How to Grow Your YouTube Channel With Justin Brown

Justin Brown says it’s not too late for YouTube.

The founder of Primal Video, a video strategy YouTube channel with 1.31 million subscribers, believes you can still start and grow a successful YouTube channel.

“There’s no other platform that gives you views as consistent for years as YouTube does,” Brown says.

Brown and his brother Mike first started their YouTube channel as a tool to drive organic traffic to their video business. Then, in 2016, they started taking things seriously and building a channel focused on helping people solve problems. Five years later, they grew their channel to surpass 1 million subscribers.

But Brown makes no secret of his strategies. Primal Video’s mission is to go beyond the basics of video production and show how creators can scale their content on YouTube to increase results for their business or brand.

The YouTube flywheel

Aside from anticipating your audience’s questions, Brown says you need to create the content you want. It seems obvious, but after six years of video production, he says he’ll lose creative steam if he’s not passionate about an idea.

“If you’re just making videos for an algorithm, it gets pretty thin,” says Brown.

Brown Batch produces videos that allow him to capitalize on creative momentum and buy time to work on creating more value for his audience. And YouTube makes it easy to engage with audiences through community feeds and live streams.

“If you’re just starting out, do your best to answer as many comments and ask questions. Get people engaged with your content — it will help them, but it will also help YouTube to see that people aren’t just sitting back and watching your content,” says Brown.

This YouTube flywheel gives momentum to a channel. When you create content that people search for and engage with the audience, you get ideas for new content from the audience. As a result, YouTube promotes your videos to people searching for your ideas. From then on, the wheel keeps turning.

Don’t bury the lede

But is it worth competing with YouTube titans like Primal Video?

“The best time to start was yesterday,” says Brown.

“The second best time is today.”

Brown says the company has made every mistake since the channel launched. One of the biggest mistakes he has made and sees in others is burying the lede.

“No one cares who you are,” says Brown. “Is this guy […] will I answer the pain or problem I clicked?

Brown suggests that YouTubers should tell audiences up front what value they’re getting from the video, rather than wasting precious seconds on fancy graphics and a personal intro. For example, in a video about iPhone editing apps, Brown would start the video with, “I’m going to share with you the top five video editing apps on iPhone so you can figure out which one is best for you.”

Now the audience knows exactly what will be in the video (five editing apps), the use case (iPhone), and what will solve it (the best for you). Brown says 96 percent of their views come from non-subscribers, so they have to treat each video like no one knows who’s on camera.

A simple hack for beginners trying to find high search intent topics is to just type in the YouTube search bar. You might instinctively think that your video should be titled “iPhone video editing software”, but after typing in the search bar, the word “app” comes up first. But the message in your video needs to match your title’s keyword research. Likewise, your thumbnail must be memorable, clear, and consistent with the content.

“The other part of it is that you should test, because what works for you on a given video may be completely different than what works on the next video,” says Brown. He recommends using tools like TubeBuddy for A/B testing and don’t be afraid to try something new, even if you feel silly creating a thumbnail of your face.

“So we don’t have any ties here,” Brown says. “Our goal is to create something clickable.”