How to Catapult Your Brand with YouTube and Collaboration w/Andrew Murdoch

This is Tools of the Podcast Trade, where you can learn about the tools and resources you can use to start and grow your podcast Tune in next week, as we talk about the help you need to remove the mystery from podcasting so you can become a successful podcaster that can reach your audience where they are. My guest today is Andrew Murdock, a business YouTube strategist. Welcome, andrew. Hey, jen, thanks so much for having me. Sure, it's my pleasure to have you, so, before we get into what you do, could you tell us who is Andrew Murdock?

I am a digital nomad. I've been traveling the world since 2018. Covid certainly created some problems for me, but luckily, being location independent actually turned out to be a massive advantage during that time. And I am also the founder of YT Era. We are a YouTube marketing firm that specializes in done-for-you services for businesses.

Okay, all right, thanks for sharing that with us. So, youtube strategists, you're a goldmine for podcasts, all right.

I certainly like to think so, that's for sure. So, yeah, my impression is that I'm not a podcast host myself right now. I used to host various live streams back in the day on the YouTube platform and, from what I can tell, podcasting is not showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon. I'm sure you know that better than most, and what I've come to realize is it's kind of shocking, actually, how many podcasts do not have a presence on the YouTube platform. When I really started digging into this, I thought this was a little fascinating, simply because anybody can Google this and you're going to come across multiple surveys and data that proves that the YouTube platform is actually the number one choice for podcast listeners. So I always I find it quite shocking when a podcast, it's a lot of and I'm sure you can speak to this, jen it's a lot of work and effort and resources for content creation, especially when it's high quality content, whether it's the content itself or production quality. There's a lot of effort involved. So, in my humble view, a podcast host is simply just shooting themselves in the foot when they're not on the number one discoverability platform on the planet, and that's YouTube.

Yes, I have to agree with you. From day one, when I started podcasting, I didn't know anything about YouTube that much and I was recording videos as well as audio. So I think you know, yeah, I kind of saw that one coming somehow. That was a good thing, but okay. So why then should businesses use YouTube? I understand why podcasts would, but why should a business bother with YouTube?

Yeah, great question, and I mean I'd like to think that every podcast host out there is treating their podcast as a business In. Maybe in the earlier days a host might treat it more like a hobby before they are able to gain some traction, gain some momentum and monetize their audience, and I totally understand that. But what I'd like to tell businesses and my clients is that they should consider YouTube and like a mini business within their existing business. Now why should we treat it like that? Well, we all every business, every entrepreneur, at the end of the day, globally share the same pain point with when it comes to putting their brand in front of the perfect prospect at the perfect time. We all struggle with that mission and the idea here is that you want to pair, you want to marry that struggle, that pain point, with the perfect solution, and clearly I'm biased. But YouTube, in my view, is the perfect solution because the YouTube AI YouTube switched to an AI model back in 2013. I know a lot of people are AI crazy these days, but I've been using AI for years. It's called YouTube and ever since they switched to that AI model, their discoverability has just skyrocketed. So why would you want to pair or include YouTube into your overarching marketing strategy. Well, the YouTube AI obsesses 24 seven 365 on putting the perfect video in front of the perfect viewer at the perfect time. So in my humble view, that seems like a match made in heaven. If your business is not currently leveraging YouTube marketing in your overarching marketing and sales strategies, then you're absolutely leaving money on the table. Your competitors are attracting the attention of your ideal audience when you don't have a presence on that platform. And then, to build off of that, I have to mention this If we have two businesses, two businesses, all things being equal let's say business A is using YouTube and business B decided that YouTube is a waste of money, it's not worth their effort. Okay, let's say both businesses are identical. They're in the same niche, they have the same number of employees, they have the same kinds of prospects and clients, they have similar products and services, all things being equal. But again, business A has a YouTube channel. I would bet serious money that business A will be around three years from now, five years now, 10 years from now, whereas business B it's hit or miss. Why? Because every single time a business creates YouTube video content, especially when it's strategically designed, in an evergreen capacity. You've now successfully cloned your brand, cloned your business, cloned yourself. I consider YouTube videos more like clones. And those clones, they're working for you 24, 7, 365. So, even though both of these businesses going back to our example have the exact same number of employees or team members, business A has clones that are working for themselves 24, 7, 365, building their brand, building their presence, their authority, their reach, their influence, whereas business B they don't have any clones. There's only so many hours in the day, your sales staff can only make so many calls, your sales staff can only send out so many emails. But when you leverage a program, a system that's working for you 24, 7, 365, there's a compounded factor there that you need to take into account. And if you're hitting the publish button at least once a week, well geez, by the end of the year you have 52 clones working for you, 24, 7. Business B doesn't stand a chance. That's how I love that?

Yeah, absolutely. I love that too, because a lot of times an entrepreneur is working. I wish I could clone myself, start a YouTube channel. I love it. You got it. Absolutely amazing. I love it. Yeah, oh, wow. That is something, and that is very eye-opening, I think. Maybe not just for business, but for podcasters, especially those who are looking to break out Right.

Exactly, and I've had the pleasure of interviewing a couple of human behavior scientists over the years, and it's no secret, it's no secret at all, that the majority of human communication since the beginning of time is non verbal, and that's why I mean, once upon a time, text was the number one form of content medium consumed, and then it transitioned into images, still images, and then it transitioned into video. Video is the number one Form of content consume today and there's no evidence that suggests that that's going to change anytime soon. One day it may change to me are or vr, but both of those technologies are built off of video. Yeah, really feel really bad for people that are relying solely on audio, only conversation or communication, or text only communication. Unfortunately, I feel like those people. Their days are numbered, because if you're playing on being in business for three years or longer and you're not creating video content, the preferred medium of communication, then yeah you're, you're going to restrict your audience size drastically.

Yeah, true, because the thing with podcasting in audio format, not everyone in the world will have access to all those platforms. Right, everyone in the world has access to you too.

That's a solid way to put it. I love how you said that because more and more people are gaining access to the internet by the day, right the cost of some. Some experts actually are saying that access to the internet should be a human right, which I fully support, and I don't think anyone would would would fight that premise. But more and more people are accessing the internet and, like you said, everyone has access to you too, so you in. The thing that I've come to realize over the years is that when you need to search for content, you're gonna go to Google, but anytime someone wants to learn about something, a new skill, answer a specific question, nine times out of ten help ninety nine times out of a hundred, they're going to you to yeah, yeah, wow, yeah, this is quite interesting.

can you tell us what is the number one strategy that A small business could use to get monetized? On you to.

Oh, wow, number one strategy? Well, there are, make no mistake. There are dozens of ways you can monetize a youtube channel and I help businesses achieve that Everyday. When you can turn a marketing expense like ad spend, if you can reduce that to zero and then convince them these platforms, to pay you For the privilege of putting a spotlight on your business, well that's just gonna make you more sustainable. How many times you're gonna want to do that? You're gonna want to do that Seven days a week, right? I know? I know of a business. I know of a very sexy, sexy business. They sell office furniture and they were spending thirty thousand dollars a month and ad spend. They have since reduced that thirty thousand dollar bill to zero and they now have you to paying them thirty thousand dollars a month and ad revenue. So, anytime a business can reduce an expense to zero and turn it into an additional revenue stream, that's just going to make you far more resilient when market outside market factors Perhaps will have negative impacts on your business, right? every business should be striving for additional revenue streams. So, going back to your question specifically, though, for, like, a smaller podcast host or smaller business owner, smaller entrepreneur, the number one top tip I can give you is well, you have an entire film studio in your pocket. There's really no excuse. There really isn't. I hate to bring out the tough love here, but sometimes it's required. There's absolutely nothing preventing you from grabbing the phone out your pocket, holding it up horizontally, not vertically. You can always edit a video horizontally to make it vertical content, but it's really difficult going the other way around. So hold your phone horizontally, and if you're holding it close enough to you, a lot of these phones have amazing mics on them. If you have the phone set too far away from you, obviously you're gonna want to think about audio quality, but if you're creating content with your phone just an arm length away, the camera is fantastic, the audio will be fantastic. Make sure you're well lit. Honestly, that's the best advice I can give a smaller entrepreneur.

So just keep producing.

Yeah, just hit the record button.

Yeah.

I think the biggest like if, if now I'm not giving you one answer, I'm giving you multiple answers. But the number one struggle, challenge, obstacle that I see people need to overcome, it's the fear. It's the fear of putting themselves out there, because everyone has a film studio in their pocket, so what's the thing that's preventing them from putting themselves out there? It's fear. And yeah, the best advice I have for anyone is think about your ideal client, think about your customer, think about all the people out there that are struggling with different pain points that your business specifically addresses, and get yourself out of your mind and put yourself in their shoes. Think about those ideal clients and customers and think about what will happen to their lives if they don't learn of you and your business and your brand and your podcast. Think about how many years of struggle you're going to help them avoid by putting yourself out there. I find when you get out of yourself and put yourself in that frame of mind, then the fear of hitting the record button goes away and then it's a lot more, it's a lot easier hitting the record button and then at that point, once you hit, overcome that fear of hitting the record button, then it's just getting consistent, put it on your calendar, marking off that time on the calendar for content creation and treating it as seriously as if you were meeting with a client, because it's an important part of your job these days content creation, pumping content on a regular basis, just like you are right now with this podcast.

Yeah, thank you. All right, wow, that's a lot to unpack and it's a lot of valuable information and I appreciate you because you are at top level where this is concerned and I appreciate my audience will appreciate this, thank you. So how can a business leverage collaboration? I do see some YouTubers talking about collaborating with brands and stuff like that. How can someone who has a YouTube channel leverage collaboration with these brands?

Yeah, that's a really great question. I love that question because collaborations is one of the easiest ways a smaller YouTube channel can grow in an above average rate. Okay, so what do I mean by that? Now, you mentioned a couple of little things there that I can unpack A collaboration with a brand that would be considered more like a brand deal rather than a collaboration. Okay, so let's say you've built up a sizable audience, and it's a very targeted audience, and you use certain products or services in your own brand, in your own business, in your own company. You may want to reach out to that brand. Or perhaps they've already reached out to you because you've already built up a sizable audience and they'll want you to review their product and service in exchange for some kind of fee. They want access to the eyeballs that you control, so you would charge them a fee to do a brand deal. Whether you're reviewing a product or service and you're inserting it into one of your videos, okay, or I should say it's the entire video per se. Or you're actually promoting their product or service, like, let's say, they're on a VPN, so then you agree to talk about their vpn for 30 seconds and you insert that into one of your videos. Okay, so that would be consider brand deal and absolutely it is an additional revenue stream for your business. It typically won't kick in until you have a sizable audience. If you can prove that you have at least, let's say, a thousand viewers on a right on a daily or monthly basis on a very targeted niche, then that brand may see value in paying you for that brand deal because they want their, their brand, to be exposed in front of that targeted audience. Right, right, I personally put a lot more value in viewers than subscribers. A lot of people mistakenly put a lot of value in subscribers. I think that's a mistake because someone could obviously hit the subscribe button and never watch any of your videos Really more of a vanity metric. At the end of the day, if you're tracking your daily and monthly views, as long as those views are going up on a regular basis on a long enough time frame, then you can show a brand that you have influence, that you control a certain amount of authority in that space. Right, that's a great. A collaboration would be an example of something that you're actually your. What you do is you reach out to another youtube channel with a very similar type audience. They could be a direct competitor or they could be what I would refer to as a comparable somebody that isn't direct competition to you, but they have a very similar audience. Now, in that situation, it is much more likely that you'll get responses from people than if you're direct competition. I would still encourage you to reach out to direct competitors and ask if they would be interested to do doing a collaboration. I argue that that arising tide raises all ships approach is is going to be a win, win, win scenario. It's gonna be a win for you, a win from them for them and a win for the viewer at the end of the day. Unfortunately, we do live in a world where there's a lot of people out there with scarcity mentalities and they're gonna shut you down and say, no, I don't want to do a collaboration with you, you're my direct competitor and I think that's really short sighted of them. Don't fall victim to that short sighted mentality. I would encourage you to think abundantly and think that rising tide raises all ships mentality, because the more collaborations you do with people with similar, similar type audiences, faster you and them will grow. It's not an net. It's a net positive relationship. Okay, it's your, you're never going to need to worry about. Oh, you know we're taking business from you. You take your business mark. I think that's the wrong approach, but also, obviously, that's the world we live in. So you stand a better chance of getting responses from people if you isolate youtube channels that have a similar audience that are perhaps not the direct competition. So how do you find that? Well, you already know what your product and service addresses. Figure out what problems your clients and customers are dealing with before they reach your stage and after they're done with your stage Is now you find you reach out to those youtube channels that provide products and solutions for for clients at different aspects of the journey, of their development journey, and you can clearly say, hey, I'm not your direct competition because I'm serving clients after they're done with your service or before you start your service. Right, they'll be much more likely to do a collaboration, and there are dozens and dozens of ways you can do collaborations with one another. You can get together physically to get together and create a couple of youtube videos one goes on your channel, one goes on their channel and have each video point to the other one. Or, if it's more of a like, a podcast scenario, like the like, the kind of audience you serve. Well, I'll be a guest on your podcast. You be a guest on my podcast and we'll point to the other episode so that we can get. A data relationship between these two episodes. That's a really powerful scenario because a lot of people mistake, don't understand that only 10% of the views generated on the youtube platform globally or direct result from the search algorithm. 75% are direct result from the recommendation algorithms. There's two of them browse features and suggested. So if you're able to establish a data relationship with your youtube channel and another youtube channel, once someone watches a video on their channel, youtube goes. There's a similar relationship here between the viewers on both channels. So once someone sees a video on their channel, the next time they go into YouTube, all of a sudden, when they're scrolling through their suggested column, they might see two, three, four videos from your channel because YouTube has established a data relationship between the two channels. That gets a little technical, but anyway, it is a powerful way to grow your channel and I assure you doing collaborations will accelerate those results.

Yes, I could see how that would work and I would think an example would be like a podcast host who is in the hosting platform collaborating with a podcaster, exactly, oh yeah, yeah, that's a no-brainer.

Especially those podcasts. Both of those podcasts are serving a similar audience. Yes, you wouldn't want to do a collaboration with a very different audience. That would be a waste of both of your time. Right? If you're in the gardening niche, then you're not going to want to collaborate with a gamer, and vice versa.

Got you Okay, thank you. So what is Andrew grateful for today?

What am I grateful for today? I'm grateful for the sun because I'm currently in Costa Rica and it's rainy season and right now it's a difficult time to schedule. Sometimes it's a little frustrating when I book these kinds of interviews. I love doing these kinds of interviews, but sometimes we get some pretty nasty weather in Costa Rica, where I'm located right now, and then I have power and internet issues. So right now I'm just grateful for power and internet.

The weather.

Yeah, love Cloud and Crumman Great scuba diving there, love it.

Yeah, okay, thank you. All right, can you give us, before I let you go, give us two tips for new podcasters starting out, I'm going to give you a free reign with that one.

Two tips for new podcasters. Starting a brand new YouTube channel? Love that I would. I highly encourage you to post your your episodes as premieres. Now, what's a premiere? A premiere is like a regular video upload and a live stream, but the two of them had a baby and that's premiere, right? So you create the video, you upload it to YouTube and you schedule it in advance to be released on a certain day at a certain time as a premiere, and then when it's, and make sure you follow best practices. Please don't avoid the best practices. Don't skip or half-ass the effort on the thumbnail or the title. They're affectionately called the power twins. You're never going to convince someone to click on your thumbnail instead of someone else's without giving that the proper attention it deserves. Okay, human beings, at the end of the day, we're very vain creatures. We like pretty things. We don't want to waste our time on content that we deem is not good enough and unfortunately, people will assume a terrible thumbnail is representing a terrible video, right? So don't underestimate those items. When you're packaging a video together, give it a great title, give it a great thumbnail. If you don't know how to do that, do some. Do some research on YouTube. There's some wonderful videos out there on YouTube. All the time that will educate you for free on those aspects, okay, and then schedule your episodes out in advance as premiers. Grab that video link and promote it to everywhere you possibly can, to the right audience. Not everybody and their dog should be coming to your video. Only the targeted eyeballs that you're trying to attract should come to your video. Post it on social media, share it on email lists. If you don't have much of a presence on social media or you don't have an email list, other people in your network, do ask them if they would be, if they would consider promoting your very first episode, your first five episodes on this new channel. Promote it absolutely everywhere and then, after the video goes live, stop promoting the video link. Don't do that. There's some very negative unintended consequences that I don't have time to go into on this chat. But you can promote the video link as a whole. That is a safer bet for you. Okay, and do that for the first five 10 videos and you'll notice that your YouTube channel will generate some traction with the right eyeballs. You want to attract the right eyeballs, not the most eyeballs In business. you're not about trying to go viral. That's more for the entertainers In business. You want to attract the right eyeballs, not the most eyeballs. So that was probably a lot more than two tips there, but that'll get you going.

That's lovely. Thank you very much, and how can we get in touch with you?

Probably easiest to DM me on LinkedIn. I just find LinkedIn to be a lot more mature platform than some of these other platforms out there, and our website is ytorracom, y-t-e-r-acom, and we've got an online course at ytforbusinesscom.

Okay, all right, thank you, and we'll put those links in the show notes. Thank you, andrew Murdoch, for coming and speaking to us today on tools of the podcast trade. Any parting shots? Yeah?

Thanks so much for having me, jen. Honestly, I really do believe that more podcasts, more businesses need to treat YouTube seriously, and I'm here to help and answer questions in any way I can. I really do want to just come back to that point that we left. We mentioned earlier. Overcoming the fear of hitting the record button is vitally important in this day and age. People got to know you before they can like you. They got to like you before they can trust you and they got to trust you before they do business with you, and one of the easiest ways you can do that is hit the record button.

That's it. Yeah, okay, thank you, andrew, appreciate you. Got questions about podcasting. Do you find yourself struggling with the tools and strategies that you know will help you launch and grow your show? Why not join the newest podcast club where you can get your questions answered by me or one of our guest experts? The link to our next meeting is below Sign up today and don't let confusion about podcasting stop you from owning your genius. Whether you're an individual or a nonprofit, the newest podcast club is where podcasting come for answers. Link below for our next meeting.