It’s a pretty common practice for YouTube creators to feature an end card on their videos that highlights other content people could watch. There’s various calls to action. Well, let’s talk about the best strategy to use for your end card so that you actually get the results from it that you want.
Vgfiasco wrote and asked this. Hey +TimSchmoyer, I have a question about outro splash screens. I use one on all my videos, but I don’t think it’s having very much, if any, effect on directing my viewer to additional content based on what I’ve seen in my annotations analytics. My Channel is very small right now, so that may have something to do with it.
Good question. This is often what most creators think of as the main strategy for their end card, which is, like you mentioned, it’s to get people to watch more of your videos. And the main way that would happen is you have the little spotlight annotations wrapped around different video thumbnails that you have in your end card. And you just kind of hope people click on them to go to the next video and keep watching, but as you pointed out, that rarely happens.
So here’s what I actually do with my end card, my insulating step. My strategy is not to get people to watch additional videos of mine, although that can happen. My main strategy for my end card is to get people to subscribe and then watch more videos as I publish them. So let me explain to you how this works.
So you guys have been around here for a while, maybe you’ve noticed this, that in my end card, I always separate saying, you know, I give my first call to action, which is to subscribers to comment about something that’s relevant to the video, and hopefully a question that if people actually answer it, the comments section below the video could become more valuable than the actual content itself. Like this video acts like the discussion starter and the comments is like were the main value is at.
Call to Action
So that’s my first call action, but then, you notice when I start giving my next thing, my second call to action, that– from everything at that point of the video there on out, is me talking to non subscribed viewers. And so my end card is designed specifically for non subscribed viewers.
Hook Them
And so I start by saying, I hook them, I catch their attention by calling them out. I address them specifically, and I say, hey if this is your first time here, and then I give my call to action, I would love to having you subscribe. And then, I just go into a pitch about why. I kind of give my posting schedule, I share the value proposition like what do I believe, why am I doing this, about changing lives, about spreading your message, growing YouTube channels, all that kind of stuff.
But all that in– and while I’m giving that call to action at the end, and while I’m making that pitch, everything that’s happening on screen is designed to give those non subscribed viewers something to look at that will make them become more likely to subscribe as a result of watching that video. So I have four other videos up the right side, maybe you’ve noticed, and they kind of don’t really change very often. I change them every few months or so. And the reason for that is because those videos are there not to get people to click to watch them necessarily, but it serves as a sampling of the other types of content that if this person I’m talking to were to subscribe, this is a type of content you can expect. You know? So I’m showing them other examples of videos that I’ve done in the past that I’ve found are actually the most enticing to the target audience I’m trying to reach here on YouTube.
Give My Pitch
So they’re listening to me give my pitch. Here’s what our channel’s about, here’s why it’s valuable, and here’s why you should care, blah,blah,blah. I’m answering all those questions– you know, kind of– for the viewer. And while they’re listening to me, they’re seeing OK like here’s that video, that looks like a good title. Oh that looks like a video too. Oh that third one, wow, maybe this guy is posting like good stuff. Like, I’m not going to click and watch his videos right now, but it looks like there some good stuff going on in this channel. I’ll subscribe and get the next one that come from you in the future. That’s exactly what I want to happen.
Now I also have in my end card this little thing I show. It’s called– my free eBook. It’s called “The Secret to Building Your YouTube Channel”. And I never even talk about it. I just show it visually there, and the title and the graphic itself just kind of work on its own. I don’t need to talk about it. It’s there.
People can click it if they want or they get the link in the description of the video or in a card. Sometimes, I put it in an interactive card. And people can click if they’re curious to learn more. They kind of know what to do with that, and they can click it and go sign up for my email list to get exclusive content and also get that eBook for free. And that’s been working very well for me.
Even though I never talk about it, I never point it out. It works well. Just so you guys know, we have some numbers. It seems to be about one in every five YouTube subscribers also then goes ahead and converts into an email subscriber, which is very valuable for me because now, I can get right into people’s inboxes. I can build a deeper relationship with that person through email. I can send them more valuable content in different types of formats than I can here on YouTube, which is really valuable for me, and hopefully also, is equally valuable for the person who signs up to get those emails. Plus, they get the added benefit of downloading that eBook for free.
So hopefully, it’s a win all the way around. Now with all that said, I do also want to say that I’m going to be reworking my end card strategy a little bit now that interactive cards are becoming more of a thing on YouTube. People know how to use them, they’re more interactive. The annotation thing, there are less and less– people are using less. On mobile devices, they don’t even work.
So I am going to be developing an end card strategy that takes advantage of interactive cards more than I am currently. But for right now, like the overall general principle will still be the same. And if your end card is designed to convert non subscribed viewers into subscribers, not necessarily just to get them to click to watch more of my videos. There’s related videos that show down the right hand side of the page on desktop. And mobile, there other related videos that show. There’s other ways for them to do that.
So I’ll would love to hear for you though in the comments below. What do you think? What is your end card strategy? How do you design that? For what goals? For what purpose? And what kind of metrics are you looking for that indicate to you that your end card is being successful?
And the rest of you who are working through that question yourself, definitely read the comments people are leaving down there below. I know you will learn a lot from them like I do every week here at Video Creators. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for being a part of the Video Creators community.