Creators lose viewers because they delay delivering promised value after the hook. A 14-minute video averaged only 1:34 watch time due to a long setup. Fix it by delivering your first piece of value within 60-90 seconds and keeping setup under 30% of total runtime.
There's one fix that will stop your audience from leaving so early, and it's not what you think. So by the end of this video, you'll know exactly how to get someone past the first 30 seconds and how to keep them long enough to hear what you actually have to say. Here's the hard truth. Whatever reason that you believe that someone is not watching your video is not true. Like, no one is clicking off your videos because your editing is bad, your following is small, Or that you believe that you're not good enough. Those aren't the reasons why people are leaving. The real reason why people are leaving your videos is because you haven't given them a reason to stay long enough. In fact, you've given them a reason to leave early. And here's what I mean by that. On my last video that I posted, I really put my time, energy, and effort in this video. I was really excited to drop this video. And when I dropped this video, it started to rack up a good bit of views. And the, the length of that video was 14 minutes. I was really proud of that video, but I was waiting for the real data to ship. I was waiting for the data to reveal the average view duration. And this metric really tells you the average amount of time that your overall audience spent watching that video. And I was disappointed to see that on that 14-minute video, The average view duration was a minute and 34 seconds. When I saw that minute and 34 seconds, my heart dropped to my toe because, man, I put so much in this video. And to see that nobody cared about that video, it was a bit disappointing. Rather than linger with this disappointment, I had to figure out why was people dropping off so early. So I began watching this video and I realized what I was doing within that video that gave people a reason to leave and not stick with it long enough. I delivered the hook and the promise within that hook at a reasonable amount of time, and it was enticing for them to watch beyond the 30 seconds. But the promise that I mentioned within the hook, I took too long to deliver on it. I was too busy in the setup phase, and by the time that I arrived At the premise, they were already done watching. It was like, you remember when you were a kid and your mama said, now if you eat your vegetables, you can get your dessert. Well, I was force-feeding them vegetables and they got to a point where it was like, man, I don't want the dessert. You could keep the dessert. And that's what you're doing within your videos when you're overextending on the setup and not delivering on the premise that you mentioned in the hook. They're not going to stay long enough. Because you have to realize this: we all do things for our own benefit. If we feel like something isn't benefiting us, we will go away from it. You have to understand that when people are watching your videos, there are two reasons why they would be watching your videos. They are asking, does this solve a problem that I'm having, or does it distract me from a problem that I'm having? If your videos feel like they're taking too long for them to arrive at the answer to their question, people are gonna click off. They're gonna go to someone else who could probably solve that problem, or they're going to go to a different platform. And when enough people does this and this becomes the case, YouTube will stop recommending that video. Because its job, for it to make money, it has to keep people on its platform. And it wants to promote certain videos that are keeping people on its platform. And when you're taking too long to deliver on your promise, to keep people watching your videos and to keep people on the platform, it's not gonna see a reason to continue to promote your videos. So if we do things for our own benefit, you have to figure out what will be in the benefit of the viewers that will be watching your videos. Because your job is to keep them on your videos long enough for YouTube to decide to promote more of your videos and to continue to promote that video itself. Now we're living in a time where people want their desires in an accelerated speed. Because people have short attention spans. So you can't take so long of delivering your hook and the promise within that hook, the setup, and then the actual promise, especially when you don't have a large following. You don't have that luxury of taking too long within the setup because again, people are wondering, will your video solve a problem that they're having or distract them from a problem that they're having? So that means you have to give them what they want, how they want it, at an accelerated speed. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to remove all the important stuff that they would need that will help them get what they want. But you have to be mindful of how long it takes for you to deliver it, right? One of the problems that a lot of creators have when they're creating their content is that they overexplain. And that slows down the pace of them delivering on the promise that they mentioned within the hook. When you're overexplaining, that will keep people from staying long enough and have them do something else. So here's the fix. Before you post, time your setup against your promise. If more than 30% of your video is actually the setup before you touch that promise, then you're overfeeding your audience with vegetables. So you need to cut that down and ask yourself the question, can I deliver the first piece of value within the first 60 to 90 seconds? Can I just give them a little taste of that dessert that would entice them to want to watch Longer. When I rewatched that 14-minute video, my setup ramp between like 2 to 4 minutes long, and had I cut it down to about a minute or so, the average view duration of that video would have went up. If I would have got to that dessert early on, more people would have been enticed to stay longer to watch that video. But because I was force-feeding them Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, peas, corn, Beans, all type of disgusting vegetables. They was like, I'm out of here. He should have just got to this dessert faster and I would have stayed longer. So before you post your next video, actually watch it and ask yourself the question, does this video take too long for me to deliver on the promise that I mentioned within the hook? If it does, cut some of that stuff out or explain it differently so it can get to that promise fast enough. That's the one fix. Time your setup, get to the premise fast, and let people taste that dessert early. If you want me to look at your setup and tell you exactly where you're overfeeding your audience, hit me up on IG. If you're ready to take control of your life and develop that confidence that you've always been waiting for, then these 2 videos will help with that.
