Six or seven videos in, Alex Cattoni got her first comment.
Not a spam bot. Not a friend being polite. A real person who'd actually watched her video and had a question: "Wait, let me get this straight. You work from home, you write for brands and businesses that you love, and you make money doing it. Can you do a video on that?"
So she did. She recorded a video about how to become a freelance copywriter. And that single video exploded her channel.
Alex is the founder of Copy Posse and one of the most successful YouTube creators in the online marketing space. She's grown to over 400,000 subscribers since launching in February 2019, and she's done it entirely through organic content. No paid ads. No viral shortcuts. Just a YouTube content strategy that treats every video as a long-term business asset.
In a recent conversation with Stu McLaren, Alex broke down her exact YouTube content strategy, the retention mistakes most creators make, and why she believes YouTube is the single most powerful channel for lead generation. What follows is the playbook.
Alex didn't mince words: she's obsessed with YouTube. And the reason is simple. YouTube is predictable.
Instagram content lives for 24 to 48 hours. Maybe three or four days if you're lucky, then it drops off a cliff. YouTube content can drive views for years. Alex shared that a video she recorded in 2021 or 2022 was among her highest-viewed videos of the last 28 days. That kind of shelf life doesn't exist anywhere else.
The data backs this up. 91% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool, and 73% of consumers say they're more likely to purchase after watching a YouTube video. But what makes YouTube leads uniquely valuable isn't just volume. It's quality.
As Alex explained it, most people watch one video, then another, then another before they decide to opt in. By the time someone gives you their email address, they've spent minutes (sometimes hours) with you on screen. They feel like they know you. They feel like you're a friend. That depth of relationship simply can't happen through a 7-second Reel.
YouTube creators also earn a higher median income compared to Instagram creators. And that's before factoring in the revenue from courses, memberships, or coaching programs that YouTube leads eventually buy into.
"It's a double whammy," Alex said. "I'm going to get high-value leads that feel like they know me already. And then I'm going to make them an offer."
Most creators think about YouTube content as one big category: stuff that hopefully gets views. Alex thinks about it differently. She maps every video to a stage in a marketing funnel.
Top of funnel is what she calls "go fishing" videos. Broad, searchable topics designed to reach people who don't know you yet. In her world, that might be "five ways to make money online." These videos attract a wide audience, but they're not what keeps subscribers coming back.
Middle of funnel makes up 60-70% of her content. These are tactical, how-to videos that serve people who've already decided they want to learn about copywriting, marketing, or messaging. Words like "funnel," "email sequence," or "sales page" signal middle-of-funnel content. This is where trust gets built.
Bottom of funnel deepens the relationship with existing subscribers. These videos are more specific, often tied directly to her offers, and they move warm viewers toward a purchase decision.
The mix matters. If you only publish top-of-funnel content, your subscribers have no reason to stick around. If you only publish middle-of-funnel content, you're not reaching new people. Alex balances both, weighted toward the tactical middle because that's where the real value lives.
The same principle applies inside a membership. The three types of content every membership site needs follow a similar logic: attract, educate, and retain.
Alex's content planning doesn't happen in a vacuum. Her team looks at their marketing calendar, identifies upcoming promotions, and reverse-engineers YouTube topics that feed into those launches.
If they're promoting an email marketing course, they'll publish a few email marketing videos in the weeks leading up to the launch. If the offer targets beginners, they'll lean into top-of-funnel topics to fill the pipeline with the right audience. They plan roughly a quarter in advance, finalizing specific topics 30 to 60 days out.
They also tap into trending conversations. When the Barbie movie came out, Alex created a marketing case study around it. She did a video about Taylor Swift's ticket launch strategy that got people fired up because of how polarizing the topic was. The trick is taking a cultural moment and connecting it to what you actually teach.
This offer-first content planning approach is one of the biggest gaps in how most creators use YouTube. They create content they think will get views, then scramble to figure out how to monetize it. Alex starts with the offer and works backward. Every video exists to serve the business, even when it's pure education.
If you're building a membership or course, this is the same strategic thinking behind finding new members for your membership: start with who you're trying to reach and work backward to the content that attracts them.
Alex dropped a piece of advice that Stu admitted he'd been getting wrong for years: never recap at the end of your YouTube video.
If you come from the world of presentations and live speaking, you've probably heard the classic framework: tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them. That works on stage. On YouTube, it's a retention killer.
The reason is simple.
YouTube grades your videos based on how long people watch. The second you signal that the value is over, viewers leave. If you have a video with five tips, Alex says you can literally see the drop-off in your analytics the moment you say "and number five is..." Viewers got what they came for. They're gone.
The numbers confirm this. 55% of YouTube viewers are lost by the 60-second mark, and videos using open loops see a 32% increase in watch time. What you do at the end of a video matters just as much as the hook.
Instead of recapping, Alex uses an open loop at the end. She introduces a related topic, hooks the viewer's curiosity, and says "we'll link to that video next." Then the end screen card points directly to that next video. It's short. "Hey, if you liked this video, check out this one next." Done.
This keeps viewers on her channel instead of drifting to the sidebar, where YouTube recommends someone else's content. It's a daisy chain. Each video leads to the next, and over time, viewers go deep into her library. That binge behavior is exactly what the algorithm rewards.
Alex publishes one video per week. YouTube experts have told her to go to two. She hasn't, because sustainability matters more than speed.
It took her six months of posting every single week before she hit a thousand subscribers. Six months. Most people would have quit after six weeks. But those first thousand subscribers were genuine fans who'd watched her content and chosen to come back.
"A thousand YouTube subscribers to me is way more exciting than a thousand Instagram followers," Alex said. And she's right. Channels uploading consistently grow views 53% faster and subscribers 66% faster than channels that post sporadically. The pace matters less than the regularity.
Her videos are fully scripted, 8 to 13 minutes long (with 9 to 10 minutes being the sweet spot), and she reads from a teleprompter so naturally that nobody realizes it's scripted. The production process is dialed in. One video a week is sustainable for her team, and sustainability is what keeps you in the game long enough for compounding to kick in.
One of the most interesting points Alex made is that YouTube isn't just for course creators or people selling to the masses. She's seen people in her mastermind go directly from YouTube to high-ticket coaching applications. No funnel. No email sequence. Just YouTube to an application form for a $5,000+ group coaching program.
Alex's advice for anyone starting out is to reverse-engineer your content from your offer. Ask yourself: what's the one thing I want to scale? Then identify the five steps your ideal customer takes before they're ready to buy. Those steps become your content. Top of funnel for the early awareness steps. Middle of funnel for the problem-solving steps. Bottom of funnel for the decision-making steps.
You're not just creating videos. You're breadcrumbing the entire customer journey.
For creators exploring subscription business ideas or thinking about launching a membership, this is the playbook. YouTube becomes your lead generation engine, and your membership becomes the destination where those leads convert into recurring revenue.
You don't need 400,000 subscribers or a full production team to put this into practice.
Map your funnel. Write down your primary offer. Then list the five questions your ideal customer asks on their journey from "I have a problem" to "I'm ready to buy." Those questions become your first five video topics.
Cut the recap. On your next video, skip the summary. Instead, tease a related topic and link to another video on your end screen. Even if you only have two videos on your channel, start building the daisy chain.
Pick a sustainable pace. One video per week is plenty. What matters is that you show up every single week, not that you publish daily and burn out by month two.
Align content with your promotional calendar. If you have a launch or promotion coming up in the next 30 to 90 days, create 2-3 videos on that topic beforehand. Fill the pipeline with people who are already interested in what you're about to sell.
Alex Cattoni built a 400,000-subscriber YouTube channel with no ads, no viral hacks, and no secret algorithm tricks. She built it one video at a time, with a clear strategy behind every piece of content. YouTube rewards creators who play the long game. The question is whether you're willing to start.
Ready to turn your YouTube audience into recurring revenue? See how creators are building memberships that grow with their audience.
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