How to Drive Millions of Organic Impressions via YouTube with Adrian Lurie: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by high level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down how to drive millions of organic impressions with YouTube. To drop these value bombs, I brought Adrian Lurie into EO Fire Studios. Adrian is a co-founder of Dragon Fruit Media, an agency that helps creators and businesses grow their audience on YouTube. He writes screenplays, loves foreign theater and cinema, and served with the Peace Corps and the DR. And today we talk about how video content is challenging, however it can be learned, and how the best way to build an audience is to tell a story and earn your viewers' trust by making them feel you want to provide lifetime value and oh, so much more.

0:44And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Adrian and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white-label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, it's time to stop guessing and start winning with a proven playbook. Inside the Freedom Circle, you'll have access to my step-by-step systems for creating offers, building processes, and driving traffic all in just 90 days.

1:26Ready for freedom? Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Adrian, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hello, Fire Nation. It's great to be with you. Something that I think is a key to success that most people disagree with is probably that I don't think success has much to do with working hard. And I think it's much more about creating a system of incentives that make the work not hard. Fire Nation, today we're talking about driving millions of organic impressions via YouTube. And Adrian's going to be dropping these value bombs.

2:21So let's dive right into you believing that video is the future of content. Tell us more about this. To frame this, it's good to think about what many people are calling now the attention economy, which has sort of become a buzzword. But the attention economy has always existed. For the majority of it, it was dominated by print media, right, newspapers and magazines. And then, you know, and it was traditionally divided into entertainment and advertising, basically trading people's attention for money. You know, that was done through entertainment and advertising. then the vast majority of advertising revenue shifted in the late 90s out of print media and into audio visual content and i bring this up this history because i think that to assume that history will not repeat itself would be i think naive so in in now the internet being the primary location where attention is traded for money, no longer, you know, TV or newspapers or magazines.

3:39You also saw the rise of blogs and, you know, newsletters. And that's very much, you know, still the world we're living in. But at the same time, you know, TV is coming up. Video content on the internet is rising in the same way that audiovisual content was rising in, you know you know primarily at the beginning of the 80s and then peaked in the late 90s and it will take over um the internet in the same way that you know tv took over newspapers and magazines i i believe and so um if your if your goal is to ride that wave and successfully trade attention for money through entertainment and advertising.

4:29Video is really going to be the best way to do it. We're sort of at the base of the mountain here. So it's only going to go up. So we talked a little bit about the attention industry. Go a little bit into visual storytelling and trust-based conversion. Talk about those two things. Traditionally, there's division between art and entertainment, right? Excuse me, entertainment and advertising. There was always, you know, there's always been slight overlaps between those two. And, you know, I think recently with the Super Bowl, you know, we all, you know, very much have come to know that the Super Bowl ads to be a great example of where entertainment and advertising can overlap.

5:08And it's all about, you know, what can be the, what's the most entertaining and memorable. And that's a great example of where I think marketing is going. And many people are already, you know, doing lots of content marketing. And so in the same way that video content is sort of the video is the future of content, I think this combination of entertainment and advertising is also the future of marketing. So visual storytelling is essentially an individual's or business's ability to capture a viewer's attention through character and narrative. And that sounds like maybe woo-woo-wah-wah or like that's what they do in the movies.

6:02But it's really pretty simple. And so I think that if you can do that in your videos, if you can make your viewer feel as though they are hearing a story and seeing a story unfold in front of them, you will necessarily capture their attention more and longer than your competitors. And so that's why storytelling is so important. And the other term you brought up, trust-based conversion, is sort of just the extension of that. Is that when you tell people a story and you gain their attention for a long amount of time, you earn their trust because you're showing them that you respect their attention, that you're not going to use their attention to berate them with, you know, valueless pitches and ads, but rather you want to provide some value to them.

7:03And so that's very much embedded in storytelling, right, is it feels very valuable as this story unfolds. But there's also the more explicit version of that, which is, you know, just really just help content. And so your ability in a video to, to provide real value to someone that's actually going to positively impact their life without trying to sell them anything, um, is how you earn trust. And that is absolutely the best way to build an audience today. Um, and those, that audience, you know, is essentially then this, this, your subscriber base or your followers or whatever. They're your super fans as some might call them.

7:42And they are going to have the highest likelihood of converting and giving you a lifetime customer value. The attention industry, visual storytelling, trust-based conversion. These are all very powerful things, Fire Nation, when you're building up your content bank when it comes to video. Now, we've all heard of the standard tactics and strategies and tips when it comes to having success on a platform like YouTube with video. Give us some of your most underrated tactics to have success on YouTube. Creators that want to convert as quickly as possible. And so we call this like conversion focused content.

8:23And then, and so I think perhaps a, something that many people don't want to hear or don't often want to, to incorporate into their strategies to avoid conversion-focused content for as long as possible. The YouTube algorithm wants, you know, YouTube as a business model, it makes money the longer people stay on platform. And so when you include links or you, when you're description or you direct people off platform, especially when you have a, you know, a younger or smaller channel, you're immediately communicating to YouTube that your video causes people to leave YouTube. So avoiding conversion-focused content early on in your YouTube strategy is something that I think people rarely do because it doesn't feel good all the time.

9:21Like, wait, I'm spending money on these videos. I'm putting all this time and effort into it. I want conversions. And so that's something that I think is often underrated is actually avoiding that and kind of pushing past that discomfort and saying, this is a long, we're in this for the long haul. We want to get our subscriber base up to at least in the high, you know, tens of thousands, um, before necessarily, um, you know, just trying to get my, our subscriber base to, to buy, buy things. Um, not always the perfect strategy for everyone, but that's one tip. Um, I think that generally when we think about performance on YouTube, there's two primary metrics that the algorithm values.

10:07The first is your ability to get someone to click on your title and thumbnail. And then the second is how long you can get them to stay on your video. um so many people focus on the first uh measured by you know it's called ctr click-through rate they think about you know how can i get people to click but less people a lot less people are focusing on how can i guarantee that my viewers and the highest number of viewers stay watching my video until the very end. And it's what we call retention, or it could be measured by average percentage viewed. And thinking not just about total average percentage viewed, but also what is my first 20 second retention?

10:55What is my first 30 % retention? What is my end of video retention? And then what is my overall average percentage viewed or overall retention? And looking at these numbers to try and figure out how can I optimize my video in its structure, in my intro, in my editing, and in the value that I'm delivering throughout to create the highest probability that the most amount of people will stay watching until the end. And then ideally click on one of my, you know, one of your end screen cards to watch another video. And that's a whole, end screen cards could be a whole nother underrated thing. Most people just say at the end of their video, Hey, like, and subscribe.

11:35But if YouTube, what YouTube wants even more than that is for them to watch another one of your videos. And I ideally that's what you want as well. So ending your video with a CTA, not just maybe subscribe or like or share, but, um, a CTA to watch another one of your videos. It's actually a much higher leverage CTA for the end of your videos than, than to get them to subscribe or, um, or just comment. Underrated tactics, Fire Nation for your success on YouTube. And one thing we're going to dive into next are analytics within YouTube. And we're going to share a couple of success stories as well, some real specifics when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

12:15Energy, focus, and recovery are critical for high performers like us. And finding the right supplements can make all the difference. Quicksilver Scientific makes advanced liposomal supplements your body can use fast. Quicksilver Scientific is a US-based company that manufactures advanced liposomal supplements. In everyday terms, this means nutrients are easier for your body to absorb and put to work quickly. I've been using Quicksilver's The One, which helps restore mitochondrial function for lasting energy and clarity. And when you knock out seven podcast interviews in one day, energy and clarity are especially important.

12:48What's also important to me is that Quicksilver has clean formulations. All of their supplements are non-GMO, have no unnecessary fillers, and are allergen-tested. Quick Silver Scientific makes advanced liposomal supplements so you can actually feel the difference. Energy, focus, calm, recovery. Get 10 % off plus free shipping at tryqs.com slash fire. That's tryqs.com slash fire. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business.

13:28And they are also our featured partner, High Level. If you're an entrepreneur, coach, agency, or course creator looking to grow faster and smarter, High Level is the all-in-one platform that replaces your entire tech stack. Seriously, think ClickFunnels, Calendly, MailChimp, Kajabi, and even your CRM all rolled up into one powerful white label solution. You can build funnels, send SMS and email campaigns, schedule appointments, manage pipelines, run memberships, and even launch your own branded mobile app. It's drag and drop simple, incredibly customizable, and built for serious growth. My favorite part, you can resell high level under your own brand.

14:04That means recurring revenue, loyal clients, and total control. So whether you're tired of duct taping tools together or ready to start offering high value services with ease, High Level is your unfair advantage. On top of it all, their support team is second to none and has your back every step of the way. Seriously, every question that pops up, they will have your answer waiting. And if you visit my special partnership link, you'll get a free trial. So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together.

14:41High level, join the revolution. All right, Adrian, we're back. And man, like just knowing your numbers are so important, knowing your stats, your watch time, your click rate, like all these different things are so important. Can you take a step back right now? Give us a class on YouTube Analytics 101. It's a beast, YouTube Analytics. And it's really a double-edged sword. I mean, YouTube is truly the only platform that gives users such an amazing amount of insight into viewer behavior through their analytics and through the data. And not only do they have the YouTube studio where you could go in and look at all the numbers and the nice graphs they put together for you, but you can actually export all that data as well.

15:38And so at Dragon Fruit, we have some of our own systems that actually kind of scrape all the data out and run even more extensive granular analyses of the numbers. And just the fact that that's even possible, just like to start there is pretty incredible and something that people should really be thinking about taking advantage of. It's sort of like I often use the example of, you know, so we just passed the trade deadline for the NBA. I don't know how many listeners are NBA fans, but I'm a big NBA fan. And the good comparison metaphor here or comparison is, you know, you got the coach has their trade deadline coming up and their coaching staff brings them all the stats on their players and all the prospects and all the people that think about trading and all the numbers on, you know, on all these players.

16:32And they're like, all right, you know, let's sit down and let's look at all this and analyze this and figure out what the most effective trade is, you know, based on. and the coach just is kind of like, nah, I think we should just keep doing what we're doing. Or, nah, I just got a gut feeling. I'm just going off my hunch. That would be a pretty suboptimal strategy for winning a title. So just to start there and thinking about how important these numbers are and why we should even really be caring about them. as you start looking into them it can feel very overwhelming especially you know not everyone has a background in data analysis and is super comfortable with the back end of YouTube so I think that generally as I said before the most important things you're looking for are how many people are clicking on my title and thumbnail and how many people are watching the very end that's that's the entry point right those numbers you can track your click-through rates as well as your average percentage viewed or retention, right?

17:43Those are made very accessible to you. But there's a lot of nuance here, right? So if we start, let's start by diving into click-through rate. So first of all, you don't know if your click-through rate is based on how it's impacted by your title or your thumbnail. Like maybe your title sucked, but you had a really riveting thumbnail. And so people clicked on your video. But if your title hadn't sucked and was really good, you might have had double that click-through rate. But you would never know that based on your CTR number. So one important thing to do is like A-B test your titles and thumbnails.

18:17This might look like changing your thumbnail after 24 hours based on performance and seeing if you see a spike. That's sort of the more like manual version. But there's also resources. Like we use TubeBuddy for all of our clients and to actually A-B test their thumbnails. And that A-B, they sort of are constantly, that tool constantly switches out the two thumbnails to see which perform better, regardless of the title staying the same. So that's one thing. The other issue with CTR is it's confounded by impressions. So it generally, it has a negative correlation with impressions. impressions are the number of times your video appears on on the youtube platform in front of a user so that's and that's uh you know that's you know when we start thinking about traffic sources so is it appearing on the browse page is it appearing in the suggested tab is it appearing in people's subscriber feed these are all different or in the search you know in in search page um these are all traffic sources so you want to you want to look at not just how many impressions am I getting, but where are they appearing?

19:29And then what is my CTR for each of these traffic sources? Generally, search is going to have a higher CTR because people are, you know, they have a more specific user intent. But you ideally, ideally are getting the most impressions from the browse page, because that means that YouTube is organically promoting your content to subscribers and non-subscribers. You want to watch out. You can't just compare two videos CTR because if one video has 200 ,000 impressions and the other video has 5 ,000 impressions, your click-through rate is going to be confounded by those numbers, right? So what we do at Dragon Fruit is we benchmark all of the metrics that we're tracking.

20:16So we're either benchmarking by number of views or number of days or hours since upload. And that allows us to actually control, in the case of CTR, it allows us to control for impression count so that we can accurately compare different videos, CTR, and figure out what's actually causing people to click more often. And then, again, basing that off of traffic source. So maybe we have a really high CTR in our subscriber feed because our subscribers love our videos. But when we look at non-subscribers that are seeing our impressions on the browse page, we're seeing a lower CTR. And that means that our videos are appealing to our subscriber base, but it's not appealing beyond that initial group.

21:03And so we have to figure out how to make our thumbnails and titles more discoverable or widely accessible or appealing to a larger audience. so that i feel like that that's a pretty good primer on like click-through rate on how do you you know getting people to sort of like the numbers you want to look at when when thinking about who's clicking on your actual video getting in um the next most important thing is getting them to stay to the end so i already kind of mentioned this but it's primarily thinking about retentions you want to be looking at first 20 second first 30 second end of video retention and then overall retention measured by average percentage viewed.

21:41This is different than watch time because obviously a 30-minute video is always going to get more watch time than a five-minute video unless the view counts are drastically less for the longer video. But generally, a longer video is going to get you more watch time. That's not always a good thing. So that's not always, that's not a reason necessarily like, oh, I'm just going to make all 30 minute videos because YouTube values watch time. And I'm going to get more watch time on my 30 minute videos because YouTube is also tracking this average percentage view. So you're going to get a much lower average percentage viewed on a 30 minute video because there's no way people are sticking around until the end of that thing.

22:24You know, um, whereas a five minute video, you might, you might get a lot more people to actually watch it to the end. And so your average percentage viewed, um, might be higher in thinking about like, okay, what are some gold standards here? Like, okay, I have my video. What, what is an hour good average percentage of you'd look like? So generally, if you have a video that's, you know, in the like eight to 12 minute range, like around a 10 minute video, um, if you can get 50 % of viewers, if you can get your end of video retention to be at 50%, you have done something very impressive. You have seriously captured your audience's attention far beyond what most people are able to do.

23:09So you're in the top percentile of creators across the entire platform. So that's what you should be shooting for, 50 % end of video retention. um that that often will leave you with a um and so that will often leave you with an average um um average percentage viewed or overall retention you know somewhere around you know in the 40s um maybe mid 40 percentile percent range um excuse me i'm sorry i'm sorry i went the wrong direction there uh 60s in the 60s and and what you want for the first 20 30 seconds is you want to lose no more. You want to be around 80 % plus. So you want like first 20, 30 seconds, you don't lose more than 20 % of your audience.

23:53By the end, you don't want to lose more than 50. And that's going to give you an overall percentage, you know, in that kind of that mid 60 range. So that should be your North Star for retention. And that when you start hitting those numbers consistently, you the algorithm does notice that and we see time and time again, you know, increased promotion on videos that are able to do that. Um, so yeah, I think that, I think that that's how I would sort of start my one-on-one class. No, I think that's a great one-on-one. And I do kind of want to start to wrap this up with a bang because you've taken us through the attention industry, the visual storytelling, trust-based conversion.

24:31You've given us some underrated tactics. We just went through a YouTube analytics one-on-one class. let's end with a success story. Like something that you trained one of your clients on, you walk them through these things and then give us some results that they had. Now, I know you need to keep a lot of this on not specific and not use names, et cetera, but as much as you can share, get as detailed as possible, tell us one success story. We had a client that came to us and they were having, they weren't having a huge problem getting people into their videos so like their their click-through rates were pretty good they were getting a lot of impressions their main problem was again they just couldn't they for whatever reason people were getting into their videos and um and and not not sticking around to the end and and what that led to was again youtube seeing their videos as low performing because people aren't are only watching like you know a small percentage of it and a low subscriber conversion rate.

25:34So they were getting a lot of views, but then people weren't subscribing based on the videos. So what we focused on, again, is this kind of thing I went through was retention. If we can get people to stay to the end, not only does that make, communicate to the algorithm that that video is valuable, but it shows that the viewer thought it was valuable and it creates a much higher percentage chance that they're going to actually subscribe. So that we really focused in on this client with how much, how can we structure the videos to be the most engaging and entertaining and deliver the most value consistently throughout.

26:09And when we started with them, they had a like 23 % average percentage. Like that was their rolling average percentage view. It was around 23%. They couldn't really get it higher than that. Um, and in, uh, in around, I think it was like seven or eight months, um, we were able to, um, get that number up to, um, an average of, uh, rolling retention of 55%. Um, and it led to, um, their impressions like skyrocket. So skyrocket, I mean, it led to in that amount of time, um, they got, uh, over 6 million organic impressions and, um, uh, five X'd their, uh, their subscriber count. So that was something that I think even surprised my team because of how much we think about, um, just like, Oh, my title and thumbnails aren't good enough.

27:11You know, that's the thing we hear the most. But in thinking about remembering that, you know, these are people that are on the platform. And if your video isn't really bringing them in and, you know, engrossing them and, and capturing their attention, inspiring them and educating them and delivering them value throughout the whole thing and getting them to stick to the end, then it's not, you know, you aren't going to see that kind of rapid growth that people are looking for. And so really digging into the specifics of your piece of content in minute by minute, second by second, how am I communicating?

27:52What am I saying? What value am I delivering? Am I delivering on what my title and thumbnail promised my audience? And is this targeted toward my target viewer persona and consistent with my channel's value proposition? And getting into these granular bit by bit, we were able to, yeah, to over double the rolling average percentage viewed, get over 6 million organic impressions and 5X the subscriber base. That was something that I think we were really excited about, happy with. Love that story. Love success stories overall. And Adrian, take us home. What's the one thing you want to leave Fire Nation with?

28:31Any way that we can connect with you, your company, any call to action you have, and then we'll say goodbye. One thing I would just leave everyone with is video content is really difficult. And there's a high barrier to entry here. I mean, most people in high school or college learned how to write, and maybe even learned how to write pretty well. A lot of people know how to write pretty well. It's a common skill. Um, but not, but most people were not taught how to handle a camera or how to adjust their, their aperture or figure out what focal length their lens should be or edit in premiere and color grade.

29:18Right. And so these are, these are hybrid entry skills and they require a lot of, of, of time and energy, um, to learn. And so just to kind of say, it's kind of a long game, I guess. And although it's difficult, it's something that is really worth, I think, diving into. And anyone can do it. And it just takes that kind of building the system. That's what I'd say. That's what I'd say I'll leave everyone with. is just if you can build a system around video content and really get a flywheel going, um, you know, anyone can do this and, and the returns, they're going to be, they're going to be big.

30:05I mean, like I said at the beginning, we're at the base of this mountain. So, um, that's, that's what I'll leave everyone with. Um, we would love to be in touch with anyone who who's, who's interested in who's a creator or business, you know, wants to make videos. We actually, we threw together a, a fun little landing page. Um, so you can actually find us at dragonfruitmedia.co slash fire. And that is specifically for the Fire Nation listeners. You can go there and we've got some great free resources, some YouTube script writing guidelines, some guides that go into, dive even deeper into some of the analytics, insights and tips and tricks that I went through today.

30:46And yeah, we'd love to have you guys over there and download some of those free resources and, you know, get in touch if you ever need anything. My name's Adrian. And, you know, we'd love to, yeah, we'd love to work with anyone. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with AL and JLD today. So keep up that heat. Head over to eofire.com, type Adrian in the search bar and his show notes page will pop up with everything that we've talked about here today. Best show notes in the biz. And Adrian, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.