334: How To Market Your Online Store On YouTube With Eric Bandholz

Podcast: Download (Duration: 52:21 — 60.2MB)

Growing a YouTube channel for an ecommerce store comes down to the thumbnail and title, which Eric Bandholz estimates account for roughly 90% of a video’s success. The content quality matters mainly for keeping people watching once they click, and watch time is what tells YouTube to recommend you further.

In this episode I spoke with Eric Bandholz, founder of Beardbrand, an eight figure men’s grooming store where over 40% of the business traces directly to YouTube. He also grew a second channel from a dead 7,000 subscribers to over 100,000 subscribers and 16 million views in a single year.

Below is everything: how to choose content, why he does no keyword research, the click-through rates he targets, how he fixes a failing video within the first hour, and where the product links actually belong.

Key takeaways

• Thumbnail and title are roughly 90% of the outcome. Spend your effort there, not on keyword research.
• Zoom the thumbnail way in on a face, and skip the text entirely.
• Watch the first hour. A video ranking eighth or ninth against your last ten gets a new thumbnail immediately.
• Target 5% click-through on an established channel, and 15% signals a hit on a small one.
• Average view duration beats percentage watched. Five minutes reliably produces 100,000 views for Beardbrand.
• Follow the data rather than your ambition. A 30-hour production got a fifth of the views of him talking to a camera.
• Use the 80/20 rule. Most content serves the audience’s lifestyle, not your products.
• Pin a comment with your link. Nobody reads the description.

Which ecommerce businesses suit YouTube

Consumer-facing brands that make their own products are the natural fit, and the platform is not limited to them.

Beardbrand sells men’s grooming products and makes videos about men’s grooming, which is the straightforward version. Watches, shoes, and most consumable products work the same way.

The counterexample is a pure reseller selling genuinely strange products, like a twelve pound gummy worm, and eating it on camera.

Eric’s position is that talent and execution matter more than category. Content that resonates with an audience finds a way regardless of what you sell.

How Beardbrand’s YouTube channel actually started

One video that hit is what made the channel worth continuing.

The channel predates the business. A co-founder who left within about a month created it, and the early videos were as unremarkable as him clicking around a computer.

Eric published roughly six to twelve videos in that first year with no clear content direction.

One of them, how to grow a beard, reached about 10,000 views against a few hundred subscribers.

His honest assessment is that without that single video, YouTube might never have happened for the brand.

The follow-up was mechanical. If how to grow a beard worked, then how to grow a mustache and how to apply beard products were the next videos.

How to figure out what content resonates

View count is the primary signal, and YouTube gives you everything else you need.

The rule is simple. Videos generating dramatically more views than your others tell you what your audience wants, so make more of those.

Eric’s most instructive failure was rowing a marathon. Waterproof cameras, GoPros, extensive B-roll, weeks of training, and roughly 30 hours of production produced three to five thousand views.

Turning on the lights and rambling for ten minutes about the top ten things that are great about beards produced 20,000.

His conclusion is not to fight the audience. If the ambitious format does not land, change formats regardless of how interesting you find it.

Part of the constraint is the brand name itself. Beardbrand sells hair shampoo, conditioner, and a versatile body bar, and people will always think beards first.

Why YouTube’s algorithm keeps changing what works

YouTube optimizes for keeping people on YouTube, and the tactics that serve that goal shift.

The daily vlogger era came from that logic. Around Casey Neistat’s rise, YouTube favored creators publishing daily on the reasoning that viewers would return every day.

That preference reversed. Eric’s read is that YouTube recognized daily content was burning creators out and pushing them to the bottom of the barrel.

The current weighting favors fewer, better videos that resonate strongly.

Quality here does not mean production value. Some channels publish monthly and get millions of views by doing something nobody else is doing.

Beardbrand’s cadence lands around two to three videos a week per channel, on the honest assessment that a beard grooming tutorial can only be so remarkable.

Why he split one channel into two

Mixing two content types on one channel meant every viewer saw videos they did not want.

Beardbrand was publishing seven videos a week across two formats: barbershop transformations and studio tutorials.

Most subscribers were watching for the barbershop content and ignoring the studio videos.

That matters because consecutive underperforming videos push YouTube to recommend the channel less.

Splitting them meant the same seven videos a week across two channels, each serving an audience that wanted that specific format.

The new channel launched with help from the old one. End cards, a deliberately provocative “I’m leaving the channel” video, and roughly 10,000 subscribers arriving in the first week.

What to make videos about when you only have 13 products

Talking about your own products exhausts itself quickly, so build content around your customer’s lifestyle instead.

Eric’s math is direct. Thirteen products and nine fragrances gives him roughly 21 possible videos, and then nothing.

The 80/20 rule is the structure. Roughly 80% serves the audience’s interests and 10% to 20% is self-promotional.

Two viable modes exist. Entertainment, which is what the barbershop channel does with transformations most viewers watch to relax rather than to learn.

And education, which is what the second channel does with tutorials on trimming nose hair or ear hair, including topics where Beardbrand sells nothing at all.

For my own store his suggestion was to go well beyond handkerchiefs into wedding planning and crafting, which broadens the content range and can surface new product opportunities.

Product placement stays soft. A barber reaches for a Beardbrand product during a styling, without a hard call to action.

Why he does no keyword research

Eric wants full freedom on the title so it can work with the thumbnail, and keyword stuffing makes titles read as non-human.

His alternative allocation is to put that time into making the video better and the packaging more compelling.

The tradeoff depends on your production cost. Beardbrand spends roughly 20 minutes of his time plus a few hours of editing, so a miss costs about $200 and the response is to publish something else.

A creator spending $20,000 on a single video needs far more certainty upfront, and preparation makes sense at that level.

How to get into YouTube’s recommendations

Click-through rate paired with watch time is the entire mechanism.

The sequence is that a strong click-through rate tells YouTube to show the video to more people, and strong watch time confirms the recommendation was right.

YouTube needs very little data to identify a winner, which is why the packaging matters so much.

Search is a minority of Beardbrand’s traffic at roughly 12%. Most growth comes from the recommended sidebar.

Eric’s argument follows from that. Energy spent on keyword research or promotion on other platforms is better spent making the title and thumbnail compelling enough to earn the click.

The click-through rates and watch times to target

Eric’s benchmarks differ by channel size and audience engagement.

On the large channel, 5% to 6% is a good click-through rate, with roughly 8% in the first hour indicating a strong start.

On the smaller, newer, more engaged channel, 15% signals a winner.

Roughly 5% is a reasonable general benchmark across YouTube.

Notification click-through runs 0.5% to 2.5% across the platform, and an abnormal number there is an early indicator, though the data arrives about two days later.

Watch time is measured in absolute minutes rather than percentage. Five minutes of average view duration reliably produces 100,000 views for Beardbrand, on videos running roughly 18 minutes for barbershop content and 8 to 12 minutes for studio content.

How to build a thumbnail that gets clicks

Zoom far in on a face, make eye contact, and use no text at all.

The mistake he flagged in my own channel was putting the full title as text on the thumbnail, ten words deep, with a tiny version of me in the corner.

The title already appears directly above the thumbnail, so repeating it wastes the entire image.

One of his best performing videos is extreme. Just his mustache and part of his nose with a comb, no eyes visible.

Omitting text also preserves intrigue, which is the other half of the job.

The difference between a hook and clickbait

A hook creates curiosity without revealing the answer, and clickbait misrepresents what the video contains.

The distinction Eric draws is about honesty rather than aggressiveness. Withholding the answer to make someone want to watch is legitimate.

Clickbait is fraudulent. An unrelated provocative image over a business video is the example, and YouTube’s algorithm is trained to detect that pattern.

The video still has to satisfy the curiosity the packaging created. It does not have to be the best video ever made.

How to fix a video in its first hour

Watch the metrics live and swap the thumbnail immediately if the video is underperforming.

Beardbrand ranks each new video against its last ten and targets fifth or better.

A video landing eighth or ninth triggers a change, sometimes within the first half hour.

Every video ships with multiple thumbnails and titles prepared for exactly this.

The example he gave is instructive. A bald bearded client is core audience material, and the thumbnail showed only barber hands and scissors with no client visible. Swapping to the beard being styled moved it from bottom of the list to second.

The first hour matters because that is where most of the early engagement signal is generated.

Where to put your product links

Pin a comment with the link, because almost nobody reads the description.

The description should still contain the link, and Eric’s assessment is that it goes largely unread.

Comments get read. A pinned first comment puts the link where people are already looking.

On engagement signals, he does not believe likes and comments meaningfully drive visibility, since both are easily manipulated. Abnormal subscription rates from a single video are a stronger signal.

He also declines to push the notification bell. Someone who will not watch every video should not be notified about every video.

Eric Bandholz’s three tips for starting from scratch

Action over perfection is the first, and the one most people fail on.

Publish as much content as you can as quickly as you can, sort by views, and make more of whatever performs.

Second, invest roughly 90% of your early effort in learning to build engaging thumbnails and titles.

Third, refine the content itself. Cut the filler, tell an actual story, drop useful moments throughout so people do not skip ahead, and use B-roll and scene changes to hold attention.

Frequently asked questions

How do you grow a YouTube channel for an online store?

Focus on thumbnails and titles, which Eric Bandholz estimates drive roughly 90% of a video’s success. Publish frequently, sort by views to find what resonates, and build most content around your customer’s lifestyle rather than your products.

Should you do keyword research for YouTube?

Eric does none. He wants full freedom on the title so it works with the thumbnail, and keyword stuffing makes titles read unnaturally. That tradeoff makes sense when production costs are low enough to simply publish again.

What is a good YouTube click-through rate?

Roughly 5% is a reasonable general benchmark. Beardbrand’s large channel targets 5% to 6%, with about 8% in the first hour indicating a strong start, while their smaller more engaged channel treats 15% as a winner.

Should thumbnails have text on them?

Eric uses none. The title already appears directly above the thumbnail, so repeating it wastes the image. Omitting text also preserves the intrigue that makes people click.

What should you do if a video underperforms?

Change the thumbnail within the first hour. Beardbrand ranks each video against its last ten, targets fifth or better, and swaps in a prepared alternative thumbnail when a video lands eighth or ninth.

How long should ecommerce YouTube videos be?

Beardbrand runs roughly 18 minutes for barbershop content and 8 to 12 minutes for studio tutorials. Absolute watch time matters more than percentage, and five minutes of average view duration reliably produces 100,000 views for them.

What should you make videos about if you have few products?

Your customer’s lifestyle. Thirteen products gives Eric roughly 21 possible videos before he runs out, so the channel covers grooming, style, and self-improvement rather than the catalog.

Where should you put product links on YouTube?

In a pinned comment. The description should contain the link too, and almost nobody reads descriptions, while plenty of viewers read the comments.