What you need to know about your audience to get views

Hey hey,

I wanna dive into something less sexy, yet arguably more important. Even more so than all the other things I've written about in these newsletters.

And that is understanding your audience, their needs, concerns, motives, goals, ... I'm not talking about how old they are and what country they are from. We wanna know what moves them and more important, what makes them click and watch a video from start to finish.

Why this is important, is because your messaging is received differently by you or I, assuming you are not a Belgian guy living in Vietnam who loves running but failed hard at his first marathon (finished it tho), enjoys being a father but massively underestimated parenthood... So videos on managing working out and being a dad while working from home are more my thing than yours.

You get the idea why it's important and I'll dive deep into how to understand your audience so you can craft your messaging the right way, attracting the right viewers.

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Worth Watching

Part of what I do daily is consume a lot of content and here are some of my favorites:

We created a full YouTube Idea Bank with all the previous outliers.

The outlier score is the multiple of the average of the last 10 videos on the channel.

Get Access Now

• Toby Mathis Esq | Tax Planning & Asset Protection - 3 Reasons Why Your Net Worth Explodes After 100K (25.3x)
  This is mimicked after Mark Tillbury, but shows that no matter what niche you are in, with the right video format you can have success.
• Deya - Best & Worst Freelancing Platforms of 2024 (upwork, fiverr, peopleperhour, toptal, guru, etc) (75x)
  A topic and format that has proven to work over and over, what makes it interesting here is.. It's done by a woman. YouTube is very male-dominated and just fact you are a woman and have the expertise, it works.. Perhaps something to consider with a company account?
• David Heacock - How I Make $20M Per Month Selling Air Filters​
  Make money with something unexpected, then the video is very well produced in a documentary style. Shows you how versatile YouTube is.

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Why Deep Audience Understanding Makes or Breaks Your YouTube Success

Think about this: One audience insight could spark a video idea generating hundreds of thousands in revenue or dozens of leads.

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Why most of us get this wrong

My wife often tells me I assume a lot and that's why I get in trouble, so let's use that logic for a minute:

• We jump straight to YouTube research without understanding our audience
• We copy what's working for others without understanding why
• We focus on surface-level demographics instead of deep psychological drivers
• We make assumptions about what our audience wants instead of doing the research.

Often we assume wrong.

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Three Levels of Audience Understanding

Often we get stuck at level one

1. Surface Level: Demographics, job titles, basic interests
2. Behavioral Level: Content consumption habits, purchase patterns, daily routines
3. Psychological Level: Deep fears, aspirations, beliefs, and motivations (this is where the gold is)

One of my favorite examples for level 2 is this:

The average American with a corporate job commutes for 28 min one way, their consumption behavior during that time, car, train, bus, is listening to podcasts or music.

So this is interesting for those who are targeting people helping them set up a business, or elevate people in their corporate job, how to break free from a 9-5, ... We had a client who connects people with a franchisee, for those who are too afraid to start from scratch (level 3: fear) in business but like to follow instructions and want some more security and support. While they would become a franchise owner, they can still work their job and so there would be a transition.

The most success they had was through short 20-25 min podcast episodes, this performed better than their standard talking head video on YouTube.
So this example covers the 3 levels

1. Corporate, into improving themselves, USA (disposable income)
2. Listens to podcasts, commutes to work, ...
3. Fear of starting a business without support, thinks it's hard to set away from the 9-5, wants to have more control over their income and life versus having a boss.

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Practical Steps to Deep Audience Understanding

Here is the template that we use to note all of the following down

Download Template

It's like finding your ICP for your business but understanding more about their consumption behavior so you know how to reach them.

This part is the level 3 analysis, in your full breakdown and as you can see in the template, you add all 3 levels of understanding.

1. Start With Current Customers

• Interview your best customers
• Ask about their journey before finding your solution
• Document the exact language they use to describe their problems
• Note what finally convinced them to buy

1. Community Research

• Join Facebook groups where your audience hangs out
• Read Reddit threads in relevant subreddits
• Monitor industry forum discussions
• Track LinkedIn conversations in your niche

1. Content Consumption Analysis

• Study which YouTube channels they already watch
• Note which topics get the most engagement
• Analyze which headlines make them click
• Document the content formats they prefer

1. Pain Point Documentation

• Note down every problem mentioned
• Rate the severity and frequency of each problem
• Note current solutions they're trying
• Identify gaps in available solutions

1. Language Pattern Mining

• Save screenshots of actual comments and posts
• Create a swipe file of phrases they use
• Document their objections and hesitations
• Note how they describe their ideal solution

Action Steps for This Week:

1. Create your audience deep-dive document (template provided)
2. Interview at least 3 customers or ideal clients
3. Join 3 communities where your audience hangs out
4. Start your language pattern swipe file
5. Map out the top 10 pain points you discover

Remember: The time you spend understanding your audience isn't just research, it's the foundation of every successful video you'll make.

And to be honest, a lot of this you should already know about your audience if you have a business.

I recommend starting with the template and filling everything out you can.

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How I find endless video ideas that work

This is based on one of our previous newsletters and turned into a video, a clear step-by-step on how we find video ideas for our clients.