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Master YouTube's potential with our comprehensive guide. Uncover key growth hacking YouTube strategies including SEO optimization, engaging thumbnail design, live broadcasts, YouTube Shorts, and effective hooks. Perfect for ecommerce brands, agencies, courses, and influencers seeking to increase visibility, traffic, and sales
YouTube is an excellent source of traffic, sales & views for any business.
I personally started my YouTube journey back in November of 2019 when I created a screen share video showcasing how marketers can scrape SERP results using tools like SEOQuake and Phantombuster.
That video has amassed +30K views to this day and still drives traffic to both the Bootcamp, our agency, and our communities.
This article will cover the following YouTube Growth Hacking Strategies:
Anyone can utilize YouTube for business.
E-commerce brands can drive more sales using YouTube.
Agencies can acquire more sales calls using YouTube.
Courses can generate more students using YouTube.
And influencers can acquire a bigger audience using YouTube.
Over the years, YouTube has acquired a viewer base so high that it's able to cater to ANY business' marketing needs.
The growth hacking strategies discussed in this article are designed to boost your channel's visibility, increase your subscriber count, and ultimately, drive more traffic & sales to your business.
Let's dive right in.
My favorite YouTube Growth Hack is hands down YouTube SEO.
This is something that I've even mentioned in my Hackernoon article, specifically on how I grew my channel at the start mostly by researching keywords with ok traffic & low competition.
Briefly put, YouTube has three algorithms.
The YouTube home feed algorithm.
The YouTube Shorts algorithm.
And the YouTube Search algorithm.
The easiest one of those three to capitalize on is hands down the Search Algorithm.
The process is simple.
Download a free tool like VidIQ to be able to see the existing search & competition volumes for a specific keyword.
Do some keyword research until you find a keyword that's relevant to your niche and has decent traffic and low competition.
Create a video on that keyword, and make sure to optimize the title, description & tags based on the keyword you're trying to rank for.
And that's it.
Your rank will depend on how well your video performs in terms of CTR & audience retention, but you will be performing significantly better than if you ignored this and just tried to get a mediocre video up on everyone's home feed.
Rinse & repeat this process and you now have 20 videos that are trickling in views to your channel on a steady basis and possibly converting as community members or even sales.
One of the best things about this strategy is that you'll be benefitting from videos you created years ago as long as your content is placed on keywords that have continuous traffic.
I know this is going to come off as a shock for many but your thumbnails is 60% of the video.
That and your title are what most of your viewers are going to see anyways.
The majority of your audience won't actually click on your video, what they'll do instead is see your thumbnail, read the title, and only then click on the video.
And that's only if they're interested.
I've seen so many creators ignore this to their own peril.
They'll spend hours & hours scripting, recording & editing the video only to spend 10 minutes on the thumbnail and then wonder why they're not getting any views.
YouTube looks at 2 key metrics when assessing whether a video is worth promoting further or not.
The click-through rate, which is directly dependent on the thumbnail.
AND...
The audience retention graph is directly dependent on the quality of your video.
Spend as much time as possible on that thumbnail.
If you post a video and see that the CTR is below 6%-10%, change the thumbnail.
Another great growth hacking strategy for YouTube is live streams.
The great thing about them is that viewers love them as they're able to engage with their creators in real-time, and they rank high on YouTube search results whilst they're live.
You can use this strategy to take advantage of things that are currently trending right now.
Here's an example.
Meta just released a new platform.
People rush online and start searching for that individual.
Some will search on YouTube.
You'll have a live show talking about this latest trend hence absorbing the traffic.
One key tip regarding this is to keep the live chat as engaged as possible as this helps boost viewer retention times which as mentioned, is very a important YouTube metric.
Review of Shorts just when I started them. 👆
As mentioned, YouTube functions with 3 algorithms.
This growth hacking strategy focuses purely on the YouTube shorts algorithm.
The rules of the game for YouTube Shorts are alike to any short-form content platform whether it'd be TikTok or Instagram Reels.
As we mention in our Growth Hacking Course, your short form content must:
YouTube shorts are an excellent growth hack for anyone looking to get results fast but it's slowly becoming both highly competitive & oversaturated, meaning that there's a lot of work that must go into a single video for it to pop off.
Additionally, I've personally found that keeping the subject matter of the video broad and one that everyone can relate to increases the chances of your video popping off drastically.
Hyper-focused videos on topics like "Best accounting practices for businesses in Miami" rarely go viral.
Alternatively, videos like "How to save $$$ in taxes" go viral all the time.
Keep it simple.
Example of video with a hook 👆
Hooks, hooks, hooks.
Hooks are everything.
We've mostly seen the use of hooks pick up as a growth hacking strategy in short-form content but creators have quickly realized that hooks work really well for long-form YouTube content too.
Therefore, the first minute of your long-form YouTube content should be focused purely on hooking the viewer in.
Mr. Beast understands this very well, and it's a strategy that can be seen in most of the YouTube videos he creates.
Only once you've hooked in the attention of the viewer, can you then move on to the more boring things.
Otherwise, your YouTube content will be destined to fail.
Mastering YouTube for business growth is no longer a hidden tactic; it's an open secret that needs the right combination of strategies and a dedicated effort.
From SEO optimization to the effective use of hooks, there's a world of potential to tap into.
E-commerce brands, agencies, courses, and influencers - each have a unique potential to leverage YouTube's immense viewer base and algorithms for their gain.
The five growth hacking strategies discussed in this article - SEO optimization, thumbnail design, live broadcasts, YouTube Shorts, and the powerful use of hooks - can turn YouTube into a potent business growth engine.
If you're looking to take your YouTube content marketing further then I strongly recommend you check out the content marketing modules in our Growth Hacking Course where we take you from zero to hero with our self-serve growth hacking mastermind and interactive community.
