← The Marketing Millennials
The Marketing Millennials
How to Start A YouTube Channel for Your Brand with Avi Shenkar | Ep. 383
00:43:13
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host (Market Millennials Intro)
Welcome back to the Market Millennials podcast. We're bringing back one of my favorite episodes from last year and honestly, it's even more relevant now than when we first recorded it. This is Avi Shankar from Luxury Bazaar. They're a gray market watch dealer selling Rolexes, Patek Philippe, Audemars pigeons. High end stuff. But here's the problem they face. Meta banned them. Google restricted them. The luxury brands kept sending cease and desist because they didn't like how their brand was being used. So Avi had zero traditional marketing channels. What did he do? Built a YouTube empire that turned a watch dealers into celebrities and opened doors that paid ads never could. The Gray market series has over 477k subscribers. Their sales team gets recognize walking down the street. They're getting invited to the biggest watch shows in the world. All because they showed up on YouTube with a simple idea. Go behind the scenes. And the crazy part, everything Avi predicted about personal brands, YouTube shorts and authentic content has gotten even bigger in 2026. So if you think about starting YouTube or trying to figure out how to make it work for your business, this one is one of the best episodes to listen to. Let's dive in.
- [01:29]
Daniel Murray (Marketing Millennials Host)
Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the up.
- [01:54]
Co-host or Interviewer
What's up? Welcome Avi to the Market Millennials.
- [01:58]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
What's going on? Daniel? Big fan.
- [02:00]
Co-host or Interviewer
I'm excited to chat because you have done something really interesting with YouTube and I want to start with why YouTube? Why are you doubling down on it? What are your thoughts on YouTube?
- [02:14]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
So, yeah, we were kind of without options. We are in an industry that deals with high end products where the brands are very, very, I guess, careful with how their brands are being used. We are considered a gray market watch dealer, which is not authorized by brands such as Rolex, Audemars, Piguet, Patek Philippe. They have their own authorized dealers and boutiques. We buy and sell on a secondary market. So it sounds shady, but it's not. There's, there's, you know, for example, if you want to get a Rolex and you're going to a Rolex boutique up to 3, 4, 5, even 10 years to get the model that you want. If you want to get it instantly, you go to the secondary market, which is us. Now, obviously you're going to have to pay more for it because we pay more for it, but we have it all available. So the problem that we had with the traditional marketing methods, which are, you know, running meta ads, running Google Ads, was that their attorneys kept sending us cease and desist on simply, you know, just running retargeting ads. Like if you came to our website and you looked at a Rolex and then we show you that same Rolex on Facebook or Instagram next time you're on there, that was a problem for them. And they said that we can't use their brand that way, even though we're just showing them a product, you know, not mentioning the name or anything else with that. So our meta account has been banned for probably about four years. Google, our most successful campaigns have always been name recognition campaigns, just people googling us, searching for us, or just Google shopping, which doesn't have a trademark issue. But without the options, without being able to get people to learn about us or see who we are, browse our website, we were left with what can we do that's kind of organized organic? What can we do that won't violate any trademark issues? And with that we had two ideas in mind. One of them was YouTube obviously, because, you know, YouTube four or five, you know, six years ago was really, really, you know, getting up there as far as a competitor to paid marketing. And I'm talking about the organic YouTube stuff and SEO was our second option. So a of lot talk about that separately. But YouTube at the time, you know, the industry was getting a lot of attention. This is pre Covid. Covid took it to a whole new level. But people were getting a lot of, you know, a whole lot of interest in buying and selling luxury watches just because you could buy it today for $10,000 and sell it tomorrow for $12,000 and quickly make a profit. So we started a show that my whole concept was, if you're a fan of million dollar listings, which I was at the time, was to create a million dollar listings for our business. You know, who are the people buying, you know, six figure watches? You know, what do they do, what does their house look like, you know, what does their life look like? We had a, we started producing a show like that and we hit a brick wall because most of these customers don't want to show themselves. They're, you know, very private individuals. They don't want to, you know, show their wealth to the world. So we said, okay, what can we do that others haven't? And that was kind of going behind the scenes showing what we do, how we run this company, our salespeople, our growth, our problems, our drama. I mean, it's funny like the, the episodes that get millions of views are typically the one, typically the ones where, you know, you have some sort of drama, like, you know, a six figure FedEx package has been lost, or, you know, a customer who owes us $300,000 is not picking up the phone. Somebody used a fraudulent check to purchase a watch from us. Now all these things are really the ones that are getting the most attention. But the show, which has been running for probably about three years now, is just every day what we go through, how the business operates, it's our path, you know, to growing our company and becoming, you know, a major player. Which, you know, to be honest, that just that YouTube exposure has achieved. I mean, we've, it's opened up doors that we could not open with any paid advertising in the past. I mean, we're, you know, we have meetings with manufacturers, we're getting invites to the biggest watch shows in the world. Our entire staff is recognized. You know, when they walk around in the streets like, we made celebrities out of watch dealers, which is never like, was never a thing. And I didn't realize how, how small, but how enthusiastic the watch collecting world is. I mean, to the point where I'm, I just, you know, I'm the producer of the show. I've been on the show maybe a few episodes, kind of like in passing. I was recently at Fort Lauderdale airport with my family flying back and a police officer stopped me and was like, hey, you know, are you on tv? I said, no, I'm not on tv. It's like, you're on something. I said, you know, maybe YouTube. He's like, there, that's, that's what it is. You're on the Watch channel. I'm like, wow, I can't believe that this guy recognized me. Felt amazing because my kids are right next to me, you know, like, like a celebrity in their eyes. But that was, you know, the path that we took. And it's, I mean, it's ever changing. Every day we have to come up with like, you know, what do we want to do? Do we want to do something like crazy dramatic, you know, that will get the views, or do we want to do something that's a lot more serious, that will gain the right sort of viewers? And it's constantly a balance between more views and the right views. And that's our struggle day in, day out.
- [07:56]
Co-host or Interviewer
Well, I think the first thing I like to say is constraints are probably the Best marketing tool that people don't realize. When you have big budgets, it's hard to, oh, you could invest in YouTube, you can invest in meta, but if you can go on meta, you can't go in other channels that are restricting you. You have these constraints and do creative marketing things, which YouTube is creative. I also love that you do the channel does a good job of mixing news and behind the scenes. So you also sharing your expertise that you understand the industry, not only understand watches, and I think you hit it at the right time too, because you started right when the uptick. Because I remember, I mean even on TikTok for me, I get fed all that. Those New York watch slingers. Yeah, they go behind the scenes and you don't really see the clients like you said, because they are private. But like somebody when he wants to watch this watch and they do this and it's the drama, are they going to make the deal or not make the deal. And I think it's good. And you guys do a really good job of doing that.
- [09:04]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
Yeah, we try to split, split the content between two different channels. So we have our company channel, which is Luxury Bazaar. That's, you know, we try to do more of the educational stuff there. And then we have the gray market series, which is the Roman Shark Channel. Roman is the founder of the company and I always believe that people follow personalities, not brands. So I chose to do it on his channel and that's know it grew his channel from I think we were struggling at somewhere around like 30,000 subscribers to now we're at 475,000, you know, videos. Some videos have gotten millions of views. But ultimately, you know what, what we realized is that, you know, everybody kept making fun of it when I first said, let's go all in on YouTube. You know, there are some other partners in the company that are like, you know, oh, Roman just wants to be a star. Like, this is all just a waste of money. Cameras everywhere. We hired a whole team, like a whole production. We built studios in our offices. They said it's just a complete waste of money. A year into it, they're like, wow, okay, that was not a waste of money. The amount of clients, the amount of awareness that we generated was finally like quantifiable. And like they were able to see that like, okay, YouTube is responsible for the growth of the company, the growth of revenues. And along with that, obviously we did a whole bunch of social like Instagram, TikTok, everything else that you could think of.
- [10:26]
Co-host or Interviewer
I want to go into that mentality of the rise of the personal brand and the institution. Because obviously you could see if you go on your YouTube, Broadman, 477k subscribers, Luxury Bazaar, 77k, which are still impressive numbers for a company profile. But when did you see that flip? Because obviously, like, the trust in institutions have been going down for a while, but now people are hitting it. But you hit it right before the climb of, like, this TikTok, and you tell YouTube shorts and all that good stuff. So what sparked that in your mind?
- [11:07]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
I mean, I just kind of, like, I try to be, you know, empathetic to, like, our customer. Like, who is it and what are they interested in? And I mean, just think about anybody else. Like, you know, a brand, you know, you kind of assume that whatever they're putting out there is meant to sell you on something. Whereas a personality, it's more their opinion, their expertise. And I wanted to position Roman as a thought leader in the industry. And his opinion, his expertise, I mean, he's been doing this for over 20 years. It. It actually has value. Like, people care for it. I mean, he has a. I'm not sure if you're familiar with. There's a company called Minect. It's like, pay for, you know, text messages or, you know, to have a conversation with somebody, like some. Whether it's, I don't know, a celebrity or an expert or something, he has an account on there, and people pay him just to ask his opinion. Like, hey, do you think this is a good watch for me? So using him as, you know, an expert and as a thought leader, I said, okay, we're going to create this content under his brand, because making the company, you know, a thing is going to be way more difficult than making Roman a thing. And to me, didn't really matter if people are searching for Roman or searching for Luxury Bazaar, because they're one and the same. And it turned out that, like, you know, again, my belief in personalities being bigger than brands was on point. And when we hit that, like, you know, you kind of saw that all over TikTok and all over Instagram. And influencers were becoming a thing. Creators was becoming a thing. And brands were just kind of trying, you know, and they still are every, you know, brand. Some brands do it better than others. You know, they integrate humor. They kind of. They're able to make fun of themselves. Those are the brands that you follow because they're entertaining, but otherwise you're very limited in what kind of like the brands that you actually follow. You're mostly, if you take a look at, you know, who you follow on social media. It's people. And we were trying to create something that connects people, just one to one type of connection.
- [13:15]
Co-host or Interviewer
I want to go into the operational side of this. So if I was a company today and I wanted to start on YouTube, what are the first three steps or four steps I should take to do that?
- [13:33]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
So today I think, I don't know if it's easier or harder, but I think with how YouTube Shorts has taken off, for example, you know, my, my hobby is launching brands. That's, you know, I realized that's what I do for fun. So I recently, you know, launched like a little men's grooming brand on the side. The first thing I did was just create shorts. You know, shorts will start to, I guess whether it's, you know, I don't know if that's a thing or not, but it'll, it'll warm up the account. It'll give you time. Like, you could put out videos, see what works, see what doesn't, what type of content, you know, hits and what doesn't. So I just started by putting out shorts, which is what I would recommend to everybody. And then I would think, what do I do that people don't actually have access to? You know, I kind, I kind of. It's funny because a lot of my buddies have been like, asking me like, hey, you know, what should I do? And I'm almost applying that whole behind the scenes thing to any business in any industry. Like, oh, you're a mortgage broker. Why don't you just show people how you go through, like, deals, you know, how you qualify people. Oh, you know, you're a realtor. Show them your daily, like, you know, day to day life. Like, what is it that you do? You know, people think that realtors just open up doors and flip light switches. Show them, you know, that it is, you know, more difficult or maybe that it's not that it really is that easy, that that's all you do, but give people like a fly on the wall type of preview of like, you know, your business, you know, the, the behind the scenes of it. I think that applies to almost every industry. So what I would do is I would start with just shorts. Something either educational or something entertaining. You know, there was recently, I don't remember her name, but there was a girl that started TikToks. She works at a car dealership and her stuff went viral. She like, did almost like the office type of setup for the dealership. And I think the first episode, she put little ducks everywhere. And she kept recording people saying, like, what are these ducks? Like, who keeps putting ducks everywhere? And like, it was nothing crazy, but it did. It performed so well that she said, okay, I'm going to continue doing this. So I think it's just if you do something that is, you know, I don't know. I don't know if you would say special, but if you do something that requires expertise or knowledge, then the first thing I would recommend is start with short form content about educating your viewers about what you do or how you do it or how they can do it better or, you know, let's say, I don't know, give me. Give me a job. Give me a business. Throw a business out there.
- [16:03]
Co-host or Interviewer
Let's just go with plumbing, okay?
- [16:06]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
Plumbing is probably one of the easiest ones. Now, you would think that, like, you don't want to teach people how to do what you do, because that would be silly. They would do it themselves. You know, I Google stuff on how to. Like, I recently I had a. I wanted to install a water filter for my Instant Hot in my kitchen. I ordered it from Amazon. I got it. I was like, okay, this is super easy. Let me watch the YouTube videos. I saw the videos. I got under the sink and I'm like, okay, there's no way I'm going to try to do this and possibly cause a flood or a leak in my kitchen. I'm going to call a plumber. So showing videos on how to actually do things, you know, Although, again, a lot of people think like, well, why would I teach people? Because teaching people makes you the thought leader, makes you, you know, the industry expert. And to do it on a local level is even more powerful because you become like, you know, I'm based outside of Philadelphia, so if I would, like, see somebody like, hey, this is Philadelphia's best plumber, then that's the guy I'm calling. You know, like, I recently, if you're familiar with Philly, and a lot of people are with the Eagles going to the Super Bowl. Cheesesteaks. Cheesesteaks are our. That's our food here. So I saw, maybe about a year ago, I saw a reel on Instagram or it might have been on TikTok. You know, Philadelphia's number one cheesesteak is from these guys you never heard of. I watched it. I'm like, oh, my God, I know these guys. They're around the corner from my office. I'm going to try their cheesesteak. It was delicious. I can't say it was the best one. But, like, the claim that they have the best cheesesteak that nobody's ever heard of, you know, could be completely false. But it got me as a customer, and I've actually been a customer of theirs for the last year just because of that one simple reel. So as a plumber, I would obviously concentrate on local stuff, but I would show people, here's what happens when, you know, it gets cold and your pipes freeze. You know, here is what to do when your hot water is not, you know, working or your hot water heater is not lit. You know, here's how to relight it. You know, why you should install a whole house water filter? You know, things that people are constantly thinking about or even researching if you are there, you know, and we all know that, you know, our phones listen to us, everything that you say. So if you are just, you know, talking to your wife about, like, I think we should have a hot water filter, you know, installed in the house. It's almost guaranteed that you're going to get some content about that, you know, in the next few minutes. So you want to be that piece of content that is out there, and whether organic or paid, I think, you know, that's. That's the way to go. Just pump out as much content as you can about what you do, what your typical, you know, client is asking for. What are the typical services, how much it typically costs. You know, like, these are things that people are interested in.
- [18:51]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
Okay, one serious question before I ask you. The next question is what is the best Philly's cheesesteak in Philadelphia?
- [18:59]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
You know what? I can't, I can't tell you that, like, everybody will go to, like, Gino's or Pat's. Like, they're the most marketed ones. I don't agree. I mean, we have Steve's Princess steaks, which is, like, it's not as big as, you know, Pat's or Gino's, but that if you, if you survey people from northeast Philly, they will say that it's Steve's. Me, recently, again, it's that one reel. It's Berardi Brothers. I mean, like, one reel changed my entire cheesesteak life.
- [19:28]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
I want to also go into what does the YouTube team look like? So we talked about what you would do at the beginning if you didn't have much resources or you're just getting started. But what does a full blown YouTube production look like?
- [19:42]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
A full blown one, which took us a while to get up to when we first started, we had One videographer. And everybody kept delaying, like, no, no, no, we need to hire a camera guy, we need to hire a sound guy. I said, no, you need to turn the camera on, turn the camera on, start recording. This episode goes live next Monday. And that actually is what happened. And after that, you know, we had to hire more people because we wanted to put out an episode every Monday. And to shoot for three, four days and edit for, you know, two more days required a bigger team. So right now, I mean, to get all the content that we pump out, which is quite a bit both YouTube and social, we have. Let me think. I mean, we just. Well, I guess we have three full time. Well, yeah, three full time videographers. One of which is, you know, outside the office. Two full time in the office. And we used to use an outside studio as well. That helped us if we ever needed additional, you know, people or something specific. So right now it's really just three full time videographers that both, you know, shoot and edit all of our content for both YouTube and social.
- [20:53]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
And what does it look like? The brainstorming process of, hey, I want to do a new series or a new type of video. I could tell already you watch a lot of content and get a lot of ideas from other content and try to make it for your city. But what is that brainstorming process?
- [21:12]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
I mean, the easiest one is obviously to steal what already works. Just do it in your own way, with your own flavors. My thing is I kind of. I reverted back so recently I'm launching a new series here. And the way we came about this one was like, okay, first time we launched a series, we based it off something that I personally liked, which was Million dollar listings. Said, okay, what is another series that people really like? Let me ask you, what's a series that's been on the air for quite a bit of time, has a lot of successful entrepreneurs on, and everybody loves it.
- [21:52]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
Probably Shark Tank.
- [21:54]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
There you go, you got it. First hit. I mean, it's very simple. Said, okay, I love Shark Tank too. And I was like, well, the founder of this company, his name is Roman Sharf Scharf is like, shark similar. What if I do Scharf Tank? And I was like, okay, how do I structure that? And it's funny, like, last week I was in New York scouting studios. We're actually launching a new series. I changed the name from Shark from Shark Tank to Watch Sharks just because I thought, like, if somebody comes in, what are they going to say, you know, hello, Sharfs, you Know, that would only work if like Roman Sharp's family was on the panel. So we're, we're doing a series where somebody comes in to sell a watch and to a panel of five expert watch dealers from all sorts of, you know, different areas and they are going to bid against each other, try to steal the deal, whether partner up on a deal, offer different terms, you know, make fun of each other, argue, fight, whatever. The same sort of stuff you see on Shark Tank. We're going to launch that for our industry. I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if people will love it. I think it's a cool concept. We have some really entertaining, you know, panelists. So what I decided to do was like, okay, let's start in New York. It's, you know, about an hour and a half away from us. Some of the most recognizable watch dealers are based in New York and also they happen to have a huge social following. So we took a couple of those that have really, you know, charismatic personalities and really big followings. We put them together, they specialize in certain products. Then we took some other people that specialize in other products and we're going to start putting this together. I mean, I'm creating a whole campaign to get people to register to be on the show. I'm wondering if we're going to run into the same issue where, yeah, I want to sell my watch, but I don't want to be out in public. I don't want people to know. I don't know if that's going to be an issue because people walk all over 47th street all day long selling their watches. But we're going to test it out. The typical brainstorming session is let's look at what content is performing both in the written word, video, social, like what is trending and how can we convert that into whether a long form video or some sort of a series. We try to like reuse all of our content. So our SEO solution was to launch a, you know, a whole magazine, like an entire online based magazine for watch collectors and enthusiasts. So we use that as inspiration for a lot of our video content. If an article does really well, if you think about it, you know, like, who reads these days? But if, you know, a lot of people are spending time reading some of our articles, that probably indicates that a lot more people will watch it because as we know, people have a low attention span and they prefer to watch things rather than read. So lately I've been converting a lot of our highest performing articles into videos. But it's been, you know, we had a lull where I could not come up with a new concept for over a year. I mean, I was just. We tried a couple of different ones and they tanked. We did kind of like watch collector stories where we sat down with a collector, went through all their watches, what each watch means to them. You know, does it have sentimental value? Like, when do they purchase it? I thought it was a great concept. Like, I thought people would really, you know, really like it. And after a couple episodes, we realized people are not into it. They're more into like the drama of the watch world. You know, like, they want to see somebody lose money. You know, they want to see somebody get screwed. They're not into, like just, you know, watching, I guess, people's collections. And the way I got that was, I think Ryan Serhant had a. I think it was him. Where it was like, you know, welcome to my house, where somebody gave you a tour of their home. So I wanted to do that with watch collections. And that flopped. We did. We had a little trial called Watch wars where we took two different watch models with two different people and we battled, Battled. Which one do you think is better and why? Didn't do so well. We did like watches and whiskey where we just, you know, we had the host drink throughout the episode and talk about watches and whiskey. And it got better, like at the end because they were already kind of like drunk. But that also had its, you know, its lifespan. So things, you know, things are kind of, you know, from day one that you launch a new series, there's already, you know, an expiration date. Like it's. It's going to die at some point. And I've been thinking that same thing about Gray Market for a while. Like, I was like, gray market has been on a downtrend. Like, there's no way. So what we realized, you know, or what we decided to do recently is to not put it out all the time. You know, instead of just putting out an episode a week, we decided to put out an episode where we have really good content. Because if you think about it, it's a, you know, it's like a reality show. If there's nothing going on that's interesting or dramatic, you still have to put out an episode, but that episode doesn't perform as well. So we said, okay, let's, you know, rip the band aid, not put out an episode every week and just put out ones where we really have good stories, good situations. We're still recording, we're still doing things, but we're contemplating doing like almost like a Netflix style situation where we record 10 episodes, we edit them, we really put the whole storyline together and we release them, you know, months from now when it's all done, rather than once a week.
- [27:40]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
What is your bar for what is flopping? What are metrics you're looking at? And when is the time you cut the corn and say, hey, we need to stop the series, we need to pivot somewhere else? What does that look like?
- [27:53]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
Unfortunately, the only metric that really has any say here is views. And it's funny because again, like I said earlier, my balance of views to quality viewers, like which one's more important? Well, to me they're both important. And think about it like if a video only got 5,000 views, but these are high net worth individuals that are interested in your content, that will come to you to purchase a watch, versus a million views of which 60% are 14 year old kids that are far from buying a watch at anytime soon. I mean, what's the definition of something going viral? Something going viral is everybody sees it and the majority of those people are not your ideal customer. So in my mind, or at least in practice here, we use views as a metric, but the way we want to see whether something performs is if it grows rather than declines. So if I put out a new series and the first episode only got 5,000 views, but then the second episode got 6,000 views, I'm like, okay, as long as there's like an uptrend, I give it a chance. If I see from, you know, right off the bat that, you know, people gave it a try the first time, liked it less the second time, liked it even less the third time. I'm like, okay, this is clearly, maybe we need to pivot, maybe we need to change something. And we, we will try that as well. But usually I'm like, okay, this concept is not working. Let's put it to rest and try something new.
- [29:28]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
No, I, I, I think that's the view, the quality of views is such a good point because I follow and you probably follow him too because you're in the luxury space. But the stad guy and he has, I love him, yeah, he has the best, but he has a luxury audience that he has a million followers and he could have 15 million. But they're all really wealthy individuals that like Laura Piana, like Automa, pj, like all these luxury brands. So it's, his quality of views are way better than someone who absolutely is doing something different.
- [30:06]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
You know what he has, what he has that is really hard to replicate is he has the personality like he has like. So for example, there's another YouTuber in the watch space, Nico Nico Nico Leonard. He's, I think he's from the Netherlands, but he's based in Ireland. And he has this like comedians like, you know, charisma and personality and like you just, you're entertained by him. You could talk about anything and, and be funny or just, you know, he's captivating. It's hard to find that, you know, you need almost like a paid actor if you don't have that, like, I'm not that sort of guy. I can't be, you know, this funny and over the top like, you know, type of personality. You kind of have to work with what you have. And unfortunately we don't have somebody like that that also happens to be a watch expert. If we did, then we might be able to replicate what the Stadt Guide know has done because he has that, you know, really entertaining personality and he also knows what he's talking about. But it's funny. Like I recently saw something where, you know, it was like, why did you like choose to do this whole, I don't even know how to pronounce it thing? He's like, well, it's like nobody really knows anything about it. He's like, but it's a very wealthy, like, you know, only the wealthy go there. And like, you know, I just thought like that could be like really cool. And like, you know, he doesn't sound like that like normally, you know, it doesn't talk like that. But when he does that whole act, it works because he also introduces you to his Lor Piana outfit. He dresses really well and you kind of want to copy his stuff. The watches, the colognes, the travel, all that stuff he does really, really hits with that demographic and he's done a very good job. Yeah, you're right. He could have many more millions of followers if, you know, 15 year old kids knew what the hell he was talking about. They have no idea.
- [32:03]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
He also, I saw a video. He, he starts off the video in French. So people who don't think it's not a, that don't understand French, they think they're seeing a French channel. And then he goes into speaking because people who are well traveled and stuff like that would be like, oh, he's just saying we're welcome, boys and girls. But he says it just to basically cut people out of the audience. That are not his audience, which is pretty cool. I want to ask you, what is, what is the, a big mistake most brands are making on YouTube?
- [32:42]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
Not. Not putting themselves in the, in the shoes of their average viewer or who they want their viewer to be. And again, I see this a lot from, you know, friends, friends of mine. Like, they create content. They just think like, I guess somebody at one point said any content is good content. And that's not true. If you want to succeed on YouTube, you need to think of yourself as like, you know, as enthusiastic and 10x that on camera, it doesn't translate. So when we're recording stuff, we actually tell, you know, our staff, like, you know, whatever you think is like you being enthusiastic, do more like move your hands, yell whatever you want to do. Because video, you know, tones it down. So two things you want to do. First, imagine that you want to get people's attention. And how would you do that? By being enthusiastic, by being charismatic. And second, tell them something that they might want to know. You know, like, don't just, you know, I have a buddy and I use mortgage a lot because, you know, some of my friends are in mortgage and he just, you know, puts out these videos. He's like, you know, know. Hi, everybody. Today we're going to talk about pre qualification. I'm like, dude, why are you doing this? Like, this is not going to perform. Like, you know, he won't take my advice. You know, there's, there are ways to package that up. Like, you know, first thing you need to do is the same thing you need to do in all social video is come up with a hook. Like, what's the hook for that? If I'm talking about, you know, mortgage pre qualification, how am I going to hook a viewer? Well, I would think, okay, pre qualification is something you need in order to buy a house. So maybe I would start the video with like, don't try to buy a house until you do this. You know, like just something like some way to Capture people on YouTube and obviously on social as well. And then go into like you're trying to buy a house. You know, first step you need to do is obviously work with a realtor. In order to do that, you need to be pre qualified. Like you, you have to like walk the, grab the viewer's hand and walk them through the process and do it in an entertaining manner. You can't just, you know, it can't be boring. People don't watch anything that, you know, puts them to bed. So you have to be super enthusiastic, super Charismatic and talk about it could be any topic, but make it entertaining. Make it something that, you know, people be like, okay, I'm gonna watch this. So the first five seconds have to entice you to watch the next five seconds. And that keeps going on until the video is done.
- [35:11]
Podcast Host (Market Millennials Intro)
Yeah.
- [35:12]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
One of the best tips I've ever gotten for this content is write the hook before the content. Because if the hook sucks, then the content is going to suck. So don't even write or do that video if you don't have a good hook for it.
- [35:24]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
I still can't get myself to do that. Like, I, you know, I plan out videos and I'm like, oh, shit, what's, what's the thumbnail? What's the title? You know, what are we, how are we going to hook this? You know, because I think about the concepts and then I'm like, okay, well, now we need to figure out how to hook it. For short form videos, we do do that. So for short form videos, if you've ever seen one of those images that has like, you know, 50 hooks, like the, you know, I can't live without this, you know, so we use that a lot to inspire our short form content. Like, okay, let's fill the blanks with something that matters for our industry.
- [36:01]
Podcast Host (Market Millennials Intro)
Yeah.
- [36:01]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
I mean, great marketers steal like an artist. So the best thing you could do with any content if you're starting is what you've been saying forever is, TV show that's popular. How could you do it for your industry? Is there videos that people are doing with great hooks?
- [36:17]
Co-host or Interviewer
What?
- [36:17]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
How could you just do that for your industry? I do the same thing with memes. I just take whatever meme has worked in another industry and just hook it for marketing. And that's how it works. I don't have not. I don't reinvent the wheel all the time unless I see something that's funny and I comes to my head. But it's way easier to find something that has worked and then just do it for your industry.
- [36:41]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
Absolutely. I mean, we have people here that their goal is to sell watches. They're salespeople, they want to get awareness, they want to get exposure. But one, one woman in particular, she does not want to be in front of the camera. Like she's not comfortable being on camera. So our entire team spends their day coming up with memes. You know, for her account, which have generated millions of views and one of our best performing videos, one that, you know, everybody in office said, absolutely no, do not do it like it's stupid, it's silly, it'll make us look dumb. I still went ahead and did it and it is our best performing social, you know, video, social media piece of content on one of our channels. So it's, you can't, first of all, you can't let too many cooks in the kitchen. Somebody needs to decide are we doing this or are we not doing this? And then any trending meme, use it for your industry.
- [37:39]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
Last part of this, I want to just go do a rapid fire session. Just quick questions about YouTube and just quick answers for all of them. The first question I have for you is best length for YouTube video.
- [37:53]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
YouTube will tell you it's about 10 minutes. I'm a bigger fan of longer so I'm going with 20 minutes.
- [38:01]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
Scripted or unfiltered content?
- [38:04]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
Depends if you have an expert speaking and they can talk off the top of their head then unscripted, always better.
- [38:11]
Co-host or Interviewer
YouTube shorts.
- [38:12]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
Worth it or overrated?
- [38:14]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
Worth it. 100% for growth of a channel, not for retention of viewers of long form videos.
- [38:20]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
What is a go to piece of gear for filming?
- [38:25]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
A go to piece of gear for filming an iPhone.
- [38:29]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
One brand that's crushing on YouTube besides grey market and luxury bazaar.
- [38:35]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
One brand. I mean they're not really brands. They're people like Iman Ghazi, like he's kind of like the stad guy. Like he does extremely well. You know what I use them. Dr. Squatch.
- [38:51]
Podcast Host (Market Millennials Intro)
Yeah.
- [38:52]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
That shows that people dominate. When you can't think of a brand, when you do one thing every YouTube creator should stop doing.
- [39:02]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
I don't know, I think everything that they're doing is always a test. You have to test everything. You do it all. If it works, great, continue. If it doesn't, stop.
- [39:11]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
What's the best advice you've ever received about content creation?
- [39:16]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
I mean, I've said it a couple times. It's, you know, imagine you're the viewer. You know, how do you like this video? You know, if you don't like this video, if you will not watch it, then don't make it.
- [39:28]
Co-host or Interviewer
And then the last question I have.
- [39:29]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
For you is what is a marketing hill you would die on?
- [39:33]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
A marketing hill I would die on is you need to be omnipresent. You need to be everywhere. There isn't one channel, one medium that performs better. You, you know, written video, audio, word of mouth, you know, posters, we did a billboard in Times Square. I, I want our names to be everywhere. And I think that really, I know it's, it's you know, budget prohibitive. But whatever you can do within the budget, do it all. Whether it's a audio only podcast, a video podcast, a article, a blog, you know, a newsletter, you want to do it all.
- [40:12]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
And lastly, where could people follow you? Or Luxury Bazaar or gray market. Obviously YouTube. But YouTube.
- [40:19]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
Yeah, for YouTube, obviously, you know, you have the Luxury Bazaar channel, which is more educational. You have the Roman Sharp channel, which is the entertainment side. Me personally, I'm on Instagram at Avi Shankar. I don't really put out any content on social for anything other than just stuff that's interesting to me. So I can't really say there's a reason to follow me. But definitely follow Luxury Bazaar, follow Roman Sharp, watch the Gray Market channel, or find us on Instagram.
- [40:47]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
I think you should be more YouTube videos so your kids could get more hyped up in public. When people stop you in the streets, you're not wrong.
- [40:55]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
I started a podcast. I actually had a video podcast for Luxury Bazaar. And I kind of like, you know, did first it was almost like a behind not what's that show called? Where people would sit on a couch and watch an episode of something and like talk about it. I don't remember what it was called, but like I did sort of thing. Let's talk about this episode. What happened that wasn't on screen? What, you know, how did you deal with that? And then I kind of lost, you know, not the interest to do it, but I lost the, the inspiration to keep coming up with new ideas for it.
- [41:30]
Co-host or Interviewer
I think that's the hardest thing about.
- [41:32]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
Podcasts, YouTube, all these things is, is if you the. The idea wheel, you just gotta keep, you gotta keep on it. And the best way I've heard most people, I mean you do the same, I do the same is just is continue consuming a bunch of things because that's where the best ideas come from.
- [41:53]
Co-host or Interviewer
Usually.
- [41:54]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
Yeah, I mean, it's really hard. Like I imagine every week you have to come up with something that would be valuable to your viewers or listeners. And it's tough, especially if, you know, you have other things going on in your field. I'm sure it's extremely difficult, but luckily there is constantly something going on that you can talk about. So I think you do a very good job at it. I mean, I listen to the podcast, I read the newsletter, I consume a lot of it and I find it to be very valuable.
- [42:24]
Guest or Secondary Interviewer
Well, thank you so much for joining and appreciate the shout out. I didn't pay him for that. So if anybody's saying that. Thank you so much and absolutely appreciate it.
- [42:35]
Avi Shankar (Luxury Bazaar / Gray Market Series)
Thank you for having me. I mean this has been a treat.
- [42:39]
Daniel Murray (Marketing Millennials Host)
Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.