Getting Views vs. Generating Leads on YouTube

What's up, it's Braden (again).

Earlier this week, I broke down how we blew up a video for a client (really, their whole channel).

And I already know what a lot of people are going to say

"Cool, but did it generate leads?"

It's an important discussion.

Because I'm a believer that you 100% need views to generate leads from YouTube, BUT they need to be the right views

Let's dive into it 👇

Let's take it to the extreme.

Channel A gets 100 views per month.
Channel B gets 10,000 views per month.

Which one books more calls?

Channel B.

Every time.

But there's a catch.

Those views need to come from your ICP

10,000 views from the completely wrong audience won't do anything for you.

That's why we don't chase videos that pull in millions of views.

We shoot for 20,000, 30,000, maybe even 40,000.

That way we stay inside the target market and maximize the TAM (total addressable market) within it.

When we create videos, we think through how to maximize the TAM and who we're speaking to, every single time.

You're only going to get as many qualified viewers as your positioning allows.

For example, "How the Best E-commerce Brands Scale in 2026" can only go as wide as people interested in e-commerce brands.

That's a plain fact.

"How Shopify Built an Entire Empire" is a business growth video.

It might get more views, but for an e-commerce agency, it pulls in the wrong audience.

Same topic.

Different viewer.

Another example, for a cold email agency:

"Alex Hormozi's Cold Email Advice" pulls in people interested in cold email, plus Hormozi fans who want his take on lead gen.

Both are people who want leads. Perfect ICP.

"The Secret Behind Alex Hormozi's $100M Empire" pulls in Hormozi fans.

Wrong ICP, wrong positioning.

Notice how both use Hormozi.

Only one keeps you in your lane.

Here's how we keep every video in the right lane.

Give your channel a tagline.

Something like "How to grow your business with cold email."

Or "How to grow your DTC e-commerce brand with growth marketing strategies."

Then every time you come up with a video, ask yourself one question:

Does this branch from my tagline?

If it doesn't, rework the title or scrap the idea entirely.

From there, we could go into all the packaging hacks and title hacks.

But that's not what this is about.

This is about getting qualified traffic to your channel, then maximizing the TAM within it.

When someone tells you views don't matter, they're not wrong.

Unqualified views don't matter.

Qualified viewers are the main metric.

And sometimes the only way to track that is booked calls.

For us, the view-to-booking ratio usually lands around 1,500 to 4,000 views per booked call, depending on the ICP.

If it's much higher than that, we know we're speaking to the wrong audience.

Now, there's a time and a place to go wider.

If someone with a huge channel is soaking up the entire TAM in your space, it can make sense to chase more views and take market share.

I'll break that down in a future letter.

For now: get views. Get as many qualified views as you can.

Talk soon,
Braden