Why Your YouTube Marketing Funnel Isn’t Working

You want to use YouTube as your evergreen marketing system, but things aren’t really taking off as you hope. I bet there are a few gaps in your YouTube marketing strategy that just need to be tweaked just a little bit. Let’s uncover them today.

I’m Jamar Diggs, and I help businesses create a marketing strategy with YouTube so they can attract truly connected customers who are loyal to their products or services. I’m going to share with you some of the common strategic advice that we give our clients whenever they feel like their YouTube marketing funnel isn’t working.

Managing Expectations for Your YouTube Marketing Funnel

The first thing that we have to do is manage our expectations. This happens so much with our clients because sometimes they have a huge following on other platforms, and then when they get to use YouTube, they forget how it feels to start a new platform from scratch.

It kind of hits them in the feels a little bit, I call it a little wake-up call or a gut check that happens. They start thinking, “Oh my gosh, is it working? I’m so used to getting this immediate gratification or validation from my audience,” which is really what it is, I’m not going to lie to you. YouTube is different and you’re building a platform, you’re building a new platform from scratch, and so a lot of people don’t manage that kind of expectation whenever they are starting something new like this, especially when it’s something that is a long game evergreen strategy. It takes time for things to really pop off sometimes or to pop off in the way that you really want it to.

YouTube Marketing vs. Content Creation

Another expectation that we have to manage whenever we’re working with clients is to understand that if they’re looking at a content creator’s YouTube channel and they compare it to their channel, they are actually comparing apples to oranges. The way that we are using our YouTube channel as business owners is going to be completely different when you are using it as a content creator, and so your results are going to be different, the acceleration rate is going to be different as well, and the KPIs that you measure are also going to be different. We use YouTube to get people off of the platform and into our sales systems. Content creators use YouTube so people can stay on the platform for as long as possible and they get a cut of that ad revenue.

The way that we look at things should be a little bit more different. So if you are trying to compare your own YouTube channel success or your own marketing funnel to what you see other influencers or content creators doing, stop doing that, it’s not going to help you in the long run, and it actually is going to hold you back because you could be on the right track to something, but you are comparing it to something that you really shouldn’t be.

We’ve seen this happen so many times to where we’ve had clients that are being found in search engines, they’re being suggested after people are watching the right things, but because they don’t see the subscribers or the high views, they think that their channel isn’t doing well when their channel is actually bringing in the right kind of people.

Content Matters: Optimizing Your YouTube Marketing Funnel

Another reason why your YouTube marketing funnel may not be working the way that you want it to, it could be a problem with your content and specifically you may be posting a lot of transformation based content. That’s kind of what I like to call it. I see this mistake a whole lot with coaches, especially business coaches or sales coaches, to where they see this type of transformation-based marketing being really effective upon community-based platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and they think that they could bring that same type of strategy over to YouTube, and they are wrong.

We’re not trying to attract the dreamers, we’re trying to attract people who have a problem, and they’re willing to spend money to fix it, which is why may be a problem with your type of content that you’re putting. So if you’re talking about how I scaled to $1 million in six months, or something like that, that’s okay, but that’s not going to bring in the type of people that you want. There are a lot of underlying concepts and challenges that people have before they even think about scaling to $1 million. So transformation-based content works when people already know you, they already like you, they already trust you. The main goal of YouTube is to use a search engine and to use this whole new platform of people who are searching for answers to their challenging moments and putting you in front of them and to position you as the expert.

We want to use YouTube in a way that is going to attract people who you would have never met, but all you’re doing is posting either a video a week or a video every other week, and the YouTube algorithm and the YouTube search engine is doing its job month after month after month, and sending people your way into your sales systems, transformation-based content is not going to do that for you.

Lead Magnet Quality: Enhancing Your YouTube Marketing Funnel

Another reason why your YouTube marketing funnel may not be really working for you could be because of your lead magnet. It may be low quality or you may not even have a lead magnet at all. So this is a big problem for a lot of businesses who are using YouTube. Some tend to use quick win resources to get people onto their email list, but think about this, you may be attracting the wrong kind of person, the person who is not actually going to buy from you. Maybe they just wanted that resource and now they’re good to go. That’s one of the reasons why there are a few specific type of lead magnets that I like. I did a video recently about the lead magnet types that I recommend specifically for YouTube, it’ll be really helpful for you to know what kind of lead magnets are good and what is my thoughts behind it.

Analyze the Right Data: Measuring Your YouTube Marketing Funnel’s Effectiveness

We also find that you may not think that your YouTube marketing funnel is working because you’re looking at the wrong data. So it’s very important for you to understand your YouTube analytics, your Google Analytics, and understanding what are your benchmarks and KPIs. I want you to ask yourself this question, are you really properly tracking your YouTube traffic that’s coming from your website and then also comparing it to your other platforms out there? Are you tracking your lead magnet conversion rates as they relate to other platforms? How much traffic is going over there versus how many people are actually opting into the resource? That kind of stuff is important to know, to know if your marketing strategy is actually working. And in the same vein, are you using your YouTube videos outside of them just being up on YouTube? We don’t want you to silo these YouTube videos.

Integration is Key: Making Your YouTube Marketing Funnel Work Across Your Entire Business

A lot of the times people only see YouTube marking strategy as this one way street where you post videos on YouTube and you’re supposed to get back these specific results. But like I said, YouTube is a long game and it shouldn’t be a siloed strategy, it should be integrated in your entire marketing system. How are you using YouTube to make your entire marketing implementation a lot easier, are you repurposing your YouTube videos into blog posts? Are you creating other types of media with that kind of content as well? Are you using your videos in your sales process? Yes, a lot of the times if you work with me, you are going to be able to use these videos in your sales process because it’s going to make it a lot more easier for people to understand your unique way of thinking, understand your processes, see how other clients have worked with you, and not only the sales process, but also your client success process.

These YouTube videos are able to be used as supplemental resources for your actual clients so that you don’t have to always repeat yourself over and over and over. And so, you’ll see how your YouTube marketing funnel impacts both your top of funnel people, but also the people who are actually like your clients. So I like to say that it’s like a full customer lifecycle. So when you really say that your YouTube marketing funnel isn’t working, is it because you have not implemented it in the right way and used it across these other types of things, because your YouTube channel is so much more than just attracting people to your website, all these other ways of you using it, it’s going to help you expedite your results faster than just siloing one platform on its own. At the end of the day, I truly believe that your marketing strategy is so interconnected to your sales and customer success strategy.

I want to help you understand some of the KPIs that are beyond YouTube that really help make your sales conversations a lot easier. Do you find yourself answering fewer questions in your sales conversations or DMs or demos because this person already knows what to expect from you and they’re confident in their decision, they’re confident in their investment with you? Have customers upgraded or continue their services with you because you have helped them expedite their processes with your resources? And are you seeing less churn in your product, your memberships, your group programs because you are finally attracting the right people who understand your frameworks, your methodologies, the reasonings behind your concepts, and they trust it fullheartedly and are committed to the processes with you?

Those are a few KPIs that you should be measuring that all can come from your YouTube channel. Creating this customer or client success center with YouTube is going to help you use these assets so many different ways that you wouldn’t even imagine before.

Optimize Your Sales Systems: Maximizing Conversions in Your YouTube Marketing Funnel

The final reason why your YouTube marketing funnel may not be working as well as you like could be down to your sales systems. Are they optimized for YouTube viewers, people who don’t know who you are? What happens after someone opts into that elite magnet and goes into your email list? Do you have a sales funnel in place? You’re going to need more than just your weekly newsletter in order to get someone to buy. As soon as someone joins your email list from your lead magnet, you should be sending a series of strategic emails that’s going to build authority and help the subscriber know more about you, how you help people, and show some results of how you’ve helped people in the past.

This also works if you have a product. If your lead magnet for your product was a free trial of some sort, then you need to send a series of emails that’s going to help this person make the most out of that product in the first 15 to 30 days. Now, I have a little disclaimer here. I want you to keep in mind that marketing is not linear. So even if they go through the sales sequence, it doesn’t always guarantee that they will buy immediately. That’s why it’s up to you to stay top of mind with all of your marketing initiatives to make sure that when the time is right, they are ready, they know that they want to work with you. It’s all about making sure that you’re top of mind, that you are using your authority building content, you’re using these other assets that you have created, and you’re able to be on social media in email, you may even be able to retarget with ads based upon your YouTube video views or your website traffic or your email subscribers to stay top of mind to these particular people.

Create a YouTube Marketing Strategy for Your Business

This is some of the strategic advice that I’m able to give my clients when we are evaluating their YouTube channel and their marketing funnels. If you want to learn more about how to create a YouTube marketing funnel, then I want to invite you to my free training called the YouTube Strategy Blueprint, where I walk you through my entire YouTube funnel framework.