Here's why you shouldn't optimize for a million subscribers.

Here's why you shouldn't optimize for a million subscribers.

If you look at social media I used to optimize for I used to run ads on Facebook ads and run ads on Google. Always wanted more subscribers.

If you look at social media I used to optimize for I used to run ads on Facebook ads and run ads on Google. Always wanted more subscribers.

Dude, you had nine hundred thousand or so on Facebook. Remember I have over a million. How much were you spending on Facebook? Back to the day when I was making fun of you, dude?

Dude, you had nine hundred thousand or so on Facebook. Remember I have over a million. How much were you spending on Facebook? Back to the day when I was making fun of you, dude?

On Facebook ads, I think I peaked out at like one hundred and thirty something thousand dollars a month just to get more, just buying likes.

On Facebook ads, I think I peaked out at like one hundred and thirty something thousand dollars a month just to get more, just buying likes.

Yeah, and it was funny.

Yeah, and it was funny.

I would run ads that says, Neil Hotel likes Neil Patel, so why don't you like him too, doude. That thing converted so well.

I would run ads that says, Neil Hotel likes Neil Patel, so why don't you like him too, doude. That thing converted so well.

That's so funny. That's so funny, one of my best converting ads.

That's so funny. That's so funny, one of my best converting ads.

And funny enough. At that time, I was able to make it profitable because I was running traffic toil webinar and the likes were actually converting, and when I was running the campaigns, I was making more money. But having a million plus subs on YouTube or Facebook, Like, dude, it's irrelevant, it doesn't matter. All that matters is how qualified are those subscribers to buying something from you? And the first issue is when you look at subscribers, most subscribers like even if you're like CNBC, you know, I don't know. If you watch some of their content that they push when they have conferences, they'll have millions of subscribers and it's like cool video will still get only five thousand views. One of these social networks make it where if you have a lot of subscribers, it doesn't mean you're going to get any play. Two, if you look at a lot of the people who are getting a lot of play, like the Hermoses, and I'm not trying to talk crap, it's worked well from them and good for them. They create content that's very applicable to everyone. Right, So if you want subscribers and you're trying to make your content applicable to everyone, I think it works out quite well. But b are the main reason why I don't think it's worth it is there's way better ways to generate revenue than that time and effort it takes to generate a lot of subscribers. And I have multiple channels where I've done over a million subscribers, and I have accounts that are you know, more than just mine that some of them actually have like seven, eight, ten million plus subscribers. And I've found that it doesn't work as well as some of the old school techniques, and let's look at it. I can try to have tons of subscribers to help me find businesses to buy in the marketing space, which is what I'm doing, but I have a better ROI just hiring an outbound team to just hit up the ideal profile companies and just find out.

And funny enough. At that time, I was able to make it profitable because I was running traffic toil webinar and the likes were actually converting, and when I was running the campaigns, I was making more money. But having a million plus subs on YouTube or Facebook, Like, dude, it's irrelevant, it doesn't matter. All that matters is how qualified are those subscribers to buying something from you? And the first issue is when you look at subscribers, most subscribers like even if you're like CNBC, you know, I don't know. If you watch some of their content that they push when they have conferences, they'll have millions of subscribers and it's like cool video will still get only five thousand views. One of these social networks make it where if you have a lot of subscribers, it doesn't mean you're going to get any play. Two, if you look at a lot of the people who are getting a lot of play, like the Hermoses, and I'm not trying to talk crap, it's worked well from them and good for them. They create content that's very applicable to everyone. Right, So if you want subscribers and you're trying to make your content applicable to everyone, I think it works out quite well. But b are the main reason why I don't think it's worth it is there's way better ways to generate revenue than that time and effort it takes to generate a lot of subscribers. And I have multiple channels where I've done over a million subscribers, and I have accounts that are you know, more than just mine that some of them actually have like seven, eight, ten million plus subscribers. And I've found that it doesn't work as well as some of the old school techniques, and let's look at it. I can try to have tons of subscribers to help me find businesses to buy in the marketing space, which is what I'm doing, but I have a better ROI just hiring an outbound team to just hit up the ideal profile companies and just find out.

Were there at my event when society was like, you know, instead of trying to be famous, why don't I just go buy businesses?

Were there at my event when society was like, you know, instead of trying to be famous, why don't I just go buy businesses?

I wasn't there when he said that, but yeah, no, it makes sense. And I found, for example, instead of having the subscribers and saying like, hey, who wants to sell your business? We have a better We have a much better ROI of hiring corpor dev people and people who worked in the private equity field and just having them do outreach to find his businesses to buy. Or instead of creating tons and tons of subscribers and followers on social media, we find it better to get customers for our ad agency NP Digital to just go higher execs who worked for bigger competitors who have a book of business. It's much cheaper and produces a much higher ROI in the long run from everything we've seen.

I wasn't there when he said that, but yeah, no, it makes sense. And I found, for example, instead of having the subscribers and saying like, hey, who wants to sell your business? We have a better We have a much better ROI of hiring corpor dev people and people who worked in the private equity field and just having them do outreach to find his businesses to buy. Or instead of creating tons and tons of subscribers and followers on social media, we find it better to get customers for our ad agency NP Digital to just go higher execs who worked for bigger competitors who have a book of business. It's much cheaper and produces a much higher ROI in the long run from everything we've seen.

Yeah, so high level. I mean a if you're watching this, you have a business, you should be focusing on customers ideally, But if I were to take it one level higher, the algorithms the way they were, it did used to matter if you had like a million subs, like you actually would get more play like you would get more viewers. But that's the problem is the game has changed, right, and what matters is not your It's a vanity metric. Now subscribers don't matter. What matters are the number of views that you're actually getting and like also the engagement. It's not just because you're buying views from like using paid it's also like how long are they watching, the average view duraction.

Yeah, so high level. I mean a if you're watching this, you have a business, you should be focusing on customers ideally, But if I were to take it one level higher, the algorithms the way they were, it did used to matter if you had like a million subs, like you actually would get more play like you would get more viewers. But that's the problem is the game has changed, right, and what matters is not your It's a vanity metric. Now subscribers don't matter. What matters are the number of views that you're actually getting and like also the engagement. It's not just because you're buying views from like using paid it's also like how long are they watching, the average view duraction.

And how relevant the content is to your core business. Remember the boat We did a podcast episode sor Bace that you put on Instagram. I remember you wanted me to share it, Yeah, and I didn't.

And how relevant the content is to your core business. Remember the boat We did a podcast episode sor Bace that you put on Instagram. I remember you wanted me to share it, Yeah, and I didn't.

On TikTok it got one point eight million views and.

On TikTok it got one point eight million views and.

It was a wow. Eric was breaking down the difference between a one dollar bo a ten thousand dollars vote, a million dollar vode, a billion dollar vote, et cetera. And I didn't care to share it. Not that the content was bad. I just knew it wouldn't generate me any customers, so I didn't really care.

It was a wow. Eric was breaking down the difference between a one dollar bo a ten thousand dollars vote, a million dollar vode, a billion dollar vote, et cetera. And I didn't care to share it. Not that the content was bad. I just knew it wouldn't generate me any customers, so I didn't really care.

Do you okay, here's a question for you do your Instagram? Do you actually get customers from your Instagram?

Do you okay, here's a question for you do your Instagram? Do you actually get customers from your Instagram?

No question?

No question?

Okay, so then it's irrelevant. Should have shared anyway, you asshole.

Okay, so then it's irrelevant. Should have shared anyway, you asshole.

But the point is maybe once a year, twice a year, three times a year, we may it a c but our ideal customer is someone who is like a CMO of a Fortune five hundred company, who you know, will give us many different divisions of their company in many different countries and languages, and it's a big multimillion dollar deal. You're not getting them from Instagram. What we do get though, from Instagram. And here's where the views important and the subscribers don't really matter too much. When people see our content on social media, it gets them to know about our brand. So then when we're in an RFP, people are like, oh, we've seen Neil and his brand. They're reputable. It gives us a better odd of potentially getting hired. Yeah, people have more affinity, but that doesn't even get us included in the RFPs. The RFPs go through like, oh, you're Enforrester, You're not Enforrester. Like, oh, you haven't won tons of awards, Okay, you have one tons of awards. Like it's a lot of black and white, Like, oh, our company has worked with a lot of your previous or your employees at previous companies, so we're we had a great experience, so we're now willing to include you in the RFP. We're just seeing subscribers as a vandy metric that's irrelevant. Yes, it's better to optimize for views and engagement assuming the content's relevant, but a subscriber number just doesn't matter that much anymore. Yeah, So the key takeaway here is, look, subscribers are vanity optimized for views, and ideally you're optimizing for views that are relevant to driving conversions for your business. And that's all it is at the end of the day. Like, for example, the reason why we're doing this, reason why we're recording.

But the point is maybe once a year, twice a year, three times a year, we may it a c but our ideal customer is someone who is like a CMO of a Fortune five hundred company, who you know, will give us many different divisions of their company in many different countries and languages, and it's a big multimillion dollar deal. You're not getting them from Instagram. What we do get though, from Instagram. And here's where the views important and the subscribers don't really matter too much. When people see our content on social media, it gets them to know about our brand. So then when we're in an RFP, people are like, oh, we've seen Neil and his brand. They're reputable. It gives us a better odd of potentially getting hired. Yeah, people have more affinity, but that doesn't even get us included in the RFPs. The RFPs go through like, oh, you're Enforrester, You're not Enforrester. Like, oh, you haven't won tons of awards, Okay, you have one tons of awards. Like it's a lot of black and white, Like, oh, our company has worked with a lot of your previous or your employees at previous companies, so we're we had a great experience, so we're now willing to include you in the RFP. We're just seeing subscribers as a vandy metric that's irrelevant. Yes, it's better to optimize for views and engagement assuming the content's relevant, but a subscriber number just doesn't matter that much anymore. Yeah, So the key takeaway here is, look, subscribers are vanity optimized for views, and ideally you're optimizing for views that are relevant to driving conversions for your business. And that's all it is at the end of the day. Like, for example, the reason why we're doing this, reason why we're recording.

This is we think this will do well on YouTube. Right we are we're trying to optimize for views. We're trying to hook, right, We're playing the game there, and there's a game to play for each channel. But at the end of the day, if you're optimizing for the wrong thing, like the example I used on this podcast long time ago, is I optimize.

This is we think this will do well on YouTube. Right we are we're trying to optimize for views. We're trying to hook, right, We're playing the game there, and there's a game to play for each channel. But at the end of the day, if you're optimizing for the wrong thing, like the example I used on this podcast long time ago, is I optimize.

What is that let's stream?

What is that let's stream?

I'm addicted to it all right, So anyway, you know, just play spradlisting into his mouth. So the back in my early days of se O, the way I started out was I optimized for rankings, and I was like, you know, I like going to m festivals and I like light show videos, So I canna make a website called light show videos dot com. Yeah, and I got the number one ranking for it, Like it took me two months to get there, right, And when I got there, I expected the avalanche of traffic to come through views. Right. I was optimizing for like subscribers instead of views. And what happened. I didn't get any traffic for it. I wasted all the time and effort.

I'm addicted to it all right, So anyway, you know, just play spradlisting into his mouth. So the back in my early days of se O, the way I started out was I optimized for rankings, and I was like, you know, I like going to m festivals and I like light show videos, So I canna make a website called light show videos dot com. Yeah, and I got the number one ranking for it, Like it took me two months to get there, right, And when I got there, I expected the avalanche of traffic to come through views. Right. I was optimizing for like subscribers instead of views. And what happened. I didn't get any traffic for it. I wasted all the time and effort.

Did you remember when he used to come to my place in Vegas just for EEDC EDM.

Did you remember when he used to come to my place in Vegas just for EEDC EDM.

Well ADC Yeah, I stayed at your place ye yeah.

Well ADC Yeah, I stayed at your place ye yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyway, look, point is, if you want attention. It's views, it's not subscribers. I'm beating a dead horse now, so just go watch this next video over here, and don't forget to rate you. Subscribe and we'll see you tomorrow

So anyway, look, point is, if you want attention. It's views, it's not subscribers. I'm beating a dead horse now, so just go watch this next video over here, and don't forget to rate you. Subscribe and we'll see you tomorrow