YouTube marketing and channel management
The other half is the title, the thumbnail and the first fifteen seconds, and that is the half most companies hand to whoever has the afternoon free. We take the channel seriously as a search engine and a sales channel: what it is for, what gets made, how it is packaged, and what it returns.
You already know how to make the thing. The part that decides whether it travels is the packaging and the first fifteen seconds, and the part that decides whether it pays is everything that happens off the platform. We take that end of it so you can stay on the camera.
Three minutes, twelve questions, no email needed to see your score.
Every channel has this shape. The argument is about where the cliff sits.
What we run on YouTube
One platform, done properly, before anyone talks you into five.
Where we come in
They arrive in different words and they are usually the same problem underneath.
They arrive in different words and they are usually the same problem underneath.
Eight videos, made properly, uploaded over a summer, and then nothing. Somebody left, the budget moved, and the whole thing sits there as an argument against trying again. It is the single most common thing we are shown.
YouTube is showing your videos to people and they are choosing something else. That is not a content problem, it is a packaging problem, and it is the cheapest thing on this page to fix because the videos already exist.
Company updates, event recaps and a two minute brand film. All perfectly good, all made for people who already know you exist. Nothing on the channel answers a question a stranger typed in, which is where almost all of the reach lives.
Ad revenue on its own is a wage that somebody else sets and can cut in a quarter. The channels that pay properly have three or four things running behind the videos, and none of them are complicated once the audience exists.
Something took off, the channel grew on the back of it, and nothing since has come close. Almost always the winner had a format in it that nobody went back and named, so it was never repeated on purpose.
Filming, editing, thumbnails, descriptions, sponsor emails, invoices, and the comments. Something gets dropped every week and it is normally the packaging, which is the part that decides whether any of the rest gets seen.
The Packaging Lab
Nobody chooses your video against a blank page. They choose it against five other thumbnails, on a phone, in about a second and a half. The title below is deliberately a bad one, so you can see the checks working. Replace it with a real one of yours, pick a thumbnail treatment, and the column on the right redraws as it would appear in a browse feed.
0 of five checks clear. It is a checklist, not a prediction: no tool can tell you what will get clicked.
Everything here happens in your browser. What you type is not stored, not sent and not seen by us.
The YouTube Scorecard
It is the same set of questions we work through on a first call, so you may as well have the answers before you decide whether to book one. Nothing is sent anywhere while you answer, and you see your score without handing over an email address.
Four things, weighted evenly, because a weak one drags the other three down with it. A channel can be beautifully shot and still fail on all four.
Your answers stay in your browser. Nothing is stored, nothing is sent and your score never leaves this page, so copy it out below if you want to keep it.
The Vision Note
What is actually working in search, paid and AI right now, written for people who have a business to run rather than a marketing degree to finish. Sign up and the guide below comes through straight away.
Four of the twelve workflows in it are the ones this page has been describing: turning one filmed afternoon into a month of uploads, generating title and thumbnail options worth arguing about, cutting long form into Shorts without losing the point, and reading a month of analytics down to one page somebody will act on. They work the same whether an agency runs your channel or you do.
No more than twice a month, from [email protected]. Unsubscribe in one click, and your address is handled as set out in our privacy notice.
What we do
Most people take the lot. Some take two or three because the rest is already covered, and that is a perfectly sensible way to buy it.
What the channel is for, who it is talking to, and the three or four repeatable formats it is going to run. Named formats, so a good video can be made again on purpose rather than by accident. You get this written down whether or not we ever film anything.
Written before the video is made, because a title you cannot package is usually a video worth cutting. Several options per upload, tested against the browse feed rather than against each other in a document, and revisited on anything that underperforms.
Long form built around a structure that keeps people watching, and Shorts cut from the same material rather than made separately. We direct what needs shooting, use what you already have, and hand back the project files as well as the exports.
Chapters, descriptions, playlists and end screens set up so one video leads to the next and the back catalogue keeps working. This is the unglamorous half of YouTube and it is why a channel eventually stops depending on its newest upload.
In-stream and in-feed campaigns run through Google Ads, usually put behind something that already proved itself organically. The ad account stays in your name and on your card, and we say plainly when the money would do more elsewhere.
One page a month: what we published, what it did, what we are changing and what we need from you. Click-through rate and average view duration at the top, subscriber count near the bottom where it belongs.
YouTube first, on purpose. Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and TikTok all come up, and we run them, but a channel rewards depth in a way a feed does not: a video published today can still be earning views in three years, which is not true of anything else you will post this week.
AI and YouTube
AI is very good at the middle of this job and poor at both ends of it. It will not tell you what your channel should stand for, and an audience can smell a script it wrote from about four seconds in. In between those two it takes a great deal of grind out of the week, which is why our costs are lower than they were three years ago.
How we use AI across the agencyOptions generated fast and cheaply, then argued over by people. The value is in having enough to be picky, not in the machine happening to write the good one.
The transcript finds the moments that stand alone, a person picks which of them actually do, and the edit follows. Clipping at random is how a channel ends up with fifty Shorts and no new viewers.
Comments sorted by sentiment and by whether they contain a question worth a real answer, so the ones that matter reach a human quickly. The reply is written by that human.
We will not put an AI presenter on your channel or clone anybody's voice for it. A named person reviews everything before it publishes. Whatever it saves is not worth what it costs you the day an audience notices.
How it runs
The first four weeks look different from the rest, because most of the value sits in the decisions rather than the filming.
Every video you have published, the analytics behind them, the traffic sources, and three channels you envy. We come back with which videos earned their place, where the retention breaks and what the channel is actually for.
One page covering the formats, the publishing rhythm and the numbers we expect to move. Titles and thumbnails written before anything is shot, then a filming day that carries the first month.
Editing, packaging, publishing, replying, and cutting Shorts from what already exists. You see everything before it goes out and can veto anything, though most people stop looking by month two.
One page, twenty minutes, in plain English. Which videos beat the channel average and why, what we are repeating, what we are dropping, and whether a thumbnail is worth changing on something older.
Monthly is the common one and it is not always the right one, and we will say so on the call.
Creators tend to start with the day and come back for the monthly once the channel is carrying real money.
An audit and a working session for teams who intend to keep running YouTube themselves.
We run the channel as an extension of your team, with one senior person named on it.
A fixed run with a start and a finish: reviving a dormant channel, or one series shot in a block.
An audit, a set of named formats and a packaging system, built with you in one working session.
We take the business end so you can stay on the part only you can do, which is the camera.
A single run of videos or one brand deal, run properly, usually the one that matters more than the rest.
Everything is quoted before anything starts, so you see the scope and the number on one page and decide from there. Ad budget is separate and stays on your own card, where you can see it.
What we measure
A subscriber is somebody who once pressed a button. Whether they ever see you again is decided by two numbers, and both of them are things you can change this month.
Click-through rate is whether anybody chooses your video. Average view duration is whether they stay once they have. Everything else on the analytics page is downstream of those two, which is why they are the only two on the slider below.
The arithmetic is worth doing once, because it settles an argument that otherwise runs for months. Move the sliders to something close to your own channel and see which of the two is worth your Tuesday.
One extra point of click-through rate, from better packaging on videos you have already made: +1,200 views a month.
One extra minute of average view duration, from a better opening: +80 watch hours a month.
Straight arithmetic, not a forecast. It assumes nothing about your subject, your competition or the season, and it ignores the compounding effect of both numbers on how often YouTube shows you at all, which is the part that really matters over a year.
If the only thing that went up last month was the subscriber count, we have not done our job, and we will say so in the review.
An illustration of the monthly page rather than a real client's numbers. The order is the point: the thing at the top is the thing we are being paid to move.
Before you ask
You do, throughout. The channel stays in your name, the ad account stays on your billing, and every file we make is handed over in a folder you control, including the project files and the raw footage rather than just the exports. If we part company you keep the lot. Nothing we build should be hard to walk away from.
No. A YouTube channel is managed through a Brand Account, which lets you add named people at the level of access they need without anyone sharing a login. It takes about five minutes to set up and you can remove us in one click.
For most channels one good video a week, or one a fortnight plus Shorts, rather than daily. Consistency matters more than frequency: a viewer who knows roughly when you appear is worth several who cannot predict it. If a competitor is publishing daily and it is working, we look at why before copying it.
It helps enormously and it is not compulsory. A face gives a channel somebody to come back for, so if anyone is willing we make it as painless as we can and shoot a month in one day. If nobody is willing, we build around screen recordings, process, product and customers, and we will be honest that it is a harder route.
Usually yes, and not instead of long form. Shorts are very good at putting a channel in front of people who have never heard of it and fairly poor at turning those people into anybody who watches a fourteen minute video. Treat them as the top of the funnel, cut them from material you were filming anyway, and judge them on whether long form views went up.
They are usually the fastest win on the whole engagement. A video with impressions and a weak thumbnail is a piece of work you have already paid for that is being declined by strangers every day. Repackaging the back catalogue costs nothing to distribute and often moves the channel before anything new is published.
Yes, and roughly half of this page is written for you. The work is different in emphasis: the packaging and the retention still matter, but so do the sponsor pipeline, the rate card, the contracts and getting income off ad revenue alone. Switch the toggle at the top of the page and the relevant sections change.
Packaging changes can move within days, because they apply to videos that are already being shown. A channel starting from very little usually takes three to six months before the trend is clear, and anyone promising faster is either lucky or guessing. We agree at the start what we expect to see by day ninety and review it against that honestly.
It depends on how much filming and editing is involved, whether paid is included and whether we are handling the comments, so we quote after the first call rather than putting a package price on a website. You get the scope and the number on one page before anything starts, and it does not change without you agreeing to it.
No. The scorecard and the packaging lab both run entirely in your browser, your answers are gone the moment you close the tab and your score is never sent to us at all. There is a button under your result that copies it out as text if you want to keep it. If you sign up for the guide further down the page, that is a separate thing and only your email address travels, to Brevo, which sends our email. It is all set out in the privacy notice.
Also worth a look
What happens when they arrive decides whether any of it was worth doing.
Book a call
Bring your channel up on the screen and we will go through it with you. You will leave with at least one thing worth changing this week, whether or not you ever hire us.
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