In this episode Shaun Whynacht and Jodi discuss how businesses can leverage YouTube to drive sales without treating video as a direct advertising tool. They begin by emphasizing that video is the most engaging content type across industries and that having a YouTube channel is a baseline requirement for any modern content strategy. The conversation moves through practical steps: branding the channel (consistent naming, visual cues, channel trailer, and description with website links), creating value‑first videos rather than hard sales pitches, and understanding the viewer’s mindset. They detail technical optimization—curiosity‑driven titles, eye‑catching thumbnails (Canva templates), thorough descriptions, tags, and captions—and explain how YouTube rewards total watch time, encouraging series, suggested videos, and a 7‑13‑minute sweet spot based on a Wistia study. Topic research methods are covered, including Google search suggestions, Google Search Console’s video tab, and monitoring top‑search trends to choose timely subjects. Measurement is highlighted as essential: set clear goals, use YouTube Analytics to track the right metrics, and adjust strategy accordingly. Production advice stresses low‑budget approaches—jump cuts, single‑camera setups, and avoiding over‑production—while encouraging consistency and regular publishing. Shaun shares personal anecdotes (closing a sale from a low‑production video, posting his first TikTok) to illustrate that results come from consistent, value‑driven content rather than perfection.
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You have to measure success. You have to pick your goal and you have to make that very clear to yourself. And then on top of that, before, you know, determining whether or not you've made that goal, you have to think about how you're going to measure that.
Okay, so today we're going to be looking at YouTube How to increase sales. You know, last week in the previous episode, I did an episode about how to increase sales on Instagram and very similar stuff you're going to hear today, but we got more stats and Jodi's got some more information here to talk about content. So first of all, if you don't have a YouTube channel and you're in business and you're creating content, that's your first mistake. You should be doing something with video, would you agree?
Yes, absolutely. I think, you know, survey after survey determines that video is the most engaging type of content in every industry, no matter, you know, no matter what you're working in. So I think everybody needs to incorporate that in their content strategy for sure.
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, video is one of the top, if not the top, consumed pieces of of content. I mean, you've got the TikTok, you've got Instagram, you've got YouTube, you've got LinkedIn now having video, live video. So I mean, it wouldn't be important if, if we didn't see that all these platforms were using it. There's obviously something behind it, right? So, um, I think one of the biggest things that you need to also think about is it's not a direct sales tool. I mean, if you want to run a promo or something, that's a lot where the ads come in. You'll see that when you start to watch a video There's the pre-roll ad, you know, Monday.com was a huge one. I got targeted so many times, uh, and it made me look into it later, right? It wasn't like the first time I saw the ad, I'm like, oh, I need that. Yeah, it was okay, we need a different productivity tool, and, uh, they were top of mind. Why? Because they hit me over and over again in those pre-roll ads, and I checked it out, and that was, you know, how they sold to me.
So Yeah, and I mean, it's really easy when you can think about it from a viewer or consumer perspective. Like when— because everybody goes on YouTube and searches up like anything that they need to accomplish or want to know more about, or even if you get sucked into that rabbit hole and, you know, are watching the most random stuff. But when you think about when you're watching it, you don't appreciate when somebody just basically makes a sales pitch out of a video. Nobody wants to sit there and watch that unless, you know, it's very specific, it's, you know, part of a campaign and you make it clear that that's what the video is about. It's about learning more information about this certain product or service, but if not, nobody's gonna watch that.
No, your sales radar is gonna go up and you're gonna tune out right away.
Exactly.
So I think some of the key things that I wrote down here for how to kind of improve your, your YouTube channel is to be branded. You know, make sure that you've, you know, you've got a YouTube channel name that is on brand with it. So if, you know, if you're a personal coach, you know, maybe you'll go under your name versus like your business name, um, because that's what you're going to, to be under. I mean, you've got like Tony Robbins would have a Tony Robbins channel, right? He wouldn't have like, you know, Tony Robbins Incorporated or whatever. I don't know what the name of the actual company is, but, uh, things like that, um, you know, making sure that even in the videos that you have some branding in place. And that could be as easy as, you know, if you're doing a, you know, let's say you've got a video for an osteopath or somebody that's in a service business. Doesn't mean they have to have the signage on the background, but maybe just have a shirt that has, you know, something on it, some branding in there.
[Speaker] Yeah, definitely. And it's definitely in the subtleties because, you know, nobody wants it in their face, but it's also, it's kind of social proof in a way, and you're much more reputable if you have these kind of slight indications and this consistency in your brand and in your look and your videos on social platforms everywhere across the board.
And YouTube allows you to have trailers so when somebody comes to your channel for the first time, a video can pre-play that's there and my suggestion on that is to really have a really warm introduction, a welcome to it versus a commercial in there. Making sure that your channel description has a link to your website. So that when they are curious enough to dig deeper and find out more about you, they know how to find you, how to contact you as well.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I think with YouTube and even with all video content in general, sales are a result of good quality consistent content. It's not you make a video with the purpose of selling.
No.
And while that might sound backwards to some people who are like, "Oh, I want to use YouTube, you know, video is blowing up, I need to get on this to increase my sales. You can't go in with that solely in mind, because like we mentioned before, it's— YouTube is flooded with content, you know. Like, I don't know the exact statistics, but people, you know, like, there's billions of hours to watch on YouTube. And I mean, like, you just, you just have to provide value, and you have to actively think about that every video that you're publishing, because if not, then Nobody's gonna care, right? It's not gonna matter to anybody.
And when you're talking about publishing videos, there's some technical things you need to put into play, you know, giving attention to the title of the video, making sure that it is, you know, I would more so lean towards curiosity-driven enough that if somebody saw it in a kind of a grid of other videos that they would seem interested in what that topic is. Your thumbnail image is huge. A lot of people will judge the video or the click based on what the image looks like. And if you're not a graphic designer, get a Canva account. There's tons of templates, that's what we use, it's fantastic. Your description's huge, your tags, captions, so put captions 'cause some people will watch the video and won't have the captions on that way. And you come down to any type of marketing where it's like the amount of touchpoints, right? I think the statistic before was like 7 touchpoints before a message gets across. Um, and the same thing, you know, have those suggested videos at the end of your videos to recommend the next one, because YouTube rewards you for total watch time, not necessarily, um, like just the amount of people. Like, if your video has like 10,000 views, that's fine, but it's like your total watch time of your videos is going to come into play. So the longer they can stay on there and you can recommend the next one and so forth. So if you're developing like a 4-video series, watch video 1, have the thumbnail for video 2 come up and try to keep them going on there.
Yeah, definitely. And I mean, with that being said too, there's a lot that you can learn, but you do have to invest time, right? Like if you're serious about really putting some effort into a YouTube channel and investing time in that, You know, take some time to take a course, or even just do your own research if you don't necessarily want to invest the money in a course, but you have the time. Do some research, you know, take some notes, like act like you're back in school and learning this new YouTube algorithm, right?
The irony is that there's a ton of YouTube videos out there on how to create YouTube videos.
Exactly.
Yeah, and it's great. That way. And in prep for this, I was looking at the current stats on, on, you know, the current length of videos, because depending on who you talk to, they say, oh, longer is better because you're thinking of that total watch time. Um, and then, you know, the attention spans and everything, you know, TikTok has gone up to 3 minutes now. Um, so it's like, do I do shorter videos? So the, the video streaming service or hosting service Wistia They did a study in, I think it was this year, and they looked at 600,000 videos on their platform. Okay. Very similar to YouTube. You can host and publicly see them. And what they found was videos that are shorter. So let's say the 2-minute mark of those 600,000, after 2 minutes, people's attention engagement have fallen off. Hmm. Um, and then if you get in that longer one, you're looking at a window of 7 to 13 minutes of being an ideal length. Because they found after 12 minutes the engagement has fallen off in the videos. Okay, so the overall recommendation was that, that don't try to drive for length, but try to make sure that the video is as long as the quality and the content is great, right? If you're like, I got 10 minutes of content but I need to get to 12, and you're just fluffing the rest, you're going to lose that interest and it's going to, it's going to dilute the quality of the video.
Yep, absolutely. And I think another big thing, and I probably reiterate this in every podcast, we could make a compilation of like all the times I've said this, but you have to measure success. You have to pick your goal and you have to make that very clear to yourself. And then on top of that, before, you know, determining whether or not you've made that goal, you have to think about how you're going to measure that. So obviously YouTube has Analytics, but obviously they all can mean different things and you have to really understand them well before you can, can make a decision on it. If you feel like you want to keep going with the strategy you're taking or if you want to change things up.
Yeah, and when you look at what's the most important thing, it's, it's right out of the gate. The moment somebody— just think of, let's walk through the experience. Somebody's going on YouTube, they're looking up a phrase, how do I do this, how do I do whatever, and they're gonna initially visually judge by thumbnail. Looking at those and they click on one, you have to catch them right away, right? So, you know, what they saw in that thumbnail that made them click, you need to kind of reassure them of that, catch their attention. You'll see a lot of the videos you start to watch, whoever's the person speaking has a really good hook right away, right? There's not an animated opening, there's not anything like that. It's, it's like, you know, you've got this problem, do you want to learn how to do this? We're going to cover that right now in this video, right? Maybe there's a short branded 2 to 3 second kind of like buzz thing that happens and then they get right into it. Yeah. And, you know, you can think about if you've ever studied copywriting, is that every paragraph has to make you want to read the next paragraph. That's the same thing. Every point in the video has to make you want to listen to the next one, to the next one, to the next. So there is some, some scripting and thought that comes into it. There are people out there, a few that can just off the cuff turn the camera on and talk that way.
Yeah.
But for the most of us, yeah, it's not going to be that easy. Luckily, people are a little more acceptable to, um, like jump cuts and videos. So, um, you know, if you've started to watch people teach you on how to edit for TikTok, the jump cuts are normal, and their video app allows you to actually like record a clip, stop, move, change, record, and it will jump to those. And people are used to that kind of content, so you don't have to have like multiple cameras and all this kind of stuff set up.
So yeah, definitely. And I think one of the most important things is making sure that you're choosing topics that people want to know about now, you know, not things that were popular a couple years ago or that aren't quite popular yet. And, you know, you have to go in and do some research and, and really dig and see what your audience you know, the type of people who you're trying to attract, what are they interested in right now? What are they watching? What are the top searches on YouTube, on Google? How do you rank well? All those sorts of things are really important factors.
And that's another key point too, is looking at what the search volume for certain topics are in Google. You know, let's use top of mind. I was just thinking here, like, let's say, you know, a physiotherapist, right, who deals with people with injuries, right? So, you know, people have sore muscles, so it could be like how do I stretch for sore whatever, right? Just go to Google and type in that initial key phrase. How do I search for or how do I stretch for sore stop and it will drop down suggestions and those suggestions are pulling from the top searches for that topic. So just find all those and do your videos on those. So think about your industry, what you could do it, right?
Yeah, because I think a big block can be coming up with ideas and That really isn't difficult when you, you know, go and do some research and, you know, even making sure that you're just checking up on it every month, once a month, just to see if there's anything new that's coming up, um, and, and what other people are doing as well and, and what's going to be competitive and what you can rank for and all those sorts of things.
Yeah, and you can do searches, Google Search Console as well. You could go to like the video tab. Most people don't even know that Google has that video tab. And you can search for your phrase and it'll bring up all the videos that are on, on there. Or even for, for YouTube, just search your topic and say, are there other videos there? Because we were doing some training in a course, and it's not necessarily being found in those initial searches, but being recommended as the secondary video that's there is yielding higher returns for people because you already got somebody committed to watching something because they watched the video, and now your video is recommended as the next one. And if you come up, there's a higher chance they're gonna go into it, right? So what else you got?
That was pretty much it.
That was pretty much it. That was a lot. I mean, my background has been in video for, you know, over 20 years, and you know, it's ever-evolving, it's changing. I don't have the secret code for YouTube videos. There are people out there that you'll always look and you'll be like, well, their video is so much better. But I guarantee it, like, I've, I've actually closed the sale from a video that had no production value. It was me turning the camera on years ago and just talking on a topic, and somebody found it in a search. It was either recommended or whatever, and they called me just because they liked kind of how I was presenting it. I mean, it turned into a really good project and contract long term. So you don't know who's out there. You just need to stop procrastinating and start putting stuff out. Yeah, right. I mean, I've held off on TikTok and I posted my very first TikTok video yesterday.
Wow.
Yeah, proud. Not with any purpose. I bought a, a selfie, um, little light that was at Canadian Tire. It was on clearance and it was like really bright and it held my phone. I clipped it in. I'm like, okay, I'm going to try this. And I hit record and just started talking. And then I was like, I should put that on TikTok. And I threw it up there and people were voting and liking. So it was like it hadn't— in my mind, I would have never thought to put that on there, but I'm like, why not? Just try it, right? Just put some videos out there and see how it goes, and you'll, you'll evolve over time.
