Who Watched Your Viral Video?

I clicked an ad on Instagram for a free brand assessment. I didn't think my brand needed one. I just wanted to see what people were putting out into the world, so I gave them my name and phone number.

Then I got an email asking me to confirm my email. I confirmed it, and it sent me to a new landing page asking me to book a free consult with them. I never got the assessment. I still don't know if they were just tricking people into it. I'd been dropped into a conversion funnel built to get me onto a sales call, and the thing I'd actually asked for wasn't anywhere in it.

Somebody probably counted that as a win. They got a lead, a phone number and a confirmed email. What they didn't get was anybody who trusted them.

Who saw it?

Ryan Blake made the point better than I could when he came on my podcast. Picture a window washing company that comes in wanting a viral video. Say it works, and a million people watch it. "Are any of the million people that saw your viral video someone that needs their windows washed?" Ryan asked. If they're mostly 14-year-olds on TikTok, the answer is no. They don't care whether anybody's windows get washed.

That's the question almost nobody asks about views and followers. Ryan called them glamour stats, and I think that's exactly right. A big number feels like success, but it doesn't tell you whether the right people saw the thing or what they did next. "If you have a thousand engaged people that are the correct thousand engaged people," he said, "that's ultimately way more valuable than a million people that might look at your stuff."

He also went after the boost button, the one in the app that offers to have more people see your post. More people, sure. Which people? The button doesn't say, and that's the problem with most of the social media advice small businesses get. It's built to get more eyes on the post, and nobody checks whose eyes they are.

Entertain them with the problem, then ask

None of this means content has to be boring. People go to Instagram and TikTok to be entertained, and a business that ignores that won't get watched at all. The trick is what the entertainment is about.

If you can show somebody a problem they actually have in an entertaining way, you've done your job. Say you sell golf lessons, and you make a funny video about how to hit a golf ball longer. The people who laugh at it and remember it are golfers. Down the line, when they see an ad from you, they think, I remember that video. I'll buy from them.

That second step is the part most businesses skip. Ryan has talked to social media managers who didn't know you could put a call to action on the content at all. They put everything into the entertainment and never ask anybody to do anything. So the business entertains half a million people and hopes 2 percent of them find their way to the website on their own. A few will. Most won't, because nobody told them where to go.

So the next step has to be there, and it has to be easy. The person who watched the video lands somewhere that matches what they saw, and they can tell what you want them to do. That's the opposite of my brand assessment. I knew exactly what I wanted, and the whole funnel was built to get me somewhere else.

A thousand people who need what you sell, who remember you and know what to do next, will do more for a business than a million who were just passing through. That's the marketing I want to do, and it starts with knowing who you want watching before you make anything.