How to Use YouTube to build your Email List for Fitness Professionals w/Meredith Marsh

What's up, coach? In today's video, we're talking how to use YouTube to grow your email list for your fitness business. Are you ready? Let's get started. Hey, Coach. I'm Beverly Simpson, the owner of B. Simpson Fitness. I'm the founder of the PT Profit podcast. In today's video, we're discussing with vid pro mom Meredith Marsh how to grow and monetize your YouTube channel, specifically so that you can grow your email list without using paid advertising so that you can grow a thriving fitness business. If you like this video, please be sure to let us know in the comments below. Hit like hit subscribe and hit that bell so you can be notified for the latest and greatest videos from this channel. So without further ado, let's roll that interview.

Hello.

Hello, Meredith. I'm so happy and excited that you're here. Thank you for joining us today. How are you?

I'm great. Beverly. Thanks for having me here.

Really, it's our pleasure. So why don't we just go ahead and dive in. Can you tell us a little bit about you, who you are and how you got started on YouTube?

Yeah. So, like Beverly already said, my name is Meredith. I have a YouTube channel called Vidpromom and a blog. And I started that about five or six years ago because I had this idea in my head that I could start a blog and make money from it and then quit my job, which is a lot of people have that dream. And I ended up turning that blog into a YouTube channel where I created tutorials about how to use a GoPro camera and how to edit GoPro videos. That's how it started. And so between the blog and the YouTube channel, I started to grow an audience. But I noticed that even though I was using Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook and all the other platforms, it was YouTube that was really growing at a rapid rate even though I was doing all the right things on all the other platforms. And so I quickly latched onto that and really started to take it more seriously. And about a year and a half after I started my YouTube channel, I lost my full time job. So I had, when I started it, I had a job, I had two little kids and I put about a year and a half into it and then lost my job when they moved my position to another state. And so I had made a little bit of money through affiliate marketing and ads and some sponsorship brand deals. It wasn't enough to go full time really, but I decided that was what I was going to do instead of Going out to find another job. So I've been a full time content creator since 2016 and that's where I'm at.

I love that. I love that. So just a couple of follow up questions for you real quick. Is that YouTube I think is notorious for the fact that people have this feeling of like only specific niches do really well on YouTube. That's one. So the fact that you created an entire audience based on how to use a GoPro is really amazing. And then also the second thing is a lot of people get into fear about YouTube because you just see a lot of hate, a lot of trolls. I know that Facebook has that as well. But what would you say to someone who is new, maybe nervous about all those hate, all the hate that seems to be more prevalent in the YouTube world than it does on other platforms? And last question, I promise I'll remember it, I'll say it again, but you mentioned that you used ads. Were you using YouTube ads specifically? Was that Facebook ads?

No, I was earning revenue from ads. I wasn't running ads. So YouTube is. YouTube has an ad network. And so when you're, once your channel gets monetized, you earn income with your videos. Plus ads on my actual website, on my blog. So I was, I wasn't running ads, I was earning from ads.

Amazing. So your audience that you've gotten through YouTube has been organic, essentially?

Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, 100%.

Okay, I love that. So we can dive back into the second question that I was asking, which is, all right, what would you say to someone who was new, like, what are some of, like the new beginning basics of starting, starting a YouTube channel? And just so you know, our audience is fitness professionals. I'm dealing with a lot of personal trainers working with physical therapists. So they might not have any real experience with YouTube besides, you know, just uploading their videos to their clients to see.

Yeah. So YouTube really is. Any niche is viable for YouTube, pretty much. Especially something like fitness because it's a visual thing, you know, if you, if you need to see an exercise or something, like you need to see it, not just hear it. So. And there are a lot of fitness professionals on YouTube with absolutely like gigantic channels. But if you were going to start today from scratch, I would say to specialize in something specific. Even if, and this is a tricky thing for a lot of people, even if in your business and your expertise you could teach yoga and Pilates and prenatal exercises and postnatal exercises, even if, like that's your business, you could do all that stuff on YouTube, just start with one little area and dominate that area. And there's almost like, no niche too small when you're first starting. And so that's what I would say. There are a lot of fitness professionals, but if you're going to break out today, start with a very, very small, narrow niche and just, you know, come up with five video topics on that super narrow niche and then go out from there and expand more. But don't look at the people that are super successful and be like, I want to do that. Like, they had to start somewhere. You have to start somewhere and just start small and targeted.

Okay, great. Can you give us an example? Like, so you gave us, like. So let's say I was a yoga teacher.

Okay.

I'm a yoga teacher. How would you get specific? And you also said that, you know, not to be worried about, like, niching too much or, you know, niching down too much. How would you know? How would you know if you're too big or if you're too small?

You. The only way that you know anything on YouTube is to do it. Yeah. Look at the results, look at the analytics, and just. Just see if you were. Let's say if you're a yoga teacher and you look at, like, I know there's a big channel, Yoga with Adriene. Right. And she's got millions, I think, of subscribers. So you could cover all types of yoga and try to emulate her channel and her content, but you would be competing with somebody with millions of subscribers. So instead, there's so many. If you think about, like, there's so many different types of bodies, people with those bodies. So there's all different kinds of yoga. Not even. Not even just different types of yoga. Because I know there are different. I don't even know what you call it, but I know there are different types of yoga. So not. I'm not talking about different types. Like, you're going to cover. I don't know. Give me an example. Do you even know Beverly?

It's so funny, because I was like, beverly, why did you go yoga? You absolutely know nothing about you yoga. That's. That's, like, insane. Okay, so let's go with. Actually, we'll go with. Let's go away from yoga for a second. We'll just go from where we started, which is where we were talking about, you know, postnatal fitness.

Yeah.

So you guys heard in the intro when I was telling you that I know Meredith from a mastermind, but also I've worked with her Specifically on my channel. And I'll say that for me, when we were working on postnatal fitness, or we were postpartum fitness specifically is. I kept saying to her, like, I can. How do you narrow it down when I can create one video that's like how to. How to get fit postpartum, Right? That's like a. That's a huge topic. But I can create one video about it. So let's talk about there. Let's say you have a postpartum trainer like, like me, like we worked on. How would you break that down for a new channel?

Yeah, yeah. So for you, you are like, I help moms. I'm a fitness instructor, expert teacher for moms. Right. And we got even more specific than that because you could have been like, I help obese moms, or I help moms over 30, you know, moms in their 30s, or cesarean moms. Right. Or what about moms who have other, like, ailments? What if. What about arthritis? Or, like, who knows, right?

Or pelvic fluid diastasis or something really specific? Not that I couldn't help other moms, but the intention is just to break in so that you can start growing the audience and then therefore get in front of other moms.

Yeah, yeah. Because you have to think about the actual people, the actual human beings that are watching your videos. And so, like with the yoga example, I was gonna say, it's not about this. I teach this style yoga. Try. I teach this style yoga for. And then who. Who is it for? Is it for women over 60? Is it for people with arthritis? Is it for cesarean? Post cesarean moms, like, get really specific. Because if you think about somebody who just gave birth, they had a cesarean, and now they want to lose the weight, they can't just go watch any YouTube channel. They can't just go do whatever some fitness person on YouTube says. They need something specific, specific that they know is going to be safe for them to do. So that person needs that. That type of video, that person that is going to keep their actual issue, whatever it is, in mind. So it's like it's niching down. Sometimes we think of, like, niching down the type of content or like I said, like the different types of yoga. But you, you also have to niche down to that person that you are really targeting. And ideally it would be your ideal client. That's where you would start with. With the who of who to target. Your ideal client would be where you would start with that.

Okay, awesome. I love that. So, you know, we titled this podcast, you know how to grow your list using YouTube. And I think that the main reason that I wanted to do that is because, you know, my clients and I, we talk a lot about these awesome platforms, right? Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all these really awesome things. But the truth is the people on there live on there, and that's just borrowed space. So ideally, what we want to do is we want to pull them off these platforms, platforms like YouTube, like Facebook, like Instagram, and get them onto our email list. Because, say YouTube crashes tomorrow or Instagram closes your account tomorrow, you still have real estate in their inbox. So getting them on your list is very valuable and very important. And the reason why I wanted to talk about YouTube specifically and with you is because, like you said, you've grown your email list and you've used YouTube organically without using ads. And most people know that on Facebook you gotta pay to play. But YouTube is an awesome place to start because you don't necessarily have to be investing in a lot of Facebook ads. So can we talk a little bit about that, about why YouTube is so different in that way and how you would get started as well there?

Yeah. So YouTube is a search engine, for one thing. And whereas Facebook is really not, it's also a recommendation engine. So the YouTube algorithm knows what its viewers are going to want to watch. It knows, it knows it so well that it's going to predict what you want to watch next. It's going to pull that video up once the one you're watching is done. And when you, if you ever notice, like if you open up your YouTube app, if you use YouTube, if you watch videos there, if you open it up on your desktop or you open up the app, you might see videos from people that you're not subscribed to or you've never heard of, but the topics of those videos are very similar to things that you have watched previously. That's YouTube's recommendation algorithm at work. And you don't have to pay to play on YouTube. It's an organic platform. It's owned by Google. So that's one of the big differences between using YouTube over something like Facebook or Instagram, where that content sort of disappears after a certain amount of time, you know, like after a day, it's out of people's feeds, unless you're paying to keep it in, in people's feeds. Whereas YouTube, it just kind of keeps going and going. And so if you're going to use YouTube to grow your email list, you would want to create content like we already mentioned, for your ideal audience. So keep that in mind that if you're creating videos for your ideal customer and those people join your email list, that's what you want to see. If you're creating videos just because you think, oh, this will get a lot of views or this is going to go viral or whatever, you may have people join your email list that aren't your ideal customer and that doesn't do anything for you at all. So keep that in mind if Your goal on YouTube is to grow your email list. And so what you would do is I always recommend to my clients and students to create something called a Save me series, which is kind of like if you start with what are the basics that my ideal customer needs to know or what are the common questions that they have? And create a series of like five videos that are optimized to show up in the search engine so that they find your videos and you answer their question and you sort of become the hero in your niche. You become that go to person and then you use, you use those videos to direct people to your email list with a lead magnet or a freebie or something of that nature. So with every video, you can let people know, in the video, you know, hey, I have a, I have a freebie, I have a free checklist or a free five minute training or whatever, whatever it happens to be. And you let them know like there's a link down in the description and you not only will get, you will get views on your videos and your channel will grow, but you're also utilizing that to get people onto your email list for those that are really interested.

Okay, great. So you mentioned that you want, you might want to consider doing like a 5 video save me series.

Right?

So when you're talking about that, do you mean that, you know, and you also said to take a look at it in terms of what are the questions that you're asking. So you recommend that the videos build on each other like that, you know, like when I hear series, I think a television show like Cliffhangers. Or do you recommend like, okay, so if we're talking about fitness, one video, how to, you know, best way to eat breakfast or get vegetables at breakfast. Next video, best workout postpartum. You know, so that they work together but maybe not necessarily live together. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, it's, that is definitely like topic specific because there may be a topic that it makes sense to have them sort of chained together. Like you have to watch the whole thing. But What I like to do is try and think of not so much like the viewer has to watch all five videos to get the. All of the information, but that it makes logical sense. Like the viewer is essentially compelled to watch the next video. They feel like, oh, I have to watch that because the title and the topic is like the next obvious thing to watch.

Okay, great. So can you give me, can you give me an example? And I get that it doesn't have to be fitness because you're, you know, you're like, I don't know, what do you think about fitness? But can you give us an example, like maybe an niche that you are fluent in?

An example of a series?

Yeah, like, of a saving series. Like, if you were to create a Save me series today and you're brand new, what would yours look like?

Yeah. Well, I can give you a really good example of one that I did a couple of years ago, which was on how to use a GoPro camera. This wasn't when I first started my channel. And also, I should mention, I don't do GoPro tutorials anymore. I do like how to edit videos, how to create videos, how I have a, a how to use TikTok for adults video that's going to be coming out soon. So I can't wait for that.

That's like the next conversation because I, Meredith actually was the person that inspired me to like, just, you know, look at TikTok. And I'm looking at it and I feel like I'm a hundred years old. I'm like, what is this?

Yeah, it's all right. It's all right. If you subscribe to goodpromom, I will fill you in. So. So a few years ago, though, I thought that it would be a great idea to publish one video a day for 30 days. It wasn't a great idea to do 30. It would have made a lot more sense to do five. So it's. I. It took me six months to do 30 days worth of videos. And so. But what I did was I took the, the most recent GoPro camera, which I had. I owned it. I opened up the user manual and I separated out. Like, I basically made a video for every page of the user manual because nobody reads the user manual. They go to YouTube. Right. So what I did there. So with 30 videos. And again, I would do this with like five or 10 or something and not do it a video a day. What I did there was I had the very first video where I told my audience that I was going to be doing this series, how to use a GoPro for beginners. And I created a GoPro settings cheat sheet, and that was my lead magnet. So it was a one page cheat sheet. I love creating cheat sheets for my lead magnets. They just, they work really well for my audience and they really like that. So that may not work for every niche, but I told them about that cheat sheet in that video. In the first video. In the second video, I really dove into the actual content, but I made sure that it was. I covered one thing. I covered like how I think I may have done like an unboxing of what comes in the box with a GoPro. So the next video was maybe about like the battery or something, different ways to have alternate batteries or get more battery life or something. So it was like one little topic for every video. But in every one of those videos, I told people, this is video number, you know, 13 in the series. And if you want to get the GoPro settings cheat sheet, go back to video number one. And then at the end of the video, I would link to video number one in the YouTube cards and also in the description. So that did two things for me. One, let me give a call to action in the video that talked about my lead magnet. But instead of just directly linking them to the lead magnet, I linked them to video number one. So they had to go back and start the series. And so that's for people who are new to the channel, right? So, so if they've never, if they just happened upon this video that happens to be number 13 in a series of 30. They don't know that I have a series. They don't know who I am. So I'm telling them who I am and where to get the lead magnet. And oh, by the way, this is a whole series. So now they're at video number one. They can binge the whole series, subscribe for the rest of the videos, and also download that cheat sheet. And so that worked really, really well for me and I think it would work really well for anybody. You want to be really careful that you don't have, like every single one of your videos are sending people away to go join your email list. So it's okay to. It's not that it's bad to do that ever. It's okay to do it every once in a while when that's the purpose of the video, but you don't necessarily want to do it in every single video. It would be much better for you to have like a. Sometimes people call it like a hero Video where it's maybe like you're covering a really important and in depth topic or something, and you're sending people from there to your email list and then you have whole other series or something on your channel where you're just directing people to that video. So you're kind of getting another view out of them. You're getting your, you're, you're signaling to YouTube that once people are watching this video, they go. And they watch this other video. Imagine that it's because you told them to go do that.

YouTube cares about watch time. So the longer you can keep them on your channel, the more YouTube says this is relevant. People care about this channel.

Yeah, yeah. And so, and that's why one of the reasons why you don't want to just be sending people to your lead magnet with every single video, because YouTube is going to see that when someone goes to Beverly's channel, they leave, they watch a video and then they're gone. And if it's like that with every single video, YouTube has absolutely no reason to show your videos to more people because they know that you're going to be leaving. They're going to be leaving. So that's why you have to, you have to kind of think ahead and sort of strategize. And so, for example, I have lots of videos where I'm not really even talking about anything to do with any of my lead magnets necessarily. So. So giving that call to action would not really make sense. Like, it wouldn't be worth it because I haven't even talked about why you would need the lead magnet. Whereas I have some other videos where I am specifically trying to get people to go to that lead magnet. And so I'll link out on that one. But not everyone.

I see. That's such a good point. I didn't, you know, when you're thinking about building your business and building your email list. Right. We have to remember that we want to be in integrity with the actual platform. That's why I never tell people. You know, I know it's possible to just post from Instagram to Facebook, but you want to be respectful of the actual platform because it'll only help you. Yeah, it'll be the, you know, Facebook or YouTube will say, yes, this is great.

Yeah, yeah. You definitely have to look at the. You have. You. There's no reason really to be on any platform unless you're there to make that platform more valuable for the company that owns it. Right. That's what they want to see there. So you have to kind of play their game by their rules if you want to succeed there. And, you know, you can also not play by their rules, but if you're trying to succeed there and really grow an audience, it's really best to give them what they want, which is keeping people on the platforms so good and so true.

And we were talking, and I know we're going to get into this too, when we're talking about how we build. You were saying, you know, YouTube is a search engine and that, you know, how we're going to build the channel organically. It's that when people are searching, they're already kind of in a buyer's mindset because businesses, there's a problem, we need a solution. And so they go to Google and they go to places like YouTube because they have a problem. And then if you are the solution, not every video needs to be come to my list. Come to my list. Because they'll already start to create no like and trust with you watching videos and get onto your list and buy for you. Bye.

Right. Yeah, that's such a good point.

Okay, so I want to go into, I want to get into just quick recap for people who are new to YouTube. Step number one, really niche down. Step number two, come up with that Save me series. And then what would you say, you know, the next thing, what's the next step that someone should be thinking about when they're creating their YouTube channel?

Yeah, I. So I teach my clients something called the spiderweb effect, Lead magnet. But instead of just directly linking them to the lead magnet, I linked them to video number one. So they had to go back and start the series. And so that's for people who are new to the channel. Right. So if they've never, if they just happened upon this video that happens to be number 13 in a series of 30. They don't know that I have a series. They don't know who I am. So I'm telling them who I am and where to get the lead magnet. And oh, by the way, this is a whole series. So now they're at video number one. They can binge the whole series, subscribe for the rest of the videos, and also download that cheat sheet. And so that worked really, really well for me, and I think it would work really well for anybody. You want to be really careful that you don't have, like every single one of your videos are sending people away to go join your email list. So it's, it's okay to. It's not that it's Bad to do that ever. It's okay to do it every once in a while when that's the purpose of the video. But you don't necessarily want to do it in every single video. It would be much better for you to have like a. Sometimes people call it like a hero video, where it's maybe like you're covering a really important and in depth topic or something and you're sending people from there to your email list and then you have a whole other series or something on your channel where you're just directing people to that video. So you're kind of getting another view out of them. You're getting your, you're. You're signaling to YouTube that once people are watching this video, they go and they watch this other video. Imagine that it's because you tell them to go do that.

YouTube cares about watch time. So the longer you can keep them on your channel, the more YouTube says, oh, this is relevant. People care about this channel.

Yeah, yeah. And so, and that's why one of the reasons why you don't want to just be sending people to your lead magnet with every single video, because YouTube is going to see that when someone goes to Beverly's channel, they leave, they watch a video, and then they're gone. And if it's like that with every single video, YouTube has absolutely no reason to show your videos to more people because they know that you're going to be leaving, they're going to be leaving. So that's why you have to kind of think ahead and sort of strategize. And so, for example, I have lots of videos where I'm not really even talking about anything to do with any of my lead magnets necessarily. So giving that call to action would not really make sense. Like, it wouldn't be worth it because I haven't even talked about why you would need the lead magnet. Whereas I have some other videos where I am specifically trying to get people to go to that lead magnet. And so I'll link out on that one. But not everyone.

I see. That's such a good point. I didn't. You know, when you're thinking about building your business and building your email list. Right. We have to remember that we want to be in integrity with the actual platform. That's why I never tell people, you know, I know it's possible to just post from Instagram to Facebook, but you want to be respectful of the actual platform because it'll only help you. Yeah, yeah, it'll be the, you know, Facebook or YouTube will say, yes. This is great.

Yeah, yeah, you definitely have to look at the. You have. You. There's no reason really to be on any platform unless you're there to make that platform more valuable for the company that owns it. Right. That's what they want to see there. So you have to kind of play their game by their rules if you want to succeed there. And, you know, you can also not play by their rules, but if you're trying to succeed there and really grow an audience, it's really best to give them what they want, which is keeping people on the platforms so good and so true.

And we were talking, and I know we're going to get into this too, when we're talking about how we build. You were saying, you know, YouTube is a search engine and that, you know, how we're going to build the channel organically. It's that when people are searching, they're already kind of in a buyer's mindset because businesses, there's a problem, we need a solution. And so they go to Google and they go to places like YouTube because they have a problem. And then if you are the solution, not every video needs to be come to my list. Come to my list because they'll already start to create no like and trust with you most you watching videos and get onto your list and then buy for you. Bye.

Right. Yeah, that's such a good point.

Okay, so I want to go into. I want to get into just quick recap for people who are new to YouTube now. Step number one, really niche down. Step number two, come up with that Save Me series. And then what would you say, you know, the next thing, what's the next step that someone should be thinking about when they're creating their YouTube channel?

Yeah, I. So I teach my clients something called the spiderweb effect, which is instead of thinking just about niching down or niching up, if you think about niching out like a spider web, a spider weaves a web so that she can catch bugs and eat. And so the tighter that spider web, the more likely that she's going to catch something in it. Right. And so oftentimes we. Anybody who's inclined to be a content creator is already, like, inherently creative. You're an ideas person. You're probably multifaceted in your interests, and you're like, I could create a video about this or that or whatever. And a lot of times that's what people do. They create a video about, you know, you might go from a recipe to a workout to a review of your gym Outfit, and that might be okay, but when you're first starting out and trying to build your audience, you have to kind of niche out. And so with the example of like post C section weight loss, that's super niched. And so if you are going to create videos about that, you would want to cover everything that has to do with post C section weight loss or even post C section workouts, not even weight loss workouts, and answer every possible question. Even if it might include clothing. I don't know if that affects post C section, but it might include modifications.

Or it does in the sense that, like, if you have scar, right. You know, you have pain around that scar, you could write a video, a video of like what to work out in that's comfortable for your C section scar, right?

Yeah, yeah. And so if you think about that for a minute, like if you just get into the mind of a viewer and if somebody is. Somebody goes to YouTube and they search post C section workout or workouts after C section or something like that. Right. You know that that person has had a C section, so they've had a baby, they've had surgery, and they are looking to lose weight. Right. You know that about that person. And so what are the things that matter to them right now? Yes, it's the workout. That's what they search for. They're searching for workouts, but maybe they're also searching, like you just said, for what to wear that's going to be comfortable. Maybe they might even be. I don't know. There's. There's. You have to kind of get into their brain and think about the different things that they're going through and struggling with as it relates to what they searched for. And so answer every possible question, even if you don't have an answer to a question. Like, for example, I could imagine somebody searching, like, how long after a C section can I work out? Well, you're not a physician.

It depends. The answer to that is really. It depends because you need to, you know, talk to that person, figure out their stuff.

Yeah, but you would probably say you need to ask your doctor. And so you don't really have an answer, but you can talk about all of the different things. Things to consider with the caveat that you should ask your doctor. You can still talk about it. Right. They still saying, go ask your doctor is not an answer. And it's if they're going to YouTube, that's not the answer they're looking for, for sure. Right. They just want to hear some ideas and perspectives and have some type of a, sort of a conversation about it, even though they're obviously not conversing with you. So you really fill out that spider web. If you think about post C section workouts as one little section of the spider web, and you fill it up with every, every possible topic, every possible question, and then you move out and maybe you cover like, maybe something to do with like, nutritional stuff for healing after a C section or something like that. Right. Because that person, you know that you've already attracted people who had a C section, so what else can you teach them or what might they be wanting to know? Again, it could be nutrition, it could be stuff to eat. It could be, you know, any number of things, and you kind of go out from there rather than having a video with like a post C section workout and then having a video that is something completely like, like a recipe, A recipe or even like something like a workout that someone who just had a C section wouldn't do or shouldn't do. Because you've already. You've attracted this type of person and now you're giving them content that they can't even do and shouldn't do and aren't interested in. And so you fill. You kind of fill out your spiderweb instead of, instead of bouncing around. If you think about, like, you want to, like a spider's catching bugs, you want to catch viewers. And so the tighter your videos are related to each other at first, when you're starting out, when you're trying to grow and build and attract an audience, then the better off you will be. I see. I see.

So, you know, it could be that someone who's in a C that had a C section is interested in recipes, but maybe not at first. Like, maybe it's better to just, you know, for sure that they'll need this content as opposed to maybe someone doesn't really care about weight loss and they don't really care about food. They just want to know how to move their body.

Right.

So you don't run that risk essentially of, you know, deterring them if you're posting like a recipe or something that they don't care about.

Right, I can see that.

I can see that. And Meredith and I have talked about that specifically for my channel because that was something that was huge for me, you know, because I talked all the time about my three pillars of wellness. And so I would always want to be like, no, I need to write, do everything this week. I'm going to do this pillar. This week, I'm going to do that. Pillar. But YouTube is a different platform than Instagram and Facebook and needs to be treated as such. And so very little is they like just do one. Pillar Beverly. She didn't talk like that. That was her intent with kindness.

And I think it's natural though, to kind of struggle with that because even I struggle with that because I teach people like I have a membership program to teach people how to grow their audience and income online using YouTube. So I'm teaching how to use YouTube and how to use video and other platforms. But that's not what my channel is about. My channel is about how to create videos and edit videos. So. Right, that's different, but the topic of creating videos and editing videos is totally in line with my ideal videos. So. Right, that's different, but the topic of creating videos and editing videos is totally in line with my ideal customer. Right, because if you're creating videos for YouTube, then you're probably trying to grow your YouTube channel. And so you get on my email list and that's where you get like invited to my five day challenge and all that kind of stuff. But my YouTube channel doesn't. Customer. Right, because if you're creating videos for YouTube, then you're probably trying to grow your YouTube channel and so you get on my email list and that cover every. It doesn't cover all my pillars, as Beverly put it.

Yes, exactly. So great. So we've talked about how to get started and now you've got all your topics and ideas. Now here's something that people get really hung up on, so I'd really love your opinion on. This is when you go to YouTube and you look at the people that are super successful, right? You'll see that the content that they put out is really elevated. Like, it looks very polished, it looks very, it looks, you know, very succinct. And people who are just getting started sometimes feel intimidated by that. So in your opinion, what would you, what would you recommend to people when they're putting up the content? Or maybe they're scared. Maybe they're scared to create anything. Yeah. Like what? How important? So, you know, long story long, how important is it to make your content look so polished, look good?

Yeah, it's a little bit of a balancing act. And I always like to say creating videos is. It's part art and part science. So there's a creative element to it and it's a, it's like a personal creation thing, just like art. But there's also a science to it because you have human beings watching Your videos, we hope. And so there's a couple things to keep in mind. And a lot of times people think, well, I need a good camera. And that's kind of where they start in their mind. And cameras can be expensive.

So.

But what, what you really need is decent lighting, which doesn't mean you have to go and buy lights. It could mean decent natural lighting, which means maybe planning your video shoots at a time of day that you're going to have decent lighting like the golden hour, which is like after the sun goes down. So depending on your window situation and your yard and your trees situation, you may have a golden like three hours. And so you can either plan that out around your natural light. You don't want direct light, you want to have just a nice sort of ambient light. Or you can buy inexpensive lights for like less than a hundred dollars on Amazon. You could buy a couple of box lights or LED lights when you are well lit. And this goes for you, especially if you. Well, it goes for anybody. But I like to say this especially if you're a woman who feels self conscious about how you look or maybe you have, you don't have, you don't wear a lot of makeup, maybe your complexion is not that great. Like if you are well lit, you will look good because all of the blemishes and imperfections kind of, the light kind of washes it away. And so the other thing is audio. Most cameras, like actually no cameras have really acceptable audio. I would call it unacceptable. You don't just use your camera and talk to the camera and use the microphone that's on the camera for a YouTube video. I mean you can, but the quality is not that great, especially if you're far away from the camera, right. If you're, if it's right up to your face, if you're like flogging or something, that might work. And so having some kind of an external microphone, either something, there's microphones that plug into the mic jack on your camera, that sit on top of your camera, so they're connected. There's external microphones that are record on a separate device and then you sync your audio and your video. So there's that. I would say look at audio first, invest in audio first. So even if you're using your phone to record videos, you can get an external microphone that plugs in and then look at lighting. And then if you want to invest in a camera, I would look at making sure it has a microphone jack and that it has a flip out screen so you can See yourself, it has auto focus like on your face and that. Yeah, those are, those are sort of the three things. So I have a Canon 70D, the 90D is the most, the newest one. So I would definitely recommend that family of cameras. But those are the three things. A mic jack, a flip out screen and auto focus on your, on your face or your body or whatever.

You don't think it's something that they need to get started? Like you could use your iPhone.

You can definitely use your iPhone, especially if you upgrade the audio with a microphone and your lighting. I think there's. The camera that I use for YouTube is a 70D. My phone shoots 4K. My camera doesn't even shoot 4K. Like the way, you know, phones these days are really, they're fantastic. And so there's no reason why you couldn't use your phone, especially if you have like a newer, a newer ish phone. In fact, I have a group coaching program where we have seven people. We had five people on the call and of those five people, I was the only one that uses a camera for my videos and everyone else uses their phone and they're new, newish YouTube creators and it just, it totally works for them.

I love that. Okay, great. So I definitely want to be really mindful of your time. This has been awesome. So I just want to close it out with just this last question because we've talked a lot about, you know, how to grow our list, the importance of growing the list, especially the ways that we would go about at least initially starting this channel and thinking about it. And we've talked a little bit about the why. But if you are comfortable, I would love for you to share with us a little bit about kind of the results or the next step of what happened from when you grew this list using your YouTube. You did it organically and then you put out an offer. So, so you launched essentially an offer to these people on your list that you got organically through YouTube. Can you, if you wouldn't mind, would you mind sharing a little bit about, you know, what are some of the results you've seen from putting efforts into your YouTube channel?

Yeah, so like we've already talked about, I'm a big fan of organic traffic and organic leads and I have run Facebook ads before, but not, it's not a regular thing. It's been kind of like experimental. And so whenever I launch my programs, which I have a membership program, I have a video editing course and I have a group coaching program. And so whenever I launch, I'm launching to my list of people that came organically through YouTube and through my website, not through ads. Right. So I just wrapped up two kind of back to back launches, which I don't recommend, but that's what I did. And so in the last two launches, so in the last three to four weeks, I made. My results were $8,000 in my launches from organic leads from YouTube. Right. No ads. So when you think about like, oh, an $8,000 launch, you know, big whoop. It's. It's not a six figure launch, it's not even a five figure launch, but it's a no ads launch. That's $8,000 that. None of the, no one gets a cut of that except for me and my business. That's not even with affiliates or anything. So that's really, I think that is the power of having organic content, whether it's through YouTube or through your website, because it's people constantly coming in and finding you that you don't have to pay money for.

You know, we talk here about marketing magic all the time and it's easy to look at these people who are, you know, toting around, oh, I made a hunt, you know, 100k launch, 200k launch, and blah, blah, blah. But we don't see how much they spent. You know, what if they spent $990,000 on Facebook ads? We don't get to see that. Right. So that's a really important point and it's something that I think gets overlooked. And so many people are rushing, rushing, rushing to put Facebook ads. Now listen, I use Facebook ads all the time. I'm not saying, saying that they're bad, but Facebook ads are not the solution to your content problem. Facebook ads are not going to all of a sudden get you a million dollars in sales. You need to make sure that your message and that your offer is converting before you even start putting these. Investing in Facebook ads. Because Facebook ads, you can't even, you can't really control them. Like, you can't. You know, people are looking at cost per lead and Facebook is looking at things like supply and demand. And so you could end up spending, you know, thousands of dollars and people do. And you're spending that money not knowing if the content is resonating or getting in front of the right people. So it's something that is important. So I'm really glad that you brought that up. Okay. So, Meredith, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate you coming and sharing your info with us. Just a quick recap. We talked about pretty much, you know, five ways, I guess, to grow your email list. We've talked about niching. Number one, we talked about niching down. We talked about creating. We talked about creating a Save Me series. And then we talked about the spiderweb content, you know, getting really clear on it. Then we talked about how to, you know, the production value. And then we finished with launching to your organic list that y' all are going to now create from your YouTube content. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you, about your services? Where's the best place I can send them to?

Well, so you can find me on YouTube, Vidpromom, or just search Meredith Marsh. You can also find me on Instagram. You can find me@vidpromom.com and Meredith Marsh on TikTok.

Her TikTok channel is so fun. I know. That's like a side note. Maybe next time we'll talk about TikTok. All right, Meredith, thanks so much. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. If you like this video, chances are your friends will, too. So be sure to hit, like, hit subscribe if you haven't already and share it with your friends, and I'll see you on the next video.