If you’re trying to grow your YouTube channel, is a YouTube consultant worth it?
Well, I’ll tell you a secret, it probably isn’t. Because for 80% of people, it’s probably not a good idea, either because you’re not ready, you don’t have the budget, or the methodology of the YouTube consultant isn’t going to work for you.
For 20% of people, it might work. And we’ve actually been trying to figure this out over the past years. How do we know how to qualify whether someone’s ready for a YouTube consultant, or at least to work with us as a YouTube consultant?
NOTE: Are you looking to meet with a YouTube consultant today? Book a call with me, Dane Golden, YouTube consultant.
So we’ve actually come up with a questionnaire. It has more than 30 questions on it. It seems like a lot of questions, but that’s what we do. And we ask people these questions on our very first call, because we don’t want to waste anyone’s time.
So here’s the questions:
What’s your email?
Channel
What’s your name and YouTube channel name? Basic stuff, right?
Source
How did you find out about us?
Channel URL
What’s the name and URL of the YouTube channel you’re inquiring about us managing? Some people may be dealing with multiple channels.
Your Role
For the purposes of us working together, are you the owner of this YouTube channel and business, an employee of the channel, acting as an agency or third party for that channel or business, or are you an agency that’s pitching this business.
Because if you’re pitching the business, well, some agencies come to me and say, Hey, we want your help pitching this business and we can share the revenue. You know what? I don’t have time to pitch your business with you. If you want to pay me to help you pitch the business, that’s fine.
Primary Channels
What are your primary channels? So this can be your primary video, social media, marketing, media platforms. This can be YouTube, your own app, social media, email, website, podcast, discord, TV, even. Now, I’d like you to rank them and maybe help me understand the percentage of your audience that’s coming from each one.
Why would I want to know this and why should you know this? Because there’s a zillion channels out there and I need to know like what’s your main thing?
And if you don’t know your main thing, what are we doing?
Okay. Here’s a secret question here.
What is Success?
If we’re working together for 12 months and we look back and said, yay, we did it. How would we know?
What is that real core metric, that thing that either you need to do or your boss needs to do or your spouse needs to do?
I don’t know who’s on your team really. What is it that thing that we would say we’re a success? Sometimes people just say, I don’t know, more views, more money, and that’s pretty vague. What we really want to do is come up with some better goals, if that’s your only goal.
Because if you’re – if you’re just trying to do better, yeah, we can help with better, but how do I know if it’s good enough?
Channel Value
What’s the service your YouTube channel provides?
The service may be to entertain. Um, the service may be to inform, the service may be to sell your products. What is the purpose you’re doing this for?
Ideal Viewer
Who is the ideal viewer? What problems are they trying to solve? And I, let’s really get this down here because some people say, Hey, everyone, anyone. Well, it’s not everyone. What is their age, their gender, their location, their profession, their interests? Maybe even what kind of TV show would they watch?
We really want to know who we’re going after here because just more is easy.
Because for instance, I can get you a million views tomorrow, just give me $10,000. Because it’s a penny per view of a YouTube ad, and $10k of pennies is a million views.
As long as you don’t care who in the world sees your videos, I can get you as many views as you like. But when it really comes down to it, I’ll bet you’re looking for a specific person that may be someone who actually likes your videos, or someone who actually may want to do business with you, or buy your products, that kind of thing.
Why?
Why do you like doing what you’re doing?
Sounds like a stupid question, but I really want to know your motivation. Is it, hey, this is how we make money? That’s a good answer. Okay. There’s a need. You’re filling it. There’s no, like, passion. That’s fine. This can be a very perfunctory thing, but if there’s some sort of passion and reason that you’re really doing this, those are the channels that end up doing better.
Because either you believe somebody needs a service like yours, or you love the tech behind it, or something,
Competitor Channels
Who are your competitor channels?
Please list three competitor YouTube sites.
If you don’t know what other people are doing, then we have no place to compare what you’re doing. We have nothing to shoot for. Maybe you’re the best, and you just want to do better, and that’s fine too.
But we need to understand the trends and the niche, and there’s a zillion niches out there and nobody can be an expert in all of them. I need to do my research. Tell me what your competitors are.
Why are you better?
Why is your channel better than the competitors?
And maybe it’s not, maybe it’s just different. But I need to know what is the thing that you do special.
Your biggest problem?
What’s the number one problem you’re trying to solve today? Something probably happened to get you here. It’s a big problem. It caused you to want to talk to me. What is that problem? What’s that core problem?
Who else?
Have you previously worked with others who provide similar services to ours? YouTube Consulting or YouTube Ads Consulting? How has the experience? What were the challenges? If your work has been with an internal team, what has caused you to need outside help?
Why is there a challenge being considered? Why is there a need? What is new that is needed? What is the timeline for this change to take place?
We’re talking for a reason. Something’s not working. Now, there’s a couple of problems that might have happened. One is a catastrophic problem. If it’s a catastrophic problem like you wanted to run an ad, you spent an entire year’s budget, everyone got involved, and it didn’t work.
That’s a catastrophic problem. I probably can’t help you. You’ve wasted your entire budget on a single shot deal. You’re burnt. You are bitter and you’re burnt, and you’re a bad client for me, I’m sorry to say. Now, maybe your traffic has been going up and up and up, but it sort of plateaued. That’s probably something that I can help with, or maybe it’s even come down a little bit, maybe 20, 30 percent, maybe even 50 percent.
We can probably help you with an approach. If it’s catastrophic. You’re very upset and you’re probably not in a state that we can help you. Not because it was a failure, but because you’re not in the right frame of mind.
Stakeholders
Who are the stakeholders in determining the success of this project? Now, this could be a team member, client, manager, writer, video producer, editor, friends, partners, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends. or investors.
I’ve worked on more than one company, more than one YouTube channel, where we’ve actually accomplished the goals we set out to do.
And then some other person, some other stakeholder said, that’s not really what we wanted. For us to be successful, we have to get everyone on board with the same goals. Sometimes that takes a lot of work. But if you don’t have everyone pulling in the same direction, it’s hard to be successful.
Hours Per Week
How many person hours are being spent on this? You have a team, you have each week you’re planning videos, shooting, editing, traveling to and from locations, promoting. This is probably pretty hard for you to measure. You may not know this, and that’s okay. But I think it’s good to estimate.
Because if you’re spending too little time, you know, you’re gonna have to spend more time. But maybe you’re spending too much time and you’re gonna outsource. We have to help you judge that. It depends on the size of your team and goals.
Team Calls
We do calls every week or every other week with our clients because this is an ongoing project and we need to talk to you on a regular basis. If that’s not what you’re up for, we can’t do it.
Also, we need to know who has a stake because they’re going to need to be on these calls or they’re going to be on sometimes.
Time Zones
What’s their time zones? We generally want to work for the U. S. or Canada or people in the Americas because we just can’t stay up too late and have calls.
Decision Maker
Who’s the primary decision maker on this project? I need to know who I’m reporting to. It’s very difficult to report to a committee.
Videos Per Month
How many YouTube videos are you publishing a month? And this is not Shorts, it’s not livestreams, it’s regular videos. This gives us an idea of what your system is and your process how much work you’re doing and how much you need.
Publishing Timeline
How far in advance of the videos needing to be published are they produced, completed, and approved minus the metadata optimization? This gives us an idea of what your production system is looking like and how much planning you’re currently doing. Is everything last minute or is it planned far in advance?
Content Styles
What percentage of the videos are in these content formats? Is it a tutorial about your service or your expertise? Is it storytelling or a vlog? Is it lifestyle, entertainment, personal stories, promotional, paid ads, other? This gives us a quick idea of how you’re structuring your videos.
Examples
Now you may be changing, you may be doing the same thing, you may be going back to an old structure. Send me a link of what’s the closest video to what you’re going to be doing in the near future.
Goal
What’s your goal? Why do you have this YouTube channel? If you’re doing it just because everyone else is doing it, it’s not a good reason. You shouldn’t have it. You need a specific goal.
Call-To-Action
Do you ask your viewers to take a certain action? What is it?
Because whatever that action is, whether it’s subscribe, you know, subscribe to your email list? That helps us measure if we’re being successful or not.
Business Income
Tell me about your business here. What are your main revenue sources? And you don’t have to tell me exact dollars, but tell me, you know, where people are coming from and the percentages. So is it from products you sell, online services or platforms or apps, consulting, coaching, online courses, memberships, ad revenue, licensing, sponsorships, brand deals, affiliate revenue, books, speaking engagements.
Tell me about what you’re doing. Tell me about your business. If we’re going to be your partner and help you, we need to know what it is you are making money from. You don’t have to tell me the numbers. Just tell me the percentage.
Customer Emails
This is really about, tell me about where the customers are coming from, that are actually buying something, and that you have their email address.
YouTube Paid Media
Are you running paid media on YouTube?
Or on Facebook? If you’re not now, maybe you should be, and if you did, what would you be selling?
Team Members
Tell me about the actual names of the people on your team. Who edits the videos? Who optimizes them? I need to understand who the players are.
Customer Dilemma
What’s the number one thing keeping people from doing business with you? Is it that your videos suck? Your products suck? Maybe people don’t know about you. I don’t know. Tell me.
Customer Questions
This is at the bottom, but it’s super important.
Don’t skip it. When your viewers or customers message you or speak to you for the first time. they’re always going to ask the same 5 or 10 questions. You’ve heard them a million times. Sometimes they’re kind of dumb questions. Not because they’re dumb, they’re just new. And whenever we’re new to something, we ask sort of dumb questions and that’s okay.
And I want to know what those new questions are. There’s always 5 to 10 questions that they always ask. What are they?
Churn Rate
How long do you keep your customers? Sometimes this is called a churn rate.
Basically, how long are they staying with you? Is it 3 months, 3 years, 3 days?
Purchase Price
How much do people spend with you the first time and also what’s the webpage where they buy that thing?
Nurture Campaign
Let’s say someone is going to be a customer eventually. How long does it take them from the first time they find out about your YouTube videos or hear about you or get your email until they are a customer? For some services, it could be a year or more. For some it could be a day
Lead Tracking
How do you track where leads are coming from? There’s lots of ways to track them. How are you doing it? Maybe you’re not doing it.
Anything else?
What else? I got everything, right?
And if we haven’t met, my name is Dane Golden, the company’s VidAction. And I ask these questions about all of my customers, usually on the very, very first call, which is a paid call usually. And I do ask people to pay for the first call because I’m providing a service for you.
At any rate, if you do work with a YouTube consultant, I hope you have a good experience. I’ll see you in the next video.