I’ve seen this pattern a thousand times with product based channels. Other creators who feature their products blow up and get hundreds of thousands of views, meanwhile the channel that actually makes the product doesn’t even show up in the search results.
Most of these product focussed channels aren’t failing because their product is weak, they are failing because their videos never reach anyone new.
Brands understand the importance of video. They know YouTube can be a very powerful discovery engine, they just approach it wrong. It all comes down to what the end-goal is, and most brands don’t give that enough thought.
You can use YouTube as a hosting site for resources, or you can leverage it as a discovery engine to build a community and attract customers. Most product businesses are trying to do achieve the latter by doing the former.
Too many brands treat their YouTube channel like their LinkedIn profile. They post product demos, tutorials and feature rundowns. Everything is packaged and polished to be a beautiful branded encyclopedia of resources centered around the product, but here’s the kicker - nobody cares.
More importantly, the people you are trying to reach don’t care, yet!
If your goal is growth, YouTube is at the top of your funnel. That means reaching people who are not looking for your brand yet, but who identify with the problems that your product solves.
In order to grow a YouTube channel, product businesses need to be making content that attracts a cold audience who have never heard about the product by talking directly to experienced problems.
That means making a hard shift from the “on brand” product-focussed content they are conditioned to produce. It means building a community around aligned shared interests that intersect with the business mission. It means thinking like a content creator.
Content creators don’t start out promoting a product or offer. They begin by making content around something the audience can already relate to, tapping into their frustrations, goals, curiosities and pain points. This does something critical, they earn trust.
Most product channels aren’t doing this. They are entirely focussed on promoting their product to a cold audience who aren’t yet ready to hear about it.
The brands that grow onYouTube are the ones that stop treating the platform like a content library and start using it to build meaningful trust with content that aligns with the audience, not with the product.
Instead of asking “how can we demonstrate our product?”, brands should start by asking “what does our audience already care about before they even know we exist?”. This reframing leads to different content ideas that connect better with a cold audience and over time will build trust. In short — less feature explanation, more problem recognition.
If this sounds like you, I’d love to help! I work with brands who want help aligning their content strategy with business objectives and achieving real growth without viral hacks and trend chasing noise. Book a free discovery call with me to see how we could work together.