Austrian Tubics Develops YouTube SEO Platform To Grow Channels Organically

How would you describe tubics in a few words?

Tubics develops a YouTube SEO platform that helps YouTube channels rank better on YouTube and Google.

What inspired you to create the platform? How did it all start?

Matthias Funk has already been working in the area of online video and digital marketing for more than 13 years – both on agency and client side. Matthias developed IPTV solutions, online video streaming platforms, did online video campaigns and produced brand videos. When Matthias and I worked as consultants, we realized that the ROI for YouTube videos is mostly very poor – without paid media. Brands and agencies lack the know-how on YouTube’s algorithm and features. They don’t know how to grow their YouTube channels. Yet they are pouring in more and more money and effort.

We started to manually optimize our clients’ YouTube channels, but soon realized that most of the work could be automated and could be done more efficiently with a 100% data-driven workflow. We prototyped the data gathering with the YouTube API to analyze our clients’ channels. After the first successful tests, we realized that this could be developed into a self-service software platform.

YouTube is not the first medium that comes to mind when talking about SEO. Why do you think that is and in how do you aim to change this mindset?

YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google and clearly the biggest one for video content. Anyhow, most businesses still don’t think about optimizing their videos for search. With the rise of video marketing and a stronger focus on the production of help content like tutorials, this will change naturally. Many YouTube creators are already optimizing their videos for search engines and we see business channels following their lead.

You replace guesswork with statistical evidence. What metrics are we talking about precisely and in what ways do they increase video ROI?

All our work focuses around organic view growth. We measure how many organic views a video obtained in a selected period before the optimization (i.e. one month) and compare it to the organic views this video got after the optimization in the same period of time. We increase video ROI because we justify investment in video production by increasing organic view rates. As these are people that found the video by searching for a specific topic they are often new potential viewers for a channel and for a good video we often see continuous growth curves.

You already work with leading brands like Kapsch or Verbund. From your experience, what are some of the most common mistakes made and how can they be avoided?

Recently we also started to work with great brands like Samsung or L’Oréal but we have been working with many brand channels for about 2 years now. Often we saw that they only used their YouTube channels as a hosting platform or a kind of video storage room but now we increasingly see brands that have a real content marketing strategy behind their YouTube channels. Common mistakes include producing videos for which there is no search traffic or no real target group, not using closed captions which is important for real users but also SEO, or having old videos on their channel that have no value anymore and should be removed.

tubics launched in 2017 and has taken the startup highway. You’ve been part of an incubator, gained industry leaders as clients, closed funding rounds and launched your MVP. What were the biggest learning points on this journey?

The startup world is a little bit crazy as you try to achieve things that are barely achievable or can be only achieved by the best and smartest teams. So in order to succeed you need to think big and stay humble at the same time. You need to juggle many things at the same time as usually your team is very small in the beginning and yet you shouldn’t lose your focus. This is pretty hard. I think the biggest learning so far was how important it is to follow a clear vision. Only then you can convince others, may it be potential customers, future team members or investors. As soon as you are starting to have doubts things are getting way more difficult. So stay true to yourself and your vision and the other things will follow.

What is the biggest challenge that your company has faced so far?

We are lucky that we started something where we see a clear need and traction in the market. Our biggest challenge is that we probably only have a certain window of opportunity to adjust our product to this need and to scale. And we are still a very small team, so we need to grow fast to take our chance. I think that our next choices for hiring new team members will be crucial.

As mentioned before, you’ve already achieved a lot since your launch last year. What’s your vision for tubics and the product behind it?

As I said we are 100% sure that video marketing and YouTube will be even much bigger in the next years than it is now and our vision is to support video creators with smart data, technology, and know-how in order to make their videos more successful and grow their channels.

We believe that creative minds that produce great videos will be able to reach a much bigger audience if their talent is combined with a sound and data-driven distribution strategy. We are convinced that tubics can and will support many brands and creators on their route to a successful YouTube channel.

What’s next for tubics?

We will do a financing round within the next months and are looking for new team members, especially JavaScript developers but also YouTube creators and online marketers who believe in our space and product. We started to launch tubics as a self-service platform and there is still a lot of work to be done on the product but also in creating a scalable online marketing funnel. We have pretty ambitious goals concerning user acquisition and think that the basis for every growth strategy is to make your existing customers very happy with a great product.

What’s one piece of advice you can give to fellow founders for their startup?

This has been said a million times but still, I think far to often startups don’t follow this rule: Build something that people want and listen closely to the feedback you get. Startups are often in sales mode when they should listen instead. Try to test your product on the market as early as possible. And if sometimes things are different than expected adapt and move on.

 

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