If you’re struggling to figure out how to grow on YouTube in New Zealand, look no further than todays mega guide. Over the past 5 years Ive grown my own channel from zero to over 90,000 subscribers, building one of the largest marketing YouTube channels in New Zealand. Whilst also building one of my clients, the Keep The Change podcast, from zero to nearly 25,000 YouTube subscribers over the past two years. We’ve worked with countless other businesses in this period and have a real hands on understanding of what is and isn’t working to grow a channel on YouTube both in general, but also specifically in New Zealand, as what works internationally doesn’t always work in New Zealand.
We touched on some basic ideas in our recent blog article ‘How we grew a youtube channel in New Zealand to 94,641 subscribers‘ but today we’re going more in depth.
Why would you want to grow on YouTube?
Before we get into how you do, lets quickly touch on why you’d even want to do it. Too often I see business owners jump into a social platform because the think they have to or because its the trendy thing to do, but you need to understand why you’re doing it if you want to stick at it for long enough to see results.
The benefits of youtube are three fold.
Firstly, you have the search aspect, people go to YouTube & Google to search when they have a problem, and by creating videos around these key search terms of your ideal customers, you can get in front of them, build trust and generate leads off the back of it. The beauty of this is these videos can stay at the top of search rankings for years and years, unlike other social media platforms where your post is pretty much invisible after a few days. YouTube generates traffic for your business on autopilot.
Secondly, you have the trust aspect, people will happily watch YouTube videos for 5, 10, 20, 30 minutes or even hours if its in the form of a podcast. Not only that but they will go on to watch multiple videos on your channel if they’re enjoying the content. By the time someone has spent hours watching your videos, they’re going to be warmed up to working with you, and the ability to turn those leads into clients or customers will be significantly higher than if they came in cold off an advert or you cold called. YouTube builds trust on autopilot for your business.
Thirdly, you have the catalogue of content aspect. Now I did briefly touch on this in the previous two, but the thing our clients & I love about YouTube is the fact you can publish a video today and it can be generating awareness, trust, leads and revenue for many years to come, compared to other platforms where its gone in a week at best. This means every video feels more like an asset that continues to work for you, rather than an expense thats over with right away and needs to paid for again and again to see any results.
The only downsides is it can be more effort to create longer video content compared to other platforms where you may write or record short form, and you don’t typically get that quick dopamine hit of a reel getting a thousand views instantly like you do on Instagram, YouTube is a slow burn but by far the best rewards long term in my opinion.
So, how do you actually grow the channel?
Create video packaging people actually want to click on
The core difference between YouTube and other social media platforms is how people consume content. On platforms such as Instagram, Facebook & TikTok, people passively scroll through content one at a time in their feed. Whereas on YouTube, people are shown a selection of roughly 6 to 20 videos on their home screen and users click on the video they most want to watch.
The core difference here is people on Instagram will watch the start of your video before choosing to continue, whereas on YouTube you need them to click on your video, in a sea of other videos, to even get them to the start of your video.
This means the way you package your video, as in the video idea, title & thumbnail, is absolutely essential. No matter how good the video is, if you don’t package it well, people won’t get the chance to see how good it is. On top of this, YouTube’s algorithm tracks what percentage of people who see your video, end up clicking on it, aka your ‘click through rate’ or CTR for short. If your click through rate is extremely low then YouTube are less likely to show your content to more people.
Now that you understand the importance of packaging, how do you actually do a good job of it?
This is the million dollar question, in all honesty it is more of an art than a science, and it does keep adjusting with time. In saying that, here’s a few things that we’ve used to reach 7,500,000 million long form views on my main channel.
Clarity. Think about what the key thing is that people will get out of your video, then make it abundantly clear in the title. Sometimes not overthinking it and keeping things simple works really well.
One of the better performing videos on our golf channel was uploaded when we had less than 1,000 subscribers, and is sitting on over 70,000 views, the packaging we used was simply ‘The Entire History Of Augusta National’ with a thumbnail that shows 1850 as the before and 2025 as the now.
It wasn’t anything fancy but it worked because it clearly explained what the video is, and so when youtube showed it to people who were interested, they clicked and watched it.
Curiosity. The other big one when it comes to creating winning YouTube packaging is curiosity, there’s a marketing idea known as the ‘curiosity gap’ where you essentially spark curiosity in the mind of the viewer, who then becomes drawn to watch the video to find out what happens and the gap is therefor closed.
It’s the same thing news outlets have been doing for hundreds of years, they write a headline that sparks curiosity, makes you want more and then you need to buy the newspaper/click on the article to find out, which then generates revenue for the newspaper. YouTube is no different.
So if you’re a Kiwisaver provider, making a video explaining why selecting the right fund is key to your outcomes, instead of titling the video ‘Your Kiwisaver Returns Are Low Due To Fund Selection’ as right off the bat there is no curiosity, people know the answer. Instead, title it ‘This Kiwisaver Mistake Costs You Tens Of Thousands At Retirement’ all of a sudden the viewer has a sense of curiosity of what could the mistake be, or even wondering if they are making that mistake. This then causes them to click on the video and find out.
Topic. Finally, we have the actual topic itself. A good topic can do most of the heavy lifting for you, on the other hand, no amount of good packaging will save a bad topic idea.
If you can create content around a topic people are already very interested in, then the packaging becomes a lot easier. For example, if we go back to the golf channel, that video about Augusta national did well, partially due to the title & thumbnail, but also due to the fact its one of the most famous golf courses in the world and it got picked up in the YouTube algorithm leading into the masters, the most famous tournament in golf. The idea itself was solid and the title and thumbnail were a nice addition.
On the other hand, had I created a video about the history of a random golf course, with less interest, it probably would have got a fraction of the views.
Simply choosing topics you know your target audience are interested in, will make your life a whole lot easier when it comes to growing your channel.
Bonus tip: Capitalise the first letter of each word in the title as it typically will grab peoples attention, for example ‘How To Go Viral On YouTube In 2026’ vs ‘How to go viral on youtube in 2026’.
Hook viewers within 5 seconds
The first 5 seconds of your video are make of break, if you capture someones attention the video can be a winner, if you fail to, it can flop even if the rest of the video is amazing.
Too often I see people creating youtube videos which have 5-10 seconds of intro music & branding at the start, or they open with a long ramble about who they are. This doesn’t work because people’s attention spans nowadays are shorter than ever, when someone clicks on your video they have a certain expectation of what they will get based on what your title & thumbnail says, your job is to confirm that is what they are getting as fast as possible.
For example, if you are a local mechanic and you’re creating a video about ‘how to change your tire’, then you literally want to start the video with ‘Today Im going to show you how to change your tire in just a few minutes, so if you ever get a flat, you can change it with confidence and don’t get yourself stranded’ this means instantly people know this is the right video.
If someones trying to learn how to change a tyre they don’t really care about who you are at this point, they just want to learn how to solve their problem, the sooner you get into this the better.
At the same time, it is good to subtly provide credibility that you actually know how to solve this problem, as peoples first thought will be ‘why should I trust this guy’
But instead of rambling on about your qualifications, you can subtly prove this by your surroundings. If you shoot the video from your workshop, people are going to trust that you probably know how to fix a car.
If you’re a dentist shooting a video about how to properly brush your teeth, do it from your dental practice and wear a white coat as its small things like this that signal credibility without you having to waste peoples time reciting your qualifications
In the event where it is tricky to show your expertise through where you are or what you wear, you can opt to include some results as social proof, for example I created a video about ’10 simple strategies to grow your Instagram’ but theres no real qualification to prove people should trust me, so instead I baked in my own results and opened the video with this:
‘These 10 simple to follow strategies applied consistently, will 10x your growth on Instagram… Ive used these strategies to grow @millionaire.dream to over 800,000 followers…’
Short, sharp and to the point, explains what they will get for the video whilst providing credibility and all done within 10 seconds. (if you want to watch that video, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAXhwBySa70&t=1s)
The whole goal of your intro is to explain what people will get from the video and why people should trust you, in a short concise way.
Understanding the algorithm
YouTubes algorithm is incredibly complex, and trying to understand exactly how it functions is well beyond any one persons skillset. However the main thing you need to know is its goal, to serve people content they’re going to click on and watch. The algorithms entire goal is to do this as efficiently as possible.
Which means, if people aren’t clicking on your videos, youtube wont recommend them.
If people click on your videos but soon after click off as you haven’t gained their attention, youtube won’t recommend them.
If YouTube is confused about who your target audience is because your videos are constantly aimed at different people, YouTube won’t recommend you as often.
In essence, to master the youtube algorithm you need three check marks. Videos people click on. Videos people stay watching. Videos in the same niche so YouTube know who to show it to. If you can do that you will be ahead of the majority of youtubers in terms of understanding the algorithm.
A lot of the ‘tricks’ people preach, are either made up, or are fancy ways of doing one of those three things Ive just mentioned above.
Lead generation
We’ve found that naturally if you do things right on YouTube you will generate leads without even trying. If you understand your target audience, create content thats valuable to them and package it well, naturally leads will fall into your funnel. However there is some fine tuning here that can help really escalate your results.
Firstly, include two core links in your description of each video. One to your email list ideally via giving people something for free. And another one to your paid offering, this could be directly to your website for people to shop, it could be to book a call with you, or directly to a sales page. This way you have one link for the cold/warm audience to get something for free and become email subscribers. Then one link for the warmer/hot audience who are wanting to buy from you.
Secondly, you want to start mentioning these links. Its all well and good to put them in the description and they will get traffic in doing so, but by mentioning them in the video you will significantly increase your traffic. One rule Ive learnt from Alex Hormozi, is to make your smaller ‘asks’ earlier on in the video, due to people who watch further into your video likely being a lot warmer leads. This means promote your free product early on in your video as the audience is colder, then promote your paid product later in the video as these viewers are likely warmer.
In general, I aim to make these call to actions as natural as possible. Rather than a large promotion I try weave it in naturally. If Im making a video about 3 ways to grow on Instagram and the first one is to create good hooks, I might then mention at the end of it ‘Ive created a free hooks guide you can download in the description if you want to learn more’ and then get into the second point.
The people who sign up to your email list can then be nurtured and sent future videos, warming them up to the point they are ready to buy.
Tags
Tags used to be an effective way to help you improve your SEO. However nowadays they do very little, so much so to the point where YouTube have added a disclaimer above the tag section. The disclaimer read: ‘Tags can be useful if content in your video is commonly misspelled. Otherwise, tags play a minimal role in helping viewers find your video.’
Which goes to show they no longer are worth worrying about, according to YouTube.
Descriptions
Similar to tags, In the past descriptions were reasonably important, people would stack them full of keywords similar to how they do on blogs. All with the goal of it helping them rank in SEO. Nowadays, thanks to AI, YouTube can see a transcript of your videos already meaning you don’t need to use the description to load it with keywords.
Instead, use your description to write a short description of the video, and include any relevant links mentioned in the video to gain new leads and customers.
End screen
End screens are what shows up at the end of your video and is a unique opportunity to show your viewers another video. Typically we select ‘best for viewer’ and then a subscribe prompt. You could also include a playlist here but we find YouTube’s recommendation engine to be so powerful its best to let them do their thing.
Conclusion
In summary, your focus on youtube should be to really understand your target audience, find proven ideas, turning them into valuable videos and packaging it up with a strong title & thumbnail. If you can do this consistently you are significantly more likely get results on the platform.
But remember, it does take time. It’ll take you time to learn how to find great ideas. It’ll take you time to become comfortable on camera. It’ll take you time to learn how to package things up. It’ll take you time to learn the ins and outs of your sector on YouTube. It’ll take time for the algorithm to figure out who your content is for.
Even if you do everything perfectly, it could still take 5-10 weeks of weekly uploads to get traction. More realistically if you aren’t starting out perfect, it could be longer. But regardless, it’ll be worth it. The trust you gain from YouTube video content and the fact the videos continues to bring views in for years to come, is well worth it.
If you need our help to do this for you, reach out to me at josh@cleverpreneur.com or book a call with me at https://calendly.com/cleverpreneur/agency-discovery-call.