Reflections on 2023 Video Marketing

This was our best year ever from a video marketing perspective. Millions of views, tons of leads, and a successful launch of our new coaching service for folks looking to do video themselves.

Here are the three things that worked in 2023 and will work for you in 2024.

Ideal Audience Alignment

I did a lot of work to refine ‘Who’ we were making videos for. Beginners tend to make videos for themselves or an imaginary person that doesn’t exist.

I have found that a much sharper visualization yields better work.

If my friend watched this, would they still respect me?

If a business owner watched this, would they find it worth their time?

If I watched this with my kids in 15 years, would I stand by it?

If the answer to those questions is “Yes. Yes. Yes.” then I’ve got a winner.

Packaging

Your Clickthrough Rate matters. Everyone with a rudimentary understanding of YouTube gets this.

And there has been a proliferation of “authentic” and “minimalist” channels that grew this year by eschewing any optimizations around their titles and thumbnails.

However, those are outliers in a broader trend.

The top video marketers. The folks that achieve business and growth objectives consistently, are far more likely to create structure around their process for developing Titles and Thumbnails.

We paid one YouTube consultant $700 for an hour long call at the end of 2022. One of his two major notes was that our thumbnails “looked 3 years out of date”.

Hannah took this to heart and spearheaded our efforts to level up our thumbnails.

The big learning is; Great packaging not only gets a higher percentage of clicks (CTR), but it also leads to More Impressions.

Higher CTR + More Impressions = Way More Views!

Scripting

We went into 2023 knowing that the biggest shift would be going from primarily unscripted content, to scripted video essays.

Wow, did it work.

In 2022, 100% of my videos were unscripted. I'd research some points and statistics, but then just kinda wing it. We produced videos quickly, with a focus on Quantity.

In 2023, I re-oriented on quality and produced almost exclusively Video Essays w/ fully written scripts.

The results were excellent.

We produced 1/5th the quantity of videos, while generating 6x the views.

I hired script writers in the beginning of the year to learn the craft, but 2 of our top 4 videos (and #1 overall) were scripts that I wrote by myself!

It is extra work for pre-production and a challenging practice to build. But once you have it, it feels like a superpower.

I am confident that these can work for you.  What are your video marketing goals for 2024?

If you’re not sure what they should be, I’m doing a free workshop on Thursday where I’ll walk you through setting appropriate, achievable goals.