Know Your Audience

I made a mistake last year.

I was just coming out of medical emergency which stole the fulltime sailing dream, and I put out a bunch of content that was helping me process what I had been through with the hopes of helping others. It was very rewarding for me personally, and I received a lot of very positive feedback from my audience, but I also started to see my view count on my YouTube channel go down.

I tried everything to slow the decline: tested different video types, different topics, and reached out to my audience. The ones that responded kept saying, “We like you for you!” “We like your authenticity”. “We like the REAL stories you tell”. And I like THEM for saying that, but, I still wasn’t growing. In fact, I was shrinking for months.

And then I hired a YouTube growth consultant…

What Type of Content Do you WANT to Create?

The consultant and I had an honest conversation about the type of content I wanted to create. The problem was, the sailing content alone wasn’t resonating with me, nor the type of audience sailing content typically attracts, and I needed this alignment with my audience in order to sustain my energy. Whether or not you need this is entirely personal.

I wanted to create YouTube videos with a mental health message. I wanted to talk about personal development, growth, and challenging our perspectives on life. I wanted to encourage more women to join the adventure space, even if it meant doing it alone.

And while many of my audience aligned with that message, I wasn’t getting real about serving the type of person who is in the sailing space. My YouTube videos were not meeting the typical viewer needs.

WHO Is The Typical Audience?

In the first year of my channel, my YouTube videos were aimed purely at sailors. Here are my year one channel demographics:

• 90.1% male
• 78% over the age of 45
• 27.2% USA; 26.8% New Zealand

And for your reference, here are demographics of US sailors overall:

• Average income over $125,000 USD/year
• 52% of have a college degree or higher
• 87% of the people interested in sailing own at least one boat, and 57% of these own 2 or more boats

Based on this data and also looking at other YouTube channels’ comments, the typical YouTube sailing channel audience fell into one of two categories: looking to retire and go on an adventure or people who wanted to live and adventure vicariously. Either way though, they are dreamers. And they are dreamers with a bit more money to spend than your average Joe. They are seeking practical skills, inspiration, hope, and entertainment.

I Had Audience Misalignment

When I first started my YouTube channel, I hadn’t though through any of this. If I’m completely honest, I really just wanted to share my adventures, build a following, and make enough money to keep traveling.

At the end of 2022 though, I went through an attachment theory course that changed my entire life, and I experienced a big shift in what I wanted to do with my channel. Instead of simply attracting sailors, I wanted to attract adventurers, specifically adventurers who were focused on the personal growth that world travel can provide. I also wanted to encourage more solo female travel. I wanted to inspire those who are struggling in life to keep moving forward and hold on to hope. And I wanted to help fellow adventurers find a sustainable income that would help them get out adventuring (thus the birth of this newsletter).

When I realised what I wanted to do and who I wanted to serve, it became clear I wasn’t targeting the right audience. Sailing alone would never attract the young and majority female audience I hoped for. And being that many who watch sailing YouTube channels are in a dreaming and inspiration phase of their lives, it seemed I’d have a pretty small target audience talking about big periods of personal growth.

The overall potential audience if I stayed put in the sailing sphere was simply too small.

So What Did I Do?

I needed to think about what type of YouTube videos would attract the audience I was looking for. And luckily, I didn’t need to start from scratch. There were already other travel vloggers talking about the things I wanted to talk about. Eva Zu Beck in the solo female adventure sphere constantly vlogs about mental health, pushing yourself, and being brave. Max & Occy openly vlog about suicide prevention and ends every episode with “Be Kind. Always”. And my instinct was that the reason they were thriving on these messages is because of the demographic that was watching their content.

It was time to do some research.

• ​Captiv8’s analysis of the demographics for the #vanlife hashtag show an average age between 25 and 44. More than 1/3 of them have incomes between $40,000 and $80,000 a year.
• ​Hiking demographics from the Appalachian trail show that 36 is the average age of a hiker and the median age is 30 years old.
• ​And while 50 percent of travel channel subscribers are aged 25 to 64, 38 percent fall in the 18 to 24 age range, with the younger demographic more likely to watch travel vlogging content.

All these categories were favored by men, but the potential audience that would be attracted my content was much bigger than in the sailing sphere. I also felt this new potential audience would be more aligned with the phase of life I was targeting.

Action

Per the advice of the consultant, I started pivoting my YouTube channel. I will go into the details of the pivot in another newsletter, but basically, I started to frame all my YouTube videos around this new focus. When I went sailing, it became less about the sail itself, and more about the solo adventurous at the destination and personal development. I chose adventures that were more realistic for the younger demographic who would have less disposable income. I also temporarily hid old videos that were on topics I no longer wanted my YouTube channel to be associated with.

And then my YouTube channel started to shift. Over the past three months, the top search terms associated with my channel have gone from:

• Sailing
• Nude beach (and variations)
• Boat survey
• Sailing around the world
• Sailboat living
• Sailboat

To now:

• Sailing New Zealand
• Marlborough Sounds
• Great Barrier Island
• Hot Springs
• Off grid
• Hiking Solo
• Adventure YouTube channel

While my YouTube channel has experienced a small decline (considering I hid over half my videos!), my average view per viewer (number of videos they watch on my channel in a session) over the last 90 days compared to the previous 90 days has gone from 1.8 views to 2.3 views, a 28% increase!!! This indicates that viewers are finding my YouTube videos more consistent, and that I am attracting an audience that wants to binge multiple videos of mine. A very good sign for the future!

Takeaway

There are two ways for you to go about this. You can either:

1. Get clear about the audience you want to attract and frame your content to attract that audience.
2. Get clear about what audience your content is already attracting and make content that will attract them to keep coming back.

And most of all, stay focused on whichever you decide. Consistent content over time is how most of us will grow.

You got this! (And stay curious!)