Offers from Lubabatu
First Look, and It Stays Searchable
YouTube is the difference here. A Reel is gone in two days; this stays searchable for as long as people are typing your product name into a search box. I film the reveal properly — the box, the first look, the reaction before I have had time to compose one. That first minute is what people come to my channel for and it is the part that cannot be re-shot, so I only get one attempt at it. Gadgets, beauty hauls, anything with packaging worth opening. My viewers are young, in Abuja and across Nigeria, and they are watching specifically because they are deciding whether to buy. 5,982 people subscribe. Your links go in the description and stay there, which is worth more over a year than the view count on day one. Send it sealed. If it arrives opened, or obviously prepared, there is no reveal left to film and the video stops being the thing you paid for.
Out of the Box and Set Up
The box is open. This is the next twenty minutes. Getting it out of the packaging is the easy part and it is where most unboxing videos stop. What people are actually anxious about is the setup — the account, the app, the firmware update that takes an hour, the cable that was not included. So I film all of that, unedited enough that you see where it went wrong. If your setup is really simple that is the best advertisement you will get, because nobody believes a brand claiming it. Coming from somebody who has just done it on camera, they do. 5,982 people subscribe and they are in Nigeria, which means bandwidth, power cuts and app-store regions all affect whether your product works here. I test in those conditions rather than ideal ones. Send login details if the setup needs an account, and tell me in advance what is not available in Nigeria so I am not discovering it on camera.
Proof That Somebody Actually Opened It
Some brands buy this because they want the video. Others buy it because they want something to link to when a customer asks whether the product is real. Counterfeits are a real problem in Nigerian e-commerce and a video of somebody in Abuja opening a sealed unit, showing the serial, the seal and the accessories, does work no amount of copywriting does. I read out what is on the box rather than what is on your website. 5,982 people subscribe. The video stays up and you can point at it indefinitely, which is most of the value if you are fighting fakes rather than fighting for attention. Send it sealed and factory-packed. If you send me a unit prepared specially for this, the whole point of it disappears and I would rather not film at all.
A Segment, Not a Whole Video
Not a video about you. A video I was making anyway, with a segment that is. Sixty to ninety seconds inside a longer upload — read properly, in my own words, placed where people are already watching rather than at the start where everyone skips. The rest of the video is whatever I had planned, which is the reason anybody is there. This works better than a dedicated review for anything that does not need demonstrating: an app, a service, a store, a subscription. People will not search for a video about your delivery service, but they will watch one about something else and hear about it. 5,982 people subscribe and the video stays up, so the segment keeps playing long after the campaign ends. Send me talking points rather than a script — a read that sounds like a script is the thing my viewers skip, and a skipped segment is money you spent on nothing.
Posted to the Community Tab
The community tab is the part of YouTube most brands forget exists. It goes to everyone subscribed, appears in their feed like a normal post, and asks nothing of anybody — no watch time required. So it is the right buy for something short: a code, a launch date, a poll asking my subscribers whether they would buy the thing you are about to sell. 5,982 people subscribe. Send the image and the text and I will put it up, and tell me if you want a poll instead, because the answers to those are usually worth more than the post itself.
A Short, Cut for the Feed
A Short is a different animal from a long upload and it belongs in a different part of your plan. Vertical, under a minute, and it goes to people who have never subscribed — the Shorts feed does not care who I am. So it is a reach buy rather than a trust buy. My long videos are where somebody decides to purchase; a Short is where they first hear the name. 5,982 people subscribe, but that number matters least on this format of anything I sell. Send me the single most surprising thing about your product. A Short that opens with a specification loses everybody in two seconds; one that opens with something unexpected keeps them long enough to reach the specification.
Live on YouTube, Not Instagram
YouTube live is slower than Instagram live and that is the reason to use it. People arrive and stay rather than dropping in for a moment, so there is room to actually go through something — a full setup, a comparison against a competitor, questions answered properly instead of in a sentence. It also gets archived. The stream stays on my channel afterwards and keeps being watched, so unlike every other live format on this platform you are not buying an hour that then disappears. 5,982 people subscribe. What I need from you is either a person who can answer technical questions on the spot or a document I can work from — and if it is the document, send it early enough for me to read it properly. Reading a specification sheet for the first time on a live stream is obvious to everybody watching and it makes your product look worse, not me.