What Does a YouTube Strategist Do (and Do You Need One)?
You need someone to help you with YouTube – you just don’t know who or what they are. A doer sounds good. Someone who can take what you have, implement, and immediately free up time on your calendar. But you’re not sure if YouTube is worth it yet.
You know YouTube is the next step in your marketing strategy. You want strategic marketing and sales assets that are always working to get more eyeballs on your business, build authority and trust so you are the first person they think about working with.
The thing is, you’re not entirely sure you want to tackle this on your own… which is why you’re here, wondering what exactly a YouTube strategist does — and if it’s who you’re looking for:
What is a YouTube Strategist?
A YouTube strategist is a person who owns the why behind your YouTube channel. With a strategist, you’re not just focusing on what videos to make, you’re focusing on how those videos connect to your business goals, your marketing ecosystem, and your revenue.
A YouTube strategist is a subject matter expert on YouTube as an awareness, authority building, and lead generation tool – specifically for business owners, like you. They’re not the ones typically editing your videos.
Rather, they’re making sure that every video has a job to do, and that’s it’s actually doing it.
How a YouTube Strategist Supports Your Channel
There are a few different levels of support you could engage with a YouTube strategist. Think of it like a “choose your own adventure:”
Support Tier #1: The DIY Model
If you just want to do it yourself (but would rather not start from scratch), you can get a course and learn how to do your YouTube strategy on your own. However, you may end up realizing that learning the information is different than actually doing it – and knowing what happens when you do it.
If you want to DIY your YouTube strategy, this free YouTube class for service providers + experts is a great starting point → watch it here.
Support Tier #2: The “Done-With-You” Strategy
This is a hybrid or mix between DIY, consulting, and education.
For example, The Low Lift Club, a YouTube membership and group program for coaches, consultants, and service providers is a done-with-you experience with a YouTube strategist. There’s an education component and curriculum, community component, DIY, and done-with-you all in one.
It’s a great solution for getting the frameworks and information you need to execute, while also getting support as you implement. Instead of taking a course and making mistakes on your own, in the Low Lift Club I’m reviewing your videos, your channel, and your content as you go – so you make the fewest mistakes possible and get where you’re trying to go a lot faster.
Support Tier #3: Private YouTube Consulting
This is more of a strategist-led consulting model. The strategist leads the YouTube project: picking your video topics, reviewing every video, auditing titles, thumbnails, and descriptions, analyzing analytics, and meeting regularly with the implementation team (the “doers”) to adjust the strategy as needed.
You handle the execution – often with the help of an editor, marketing assistant, or social media person. Your YouTube strategist serves as the brain – your implementation team as the hands.
Support Tier #4: The Full-Service YouTube Management
Yes, a YouTube strategist and YouTube manager are two separate beings, but both come together under a more agency-style model for offers like full-service YouTube management. Services like these offer both strategy and execution.
The trade-off: the production demands start to eat the strategy alive.
The team gets so busy getting videos out the door that no one is really looking at what’s working. By the time you spot the problem, their client has already filmed three more videos the old way.
A YouTube management agency has to be big enough with enough support to appropriately give strategy the attention it deserves – and that tends to come at a higher cost.
What Does a YouTube Strategist Do Day-to-Day?
All in all, in their day-to-day work, a YouTube strategist develops video topics based on business and marketing goals. For example, with Therapy for Black Girls (a past client), as their YouTube strategist I:
Audited their titles, thumbnails, and descriptions
Analyzed their analytics on a regular cycle with bi-weekly calls to review analytics
Work cross-functionality with their marketing team to make sure their channel is feeding their whole ecosystem
Design their conversion path – thinking about what the lead magnet is, what happens after someone watches, and how viewers YouTube into the email list and then a sale
It also depends on YOUR goals. For example, if you’re shifting your business and want your channel to match, as your YouTube strategist, I’m approaching it differently when compared to another client who’s launching their brand new channel.
Is a YouTube Strategist What You Need?
The main difference between a strategist and every other support member of your YouTube channel is their role in building your YouTube funnel and mapping out your full user journey. With a strategist, you’re finding the right viewers who want to download your lead magnet, get on your list, and then be nurtured toward booking and buying.
A YouTube strategist might be right for you if…
You’re already creating content on your channel but it’s not attracting the right people
You have a team (editor, VA, marketing assistant) but no one is owning the YouTube strategy
You’re a coach, consultant, or service provider who wants YouTube to be a marketing and sales asset that positions you as the expert viewers find first, trust first and hire first
You’ve been on YouTube a while and you’re not sure what’s working or why
You want to launch your channel off strong
Ready to get started and get support for your YouTube channel? Explore the Low-Lift Club, a done-with-you YouTube membership and group program here.
Answering Your Questions: Common FAQs About YouTube Strategists
Q: What’s the difference between a YouTube strategist and a YouTube manager?
A: Your strategist owns the plan, your manager owns the execution of the plan. A strategist decides what to make and why based on your business goals, a manager makes sure your videos get produced and uploaded.
A youtube manager may be someone on your team that can own this responsibility already, like a social media manager or marketing assistant if you have a small/lean team. As a YouTube strategist I give my clients access to my resources and tools for their team members to implement the strategy.
Q: Should you hire a strategist before or after you launch your channel?
A: Either option works, but before you launch your YouTube channel is ideal. Hiring a YouTube strategist before launching your channel allows you to get your foundation set – your positioning, your first batch of topics mapped out, and your funnel so you know who you want to attract and what you want them to do. You’re not wasting months of posting videos that may or may not work.
Every single video starts as a reliable sales and marketing asset for your business.
If you do hire a YouTube strategist after launch, your strategist will audit what you’ve already done, identify what's been working, and, of course, correct what hasn’t. When you hire a strategist after launching, you tend to have a jaded view of YouTube because you’re trying things without a clear strategy. There’s a lot of unlearning, relearning, and rebuilding trust in the process.
Q: How do you hire a YouTube strategist?
A: Look for someone who talks about business results and conversions, not just views, subscribers, or AdSense revenue. You want someone who looks at your channel as a business tool, not an influencer visibility play.
Get on a call, consume their content, ask questions in their DMs. Don’t be afraid to request testimonials and results.
Still wondering what YouTube could do for you and if you want to DIY, hire a strategist, or work with a YouTube manager? Get the YouTube Low Lift Starter Kit and take the first step in setting up your channel to learn what you like, don’t like, and what you’d rather outsource. Get yours here.
