MBA2623 How to Use YouTube Shorts to Drive Leads to Your Business

0:00Everyone is talking about YouTube shorts, but how do you exactly use them to get leads, not just likes. The truth is that shorts can be more than just entertainment. They can be one of the fastest ways to grow your audience and get them into your funnel for free. Let me show you how.

0:22Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business. let's start by discussing why youtube shorts work so well right now youtube is pushing shorts like crazy and they're getting prioritized in their algorithm especially for new creators and best of all you don't need a huge following to get views this is free exposure with real discovery potential and unlike tiktok and reels on instagram youtube is search driven which means your shorts can keep working for you weeks and months later when people are searching for the keywords that address your video.

1:06The way that shorts works is that YouTube puts out your shorts to an audience, even an audience that doesn't follow your channel. And then if you will watch it, if people engage with it, they show that video or that short again to more people and more people. And that circle of influence starts to grow and grow as long as your content is solid. Some of my most successful videos on YouTube are YouTube Shorts. And this is why I wanted to create today's episode because it's a gold rush right now when it comes to YouTube and these short form videos. So where do you get started? So let's start with step one, create shorts that hook and teach.

1:42Don't just talk, teach something valuable under 60 seconds, answer a burning question, share a quick tip, drop a stat or an insight that gets people thinking with a takeaway that follows up. But the most important thing when it comes to shorts is the first two seconds, that hook that grabs people's attention. So you want to start with something that really gets them thinking, hey, I should watch this video. Here are some hook examples that really worked for me. Here's how I got my first customer. So that really hooks somebody in to think, oh, how did he get his first customer? I want to keep watching.

2:16Another example is most people get this wrong in business. What did they get wrong? See how it hooks them in and gets them wanting to keep watching to find out. Another example is, don't do this if you want leads from YouTube. What should I not do? See, again, I'm alerting people to something they need to pay attention to. A strong hook gets them to stop scrolling, and the lesson gets them to stay. The information you give after the hook is what gets them really feeling like, okay, that was worth my time. I want to watch more from this person. I want to learn more from this person. I want to do business with this person eventually.

2:51but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's get on to step two. Always include a call to action. Now, if you're trying to get leads with your shorts, you want to get somebody off YouTube and onto your email list. That's the whole point of getting the lead, right? But you've got to make it explicit if you want the lead. Every short should point to somewhere. Now, you might not see this in my shorts because I'm not creating shorts to get leads for the most part. I'm getting people to watch my shorts so they can watch my long form videos, which is like an episode of our podcast. And then from there, they can sign up for my newsletter.

3:25That's my strategy. And you can do that as well. But if you want to get leads directly from shorts, feel free to have a call to action, something like want more get my free guide link in the description, or subscribe for a full tutorial, where they give their name and email address in an opt in box, and you send them a full video or I break this down step by step in my e-guide, go ahead and click the link to download it or get access to it and let them know where they should find that link. Tell them if it's in the description or I pinned a comment. Add that link in the description or in the comment.

3:57Your CTA doesn't have to be loud, but it has to be clear what it is and where they should go so that they can get that freebie. Step three, be consistent and strategic. One great short won't do it. You can't just put one out there and then forget about it for a few weeks and then put another one out there, then forget about a few months. No, you need to be consistent. To be super clear, I'm talking about 10 to 20 shorts over the next 30 days. That's a lead engine. This allows you enough chances, enough iterations for you to know what works and what's going to actually lead people to that call to action.

4:35You want to focus on a consistent content style. So when they see their shorts, they know your brand. They know that's who you are. You want to target one niche audience. You don't want to be talking to everybody. If you can narrow down to a niche, it's going to be a lot easier for them to feel like they're being heard, that you're speaking their language, that this content's for them. And of course, don't confuse people. Deliver one idea per video. You only have 60 seconds. Just go deep in those 60 seconds with one idea. And of course, I highly recommend that you batch your production. So you can batch 10 of these shorts in one afternoon and then you can have them edited in one shot.

5:13In fact, you could do all your shorts for the month in one sitting. Now, a lot of you are listening to this like, OK, I'm sold. I want to use shorts. I want to get some lead through shorts. How do I come up with ideas? Easy. Turn Turn your frequently asked questions from your audience into shorts. Think about questions you always get from your leads, from your customers. What do they ask all the time? These questions are a goldmine. For example, questions I get asked all the time are like, how do I price my service? Do I need a website to get started? How do I get my first 10 customers? These are the types of questions I get from my audience or my customers.

5:48and these are great pieces of content, great topics for me to cover in 60 seconds in a really tight and snappy way. Some topics are gonna be quite big and you can't cover in 60 seconds, but you can create a series of shorts where you talk about that topic over a course of three shorts. That's value-driven content. That builds trust and pulls the lead in naturally. People are gonna wanna learn more. They're gonna want to continue with you. They're gonna wanna be on your email list if you give them value. But even with all the advice I gave in today's episode, there might be something that's holding you back, and that's probably you, okay?

6:25You are in your own way. A lot of us, we don't want to put ourselves out there. We're afraid to look foolish or to not be polished, or maybe we're just not used to creating videos. And that's okay. You got to start somewhere. We all start at zero, right? We all have cringeworthy work in our past, and if we don't, we started too late. Listen, I've done over 2 ,600 podcast episodes. I can't listen to my first 100 episodes on the podcast. They're cringeworthy. But I had to get started. I had to get somewhere where I can get the ball rolling, learn from my experience, iterate, improve. And that's the whole name of the game.

7:03The more iterations you have, the more reps you have, the better you're going to get at it. But you're not going to get better by just sitting in your head. You've got to produce and publish work, put work out there. And Shorts is a good small commitment. You're not publishing a big 300-page book. You're not publishing a two-hour seminar or webinar. You're publishing a 60-second piece of content that you can really nail. That puts the pressure a little bit down. And what's great about Shorts is that you have enough chances to improve upon the last short. So get started and don't worry about being perfect right now.

7:36They say perfection is the enemy of progress. Listen, you don't need to go viral. You just need to be consistent. You need to be clear and helpful. That sounds pretty easy, right? The goal isn't to get millions of views here. It's attract the right people to build trust fast and to guide them to the world that you've built for them, your site, your list, your business. And YouTube Shorts can do exactly that. They can help people get exposure to the value that you can provide them. Speaking of calls to action and value that one can provide, I have a call to action for you. If you want to continue to learn from me and go a little bit deeper, you may want to join my Three Things newsletter over at 100mba.net.

8:18Every week, I send you an email with three things to work on. Number one, something to think about. I'm going to give you something to change your mindset about something. Number two, something to do so that you're progressing week after week and seeing your business grow. And number three, something to learn so that your skills are leveling up so that you become a better entrepreneur. It's my way to coach you from afar. It's absolutely free. Let's grow together. Let me help you so that you don't have a bumpy path. I had to learn the hard way. No need for you to learn the hard way. Just go to 100mba.net and sign up for any of our guides and you'll get added to our Three Things newsletter automatically.

8:54Thanks again for being part of the podcast. If you found this episode helpful, share it. Share it with a friend that you're thinking about that might benefit from today's topic. Or you can just send them straight to our show page where it has all our episodes, 100mba.net slash show, and I'll see you in the next one.