is YouTube going to control that and deepfakes and stuff like that?

Yeah. I mean, what we're seeing across the board is that people are getting tired of AI content. It's not necessarily that like the legislations are making it go away because I don't think they will be able to like, it's just You know, if people like it at the end of the day, like the consumers will want it. But what we are seeing on YouTube is that like people, people go there and watch these long-form YouTube videos not to listen to robots, but to like listen to an expert who they can trust and that know that that expert achieved things. They are actually an expert in that specific niche. They have the case studies, the results to actually back that up so they can actually listen to it. Like a robot can tell the same thing, but like if there's no credibility behind it, people just won't listen. They will just disconnect. And so that's the biggest thing. Like what we're seeing is that like with all the AI slop, like for example, if you look at LinkedIn, like every comment is like written by AI, almost all the posts are like basically written by AI. With YouTube, you can't really fake it. Like people will see if it's AI or not. And like basically all the biggest, like most successful, even B2B YouTubers, they are not using AI like video generation or anything like that because people just don't resonate with that. And that's why YouTube is becoming more and more powerful because people want to listen to you, hear your voice, hear you speak, hear analogues, your stories. And the best format to do that is like a long-form video most of the time. That's why, of course, podcasts are powerful as well. But with YouTube, there's a bit more discoverability because of the algorithm and the search. And so I definitely see that like, you know, AI video generation is not really it for YouTube. Although you can use parts and we use like AI extensively in our agency to automate certain processes and help us just make better products for our customers. But yeah, that's another thing. So yeah, I don't really see it like, you know, transforming into like all these AI videos. I think it's just amplifying the actual like human authentic videos.

Yeah, when I started podcasting, I remember, you know, in making videos, One of the people who I listened to, this guy Noah Kagan from AppSumo, I'm sure you know who he is. And he, he said he, uh, he had a contest and I won the contest. I won a microphone, not this one, and a camera, not the one we use now, for in this contest. And, you know, and I had to start a YouTube channel and I was starting my podcast, and that's how, that's how I started. And he said, oh, the first 50 might stink first 100, then, then it's going to get better, you know. And you have to be committed to do it because a lot of people start a podcast, they get 5, 10 episodes in, and then they just say forget it. Or they make some YouTube videos and they're not good and they say forget it. And I think, you know, if you're going to do it and you want to make, you want to make content, you just have to swallow your, um, I don't want to say swallow your pride, but A little bit. You just got to go for it and keep doing it, and they'll get better and better as you get more comfortable in front of the camera.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, consistency is a big, big thing. Like, with our clients, we, we always say to them that it's a long-term game. Like, don't start YouTube if you're expecting results in like 2 weeks. What we are seeing is like, it takes around like— when you're starting from zero but have the right strategy, it usually takes around 3 months to like even start to see the first couple of leads coming in the first couple of, you know, traction on YouTube. And if you have an already existing audience, that can be a little bit faster. But that's kind of the expectation we set. But then like the real like fruits of YouTube will start coming in like 6 to 12 months down the line when it's like consistent, compounded, and it's just working on autopilot. And so it's definitely not like a short-term thing.

And so if you had to give the listeners today 3 to 5 things of advice, right? Um, what to do on YouTube. What would be the— what would be those pointers, the pointers you would give people?

Yeah, the first one would definitely be, um, look at what's already working and don't try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to video ideas. Like, you should not try to invent like crazy unique, um, videos and stuff when you're starting out because you can look at all of the data on YouTube already and just see what's working. Skip the trial and error and just right away start with already proven ideas that worked in other niches, adapt it to your niche, adapt it to your niche and just dominate it as fast as you can. That's really the fastest way of is to kind of dominate a new niche on YouTube is just look at what worked in another niche, take it, adapt it to your niche, add your own value to it, and then make sure that you're using these already proven video ideas, thumbnail concepts, et cetera. That's the first one. I really think that this is the majority of YouTube success, is just using the data that you have. I would say the second one is just focus on value. Like if it's surface level, if it's not valuable, you will never succeed on YouTube and with content ever, because the people who are consuming content, they are not consuming it because they, you know, they really like your face or something. Like they're consuming it because they want to get value. They are expecting value out of it. If they don't get that, then they won't come back. They won't stick. And you won't be able to build an audience that can actually make you money, generate leads. And so it's always just about like the person or the company that can provide the most value in a niche, that person or company will dominate. And that's what we see on YouTube. And apart from that, I would also say like, don't really care. You should not care about vanity metrics like you should. Care about primarily leads generated, impact on your business, how many customers you're seeing and hearing talking about your YouTube videos and watching that previously before they sign up or book the call. That's the leading indicators, not views or subscribers, because those are just vanity metrics. You're not in the B2C space, you're not targeting consumers. You want to target a very specific niche. And even if, like sometimes even like if the views are too high, that means that you're not doing your job well because it, it just meant that like you're targeting too broad and that's not a good thing as a B2B business owner. So that's something I see a lot of kind of companies fall into that trap. And I would say lastly, really just think about content marketing as you want to spend as much, you want your customers and ideal clients to spend as much time with you as possible. Like that's content marketing is like, Even with this podcast, like we want people to spend time with us because that will build trust, that will make them trust us, that will make them see us as an expert and that will help us build our businesses and really just make more money, more revenue. That's the same thing with any content channel. And that's one of the reasons why we are pushing YouTube for our clients. Why we specialize in that is because it's so easy to get people to spend time with you, like long durations of time with these like long-form videos, whereas with like LinkedIn posts, Instagram Shorts, Reels, and YouTube Shorts, like it's a lot harder to like get people to like spend multiple minutes and hours with you. With YouTube is just so easy if you know what you're doing. So like that's always the mindset that I think successful content marketers have. And so yeah, I would say these are probably my best tips.

So are there any like special tools or that people can use, or besides calling you, of course, but like, yeah, kind of secret tools or any tips like for tools that people can use?

Yeah, definitely. So finding and analyzing the data that there is on YouTube, there are a couple of tools we use and that we recommend using. So probably the most famous one is vidIQ, um, which is a YouTube Chrome extension that you can download. And what that will do is it will give you a ton of metrics that you will see on YouTube metrics like the outlier score of a video, the view graph of a video, and that gives you a really good idea of like how the video actually performed and not just looking, looking at the views because that doesn't really tell you much. And the vidIQ Chrome extension is very good. Then there's another website that we use to really just find outlier ideas. And what an outlier idea means is that like it got, it performed a lot better than other, other videos in that same exact niche. So that just clicked that specific video. And we want to find these outlier videos when creating the strategy for our clients so we can replicate that, adapt it to our niche. That's how we were able to do that, like cloth coat video, for example. So the tool and the website that we use for that is called oneofthen.com. So like the number 1, O, F, and 10 dot com. And yeah, that's just a list of these outlier ideas. You can see them, get inspiration from them, and just adapt them before, while they are still hot and while they are still getting traffic. So, so that's a good one.

Okay, well, tell us where— tell everybody where they can get in touch with you. Not in Orlando at SeaWorld. He's not.

Yeah, yeah, I'm in Hungary, but I'm assuming most people don't want to fly here. They would rather just contact me online. So yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm on LinkedIn all the time. I'm super active there. That's the platform I, I'm the most active on apart from YouTube. So that's a great place to reach out to me. We also have a web website ks-media.co, which is our main website. Anyone can book a call with me, chat, also see our kind of results, the specific process that we take clients through. So if anyone wants to learn more about what we do and how they can scale with YouTube, then that's probably the best place. And then lastly, of course, I have my YouTube channel, which is on my name, and anyone can find it as well. I upload videos there regularly, breakdowns of B2B YouTube strategies, what we are implementing for our clients, what we see working well, and just giving away everything because I know that the more value I can provide, the better I will do. So I just try to give away everything and not sugarcoat things or gatekeep things. But yeah, those are the best places to find me.

All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening to B2B Vault, the Biz to Biz podcast today sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems. You can go to nationwidepaymentsystems.com to find out more information. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn or book an appointment there. And we'll have Shamu's, uh, all his information in the show notes and links and all that and tips. And thank you very much for joining us on the show today. Appreciate it. Have a good day.

Awesome, awesome.