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Ask HN: Would a marketing YouTube channel analyzing SaaS apps interest you?

23 points by AlexandruGlv ↗ HN
Hi, I made a youtube channel about marketing and behavioral psychology in which I plan to make 2 types of videos:

1. Maketing analysis of world events, for example:

- Did Bill Gates create Covid-19? How Conspiracy theories spread explained

- Why do scams proliferate during recessions? (and how to avoid them)

2. More in-depth analysis of marketing strategies used by companies (mostly SaaS), for example:

-Addiction marketing: How Netflix, Fortnite and social media keep you stuck to your screens

-How Notion.so is able to succeed in a saturated market?

These were a few ideas of videos, let me know which one(s) you would like to watch ! :)

FYI, i just created a video about the last topic idea mentionned here, You can watch it on my channel called Marketing Banana.

16 comments

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Jugurtha
Hi. Only if they are very well sourced. One of the good ways I have is consuming content from primary sources, and then recouping it because many people talked about it, and then getting insights. Books, videos, blog posts sometimes.

This is time consuming as it can be one sentence in a two hour interview, but it is quite the education.

I'll give you examples. One of the greatest video lists is the PandoMonthly fireside chats with Sarah Lacy. These are more than 50 videos with founders and VCs. They are long, sometimes lasting three hours. She asks excellent questions and has a way with guests. It helps she's very knowledgeable and has talked with other people involved in an acquisition or an exit or whatnot, so when the guest answers, she further qualifies the information which nudges the guest to go deeper.

It also goes through eras. With the Chris Sacca interview, she goes over his time when he worked at Google. With Stuart Butterfield, they go over his time with Flickr, where he goes over the advice he got from Reid Hoffman and Esther Dyson who were investors on whether to sell to Yahoo. The tech they built for their "game", etc.

With the Kevin Systrom interview, they talk a bit about his time with Odeo, Twitter's ancestor. Or the fact he actually knew Zuckerberg when he was in college.

But say that we're talking about marketing or growth. Alex Schultz has lecture 6 (Growth) on How to Start a Startup where he exposes a few things, and the input of Sean Parker on how to grow. Recoup with another video by Chamath Palihapitya on that effort, where he talks about "someone" on the team proposing they do what they used to do at eBay.

You wonder about why, say Pachyderm, went with an open-core model, and it turns out they were in the same YC batch with GitLab, and the latter's founder sat the former and convinced him because he had tried a bunch of things.

These are anecdotes and trivia, but gruesome wars and magnificent events were born of lesser incidents. One example would be the Sequoia/Parker/Facebook thing and the change in relationships with founders many attribute to that (proxy, founder control, etc)

These and the books give context on many things, like shifts in distribution models for enterprise software, or insights on a difficult decision at a company you wondered about or why certain things were institutionalized at another.

I want that kind of content, not some bullshit video or article with no research and a title that goes "This startup..." or "Learn how X did Y" that'll talk to me about the three things to do to do x.

AlexandruGlv
I see, I really see the value in the examples you just gave and the goal behind the channel is to go deeer into similar issues.

For the moment I think the content can still be improved, and I will try to do so incrementally over the next few months by doing longer form essays that go deeper into marketing issues.

Thank you for your message, I appreciate it a lot! :)

sushshshsh
How do you feel about really high quality text only content compared to video content?

Lately I've been finding video content inefficient and not technically deep enough for what I'm trying to learn from it. I think that the text only medium provides a much quicker way for me to know if the thing I'm looking for is in the content.

AlexandruGlv
I'm thinking of creating blog posts versions variants of the videos that would be more concise and actionnable, and Youtube would be more entertaining. What do you think ?
auganov
Feel the same way. Other than conference talks I hardly watch technical stuff on YouTube. Or really much of anything.

Plus for the creator, making high-quality videos takes so much time. Seems like a part-time endeavor and given the niche it's hard to expect something big from making these videos. Text you can write a lot of without devoting your life to it.

AlexandruGlv
I understand your point of view, and I know that it may be risky to create long form videos like these in such a niche, but here are my 2 main reasons for doing it:

- The youtube channel Marketing Mania talks about these kind of issues, and it is the most popular business channel in France with 350k subs, and he also has the most successful french business podcast.

- It's also fun to me :)

bilbopotter
Yeah anything that can help growth will be well received. I think the key is not just rehashing the well known stories- Dropbox etc
AlexandruGlv
This is what I thought, I think that striving to create content about current and well mediatized issues or more obscure but still helpful marketing examples may also help with having fresh content :)
vmurthy
@Author, Would be interesting to understand what "Analysis" here means? Given that this is about marketing and behavioural psychology, I would certainly be interested. Do you /can you cover these examples with some kind of theoretical framework in mind? 4Ps or "Influence" or such? That might add value and give more weight to the videos
AlexandruGlv
As an example, for the idea I gave about Bill Gates & the Covid-19. The Bill Gates part would just be a hook to the more interesting theme: How do conspiracy theories spread.

And from that, I can talk about How a conspiracy theory is built by going deep into a few related topics:

- How the most effective conspiracy theories allegedly happened in front of all while most are oblivious to them, this could be called the "grandeur" effect

- How rumors spread:

1. People Spread Rumors When There’s Uncertainty

2. People Spread Rumors When They Feel Anxiety

3. People Spread Rumors When the Information is Important

4. People Spread Rumors When it Helps Their Self-Image and Social Status

-How confirmation bias leads people to not even accept opposite opinions (and the help of news & social media algorithms, which encourage this bias)

-How the "mille feuille argumentatif" (french term, the MFA is used by politicians, people who debate, and conspiracy theorists), which consists in flooding someone with data and information, which is an influence tactic.

- A sort of collective Persecutory delusion, because of the common thinking that "the rich always harm the poor for profit"

And I could still do more research about the topic, hope the kind of content I'm striving to make is more clear :)

For the moment I made 2 short videos which do not go as in depth, this is because I had no editing and filming experience beforehand, and I want to ship a few projects before making more longform videos. :)

gitgud
The thing with YouTube is that first of all it has to be entertaining. Everything else comes second.

I think many people would watch those videos, as all your ideas could be explored thoroughly and easily consumed.

satvikpendem
Just subscribed. Similar channels I've seen are Business Casual and Company Man, although not exactly marketing related, more company history focused. I think something like Stratechery but in video form would work well. Focus on how companies executed well as business case studies in video form.
Exorust
Yes it would definitely interest me and a lot of people I know.

But that being said, I think it would be all about how you grow content so that more people see your videos.