For agencies
Senior YouTube strategy and channel management, without the overhead
Stewart Read now works with agency owners as a fractional YouTube lead.
Days per month rather than payroll headache.
He has run YouTube for eight-figure businesses and for one-person coaching practices, and covers the full arc of it: the strategist deciding what gets made and how it is positioned, the person managing the channel week to week, and the person reading the analytics afterwards to work out what the next content should be based on the numbers. When a shoot needs directing, that is his background too.
He has also run a Soho post house, with clients including the BBC, Channel 4, Sky, BMW, Sony Music and Universal.
For agencies
Senior expertise for client channels
Someone senior owning the strategy on the channels you already manage, so the results hold up and the client renews.
A discipline the team doesn't have
Channel strategy, search demand, packaging and retention analysis are their own specialisms. Read properly, they turn a content plan into evidence rather than instinct.
Landing new work you can't yet deliver
Go into the pitch with the capability already dialled in, and win retainers your current line-up cannot service.
Take advantage of the YouTube explosion
Client demand for YouTube keeps climbing. Meet it by the day, scaling up for a busy quarter and back down after it, with no recruiting or HR headache.
The part you cannot hire
Stewart brings a suite of analysis tools he custom coded himself, alongside the channel expertise to read them. They surface signals YouTube's own dashboard does not show, and an agency gets the output of that suite on a client channel from day one:
- Live search demand and real results-page reads on the exact terms a client's buyers type, pulled from independent data rather than YouTube's dashboard.
- Packaging and retention analysis, measured against the videos already ranking and against where viewers actually drop off.
- A monthly reconciliation of what YouTube reports against what the channel returned to the client's business.
The tools stay in-house and keep being built. What an agency buys is their output, and the person who wrote them reading it.
What the role covers
The strategy layer that translates the data into creative direction.
- Channel strategy. How the channel is positioned, what to make next, and which searches are winnable against the channels already ranking.
- Packaging and retention. Titles, thumbnails and openings tested against what the audience actually clicks and stays for, then the drop-off points read back into the next script.
- Channel management week to week. Publishing, metadata and playlists, and the monthly read of what each video returned rather than what it scored.
- The high level oversight for the team you have. Briefs your editors and juniors can work from, and the reasoning behind them, so the standard stays after the engagement ends.
- The commercial shape of the offer. What a YouTube retainer includes, what it costs to deliver, and what the client is promised by the end of month one.
- Production oversight when it is needed. Direction on shoot days, notes back on edits, and freelance crew briefed and managed for a busy month.
How it works
White-labelled behind your brand, or client-facing as part of your team, whichever suits the account. Engagements start on one channel, so the method proves itself on real work before it reaches the rest of the roster.
Agency pricing is quoted per engagement, against the remit and the number of channels. Strategy on one channel and full management across five are different jobs, so they are priced as different jobs.
For a reference point, the light-touch version sold direct to businesses is the Channel Intelligence Engine at £497 a month: one monthly briefing reconciling what YouTube reports against what the channel returned to the business. Agency work runs the same method with a wider remit.
Channels behind the method
Results from client channels Stewart has run, each written up in full:
Marisa Peer - More Than Enough
Multiple Six-Figure Revenue
Adam Stott - BBE
3x views per video
Nicky Anstey - Transform to Perform Coaching
25,000 views in 4 weeks
Moving Art - Louie Schwartzberg, Los Angeles
Dormant channel relaunched
Client quotes sit on the testimonials page, and more of the thinking behind the method is on Insights.
Compare notes
Talk to Stewart
Tell him what you're building and he'll say straight whether he can help, and what it would take.