400 subs in one day: the power of the final CTA
That took me by surprise…
I launched the Solo Club YouTube channel on 19th March 2023. It had zero subscribers (not even my mum), no videos, and, consequently, a huge mountain to climb.
After publishing a short on 23rd March which detailed my worst-ever sponsorship offer for Mark Ellis Reviews, Solo Club gained its first three subscribers.
What happened next was eye-opening.
I gradually ramped up the production process behind the scenes to the point where I could comfortably publish one long-form Solo Club video each week. Filming for the first season of the accompanying podcast also began. Momentum was building and it felt exciting to be working on something so nascent once again.
The subs continued to trickle in as I gently added content to my burgeoning channel.
Then, on Saturday, 15th April, the subscriber count soared by 399 in just 24 hours. Over the days that followed, they continued to pour in. At the time of writing, my brand-new channel which, less than a month ago, had not a single subscriber, is rapidly approaching its first milestone of 1,000 subscribers. This has happened much, much quicker than it did for Mark Ellis Reviews.
As always, the YouTube Studio subscriber graph tells its own story.
Not bad, eh?
So, what caused this huge leap in audience size? It was the result of a seven-second mention of Solo Club during the closing stages of a Mark Ellis Reviews video. It was the last - and, entirely deliberate - call to action placed precisely at a point in the video timeline where I knew only the die-hard viewers remained.
Boy did it work. It worked far better than I ever expected it to, in fact. This is the power of the final CTA, and it’s something that many creators (and, unfortunately, sponsors) overlook.
Engagement on YouTube videos falls off sharply. For the video in question, I’d lost half the audience by that point. You might think that’s a little harsh for a piece of content that doesn’t even hit the nine-minute mark, but it’s pretty typical of retention rates on that platform. The good news is that those who are left watching at such a late stage of the video are very engaged and far more likely to act if you ask them to do something.
That’s where the gold dust lies in terms of audience building and the opportunities creators have to drive newsletter sign-ups, YouTube subscribers, digital products sales or, in this case, inbound traffic to another channel. Sure, I had the benefit of a sizeable audience and positive momentum for Mark Ellis Reviews, but it’s all relative; smaller channels have the same opportunity to grab that last-minute attention at the tail end of their videos.
If you were one of those subscribers who came on board after the iPad video - thank you. You’re onboard early, and I cannot wait to show you what I have in store for the Solo Club YouTube channel.
Oh, and if you’re not subscribed... well, in the spirit of the ‘final CTA’, I’d recommend checking it out here.