YouTube is the Future for the Outdoor Industry

I don't think the outdoor industry is sleeping on YouTube. I think they're confused and they're moving slowly because they're confused, which is fair. I don't think I bet on almost anything more than YouTube in terms of growing and just building the influence of the platform. It's only going to get bigger if you look at all the numbers in terms of users watch time. It's taking over people's TV time and it's moving from shows to YouTube foreign.

Welcome to the Backcountry Marketing Podcast. My name is Cole Heilborn. Today I'm sitting down with Sam Van Boxtel. He is the founder of the Climbers Crag and you might recognize his name. He was on the show a few episodes ago. Number 131. Sam, how are you?

I'm doing good. Excited to right some wrongs on the episode.

Yeah. So you were on the show a little bit ago, talked all about social media. We touched on YouTube briefly at the end of the show. And you reached out shortly after our episode came out and said, guys, I, I've made a mistake. I've learned something new and I want to come on the show and Talk more about YouTube. So Sam, what did you say? What did you mislead our audience with and what have you. What do you want to talk about today?

I was gonna say first off, yeah, big apologies to everyone. I think it was, I think there's just more context to add on one point I said something to the effect of Instagram is king. Don't think about YouTube because most brands would need over a hundred grand year budget and don't expect to see any results to make it on YouTube. And that was kind of like just my quick write off on YouTube. And I think as we've moved into YouTube with several, nearly a dozen of our clients now, I think there's a lot more nuance there and there's mainly like two different ways brands can approach YouTube. When I said that, I still mostly stand by that in if you've never done long form content as a brand and you want to start from zero on YouTube then I stand by that statement. But there's levels to it. For instance, like we've worked with several, either podcasts or content companies that maybe do online courses. They have long form content. So it's again they have a big library and we've helped, we have helped them get hundreds of thousands of views in the first month and pay for the service. So that immediately like discredited my take. And then brands can also Work with people like creators who already have channels, and that again, pays for itself and sees results right away. That is not spending 100 grand to get that. So one third. Right. Lots of context was needed and that's kind of what I want to dive into today, if we can.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate you wanting to come back and talk about this. I think oftentimes when I get this a lot when I talk to people on the podcast, they make a comment like, oh, I don't know if I know everything to be on a podcast, and I think that's something I try to refute frequently, is just because we're having a conversation about something and people might be listening doesn't mean that one were necessarily experts. And there's always more continued learning. So I think this fits right in kind of the ethos of what we're trying to do with this show. So thank you for that. Let's back up a little bit. For folks who aren't familiar with you, I'd suggest to go listen to this episode of SAM number 131. But Sam, could you give us kind of the quick elevator pitch on you and the Climbers Crag and what you guys are up to?

Yep. So I founded Climbers Crag just actually two and a half years ago with Tom Randall, who's a big climber in the UK scene. Big pro climber, works with a lot of climbing businesses. We came together and basically started a climbing social media agency. That's what. That's not what we started making. Listen to the other episode. For the longer story, for the short story. We run a climbing social media agency and we help maybe about a dozen brands working with kind of two main services. One, we help them out on Instagram management, doing everything but hold the camera. So we're not going to. Our team's not going to show up in film, but we'll help you, from strategy to content prompts to editing, design, publishing, all that stuff. And then the other main thing we do is we now help brands get into the YouTube scene and show up there, which again, either is maybe we help them with our team of editors, thumbnail designers, help them actually put out content. We mostly do that with podcasts and like I said, content companies. And then the other side of that is brands that have products and are e commerce getting them onto creators channels and we kind of manage those relationships with the creators and the brands.

So to date, you guys have helped foster about a hundred brand partnerships between brands and creators. Some of that has been on your own YouTube channel that you guys have been running for some time and you've got another 30 or 50 partnerships lined up for the next three months. So you guys have quite a few. Quickly, it sounds like the agency started out very heavily on social media, very heavy on Instagram, and now you've kind of pivoted to some degree deeply into YouTube and you're gaining a lot of experience and a lot of insight on the YouTube front. Is that, is that true?

Yeah, for sure. We've, like I was saying before we started recording, since we're mostly still staying in within the climate industry, we're branching out a little bit into adjacent niches. But still a majority of our focus is in climbing for us to get to the next level and provide more value to brands. We can't. We can only get so good at Instagram and I feel really good about what we're doing there. So what else could we do? And that's where this, this really big hole with. I saw the biggest climbing creators that I watched and kept an eye on getting hundreds of thousands of views. People really cared what they said. They've spent years building this platform and then they talk about NORDVPN and that's all you'd hear. And I go, what climbing brands? Why are you guys not spending any amount of money saying that he should be talking about a shoe or the clothes he's wearing or chalk that he likes and why he likes it. It's so much natural, makes the creator look better, makes the brand look better. And I thought if it's making sense for them to pay NordVPN, it makes sense for them to pay. They're getting enough sales. How many sales could brands get climbing brands that are actually relevant to the content. And that's kind of what we, we because, because we had a big channel. I'd already connected with and networked with nearly all the biggest climbing channels. So it was a pretty easy voice message of like, yo, here's an idea, what do you like? What if we got you climbing brands? And we were in the perfect position because we had worked with, we have a dozen climbing brands on our, that we work with, you know, day to day. And we knew probably another dozen that had great relationship with. So it was kind of this perfect thing where I was like one voice message away, both sides. And it kind of came together pretty quick. And then some of the first partnerships resulted in the biggest revenue day for these Klami brands, these small to medium sized brands. And I was like, oh, two grand equals 30 in a couple weeks. In the first two weeks, this video is going to keep doing well. I don't know. I go from there, but what do.

You mean by 2 grand equals 30 grand?

Yep. Sorry if you guys aren't in my head. That doesn't make sense. Yeah. So the, like, spending two grand to integrate your brand, your product into a video, and then that returning in an additional 30,000 of tracked revenue within the first two weeks of that upload really was the eye opener, because just to give context, we did about five partnerships in the first six months of this year. And that was just the. That was because that's what made sense for the brand. We're working with them and you're like, okay, Instagram's good. Really, you should be here. This makes sense. And we just kind of did a one on one basis. It was not this big service. It was just, okay, this makes sense. I don't. I'm not going to make you do this. We'll. We'll handle it. We know the people. And then we saw, yeah, two of the first three partnerships we did were the biggest revenue day for brands, single day they've ever had. And that's when I went, oh. And started to lean into it. And that was maybe may this year when I really kind of started taking this seriously as a. Oh, even if it didn't do this good, this is still worth it.

So, yeah, so what we're talking about today is kind of a variation of an episode we had with Nick Simmons on the show earlier. His episode was 138, where we talked about YouTube for brands. And we're kind of continuing that conversation in a way with this conversation. And Sam, as you were talking about YouTube for brands, there's kind of two different routes that brands historically can go. There's the integration route, which you're talking about now, which I want to get into and learn more about what, what. And if I'm a brand, if I invest two grand, how can I get 30 grand back? That seems like a pretty good deal. But then there's also the other side of the coin, which is how, if I'm a brand, how do I build a YouTube channel? Should I build a YouTube channel? Some things to consider there. So are there any other ways that brands can get involved with YouTube? Are those the two main ways? Are there. Is there a third way that brands could be considering if they're, if they're listening to this?

As of right now, those are the two we're doing. We're doubling down on. I mean, give me another six months, Cole. And maybe what the third chat will be. Oh, Cole, here's the third way. But at the moment, those are the two things. And that's what I see across the board. If you look across industries, maybe there's some variations within that that you could call a third thing. But I think those are the two main buckets for sure.

So let's start and talk about integrations. What type of integrations do we historically see between outdoor brands and creators?

Okay, there's. There's two main things that I'm seeing. There's either the NordVPN's of the world. If you watch any YouTube ever, they're going to ask for this 60 second block. They're going to give you these talking points. You have some freedom in what you can say, but it's. It's pretty limited. And if you. And you can feel it as an audience member. So that's like one. And that would say those are like general brands. Rarely are those especially not outdoor industry. Rarely are they niche companies. Those are usually, yeah, NordVPN Squarespace things that everyone can use. Okay, so that's one thing. And then the other thing is typically what I see from outdoor brands is treating a channel like, oh, we'll sign them to it as an athlete and maybe we'll have them show up to events and we'll pay them 6 12, whatever the. You know, 6,000. 12,000 a year. Cool. They are a North Face athlete versus treating them like I think they should. And this is what we're doing with all the creators we work with is treating them like media publications. So for the year, how many integrations do you want? How many Instagram stories and building these packages that are closer to what you guys have or you would have call as a podcast or podcast would have. That's like, how many slots do you want? Versus just treating them like we want six athlete days and we want you to wear the product. Yeah. So I think those are kind of the two main things I see. And I think we're in the middle where this weird hybrid that I think is the best of both worlds and what we. I think why we've seen good results is just if you want me to jump into like my little nuance in between, that is we asked for 60 seconds of unscripted branded product integration. The key thing is that doesn't have to be a one time. I'd rather have it throughout the video. So let me give you an example of 27crags is an app that helps you find routes and boulders outdoors. Because you just show up, there's, there's no colored holds outdoors. So you got to know where to go, how hard things are. So all I want for those integrations is, hey, here's a well known pro climber. Next time you do an outdoor climbing video, which you do all the time and your audience loves, use the app throughout it. Screen share. And I just want 60 seconds of screen time. The benefits will happen naturally. People are going to go, oh, that was neat, that's a cool feature. And then all I really want is I still need to make the sales, I still need to track something. So giving, having a clear call to action and offer that the creator gives in the first half of the video and at the very end, those are the two things I want. I want just time. I actually want to show up, I don't want to pay for the video. And then, oh, there's your five seconds.

Like that's.

The brand's gonna kind of give us the side eye if we did that. And the last thing that is the third piece is having the link at the top of the description that goes with that call to action. So the call to action will be, hey, get 20% off this thing. Here's using the link in the description or we're gonna give away something to someone who buys in the next week. Again, we could talk later about there's so many ways you could make that offer, but that's the core, like middle ground, in my opinion. I don't want to give you talking points. I don't want to tell you it has to be at once. I want it to ideally come up naturally, completely unscripted. It's prompted, like we're making it happen. But the things you say and what exactly happens, I want to leave up 100% to the creator because then the audience just feels that they're like, oh, that actually makes sense here.

We've all watched a YouTube video where we're watching it and then a NORDVPN ad comes up in the middle and you know, you go to the slider bar in the timeline and you scroll forward a minute and then keep playing your video because you don't care about what's happening. What you're describing though, these, you know, a more integrated approach, like, it seems like kind of a no brainer, I guess. Why? Have you seen this gap or this need for bringing creators and brands together? It seems like this is a symbiotic relationship that should have already been happening. Maybe it was happening, but not to the extent that it could, I guess. Why, why is this a need that you guys are helping solve for in the first place?

It's probably. Brands are probably don't want to be the NordVPN, so they go a hundred percent the other way. And I think people are just on both extremes. And I'm like, guys, there's a middle road here where it is an ad and we get sales and clear communication, but people actually watch it and it actually is meaningful and adds value to the audience in some way. So yeah, I think, I think people are. And every brand I talk to is very aware of YouTube. But the question is more just like, what does that look like? What does that look like? What do we get out of it? Do we just throw discount codes at everything? Like, no, you don't have to just do discount codes. There's. You have to give some offer that makes people take action. But yeah, I'm kind of wandering at this point, but yeah, I think that's why.

Yeah, so it sounds like there's maybe a question of why, what is the value or, or what sort of what, what are the mechanics of an integration? How would you describe the value of a good integration for all parties involved?

Yeah, I mean, creator for the creators. I mean that was one of the main things is I was worried about creators in general. Honestly, just being able to stay full time at this point. It's been a slog between just because you gotta think. And I know NORDVPN apps don't pay as well as they could because that's what financially makes sense for them because they're not gonna make that many sales, they can't give you that much. So creators, art and then AdSense is really not that great from a consistency point of view. AdSense is all over the board, so that's not reliable as well. So from a creator side, working with climbing brands can make it so they can actually sell enough so that they can keep creating in short. And that means they can charge a lot more. Like, I, I'm working with our creators to double or triple their rates over the next couple months once we have the data on, hey, we've done three integrations, maybe even with your brand. Every time we do this, we keep selling five grand. I think I'm worth two and a half. I don't think that's crazy. So from the creator, it's mostly monetary. And the upside with working with relevant niche brands is you don't lose the credibility with your audience, which is Something that brands or that creators kind of have to sacrifice right now because in the sake of just continuing to make content. So that was a problem that I just didn't like. I just had seen it enough in videos. I was like this and I know us personally, this goes back to our channel. We did every ad under the moon because we want, we needed one on every video to make, to pay for the editors, to pay for the designers, to pay for the host. Like by time it was an actual business. I realized there wasn't a business to be had in climbing channels and this is probably most niche channels. Like I don't think this is just climate problem. And I realized, oh, if we have to work with all these people, we're not selling for them. And I got a lot of empathy for their side. I'm like they're just churning through a bunch of creators that don't make them any money. These like generic brands. Yeah. So that was creators. I think that hopefully gives you context there. But from the brand side I think there's a few, few layers to it. One, you just get the, you get the endorsement and the, the brand lift that you would with an athlete. I think in this case it is comparable to an athlete because it's someone that people like. And I think it's actually maybe potentially stronger than an athlete because these people have been watching them for hours every single month, let's say, or for years to come. Some of these climate creators have been making content for five years and have talked about like five brands or like five relevant brands. And it's like the, when they do talk about brands, it means a lot to these people because they don't talk about them a lot or at least meaningful brands. So for brands there's a big potential of like, whoa, you're going to actually be heard here. This person that people care about are going to talk about you in a way that is natural and it's going to land. Doesn't mean everyone's going to buy, but it's going to land. So before you talk about roas or clicks or anything that's like the foundation of like this is, I think that's almost valuable enough for the whole cost. Obviously small and medium sized brands need to see the return to keep spending. But for some of the big brands, you might not even need to push a hard offer because I really think that base value is more than you're getting from your top tier athletes that you're paying for because they're seeing those athletes for five seconds on an Instagram feed versus you could pay for a five minute. You know, five minutes is what they're watching on YouTube. So that's like the base, the brand lift of that.

You know, there's been this push I feel like recently when it comes to the Instagram influencer to move away from the, the very large influencer, move towards more of the niche micro influencer where maybe you're, you're targeting someone who has 5,000 followers rather than 5,500 thousand followers because of that relationship that that person has with their audience. Do you think that's it seems like YouTube, it builds that relationship extremely well, which is why we all enjoy watching YouTube channels. Is I'm curious, why is YouTube a platform where that relationship seems to be fostered really well, even though it's arguably maybe one, it's maybe one one sided. Like at least on Instagram I can communicate with my followers, but on YouTube if I post a video it's much harder for me to interact with them in the YouTube platform.

Perfect question. I'm so glad you brought this up because we've thought about this a lot. One, I think it's two main factors. One, it is kind of two way because in the way that every video you watch, you click on Instagram and TikTok especially, you don't get to choose what you click, you choose the fault who you follow and potentially influence what you see. But on YouTube you're choosing I'm going to watch this person, I'm going to watch this person, I'm going to watch this person. And that adds up over time. That's like hitting the follow button every week. Like just think about that. If you followed someone every single week, you'd be like, oh, here's the post I wanted. So that's one thing. And then watch time I think is the main, other thing I really like to reference Instagram is you get five seconds. YouTube you get five minutes and then podcasts you might get 50 minutes or you know like and that just goes to show like the number means only as much as the watch time that goes with it. So like a million five second views is, I mean that's, that's pretty good. But a million five minute views is like a big business. I mean just think about this from, from the business side, the creator side, if you got a million views on Instagram or TikTok, he might be able to scrape by like with some brand deals. I mean not could probably do pretty good. If you got a million views on YouTube, you've got a, you've got a, you got a team, you got a, you got a small business. And if you had a million downloads on podcasts, you're Joe Rogan. Like so I don't know, I think that for me that's why YouTube and then I mean the lastly is it's just going to be around for, for so much longer than like podcasting. There's just so much staying power. I don't think it's only going to get bigger if you look at all the numbers in terms of users watch time, it's taking over people's TV time and it's moving from shows to YouTube. Instagram I don't have as much long term Faith in, but YouTube I would, I don't think I bet on almost anything more than YouTube in terms of growing and just building the influence of the platform.

So I want to get back to brand value with integrations here in a sec, but I'm curious to press a little deeper here. So this is something that I've wrestled with. It seems like in most business the, the value or the monetary value comes from the relationship directly between, at least in my mind, between the brand and the consumer. And now in this model that we're talking about where there's a creator who is helping facilitate the relationship between the brand and the consumer, they're, they're kind of a middleman, they're integrating themselves right in the middle between these two. Does that quote unquote middleman, does that detract from the value between the creator and the brand? Or does it reinforce that relationship or does it divert the relationship towards the creator away from the brand? That makes sense.

Yeah. I mean, I've heard creators described as a bridge. When you work with a creator, you're, they're building a bridge between their audience and the brand, which I think is a nice visual representation of it. I think there's, there's pros and cons to, I mean there's upsides to both, Both of what you said in terms of is detracting from the brand or is it adding value? I think to me, I don't see the immediate detractions from the brand. Like I couldn't list off a few, but if I talk about the positives of it, I mean you can just immediately think about the association of connecting the brand with that, which is what brands have been paying for forever. So it's just like another form of that. You know, you could put them on your website, have them on the landing pages and all using them in paid ads to, you know, you see them in, you run a campaign where they're showing up in their brands, are showing up in the creator's YouTube videos and then they use that content to go to promo and paid ads across other platforms. If you looked at the biggest creators, that's what the big brands are doing. They're like, we're going to pay and then we want usage rights and we want to put that everywhere. Because you convert so much better. When I can do paid ads to your following to the offer that I want, like that's just going to work. So yeah, I'm open to. I'm sure there's probably plenty of downsides but they don't come to mind. So that's probably my. It's probably some naivety there in terms of, from the branding point of view.

So when a brand approaches you and they say we want to set up some sort of a relationship and integration with a creator, what on average, what are their goals? Are they coming in and they want to, they want to grow revenue, Are they looking for impressions? Are they looking for email newsletter signups? If you had to average out the goal for a brand, what are they coming to the creator for?

Yeah, right now, right now I'd say it's by far majority is conversion based because that's kind of what I'm leading in with. I'm saying here's the results. This is crazy. We can get conversions and there's all this upside of this video living on for forever the brand lift of the creator, all that stuff I talked about. So for me it's like this. If we can get, if we can hit with conversions and have let's say 2 to 4x roas on, you know, in like the first 30 days that ends up being an incredible, just no brainer. And that's what I'm trying to get to because I think the opportunity is that big and it is. From the data we've seen, not every integration is hitting that. But I'm trying to think almost none. There's very few that haven't hit like 2x roas which is just such a good base. Yeah, you could maybe get more on, on meta or whatever if you got a good campaign set up. But my pushback to that is there's this big study that I found recently that was done last year. It was between with the biggest influencer marketing agency, the Outloud group is what it is and they worked with a data security company which is, this is kind of creepy if you think about, but don't think about it too much. So they tracked 150 videos and 600,000 people that watched those videos. So they tracked those viewers. Every video had a discount code and a trackable link, you know with like let's say UTM parameters or something. So they can see it in Google Analytics. And four out of every five website visits were untracked through that link. So they just would go direct, they would show up later, they could go through Instagram like any like they came back to the website untracked. And then what's crazy is three out of every four conversions were untracked as well. Even when you give a great offer at a discount code, they want a different product, they come back after the discount's over which. So then if you go back to that 2x roas I like to go back to being like if we could hit that really you gotta almost 3 or 4x that to be the true ROI over time and again we're not talking about the brand lift and the other things here. And this is where it just really becomes like guys, we should be doing this.

So in that study what was the timeline for, for the three quarters of the people who watch the video to come back to the website?

Yeah, I believe it was a two, a six month, a two quarter test. I don't, I didn't write that one piece of information down. So I could be off there. I could send you over the link if you want to, the study link. If you want to attach that to the show notes, that would be. Yeah, I'd be really curious again, could be something I'm missing in there. But the high level stats, that's what I wrote those down because it's like wow. And it felt like a big enough sample size that was meaningful in terms of this was across niches and across brands, across creators. So again, not that we should live by one study, but even if it was double the revenues untracked. So from the conversion side that's. I would like to start there because if we can do that then this is a no brainer to spend more next month. Right, right.

So this, you're saying that most of the partnerships that you facilitated like they're leading to a minimum 2x return. What, how do you do that? What are the ingredients in order to almost guarantee a return like that? Like there has to be some sort of a formula or ingredients that have to be considered in order to make that work.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So for me I think there's like there's three things that make a good YouTube partnership. Like three things you have to balance one obviously, like we talked about, you have to make sure that the brands get what they want, the audience gets what they want and, and the creators get what they want as close to possible. We'll make everyone happy. You know, if we, if everyone's happy and everyone gets what they want, it's, it's a good partnership in my eyes. So brands want to hit their KPI. Let's just say 3x rise or whatever. Some brands will have like a, a CAC target which is another thing that's common cost to acquire a customer with this offer. We want to see, you know, we every $100 we need to bring someone in and that's consistent across their paid campaigns. So we see whatever their KPI is, they want to hit that or over deliver on that audiences want, even if they don't know it, to solve hopefully some problem they have in terms of like, I don't like my chalk, I'm out of chalk. What shoes are the best, I don't, I need a new mountain bike. Like they have some problem and obviously if we can solve that with the purchase, that's, that'll make them happy. And our bonus of them is if they can get a deal and if they can feel like they get a deal on that, like not even just solving the problem, that's great. Oh, solving the problem. I already have this problem and I get 20% off. I don't see that anywhere else. Cool. Now they're like, they leave like psyched about the brand, psyched about the creator. Thanks for sharing this. Like you negotiated a deal for me almost. So that's ideally what you want from the audience. And that's why the brand alignment with NORDVPN to creators climate creators, rarely is the audience member going to go, yes, you got me a deal. I was looking for this. Potentially, potentially that would be the case. But very few and then creators want to be compensated so they can create bigger and better content. Most times if you talk to them, they're just like, I want to make better videos and more money, lets me travel, give it away, whatever they want to do with it. But also they want to not feel like a sellout or hurt their credibility in the long term. So again goes back to the alignment of the brands and making sure that. And also not giving them those talking points. Like that's one of the big things I tell brands is like one, we need to track data and two, like I need to know your Revenue and not revenue on everything. But we need to know how this did so we can adjust and improve. And two, we need to not give the brand, give the creator a bunch of talking points. Like, we need to trust them to use the product and talk about what they like. So, yeah, I mean, there's a few other key factors too in there in terms of, like, the more aligned the audiences are, obviously that's going to make this easier the longer the creator's been using and enjoying the product. That sounds like a small thing, but it totally comes through in the ad reads, just the way they phrase things. And creators are also pretty smart. They don't want to say something stupid that's like, I've been loving this for years. If they haven't, and if they do say that brand audiences are going to pick up on that and go, oh, wow, okay, this is 100% legit. They were using this. I what's even better and what we're working on is how do you show in your videos that you're using the product before you talk about it? So we're working with an apparel company. It's Mag Smitbo's apparel company. He's arguably the, I'd say, the biggest climate YouTuber. He has an apparel brand. We're working with other climbing creators and working with the creators on what would be the best partnership here. It became clear that it's like, don't send me the stuff and then immediately have me talk about it before anyone seen me work. That's not apparel works. Like, I know what you wear because I see it every week in your videos. So what we're doing with them is they're going to test out the clothes and wear it for at least in a month in their videos. Not calling it out, not making a big deal. This is just their test run. Do I actually like it? And then in their integration, they're going to say, you saw me do this and this and this in the apparel, they have the B roll to show it. And it just is actually feels more meaningful because it is. And if the creator at any point along the way is like, this is not as good as I wanted it to be, then we just end the deal. And we don't have to go through it with it because it's all about just building that ad, that integration that actually works, which gets them paid, gets the brand paid, and gets us paid in the middle in terms of like, that's our job to make sure this actually works and looks good.

Is there a certain Audience, minimum audience size that's required on the creator's behalf in order to make this worthwhile for the brand.

Yeah, I, I think the answer is probably no. If it's the right person. Like I think there's probably you could go really low, let's say a thousand views. If it's the right. We went super niche. What we look at in terms of like climbing and I think the general best practices, I look at something called base views, which is in the last, let's say the last 10 videos that have at least had a month to get viewership. You don't want to judge videos too quick. So once they had a month, look at 10, what's like the worst perform. What's the bomb? Like what's. If this creator just missed what is that viewership and if that one's above 10,000, that's when I feel pretty good. Because typically a good insight we've already seen is most times you're selling to the core audience. Everyone else might make a conversion if it's a perfect fit. But mostly you're selling to whoever's that, whoever's whatever creators you're working with their core base. So I want to figure out what the base is and the best way is who will watch a terrible or not a terrible video, but their worst video or their worst topic. So anyone with a base over 10k is when I start thinking about what brands would be a good fit for them and potentially helping them with brands.

And when you're evaluating audience fit for a brand, is there research that goes into that or do you just kind of look, look broadly at the channel, the content type and then kind of go from there or is there a more in depth process?

Yeah, audience, I think there's two, two parts to this. One is being in the content and in the niche helps a lot. Like we just know what people's general sense is for each creator and what kind of audience they have. Some are more training focused, some are more. I'm one of the top athletes in the world. You watch me to see what cool things I'm doing because there's or you watch me to learn and I'm a coach. There's all these like kind of sub niches and ideally if you fit the sub niche brands with the sub niche creators, that's when you get those outsized returns like we had in our first tests. This is just such a perfect fit. But the other thing is I like to look at comments to see especially so like when I look outside of climbing And I haven't watched this crater a bunch. I go to their comments, looking at the number and comparing like some baselines of in climbing and I expect to see, you know, this many comments for this many views. I go into another niche and go whoa, that's way more than I expected. What are people saying? You got to make sure they're not. This is terrible. This is the worst video ever. Like, it's not like a, let's say like a hot takes video or some controversial thing and everyone's just jumping in given their take. But you, you'll know the, you know the comments of like, oh, this is the best video ever. Thanks for sharing this. This is the best video on blank topic. Those are the comments I'm looking for and I'm looking at the scale of them. There's no general benchmark or good number there. But you'll get a sense in terms of comparing apples to apples in terms of creators within niches. But that's in terms of audience. Those are three things I look at to decide which, which creator, which creators should go with which brands.

Are there any brands, general outdoor brands that you don't feel like a integration with, with an appropriate channel is, is helpful or, or would be a good course of action or is this kind of. Could everyone take advantage of this?

Yeah, I think anyone who, if you do paid spend and if you work with athletes, you should be doing creators because it's kind of a hybrid in my opinion. Or if you work with media publications which I think would be most brands in terms of if you work with one of those people, we're in that category. We're not all the way paid, we're not all the way athletes. We're in the middle. But if you do either one or both especially I think you should have some of the budget carved out to go into the middle in my opinion, maybe more than both the sides. Cuz like athletes just have one piece, definitely still have value. I'm not saying write off athletes, um, and I'm not saying write off paid by any means retargeting and all that stuff you can't do with YouTube. But there's this middle category that's really powerful, gets you return, gets you the lift.

Maybe to kind of wrap up this integration topic, how do you think through compensation for creators you touched on this a little bit like to. Typically I get paid X amount and then I have to provide a 60 second block, a few different social posts, et cetera, a link in my bio. What sort of models are you experimenting with in regards to compensation?

Yep. When we initially started to test, I wanted to be even more creator first and make it everyone aligned on the same incentive of you get this many views, we pay you this much, or even you get this many conversions, we pay this much. The nightmare is you can't build budgets around that much variable pay. 10 people on 10 different variable videos, it's. You lose your mind. So you have to. Flat rate is the only middle ground you come to, which is both sides take a risk. We're seeing most people end up in the 20 to 30 cpm range. That is mostly because climbing brands have a bit smaller budgets. They don't have.

They have to.

They view it as a higher risk even. But the more data we get, the more. The lower that risks and the more we're actually able to get. Creators pay what they're worth. And I think people are all worth a portion of conversions as well as, you know, the brand lift and everything we talked about. I think CPM is a bad way to determine that because we've seen that views don't actually matter too much, but it's a good starting place. So we usually look at the creator's average views and we kind of start somewhere between 20 and $30 cpm there and then we let the data speak. After you see two, three, four partnerships, and especially when you go to renegot, renegotiate with that brand, you come in with CPM is not discussion. It's like, how did we do. How did. Like, how did the video boost the brand and how did the video sell? And. And then you just go, what's a. What's a fair amount? If we did four more of these.

And are your creators, are they. Are they running, you know, before a video gets published, are they running it by the brand and saying, hey, here's what I made. Does this check out or is there full creative control to a creator?

Yeah, so ideally, when we work with people, we get a. We try to be the middle man for both. So creators aren't doing a bunch of intro calls with brands. That's something else we've done. And you get a lot of weird questions and a lot of wasted time. I feel bad for the creators, honestly. So, like our value add is to be like, we're gonna just give you the info you need to know. We're gonna get that from the brand and then we're gonna be the ones to review, which is again, a decent bit of trust from the brand to say we're not gonna Give talking points and we're gonna let climbers crag review the video. I think maybe one of our brands has requested that they see everything. But everyone else, I try to make the standard. We're going to not let anything stupid go out. We're going to make sure that. Because I just want less hands in the pie and less brands to jump in and say, let's be more like X other brand who doesn't have an offer. Things can get off the rails quickly because yeah, we just care about at the end making sure everyone gets what they want. Creator, audience, brand.

So if I'm a brand and I've been doing the integration thing and I'm like, huh, there seems to be something really valuable with YouTube. Maybe I should start my own channel. And this is kind of where your, your comment on the last episode. This is kind of what we're picking up here. What have you learned about the requirements for a brand to start a YouTube channel? I guess who should consider it, who shouldn't consider it? Let's start there.

Yeah, I think it's. I think it's an obvious yes for most. I like content company. I've never said that before, but that's like a good way of. Do you make long form media already? Like in. That could be so many forms in terms of. Yeah, like I said, online courses, podcasts, go down the list. If you already make long form content, I think it's where you should be more than Instagram in a lot of places because there's longevity there and that's just what it's made for. It's made for long form content. So yeah, that's my thoughts there. But if you're not a content company, if you've never made long form video or let's say you make one film a year, I then start thinking it's beginning, it's going to be a big, big investment. I'm not saying it's not worth it, but that's when you start going like, okay, how seriously do we want to make this? Do we want to bring on a production company to make or do we want to work with a bunch of independent creators to make something every month? Because I think brands really probably shouldn't. I think consistency is still enough of a thing that I don't think if you don't show up every month that it's worth it. I think brands, if you want to do it, I think once a month doesn't mean that can't be one nice film every month or it doesn't Mean that can't be a one of anything each month. But that would be like the minimum that is worth, worth the investment on my point of view. Because then you're just. Then it's more like campaign based almost at that point. If it's less than once a month.

One thing that Nick Simmons mentioned in his episode and I think he's. I think he said if a, if a new channel is just starting out, on average it takes, well, I'm going to totally butcher this. It's like three to five hundred videos before that channel really gains any traction. And he said, you know, there's a lot of ways to shortcut that. But that's in his perspective, that's, that's the level of investment you need to commit to before you could hope to see your channel go somewhere. What's your, what's your take on that?

It's. I'd say that's. That stat is for. And that stat's totally legit. I don't know, I don't know where it's. It's a, it's a big number. I don't know if it's 3, 500. Whatever the number is, it's in the hundreds. And I would say that's for someone who's never made content before. I think it's. When people quote it, I think it's a little. Again, it's without the context that if you've never made long form content or you've never made YouTube content, get ready to make hundreds if you have. Because we just have the data to 100% destroy that. Any new channel takes 300 videos. Like we had almost every channel we've launched. One of the first three videos gets 50 to 100,000 views. If it works, it either gets that or we've had two or three channels that we've felt really good about. Felt good about the content. You do. We've done, we do a hard push for the launch month, let's say like five, ten videos. Nothing hits off. And at that point I actually don't feel that terrible about kind of leaving, letting it be, which sounds crazy. Like I like from what we've seen is I rather do sprints to test. Does this core topic work? Because I've seen it probably five, six times. YouTube will find the audience if the core thing is interesting. So if you just give it a good stab and I'm talking and this is because we've done hundreds of videos. So like we're able to come in and be. Skip that hundreds of videos and then you're just straight to testing the core concept. Does the concept work?

So, so backup so folks understand. So in addition to managing integrations, you all, you guys also help start YouTube channels for, for other brands and creators. Is that right?

Yep. Yep. So we've done it. We've done, I think price, seven channels. We've worked with, I think two, two, like I said, didn't work out. You literally gave it a good six weeks, which sounds so short, but. And you just see no uptick, as opposed to the other five from the first thing we post. You just go, holy smokes, this has viewership. And some of the channels were getting, you know, sponsored deals and paying for themselves within the first one, two, three months, which is pretty crazy. But that's again, like, just to show you that it's not. We're not geniuses in some ways. You just made the mistakes. And you come in with title variations, thumbnail variations from day one, your ab testing stuff, you know what topics to be picking, you know who's going to bring in views. You know that if you share it to Reddit, in the right niche and in the right way, you can get your first couple hundred views, which tells YouTube what your audience is, and then it finds more of those people. Like, I just want to give context. Like, there's, there's a lot that goes into making that first month hit or miss. Doing a subscriber giveaway in the banner so that people have a reason actually hit subscribe, which tells YouTube that they really like the video, which means you're going to be at the top of their homepage. The list is pretty solid.

What's an example of, of a, of a brand or channel that you guys have launched recently that's been successful? Like, what, are we talking about an apparel brand or are we talking about some sort of a creator? Who is this working for?

Yeah, So, I mean, three different examples is one is a production company, Louder Than Eleven Climbing Production Company. They've been around for 10 years, which is crazy. And we've basically gone through their library and we just, we don't touch the editing side. We go through titles, thumbnails, and we upload every week, basically just from their library. We mix in the new stuff as it comes in from projects and that. I think the first two videos we did both got hundreds of thousands of views. That wasn't a new channel. They had been uploading just randomly things. So I think they might have had in the tens of thousands of subscribers. But again, if you looked at their Videos before that, they're getting 5,000, 2,000 views and just coming in with here's the videos we should be posting, here's the titles, here's the thumbnails. You're into the hundreds of thousands. That doesn't last forever. If you guys go to that channel louder than 11, we're getting, you know, tens of thousands of views, not hundreds of. On everything. Because a library is limited. There's only so much in the library. So. So that's like one. That's one example. Another one would be like the Struggle Climbing show is climbing podcast. We launched them and did first video did 100 something thousand views, which is bonkers. Again, we hand picked the best thing from everything he had done. They did 300,000 views in the first month. Crazy again, has it been a skyrocket? We're at like 5, 600,000amonth if you look now. And again, every video doesn't crush because again, libraries are somewhat limited, but it's still worthwhile. They've got sponsors, we're for sure paying for ourselves. And some. So that's two. The third one was Crux Academy. I think it's Crux Academy Bike is where we ended up being. That was another channel that online course content we pulled from their mountain bike courses, pulled YouTube videos from within the courses, re edited them, made them feel like YouTube videos, not slow long form courses. And I don't think was the first video there. It might have been the third that popped off again too. I think it might be like 200k now. Again, not everything crushes, but you're getting tens of thousands of views, drove so many signups, email signups to their course and to watch the other stuff on the website. So hopefully it gives you some context. That's like three pretty different examples.

So I guess similar question, like, what are the ingredients that are needed for something like that to launch? You're describing the folks you're working with have already been creating content. They already have experience making content. You're just repurposing it for YouTube. Does that have to be the case if I'm starting new with zero content in the bank, like how do I get started if I. I want to.

Yeah, I think you can get started. I think it's just not with us. I think this, the simplest form is like that. I'm sure there's a way. I have very little room to speak on what that way is, what the pitfalls are. Because I don't think. Yeah, I don't think we've tried to Launch that because I just know the headache on. You're basically building a production arm of your company and I'm not in the position to go build a production arm. Before, for someone, it was hard enough building the small one we have for within ourselves. So we're coming up on the end.

Of our time for today to kind of wrap things up though. I'm curious, you know, you. You started kind of your journey with Instagram and now here you are talking about YouTube and talking about how Instagram, you know, if you were to bet on it for the future, probably isn't as strong as YouTube. Why do you feel like YouTube is a platform that the outdoor industry should be taking seriously? And I think we are taking it seriously, but. But maybe not to the degree that we could be.

What.

Why is that? What do you. What about the platform itself? Stick around for the long haul.

And the first thing I'll jump into that for sure is the thought, the note on Instagram is like, this is not me jumping ship on Instagram by any means. This is just me realizing and understanding, better understanding with data how good this YouTube thing is and how it works alongside Instagram. Instagram still the best place for anyone to easily be able to make content. Be your storefront, be your website mirror on social. So many things sell through stories, DM automation. I could still have a whole nother podcast about how great Instagram is. Like, let's just be clear, like, this is not me ditching that. This is me bringing up this other thing that again can make. You can get your money back and get all this boost. I don't think it's going to be this great because the creators are going to get snatched up in some ways. Like they're going to get locked into deals. That's what we're trying to do. And at some point when you realize how good it is, it's going to be like, oh, well, there's two options left. And this is the people that didn't work for anyone else. So, um, anyways, I just want to clear that up on Instagram, on YouTube, I think, I think everyone's aware of it. Like you said, I don't think it's. I don't think the outdoor industry is sleeping on YouTube. I think they're confused and they're moving slowly because they're confused, which is fair. Like it's, it's risk. Without the data. I was, I moved very controlled and slow the first six months this year I was like, let's test. Let's just use One or two creators. This is not a big thing. I expected it to bomb. Honestly, I was shocked when the first client opened up Shopify and I was like, wait, is that the biggest day you've had? Like, have you had? And he's like, I think that's the biggest. I was like, okay, so the confidence and the speed at which I'm moving is only sped up because of the data. So I think I'd urge everyone to get some data and not get data from one creator in one video. But most big brands have some of their athletes do post YouTube content. So what if you did a creative integration like we talked about earlier in this episode, with a few of them? For them, it'll be the most authentic because they've been wearing the shoe, talking about it sporadically for the last couple of years or whatever. So that's where I push brands to maybe start there. If you have enough of a data set of, you know, let's say three to five people, maybe do two videos each, different offers, but just push towards getting some data because right now the thinking about it or signing YouTubers as athletes doesn't give you data. So I don't think you're going to get either more excited or less excited. Um, so, yeah, treat it a bit more like paid than athletes and treat and maybe spent. Maybe shave a little athlete budget, shave a little paid media budget and there you go. There's your start. Start of your creator. Creator fund.

Awesome. Well, Sam, if folks want to get connected with you, if they want to reach out and pick your brain, how can they find you?

Yep, super simple. Either just climberscrag.com gives you some somewhat outdated info, but gives you some. Some baseline info about us. And then everything else just hit me up@sam climberscrag.com just shoot me an email, say, these are my five questions. What am I doing wrong? Or just I'm all the always down for a quick zoom chat and hearing what? Especially anyone in the outdoor industry. It doesn't just have to be climbing. I'm curious what you guys are seeing. If things are bombing in every YouTube thing you've done, has it worked? I'd be super interested to chat and just see what'd you guys do? What was the tracking? Not to just fix it, but maybe it doesn't work for you or the niche. And that just would be fascinating from my point of view. So, yeah.

Awesome, Sam. Well, thanks again for coming on the show. It's great to hear from you and learn what you've been up to Definitely Kev is posted, and I wish you the best as you continue to dive into YouTube.

Yeah, thanks, Cole. Always good time.

All right, take care.