Why it's important to focus on real subscribers on YouTube

The strategic objective of marketing with online digital media is to accelerate lead generation and boost product/service awareness. One of the most popular channels to advertise and achieve, these goals is sharing video content via YouTube.

The ‘larger and more engaged’ the subscriber base, higher the ROI for a business. Of course, this can be achieved by focusing on real subscribers who can engage with the content by the creator, invest in the brand, and likely purchase the product or service.

YouTube hosts over 2 billion monthly viewers making it the go-to content sharing platform.

The Number Game:

Like movies’ eye box office collections, YouTube channels eye for numero uno spot with the highest number of views and subscribers in a said category. The popularity of the content among viewers creates a ripple effect leading to the content going viral within minutes of its release.

Content creators partner with YouTube for sharing creative content on different interest areas. “YouTubers,” as they are popularly known, earn an ad revenue share based on the number of views and subscribers.

PewDiePie and Cocomelon are among the top-three most-popular YouTube channels based on views and subscribers. PewDiePie is owned by a gamer who streams live gaming videos, and Cocomelon creates 3D animated nursery rhymes and children’s songs. Cocomelon is also the most-subscribed children’s channel and the most-viewed YouTube channel in the US. The numbers prove that content is the only king that can attract subscribers.

Real vs Fake Subscribers

Influencer Marketing has proved to be one of the most successful digital marketing strategies globally. Brand collaborations with influencers have doubled the influencer marketing size since 2019. As per a report by Statista, the influencer market was valued at $13.8 billion in 2021.

Influencers’ popularity helps improve brand positioning and recall value among their followers. To amplify their popularity multi-fold, influencers resort to fake subscribers. There have been reports stating that Hollywood celebrities pay for fake subscribers to increase viewership, create a buzz, and viral the content in the US. This keeps influencers in the limelight and helps them grab multi-million-dollar marketing deals for brand collaborations.

As the news started spreading, followers experienced a breach of trust. Celebrities received a lot of backlashes that negatively impacted their brand image and market value. Stars also realised that focusing on content quality is essential rather than paying huge sums for gaining fake followers and content engagement.

Bots as Subscribers

Bots as subscribers are only for optics. They aren’t real people – These are robots that can’t take any action themselves.

Purchasing bot subscribers can potentially be great for optics as they inflate the number of views and subscriber count. A report from Imperva studied data from 100,000 domains and analysed 16.7 billion visitors in 2020; it was found that 37% of all internet users were bots.

The ROI of purchasing subscribers, which more often than not are bots, is zero, since none can engage with the content or get converted into potential customers. Bots as subscribers have a zero percent conversion rate. This is the primary reason not to rely on bots and focus on real subscribers to meet the ultimate goal of a call to action, like signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product.

Running the risk of getting banned from YouTube

YouTube’s fake engagement policy explicitly prohibits “anything that artificially inflates the number of views, likes, comments, or other metrics”. This means that purchasing fake subscribers directly goes against YouTube policy.

YouTube and other Google products leverage advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to differentiate between real and fake engagement.

This means that, sooner or later, YouTube will identify a relatively high number of fake engagements for accounts which partake in accumulating fake followers for optics. YouTube can apply its “creator responsibility policy” and remove influencers with an apparent high fake follower base from its partner program.

YouTube can entirely ban content creators from the platform after repeated violations in the worst-case scenario. The algorithm might “soft-ban” or demonetise the content by limiting the reach to high-intent users. This can be disastrous to the overall marketing outreach strategy.

Conclusion

A comprehensive digital marketing strategy can result in substantially better conversions than Artificially-boosted engagement. A much better approach is to look at YouTube as part of a holistic digital marketing strategy that involves video, content, social media, and paid partnerships, designed to funnel online leads towards taking actions that generate revenue.

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