How we FAILED to scale our video content to other languages. π¬
^ A marketing FAILURE story.
(just in case you are tired of shiny success stories in your Twitter feed)
^ A marketing FAILURE story.
(just in case you are tired of shiny success stories in your Twitter feed)
You may (or may not) know that we (@ahrefs) had quite a bit of success with video content.
Ahrefs TV, our YT channel, has 270k+ subscribers as of today and each new video gets tens of thousands of views.
@samsgoh did an INCREDIBLE job there! πͺ
Ahrefs TV, our YT channel, has 270k+ subscribers as of today and each new video gets tens of thousands of views.
@samsgoh did an INCREDIBLE job there! πͺ
https://twitter.com/samsgoh/status/1453745849792700425
So then one day an idea occured to me, which I thought made a lot of sense:
Let's DUB our videos into a few other languages!π‘
Sam's videos performed incredibly well in English, so even if dubbing would make them a little less fun to watch, they should still perform well.
Let's DUB our videos into a few other languages!π‘
Sam's videos performed incredibly well in English, so even if dubbing would make them a little less fun to watch, they should still perform well.
Here at Ahrefs we're big fans of efficiency and this idea seemed right up our alley.
Producing video content from scratch is an incredibly resource-heavy process (with all the scripting, shooting, editing & post production).
And dubbing seemed like a great way to scale it.
Producing video content from scratch is an incredibly resource-heavy process (with all the scripting, shooting, editing & post production).
And dubbing seemed like a great way to scale it.
We quickly built a system around this idea:
1. We already had a few freelancers who translated our blog content to 5 other languages;
2. We found voiceover artists for those same 5 languages;
...
1. We already had a few freelancers who translated our blog content to 5 other languages;
2. We found voiceover artists for those same 5 languages;
...
...
3. We worked with both translators and voiceover artists to figure out how to do proper dubbing;
4. We hired a junior video editor to help localize all our animations and replace the voice track;
5. We outlined SOPs for publishing translated videos.
3. We worked with both translators and voiceover artists to figure out how to do proper dubbing;
4. We hired a junior video editor to help localize all our animations and replace the voice track;
5. We outlined SOPs for publishing translated videos.
It didn't take us long to launch 5 localized YouTube channels and start publishing dubbed videos there.
We had just one in-house person managing the whole project and one junior in-house video editor working on it.
Everything else was outsourced.
We had just one in-house person managing the whole project and one junior in-house video editor working on it.
Everything else was outsourced.
We launched the project last summer...
Which means that we stuck to our systems for more than a year and published quite a few dubbed videos on each channel.
We were hoping that once we hit some "critical mass" the growth of these channels will start to accelerate.
Which means that we stuck to our systems for more than a year and published quite a few dubbed videos on each channel.
We were hoping that once we hit some "critical mass" the growth of these channels will start to accelerate.
Well..
That never happened π€·ββοΈ
We did get a bunch of subscribers and a bunch of views here and there...
But the results were WAAAY below what we were expecting to get.
Even with all our efficient systems and outsourcing the project didn't seem worth the effort.
That never happened π€·ββοΈ
We did get a bunch of subscribers and a bunch of views here and there...
But the results were WAAAY below what we were expecting to get.
Even with all our efficient systems and outsourcing the project didn't seem worth the effort.
I won't go into all the details of this project (that is probably a story for another thread)...
but you can trust me that we've tried quite a few things to help those translated channels take off.
And last month we decided that we're going to call it a day.
but you can trust me that we've tried quite a few things to help those translated channels take off.
And last month we decided that we're going to call it a day.
So there you have it.
Ahrefs' marketing team gets a lot of credit for our successes, so I thought it might be good to share our failure for a change π
Ahrefs' marketing team gets a lot of credit for our successes, so I thought it might be good to share our failure for a change π
PS: looks like dubbing worked super well for @MrBeast :)
https://twitter.com/MrBeast/status/1457799326898348034
β’ β’ β’
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
γ
