subscribers
YouTube channel growth for a digital media company's long-form shows
After strong long-form shows kept drawing few views, YouTube channel growth became the brief from this digital media company. Cutting episodes into short clips, rewriting titles and thumbnails around real searches and promoting the best clips grew subscribers by 210%.
Illustrative example. Client details are anonymised and representative of the work we do.
- Industry
- Media & Entertainment
- Services
- YouTube Ads Management Services + more
- Platforms
- YouTube
- Duration
- 8 months
Where they started
Great long-form shows were getting few views and almost no new subscribers.
The approachWhat we changed
We cut shows into short clips, rewrote titles and thumbnails around what people search for, and promoted the best clips to new viewers.
What other businesses can take from this
Media companies often bring a broadcast habit to YouTube: publish the full episode, title it with the show's name and wait. New viewers rarely commit to a long video from a channel they do not know, and titles written for existing fans do not match anything people type into search. Good content ends up seen mainly by people who already subscribed.
The lesson is to use short clips as the front door. Clips give new viewers a low-commitment way to sample the show, search-led titles and thumbnails help them find it, and promotion puts the best clips in front of people who have never visited. Monthly views grew 3.5x and average watch time rose 40%, so the long-form shows gained too.
Publishers and creators sitting on a back catalogue of strong long-form video can apply this straight away.
What moved
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