Transcript
‘Retention’ is the golden word of content creation.
Whether it’s YouTube videos, TikTok, reels, Shorts, even the platform formerly known as Twitter, retaining your viewers for as long as possible is essential for growth.
And as creators you know this – you pay attention to it, you analyse it, you see what you think is “working” or “not working”.
But what if I told you that your understanding of retention – this seemingly simple concept of keeping your viewer’s focus – is totally wrong?
I’m gonna break down 3 fundamental mistakes that are holding people back when it comes to retention.
The first 2 mistakes are important things to wrap your head around, and trust me these are things that most people don’t know, and the 3rd mistake we’ll cover is a total game changer that will revolutionise the way you think about creating content.
To start, take a look at these two retention graphs, we’ve got Video A and Video B. Video A has 60% retention and Video B only has 45%..
Here’s a quick question for you:
What is the main difference between Video A and Video B that is causing retention to be so much better on one than the other?
Lots of things can affect retention, so just think about what the number one difference could be. Pause the video now if you want to write your answer in the comments so you can refer back to it later.
Keep your answer to this question in your mind as we progress through this video, maybe see if your answer changes at all, and I will give you the actual answer later on.
To get an understanding of the retention problem, we need to talk about…swimming.
On screen now is a list that was, a couple of years ago, the 20 fastest times ever swam in the men’s 100 meter breaststroke.
And there is something truly mindblowing about these times.
A fellow bald man from the UK who’s not quite as handsome and muscular as I am, Adam Peaty, was so good at the 100 meter breaststroke that he held not just the world record, but the 20 fastest times ever set,
Imagine being that good at something.
So it’s official: Adam Peaty is the person we should all compare ourselves to when we’re trying to race 100 metres as quickly as possible.
Or is he?
Adam Peaty is the best at breaststroke in what’s known as the ‘Long course’, or a 50 meter pool.
But if we move to the ‘Short course’, a 25-meter pool where swimmers get to turn and kick themselves off the wall 3 times instead of 1, Adam Peaty is not the best. In that version of basically the same race, the best is Belarussian swimmer Ilya Shymanovich.
So, either Adam Peaty or Ilya Shymanovich is who you should compare yourself to when racing 100 metres.
Or maybe it’s Thomas Ceccon, who broke Adam Peaty’s time by over 5 seconds…but he swims backstroke.
Or perhaps it’s Usain Bolt who didn’t even bother to swim, he just ran hundred metres because it’s far faster, way more practical, and you don’t have to wear a silly hat.
All of this is relevant to the first major flaw with retention.
A lot of people say you should aim for 50% retention on your videos. Others say you should aim for 60%. In this Mr Beast graph, we can see his “World’s most dangerous trap” video had almost 70% retention on a 20-minute video, at least in the first 24 hours.
But here’s the thing: different types of videos naturally have totally incomparable retention.
Think of tutorials, I’m sure you’ve looked up videos before that teach you how to do something you needed to know how to do. People need to watch an entire tutorial to learn how to do something. If you leave half way through you’re not going to know all of the steps. So tutorial videos naturally have very high retention.
On the flip side, think of a product review. Most people watching a product review are looking at buying a product, so they’ve searched for a review, and they want to know as quickly as possible whether they should buy it or not. Retention in product reviews is a lot lower because a large chunk of the audience just wants to know whether to buy, or if a product is even suitable for them, then leaves.
There are so many factors that will affect a video’s retention before a viewer has even watched a single second of content; the type of video – are people watching for entertainment or education, the length, the niche, the average age of the viewer, the device they’re watching on – are they more likely to be watching on their phone looking for a quick dopamine hit, or are they settling in to watch on TV?
There is no ‘good retention’ figure to aim for.
Just like Adam Peaty, Thomas Ceccon and Usain Bolt, every niche, every channel, and often videos on the same channel are competing in totally different races.
If you want to know what ‘good retention’ is for your channel, you need to understand why viewers are watching a certain video and how they’re finding your video, then try to improve on your previous performance if you have a good like-for-like comparison with data.
And you need to understand that the retention graph you see in YouTube Analytics is somewhere close to useless unless you view every single one with a solid understanding of context – and even then, it’s still pretty close to useless.
I made a video with over 700,000 views and it’s earned nearly $3,000, but it only has 27% retention. I know exactly why this is, but do you?
When we answer that question that I asked at the start of this video, things are going to make so much more sense to you.
So our understanding of what ‘good’ retention is is probably wrong.
Fair warning: the second thing that everyone is getting wrong might make you hungry.
Lots of factors go into making a great video, and people usually get bogged down with one major task in particular.
It’s the longest part of the content process for most people.
It takes a long time to learn.
And everyone is always looking for new tips, techniques, and tricks to use this to hack retention.
We’re of course talking about editing.
Simple editing is very important – cut out your mistakes, and bring up images or text on screen that gives visual context if you’re explaining something.
But more advanced editing – flashy transitions, sound effects, fancy on screen graphics, VFX, and taking time to record b-roll, these are all things that upgrade a video by 0.5 out of 10.
If retention was a cake…
The actual cake itself – the flour, sugar, eggs, milk – the bulk of the finished product that people devour, would not be editing.
Do you know what it would be?
A lot of people won’t like to hear this.
It would be…the script.
Without a good script, you’re just left with a mishmash of random ingredients that could have tasted delicious if you’d brought them together in the right way, but instead you’ve left your viewers with a mouthful of flour and egg.
What you’re saying, when you’re saying it, how you’re saying it – hooking people and keeping them engaged and interested throughout – is by far the most important factor for retention.
The flavour of the cake – you need a dash of vanilla, or some cocoa powder, or some fruit, to make sure the finished product is nice for people to consume. It’s not too bland. This would be audio quality. It matters a lot for retention.
The filling between the cake’s layers would be basic editing. It keeps everything stuck together and adds that essential touch. We don’t want our cake to be dry, and we don’t want viewers to be bored with what they’re consuming.
Combining a great script with clean audio and simple editing is the reason why so many simple faceless channels perform well. You actually don’t need anything more than this.
The icing on our cake would be video quality – it’s not that important, you can have a great cake without it, but having nice lighting or 4K quality is a good touch that people remember.
Advanced editing and b-roll recording is the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake. This is what you should spend time on if you’re absolutely confident you’ve put all the effort you can into the rest of the cake.
Because here’s the thing:
Amazing editing will not save retention on a crappy video. But an interesting video with bad editing can perform just fine.
Before we move on to the final and by far the biggest retention mistake you’re making, let’s pull up the retention graphs from earlier and answer that question – what was the biggest difference between Video A and Video B that made A’s retention so much better?
Has your answer changed at all?
Well, the answer is…
And this was a bit of a trick.
They’re exactly the same video.
However, Graph A shows the retention for returning viewers on a channel that has a lot of subscribers, and Graph B shows retention for new viewers. And not many new viewers watched or enjoyed it.
Videos will regularly appeal a lot more to returning viewers who already know they like your content.
This is why more established channels can sometimes get “great” retention on videos that don’t even get that many views relative to their size – because only the existing audience is interested in it.
Retention, in isolation, can be very misleading.
My 27% retention video with 700,000 views? It appealed almost entirely to brand new viewers, with nearly a quarter of cold people to the channel still watching after 38 minutes.
So here’s a bonus retention tip: make sure each video you make is interesting for both new AND returning viewers. You always want that overlap.
So now we understand that retention is relative, and we understand that the bulk of retention comes from what you say, not how you look when you say it – but here’s the biggest retention mistake by far that almost every single one of you watching right now is getting wrong…
And I know this is going to sound crazy to lots of creators…
Video retention, or watch time, is not what your aim should be.
Take Click Through Rate. Let’s say your only aim is to get the highest Click Through Rate possible on a video, you’re encouraged to clickbait. Because clickbait works. Until people get tired of it.
If your only aim is to make watch time as long as possible on a video, you’re incentivised to waste people’s time, and just like with clickbait, this obviously isn’t what you want to do.
So instead of video retention, think about this instead:
You don’t want to aim for someone to watch your video for as long as possible.
Instead, you want someone to watch your video and totally love it, then watch another of your videos, and subscribe, and tell their friends about your channel, and become a sticky viewer – someone that sticks around for months or years to come and watches every upload – with your cake smeared all over their face.
Having viewers that are absolutely covered in your black forest gateau, now that is retention.
Instead of video retention, where you try to keep someone watching one video for as long as you can, aim for channel retention, where people want to feast on every single thing you upload.
Reward people for watching every second of your video.
The truth is…retention is not the number one factor for driving traction. And I can prove it.
If you want to know how the YouTube algorithm really works right now, and how I used repeatable tactics to explode a channel with 300 subscribers to hundreds of thousands of views in a week, you need to watch the next video about how I blew up a small channel.