No matter what kind of brand you’ve worked for, you’ve probably had your Meta account suspended.
This is why you need to hedge your marketing efforts and today’s guest, Avi Shenkar, CMO of Luxury Bazaar believes YouTube is the best place to do it.
YouTube is the most durable platform for brand building. Unlike Meta or Google ads, your content doesn’t disappear when the budget runs out. A single great video can keep driving views, engagement, and sales for years.
And if there’s anyone who can tell you how to get started, it’s Avi.
Avi is a YouTube MAVERICK. Since starting in 2018, Avi has helped grow the Luxury Bazaar channel to over 75K SUBSCRIBERS. For the luxury watch market, that’s no small feat.
If you’re a listener, listen to to episode here.
If you’re a reader, here’s what he had to say (in his own lightly-edited words) about HOW to start a YouTube channel you should start a YouTube channel with 0 subscribers:
1️⃣. Turn your SEO into VIDEO (it rhymes if you say it out loud).
“We look at what content is performing across the written word, video, and social and ask, ‘What’s trending, and how can we convert that into something like a long-form video or a series?’
We try to reuse all of our content, so our SEO solution was to launch an entire online magazine for watch collectors and enthusiasts.
We use that as inspiration for a lot of our video content.
If a lot of people are spending time on our articles, that probably indicates a lot more people will watch them, since, as we know, people have a low attention span and prefer to watch things rather than read.
(Chances are you probably have all of your content already written out. Just do some polishing on your best articles and get in front of the camera!)
2️⃣. Start small (or Short).
My hobby is launching brands. I’ve realized that’s what I do for fun.
(better than binge-watching Netflix! Why not both?)
Recently, I launched a small men’s grooming brand on the side, and the first thing I did was create Shorts.
Shorts help warm up the account and give you time to experiment by putting out videos, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and identifying the type of content that resonates.
That’s why I started with Shorts, and it’s what I’d recommend to everyone.
3️⃣. Don’t put people to sleep.
A big mistake that brands are making is not putting themselves in the shoes of their average viewer or who they want their viewer to be.
I see this a lot from friends of mine where they create content without considering their audience.
Someone once said, “Any content is good content,” but that’s not true.
If you want to succeed on YouTube, you need to think of yourself as enthusiastic and 10X that on camera because it doesn’t always translate naturally.
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When we’re recording, we actually tell our staff: whatever you think is enthusiastic, do more.
Move your hands, yell, whatever feels right because the video naturally tones it down.
(I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wrapped up a podcast feeling like I just threw confetti in the air—only to watch it back and realize my energy felt way more low-key on screen.)
4️⃣. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It has to be PUBLISHED.
When we first started, we had one videographer, and everyone kept delaying, saying, “No, no, no, we need to hire a camera guy, we need to hire a sound guy.”
But I said, “No. You need to turn the camera on. Turn the camera on and start recording. This episode goes live next Monday.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
(I see this with SOOOO MANY companies. They think that before they can start making content they need to jump through a bunch of hoops. Just publish something with enthusiasm, stick to a consistent schedule, and observe what works over time. That’s really all you need.)
5️⃣. Don’t let your budget get you down.
I know it’s budget-prohibitive, but whatever you can do within a budget, do it all.
Whether it’s an audio-only podcast, a video podcast, an article, a blog, a newsletter, you want to do it all.
(Just because your budget isn’t what you’d like it to be, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also be running tests everywhere or dismissing channels wholesale.
Instead, get creative with your resources.
My favorite example is this is Mohawk Chevrolet out of New York. While car dealerships aren’t known for their content, they’ve made waves by filming a parody of The Office called The Dealership and let me tell you:
IT RULES.
This kind of content may seem unconventional, but even in industries with tighter content budgets, you can still find creative ways to engage and capture attention.)“
IN A MEME
