Our Guest:
Gabby Wallace is a video marketing expert, especially in the world of Youtube. She built her own business, Go Natural English, seven years ago on Youtube based off of her background as an english language teacher. She runs a website for her business as well at gabbywallace.com.
A Quick Preview of the Podcast:
- How to make your call-to-action effective from the beginning of a video
- The tactic that no one is using on Youtube (and how to implement it)
- How to construct a winning Youtube video (with included template)
Tim: YouTube is a powerful marketing channel. There’s no denying that and folks have tried to leverage it in many ways, including to grow their email lists. But how can you super charge your YouTube videos to turn your list building knob up to 11?
Gabby Wallace was able to do one simple thing that resulted in 25,000 new email subscribers which doubled her existing list and you will love just how simple this tactic is.
I’m Tim Paige, the senior conversion educator here at LeadPages and this is ConversionCast.
All right so I like to start of each kind of case study with the results you were able to get. So can you share with us what results you were able to get on the tactic we’re gonna talk about today?
Gabby: Absolutely. My goal is to increase my email list and so I doubled my email list size roughly from around 25,000 to around 50,000 with this strategy.
Tim: Nice. I love that. That’s fun and you’re gonna be talking about primarily how you did that through YouTube right?
Gabby: Correct, yeah. With YouTube video, content marketing.
Tim: Sweet. Okay. Tell everybody who you are and what you do?
Gabby: Hey, my name is Gabby Wallace and I’m a video marketing expert especially with YouTube. I actually built my own business on YouTube s an English language teacher. That’s my former life.
Tim: Nice.
Gabby: Yeah. So I built this business called Go Natural English several years ago and everything is going awesome with it. And people are asking me, “How can I do the same thing?” So I wanted to share some of my strategies with you all.
Tim: Well let’s do it. Let’s talk about what worked. So what are you doing that’s getting such results from your videos?
Gabby: Well one strategy in particular that I wanna share that I don’t see other people are doing is that so think about when you watch a YouTube video. A lot of people will watch like the first what? Like 30 seconds maybe a minute if it’s good.
Tim: Sure.
Gabby: I mean a lot of people go on to YouTube with a grazing mentality. It’s not usually where you expect to go watch hours of video. Although sometimes we get sucked into watching…
Tim: Yeah, no kidding.
Gabby: …a video right? But it’s probably like several different videos that you’re kind of grazing from one to the other. So I thought about that behavior and I realized I learned that the average view time is something like two and a half minutes or 50% of your video. And so I thought, why do most people, including myself, why are we leaving our call to action to the end? Most of the time, you know, you’ll wait until the end to say, “Hey, if you liked this, please subscribe,” or “Hey, if you like this, come visit my website or whatever your call to action might be. So I thought you know what, I’m gonna start doing my call to action kind of directing people to the next thing in the beginning of my video. So actually twice, the beginning and the end to remind them and not in like a weird, pushy way but kind of like hey, before I forget, let me just tell you this cool thing you can do after you watch this video. And that’s by telling people twice and in the beginning before they kind of you know drift off maybe to something else, that has just been amazing for getting more people over to my website and then to my email list. Because they’re aware then that there’s something cool that they can get on my website before maybe they lose that attention.
Tim: That’s really interesting. Can you give an example of how you might do that? Because I know a lot of people are gonna think well how do I give a call to action in the beginning without seeming like, “And now a word from our sponsor,” you know?
Gabby: Yeah. That’s another thing I don’t do. I really like to make it natural. The name of my first business was Go Natural English.
Tim: Nice.
Gabby: So it’s all about speaking naturally right? So I don’t want it to be too robotic or yeah, like the “yeah, a word from our sponsors.” So I actually, I’ll do it in a conversational way. I’ll have a quick transition. Like I mentioned I could say, “Oh, by the way, you know, if you’re interested in taking my free training, you can sign up on my website” and you give your website. Or you know, if you want my free eBook or whatever your opt-in offer is whatever reason you want people to visit your website. Or maybe it’s to subscribe. Maybe it’s a different kind of call to action. You know I might say, hey, by the way if you subscribe, we can do so much cool stuff on this YouTube channel. So don’t forget to subscribe right now or right after you watch this video. Or I might say, hey, before I forget, there’s something really cool I wanna tell you about and I think it could really help you.
So I always try to do it with a little conversational transition and lead with the benefit for the viewer. Not like begging them like oh please come to my website. I really need that traffic. It’s not about me. It should be about the viewer, right?
[00:05:06]
And kind of like if I can add a bonus strategy to this.
Tim: Please, yeah.
Gabby: I always use a template that I made for myself for all of my videos. So what I mean by template is I always have… I think there’s five points. So the first point is I tell people what they’re gonna get in the video. So like what’s in it for the viewer. The second point is the call to action, the first iteration. The third point is the meat of the episode. You know the video whatever it is I’m teaching or whatever I’m telling them or whatever kind of entertaining stuff I’m trying to do.
And then the fourth point would be again the call to action. And I guess the fifth point would just be, you know, thanks for watching and see you in the next video.
Tim: Mm-hmm.
Gabby: So I always do that template just so it doesn’t feel like every single time, I’m reinventing the wheel. I’m like what do I do on this video? I don’t know what to talk about. I mean it helps so much. I’m sure you have kind of the template you follow for your podcast too.
Tim: Right.
Gabby: It helps a lot right? Just so you know kind of what you’re doing with that order to go in.
Tim: Yeah. For sure. No that’s great. I mean not only with that help kind of keep the consistency, a brand people can have this idea of what they expect when they watch your videos but also you know for your sanity and confidence and being able to go on, and go, “This is what’s going to happen. Here’s the structure.” But it’s not so rigid that you can’t have the opportunity to do something that’s a little bit fun and keep it going. I love that. And I love the idea of doing a call to action in the beginning. So it’s not the first thing you do in the video but it’s early on in the video right?
Gabby: Right. I would tell people first why are they here. Like what are they… What can they expect out of this video? Am I gonna teach them something or am I gonna tell them about some update or am I gonna tell them a story? Or what’s going on in this video? Why should they keep watching it past five seconds.
Tim: I love it. And so this is something not only if you’re doing videos but also you know with your podcast, have a call to action early on. You know with your blogposts have a call to action early on. That’s something worth trying. And seeing if they get, you know, get results. But I think part of it is being able to do it in a way that does feel natural that does make sense in contextual with what you’re doing. And isn’t just you know, like we said here you go. Get to do this thing now.
Gabby: Yeah.
Tim: And then we’ll get back to our content. You know don’t make it feel like you’re sending people away from the thing that they’re there for. Ingrain it within the content itself.
Gabby: Yeah and it’s worked really well for me to do the same call to action in the beginning and the end. It might feel like you know, but honestly people have so much on their minds that they kind of appreciate a reminder.
Tim: Perfect. This is awesome. So where can somebody find out more about kind of your trainings and stuff like that?
Gabby: Yeah. Come to gabbywallace.com. So that’s gabbywallace.com just like my name.
Tim: Awesome, Gabby. Thanks for coming on the show.
Gabby: Thank you, Tim, my pleasure.
