How Pedro's B2B Consultancy Business Got 19X More YouTube Views in 9 Months (Without Creating New Videos)
Today I’m showing you how I helped Pedro increase his YouTube views by 19 times without having to create any new videos.
First, let me give some background on why Pedro wanted to grow his YouTube channel…
Pedro is a B2B consultant who helps SaaS companies increase conversions. He was regularly posting videos to YouTube but struggling to gain any meaningful traction.
After publishing 34 videos in 15 months on topics like “SaaS landing page” and “SaaS pricing page”, he was still only getting around 500 views a month and just 10-20 new subscribers a month.
With limited search volume for his niche, Pedro felt stumped on how to move forward. He knew he needed an effective YouTube strategy but didn’t have clarity on how to make it work.
Frustrated by the lack of growth, Pedro reached out to pick my brain on what he could be doing better on the platform. He was aware of how I’ve helped clients rapidly scale YouTube channels by optimizing existing content instead of exhausting themselves creating endless new videos.
Pedro asked me to analyze his YouTube approach and steer him in a better direction. He knew I could showcase the true potential for his channel.
BUT…he had two criteria that I had to achieve this with:
- Very low effort – he didn’t want anything to add to his workload.
- Big impact – he wanted a noticeable and significant impact on his goals – that of growing his YouTube channel for his consultancy business.
Those are usually mutually exclusive or extremely hard to achieve. The ‘Low effort’ criteria meant creating a new video was out of the question.
So how were we still able to increase views by 19x and quadruple YouTube subscribers?
To do this I adapted a small part of my Slingshot Strategy for growing businesses on YouTube.
Here are the 3 key steps I implemented that exploded Pedro’s YouTube growth using the videos he already had:
- Audit
- Audience
- Promote
1. YouTube Channel Audit
The first thing I did was go to YouTube Studio to find Pedro’s top performing videos.
He had a library of videos on his YouTube channel.
I looked at the top videos (by number of views) over the last 28 days.
Then I looked at the top videos over the last 90 days.
I was looking for videos appearing in the top 10 of both those lists. The higher up the video on both those lists, the better.
The top video for both periods was 24 minutes long
A few of these popular videos are more than 20 minutes long. For the later steps we need to keep this in mind.
With these videos I moved on to the following steps…
Traffic Sources
We need to check where the views came from on those top videos. I’m looking for videos with some organic distribution on YouTube.
Pedro has an email list and often sends his email subscribers to a YouTube video. He also has YouTube videos embedded on his website.
Looking at Traffic source data in YouTube Studio will help identify videos that are getting views from within YouTube, versus views from his email list and videos embedded on his website.
For example, this video was in the top 10 most viewed videos in both the 28 and 90 day periods but when I check the traffic source, it’s all external.
It’s also a sales pitch video – for what I’m going to do in the following steps I need to use a value-based video.
So to see the videos getting organic distribution on YouTube, I went to the detailed channel analytics in YouTube Studio. Then I used the traffic source filter, selecting YouTube Search, Suggested and Browse features.
These are the videos getting views from organic distribution on YouTube:
At the top of the list is the same video that was at the top of the 28 and 90 day periods.
That video could be the main video I’ll use in step 3 but first, a couple more checks…
Video CTR
I checked CTR (click-through rate on YouTube video impressions) for those videos to ensure it was relatively high versus the other videos on the channel.
No matter how many impressions you get, with fewer clicks you have fewer views. Fewer views = smaller potential audience.
Audience Retention & View Duration
After CTR, the next crucial element of performance is how well the video engages the viewing audience.
Do they watch for long (average view duration)?
How much of the video do they watch (average percentage viewed)?
And where do the viewers drop off (audience retention)?
It’s no good having a high CTR and lose most viewers in the first few seconds. And you certainly wouldn’t want to use any video like that to try attracting new viewers.
So, first I checked the average view duration and average percentage viewed in the same channel analytics area as the previous check for CTR. I just added those two columns.
You can see those with the highest view duration (highlighted in blue).
Most of these videos are relatively long. It’s ok the longer videos have a lower average percentage viewed than the shorter videos because the longer videos have a longer average view duration. That means viewers are spending more ‘time in your company’, so to speak.
Still, usually I would be looking for shorter videos (<10 minutes) so more people reach the end and have the opportunity to watch another video from the channel.
But I will be using more than one video in this case so we can see which performs best when we’re in the Promote stage (later on).
Now, based on everything we’ve checked so far, one video has stood out from the rest. It has:
- The most views in the last 28 and 90 days.
- And the most views from YouTube Search, Suggest and Browse features.
- The highest CTR in the top 10 viewed videos.
- Comparable average view duration to other videos.
With that video, let’s check one final measure of viewer video engagement: Audience retention.
A moment ago I showed you average view duration and average percentage viewed. They tell you how long and how much of the video the average user watches. Audience retention however shows you a percentage of viewer attention at any point during the video.
The audience retention in the first 30 seconds of the video is critical for ‘long-form’ videos on YouTube.
Here’s what I see for this video:
After 30 seconds 45.7% of viewers are still watching. On the flipside, losing more than half your viewers before 30 seconds is not ideal.
How does this compare with videos of a similar length on YouTube?
Change the audience type to see:
Now we can see, for the first ~8 minutes, audience retention is actually higher than other YouTube videos of a similar length. And is on par with other videos well past 16 minutes.
So although the audience retention could be better, it actually performs better than other similar length videos on YouTube.
With all that data, I’m happy that this will be the main video I’ll use in the upcoming Promote step.
Take care
Some videos will have a higher proportion of views from channel subscribers and existing audience (previous viewers).
These will often show high Audience Retention and Average View Duration. BUT those people already know, like and trust the channel so those metrics will be more favourable. They won’t, however, be the best video to attract a ‘cold’ audience who don’t know the channel yet.
An example of this is the video showing an 18:24 average view duration (shown above). But when you look where those viewers came from they likely already know Pedro:
- 42% were from the channel page.
- The highest average view duration came from viewers who were suggested this video from one of his other videos.
I’m looking for a video (or videos) that will grow the channel when it’s seen by an audience unfamiliar with the channel.
The takeaway
Find your top performing videos in terms of views, traffic source, CTR and audience retention. Use your knowledge of your market and target audience to weed out any videos that wouldn’t attract and keep the interest of someone who hasn’t heard of you or your YouTube channel before.
You should be left with one or several videos you can use for the following steps.
2. Your Target Audience
In order to grow your YouTube channel you need to know who your ideal target audience is.
You then need to make content that attracts and satisfies that audience, leaving them liking you, watching your other videos and perhaps even eagerly waiting for your next video.
But in this case, due to the ‘low/no effort’ criteria Pedro set, I don’t have the luxury of suggesting topics for new videos. I can only use his existing YouTube videos.
Pedro helps B2B software companies increase their conversions, working on their positioning and messaging. His particular skill is writing B2B SaaS landing pages to increase conversions.
Quite specific!
That’s good though because it means we’re crystal clear on the ideal viewing audience, the interests and the problem they want solved.
Here are the key, specific topics Pedro’s ideal audience is interested in:
saas landing page
saas positioning
saas pricing page
saas funnel
saas marketing
saas sales
Pedro has already made videos on these topic areas. In fact, the most popular video I identified in the first step (above) is specifically about SaaS landing pages.
This is perfect because now we have a topic and audience match, with a video that has shown to perform well. We’ll also have a few other videos of differing lengths around similar topics we can use in the Promote step, should we want to.
I did some research in Adzoola to find YouTube keywords, videos and channels on these topics, which we’ll use later.
YouTube Keyword Research
I entered the topics above into Adzoola’s YouTube Keyword Suggestion tool to get keywords people are actually searching for on YouTube.
I selected a few of the most relevant for Pedro’s audience. Saved them.
Then I went to get videos that rank on YouTube for those relevant keywords…
YouTube Search Results Research
Using those YouTube keywords I selected above, I used Adzoola to get videos that appear in the top 50 on YouTube for each of them.
Saving these for later, I’ll switch tabs in Adzoola to get the channels…
YouTube Channels in Search Results
In Adzoola’s Video Search results above, I can click a button to see the channels that posted those videos.
This gives me a list of the channels, sorted by those who have the most videos and visibility across the keywords I searched.
I saved these for use later, in the Promote step.
The takeaway
Identify your target audience – get specific with this.
You are not trying to reach the widest audience who will potentially be interested. Instead, with this approach, your aim is to reach the audience who are most interested and will get most value from the video(s) you selected in the first step. This way, the audience you target will be more likely to watch more of the video and interact with your other videos.
This will send positive signals and data to YouTube to help your channel’s videos get suggested to audiences with similar interests to those of your viewers. That helps grow your channel.
3. Promote With YouTube Ads
At this point, I have:
- Found the top videos on Pedro’s channel that’ll help it grow when shown to a new, cold audience.
- Clarified Pedro’s target audience – the type of people he wants to attract for his business.
- Researched keywords, existing videos and channels on YouTube that already seem to reach his target audience.
Next we’re going to leverage YouTube ads to reach and attract his specific target audience using his top performing YouTube videos. This is based on the third step of the Slingshot Strategy.
This is the exciting part because now is where we’ll set the wheels in motion for what we’ve done so far…
YouTube Ads campaign set up
Now I set up a few YouTube ad campaigns to show the videos we selected in step 1 to the audiences (keywords, videos and channels) I identified in step 2.
I set up more than one campaign for a few reasons:
1. Capture
Pedro’s market is relatively small (B2B SaaS). So I needed to test different targeting methods in different campaigns to get the balance between reach and relevance while capturing the target viewer.
2. Control
Separate campaigns allow for tighter control. If one of the targeting methods or audiences work much better, I can adjust the budget and quickly maximize that.
3 .Clarity
To easily see the performance of the different targeting methods / audiences in Google Ads at the campaign level.
I set up these campaigns this using a specific type of video campaign and YouTube ad format in Google Ads.
The video campaign subtype is called Video Views. It’s gone through a few name changes in the last few years. From Custom Video Campaign, then to Get Views and now Video Views campaign (or VVC for short).
The ad format I use is the in-feed ad type. These aren’t the in-stream YouTube ads you have to watch before a video plays. They are in-feed ads that look more like a regular video suggestion for you to watch.
Here’s an example of an in-feed ad on YouTube (shown on a mobile):
Once I had set up and launched the video campaigns, I waited for data to come in, so I could…
Monitor & Optimize
For each campaign and YouTube video within each campaign I monitored and adjusted based on a few main areas in Google Ads.
The aim was to maximise and optimise around the metrics that show an engaged viewer.
Here are the main areas I watched:
Ad view rate
I kept an eye on view rate to see early on how well I’m reaching the target audience.
High view rate = high proportion of interest in the audience I’m reaching with the ad.
A low view rate (<1%) can mean a couple of things:
- A poor match between audience and video.
- With increasing audience size and impressions, your view rate goes down vs a highly targeted, specific audience. In this case we don’t need to be concerned with a low view rate (although it can be improved – see #3 below).
- The YouTube thumbnail and title aren’t attracting the click from the target audience. Note: There were opportunities to improve thumbnails but I was set the goal of low/no effort, so I didn’t.
Remember: It’s an in-feed ad, so the view rate is going to be far lower than your in-stream view rate if you’re running direct-response YouTube ads.
Here’s how view rate looked on these in-feed video ads across the campaigns:
Those view rates aren’t as good as they would be if I was applying the full Slingshot Strategy (details further down the page), but remember we’re just working with Pedro’s existing videos.
I used view rate as an indicator only, which I used in combination with the following performance statistics to decide if I needed to make a change.
‘Video Played To’ Performance
The video played to statistics are probably the most insightful of all.
They break the video duration down into 4 sections – 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% (video watched to completion). Then they show the percentage of viewers that reach those ‘thresholds’ of the video.
This was the one measure I paid extra attention to because it showed me the key piece of information: How engaged was the viewer?
I looked at the ‘video played to’ stats at the campaign level:
Bear in mind, the main video I was using is 24 minutes long. I was also testing performance of shorter and longer videos – even one of an hour. I had to keep this in mind when looking at these statistics.
Before making any adjustments to the campaign, I would dig a bit deeper and look at the performance of the video itself.
Here’s an example:
You’ll see a video of 5 minutes got nearly 50% of viewers past 25% and another of 24 minutes got just 5% past 25% of the video. But which is more valuable?
25% of 5 minutes = 75 seconds
25% of 24 minutes = 6 minutes
So you see how it can be a little misleading when you’re looking at this across videos of very different durations.
That’s why I used the ‘video played to’ performance while keeping the video duration in mind. And used it along with the next set of metrics to make a decision on my campaign and ad adjustments.
When you match the right targeting, audience and video, you can achieve pretty impressive audience retention. Below shows a video with 39% of viewers watching more than 9 minutes of the video:
Tip: The ‘Video played to’ data is a little delayed coming into Google Ads reports. So when you look at the report, set the date picker a couple of days before the current date.
YouTube Ads Earned Actions
YouTube earned action metrics are another useful set of performance indicators. They supplement the ‘video played to’ statistics.
These are free YouTube interactions generated by your ads. You can see:
- Earned views
- Earned subscribers
- Earned shares
- Earned likes
- Earned playlist additions
Here’s how it looks:
I pay particular attention to Earned views, subscribers and shares because these contribute to growth of your audience on YouTube.
When I saw campaigns, or specific videos within them, generating earned views and subscribers, I’d look to maximise their exposure. For example, I’d pause a video that wasn’t getting earned views, over one that was.
If both ‘video played to’ and earned metrics indicated a poor performance across ads in a campaign, I’d look at the target audience as the reason and consider pausing it.
Device Performance
As a broader monitoring tool, I’d segment the above performance statistics by device.
I found that, in some campaigns and for some videos, people viewing the videos on mobile devices wouldn’t watch as far into the video as people on desktop. That makes sense to me – especially as a couple of the videos were more than 12 minutes.
Here’s an example of how stark the difference between devices can be:
On desktop 7x more viewers watched at least 25% versus mobile viewers.
In these cases I created campaigns specifically for desktop and focused on that.
The takeaway
Use in-feed YouTube ads to accelerate your channel views and subscribers, growing your audience and influence on YouTube.
Set up a YouTube ad campaign using the Video Views campaign subtype and in-feed ad format. These appear as a suggested video and in the YouTube home feed rather than as a pre-roll, ‘in-stream’ ad.
If you’re testing different targeting methods, like I did here, create separate campaigns. This will help you maintain control over budgets, track performance, test targeting methods and quickly maximise performance.
Monitor view rates for audience interest, but focus on “video played to” stats as they reveal true engagement.
Analyze performance by device and adjust if mobile viewers drop off sooner.
Prioritize those videos with high ‘played to’ rates and earned views/subscribers. These indicate an interested, engaged audience that will help your YouTube channel grow faster.
Continuously optimize by scaling budgets towards top-performing campaigns, targeting, and creative that are driving engagement.
YouTube Channel Growth Results
Here’s what we achieved, just by using Pedro’s existing videos and a few relatively simple YouTube ad campaigns:
19x Increase in views
10x more monthly subscribers
The overall impact for Pedro’s business was huge as there was very little work involved (that’s the challenge I was set!).
YouTube multiplies his reach (and can do the same for you!).
New consulting clients mentioned being recommended and watching Pedro’s YouTube videos.
This repetition and awareness builds tremendous trust and authority over time. Potential clients get on a call with Pedro already pre-sold because they know his expertise and want him working on their project.
Pedro also uses LinkedIn to attract clients. With YouTube and LinkedIn combined, he says clients tell him variations on:
“It feels like you’re everywhere. I’ve been following you for months, seeing you on all these different platforms.”
This omni-channel presence is perfect for attracting his target customer. As Pedro says “That’s what we want when you want to attract a very specific type of client.”
Bonus Branding Benefits
If your channel name and video thumbnails have a style that’s recognisable, you will even benefit just by your target audience seeing your video around YouTube.
Look at all the additional brand exposure from YouTube earned actions as a result of the ads.
Pedro’s face was in some of the video thumbnails. His Channel name is his real name. So he built authority from that. Although, in this case, I could have optimized this further if Pedro wanted a more in-depth deployment of this strategy.
Talking of optimizing further…
A Warning
This strategy grew Pedro’s channel. No doubt.
But…
He was continuing to post a certain type of content – landing page teardowns – and it wasn’t reaching his target audience. Those videos would often be found and viewed by people searching for keywords around the products he was featuring in his videos.
The Slingshot Strategy can help grow a channel in this way and it can help you fully identify the content your audience wants to consume. But, in this particular case, it grew his audience temporarily.
Why?
Unfortunately, due to the content Pedro created outside of this strategy, it meant those new viewers gradually stopped watching or didn’t come back because they were attracted to the videos he created earlier – the top performing ones.
He didn’t create new videos in the content style and structure that worked to attract new channel viewers. So his channel views tailed off.
And…
I approached this project according to the criteria Pedro set i.e. ‘low effort’, ‘big impact’. That meant:
- No new videos!
I only used existing content and that content hadn’t been created using the first two steps of the Slingshot Strategy – these two steps have a HUGE impact on the long-term success of the strategy. - No new Thumbnails
- Not even updating the meta data (video title and description)
- No ‘binge session’ strategy.
So this approach wasn’t a long-term strategy. It was a short term kickstart project that got big results for low effort.
Here’s what I recommend to get long term success:
- Monitor your performance (CTR, Average percentage viewed, audience retention and earned actions / engagement).
- Test and improve.
- Follow the FULL and complete Slingshot Strategy.
If Pedro did this now, it would grow his channel and it would continue growing.
Just like Christian did…
Christian followed the full Slingshot Strategy and grew his channel views 80x and channel subscribers by 7.5x in 40 days with one Slingshot Strategy video. Within 14 months he got to 1 million views [his YouTube channel growth story here].
Your Turn: Research Valuable Topics and Optimize Video Targeting
The strategy I used to help Pedro get a 19x increase in YouTube views was adapted from part of my broader Slingshot Strategy framework. To replicate what I did:
1. Audit your YouTube analytics to identify your top-performing existing videos based on views, CTRs, audience retention, etc.
2. Research your ideal target audience and the interests/problems they have that your videos could help with.
3. Set up in-feed YouTube ad campaigns to drive those specific audiences to your best videos.
4. Monitor the “Video Played To” and “Earned” YouTube actions like earned views and subscribers. These signal an engaged audience you can build from.
5. Optimize by reallocating budget towards the top-performing videos and audience targeting.
This approach can kickstart momentum for your YouTube channel.
However, it’s just a slice of the complete Slingshot Strategy.
To experience the full power of turning your YouTube channel into an audience-growing machine, I recommend you sign up for my comprehensive Slingshot Strategy Training.
The training covers all 3 steps of the strategy in depth, including:
- The model that shows you why you’re not getting the views you deserve and what you can do to change that
- How to make YouTube’s algorithm work for you not against you.
- How to reveal exactly which topics and angles will become viewer magnets for your market. You can stop wasting time and effort creating videos that get just a trickle of views and don’t grow your channel.
- How to turn YouTube into a consistent lead and sales machine. Grow your audience, brand awareness, and mental availability in the minds of your perfect prospects.
Plus you’ll get operator-level guides, done-for-you templates, and advanced promotion strategies not covered anywhere else.
Enroll in the full Slingshot Strategy Training today to access the complete system I’ve used to drive millions of views and rapidly grow YouTube channels in almost any market.
TL;DR: I gave Pedro a sample of the Slingshot Strategy which drove 19x more views on his YouTube channel. Sign up for the complete training to experience the system’s full potential for YouTube growth.