6:13:22Wes McDowell · Tutorial
How to Get Famous in Any Industry on YouTube in 2027
A six-hour course arguing that the best-known expert beats the best expert, and laying out the exact order to become the known one.
August 18thThe argument in one line.
For anyone who sells expertise, a weekly YouTube video feeding an email list, monthly live streams and AI recommendations beats every other channel in 2027.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A coach, consultant or freelancer who sells expertise remotely and is deciding which one or two marketing channels deserve their limited time.
- A small business owner who feels like SEO, cold outreach and short-form video stopped working and wants a ranked second opinion.
- A local service provider, such as a plumber or HVAC company, who wants to know whether Google Ads and Maps beat social media.
- Someone planning a 2027 marketing strategy who wants a simple weekly rhythm instead of posting everywhere.
SKIP IF…
- You sell physical products on TikTok Shop or Instagram, since the ranking is explicitly tilted toward expertise-based businesses.
- You want platform-level tactics like thumbnails or ad targeting; this is a strategy ranking, not a how-to.
The full version, fast.
Wes McDowell scores 22 marketing strategies on four criteria: can the right people find you, do they trust you, does it turn into paying clients, and how much do you control. YouTube, live streaming, AEO (getting AI chatbots to recommend you) and email marketing land in S tier for expertise-based businesses. Google Ads, local SEO and video podcasts are A tier for the right business. Short-form video, SEO, podcast guesting and Facebook are C. Referrals and audio-only podcasts are D, and cold email and cold DMs are F. The combined play is one weekly YouTube video, an email to your list each time, and a monthly live stream.
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00:00 – 01:05
01 · Ranking criteria and tiers
Why 2026 tactics are already dead, the four ranking criteria, and what each tier means.
01:05 – 02:05
02 · Influencer marketing
Borrowed trust from small creators; B tier, plus AI influencers as the 2027 twist.
02:05 – 03:35
03 · SEO
AI answers cut clicks and level the field; C tier.
03:35 – 05:20
04 · Short-form video
Great reach, almost no trust or sales for experts; C tier.
05:20 – 06:35
05 · Local SEO and Google Maps
Proximity and reviews rule; A tier for truly local businesses.
06:35 – 08:25
06 · Podcast guesting and cold email
Guesting is C tier; cold email is spam and goes to F.
08:25 – 09:30
07 · YouTube
The number one platform for selling expertise; S tier.
09:30 – 13:30
08 · Instagram, X, Google Ads and LinkedIn
Instagram C, X B, Google Ads A, LinkedIn B.
13:30 – 15:57
09 · Live streaming and referrals
Live streaming S tier; referrals D tier.
15:57 – 19:37
10 · Facebook, social ads and podcasts
Facebook C, social ads B, video podcast A, audio-only D.
19:37 – 21:23
11 · AEO
Getting AI to recommend you; S tier.
21:23 – 25:00
12 · Cold DMs, books and email
Cold DMs F, books B for high-ticket experts, email S.
25:00 – 26:39
13 · The combined 2027 system
YouTube plus email plus monthly live streams plus AEO, and the call to action.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Google's AI answers cut clicks on regular results roughly in half, and AI can now do your SEO in seconds, so authority is the only differentiator left.
- Short-form video builds views and followers but almost never trust, because nobody spends enough time with you to hire you.
- A student getting two or three new clients every week from videos with 100 to 200 views each shows YouTube rewards trust, not reach.
- Roughly 95 to 99 percent of competitors are too afraid to publish on YouTube, so doing the work corners their share of the market too.
- Nine out of ten people say they will refer you but only about three in ten do, which makes referrals a gift rather than a marketing channel.
- Almost half of people now use AI to find local businesses, up from about 6 percent a year ago.
- AI recommendations pull most from YouTube, and the videos do not need many views to get a business recommended.
- Run ads only after your offer is already selling without them; you cannot buy your way out of an offer that is not converting.
- Self-published books only pay off when a client is worth around $10,000 or more, since you will sell few copies.
- Email still returns roughly $36 to $42 per dollar spent, and no algorithm decides who sees it.
- Cold email trains inboxes to flag you as spam, and AI has made the problem about ten times worse because every pitch sounds the same.
- Live streaming is the antidote to AI-avatar suspicion: viewers watch you react in real time and see a real person.
- Posting ideas on X first and filming whichever gets the most likes turns a weak channel into a free idea tester for YouTube.
- A post on Instagram reaches under 5 percent of your own followers on average.
Pick channels where trust builds in public
WHAT TO LEARN
For people who sell expertise, channels that give strangers time with you and a way to hear again from you beat channels that only deliver reach.
01Ranking criteria and tiers
- Judge any channel on four questions: can buyers find you, will they trust you, does it produce paying clients, and how much of it do you control.
02Influencer marketing
- Influencer shoutouts borrow trust, so small creators whose audience matches your buyer, often under $500 a post, usually beat celebrities.
03SEO
- SEO is declining because AI answers sit above the results and AI levels the content playing field; cover the basics in an afternoon and move on.
04Short-form video
- Short-form video is good at reach and bad at conversion for expertise sellers, so skip it unless you sell a product.
05Local SEO and Google Maps
- Local businesses should lean on Google Maps, where proximity and reviews decide ranking, and on Google Ads when buyers need help right now.
06Podcast guesting and cold email
- Podcast guesting yields about 1 percent follow-through and a lot of pitching effort, so treat it as a minor supplement.
- Cold email and cold DMs poison your sender reputation and attract price-shopping clients, so drop them entirely.
07YouTube
- YouTube is the top platform for expertise because viewers see and hear you, and even tiny view counts can book clients.
08Instagram, X and Google Ads
- Use X or Twitter as a free idea tester by posting several ideas and filming the one that gets traction.
- LinkedIn suits B2B only as a second platform, and video there is growing faster than text posts.
09Live streaming and referrals
- Live streaming is easy, needs no script or editing, and builds the kind of real-person trust that AI-avatar suspicion makes valuable.
- Treat referrals as a gift, not a strategy, because you cannot control when or whether they arrive.
10Facebook, ads and podcasts
- Run paid ads only once an offer already sells, and hire someone skilled because costs rise as AI lowers the barrier for everyone.
- A video podcast on YouTube is found; an audio-only podcast mostly is not.
11AEO
- AEO works because AI recommendations feel personal, and YouTube is the source AI pulls from most, so videos that name your ideal client feed it directly.
12Books and email
- Books only make sense for high-ticket experts with clients worth $10,000 or more, and reading the audiobook yourself carries more personality.
- Email is the most profitable channel, roughly $36 to $42 back per dollar, and nobody can algorithmically hide it from people who opted in.
13The combined 2027 system
- The combined system is one weekly video, an email to your list each week, and one live stream a month that answers questions from that list.
Terms worth knowing.
- AEO
- Answer engine optimization. Getting AI chat tools like ChatGPT, Claude or Google's AI answers to recommend you and your business when someone asks who to hire.
- Tier list
- A ranking format where items are sorted into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers, with S the best and F the worst.
- Lead magnet
- A free resource offered in exchange for an email address, ideally tied to the topic of the video that promotes it.
- Expertise-based business
- A business that sells what the owner knows, such as coaching or consulting, so trust matters more than a product listing.
- Local SEO
- Optimizing to appear in map results and local listings, where distance from the searcher and reviews matter most.
Things they pointed at.
09:20productYouTube to Clients Blueprint (free)
13:55productYouTube to Clients Academy
10:50channelAlex Hormozi
Lines you could clip.
25:26
“The whole thing runs on just one weekly video. Most of your competition is never going to do this, and the people who do get all the clients.”
20:35
“Almost half of people are now using AI to find local businesses, up from about 6% a year ago.”
20:25
“People trust that recommendation way more than a search result because they told it about their specific circumstances.”
Word for word.
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I have never seen marketing change this much in a single year. AI has completely disrupted how people find you and how they decide who to hire. So a lot of what worked even in 2026 is already dead and that's why I'm ranking every marketing strategy that you could be using to grow your business in 2027.
I've taught this stuff to millions of small business owners for the past 10 years and it's taken my own business from five to seven figures. So I'm going to use everything I've learned to to rank these with four criteria in mind.
One, can the right people actually find you with it? Two, do they get to know you enough to trust you? Three, does it turn into paying clients or just views and followers?
And four, how much of it is in your control? And every single marketing strategy is gonna land in one of these tiers. S tier are the no brainers that are gonna rule 2027.
A can be great for the right business. B is good, but probably more as a backup option. C is you can, but should you?
D is don't count on it. And F means it's just dead and buried in 2027. So I'm just gonna pull these out one at a time and see where they land.
All right, first one, influencer marketing. Okay, so this one's interesting. There's something really effective about somebody who already has an audience who's talking you up because you get to borrow the trust that they've built with their people.
It could be a shout out in their video or an ad read on their podcast or a post on their feed somewhere. And because it's coming from somebody that their people already follow, it's gonna land more like a recommendation than like an ad. And you don't need a celebrity to do this either.
The smaller creators whose audience is exactly your buyer are usually the much better bet here. You know, their people actually pay attention and a lot of them charge under 500 bucks for a post. The only catch really is that you're borrowing someone else's trust instead of building your own and you're gonna pay for that every time.
So that's gonna be a B. And there is a 2027 version of this, which is AI influencers. And some of them have actual real followings now and businesses are basically paying for an AI person to recommend them.
And I think that's only gonna be more of a thing from here on out. All right, SEO. This one I'm not super high on anymore, which is kind of funny because SEO was how I used to get found.
It was my whole strategy back in the day. The problem is Google just answers questions itself now with an AI answer right at the top. Even when somebody's looking for a business to hire, you're up against the AI answer, the map, the ads, a box of related questions, you know, forum threads, all that stuff.
And when that AI answer actually shows up, people click on the regular results on the page about half as often as they used to. So this is definitely on the decline.
On top of that, AI can do your SEO now for you in like two seconds. So everyone's pretty much on a level playing field now. The only thing left that separates you in the SEO space is authority.
how long your site's been around and how many other sites link to it. And that's all stuff you can't really control very much. So sure, I would say get your SEO basics covered with AI in just a couple of hours.
Just don't expect it to set you apart anymore. So is SEO dead? Not yet, but it's getting close to it.
So I'm putting it in C. Short form video. Okay, so, you know, this is like.
TikTok, Reels, YouTube Shorts, these are great for getting found, right? You can rack up a lot of views and followers pretty fast. The trouble is, and it's big trouble, it almost never leads to anybody buying anything from you, especially if you're more of an expertise -based business and you sell what you know.
So how many shallow little tips can you throw at somebody before they really start to trust you? Nobody spends enough time with you for that. And you have to keep pumping these things out.
Sure, business tips are easy to repost on every app, but that's still busy work for you. And even with AI doing it, it still is going to eat into your time more than you think it's going to. I've done this myself, actually.
I've turned my own videos into shorts and put them on as YouTube shorts, Instagram, LinkedIn. And a lot of people actually say that they get more views on their shorts. I got less.
And I've never had one student tell me that they found me from a short. I will say though, if you sell a product, it can probably work pretty well for you. But for anybody who's selling their expertise, it's going into C.
All right, local SEO and Google Maps. So if you're a local business, I love this one, right?
If you can really only help people in your area, it's still one of the best things you can focus on. And AI can help you set it up right, but it can only really help you so much because the biggest factor in ranking number one in the map listings, it's still just how close you are to the person who's searching. So meaning somebody searching right next door for you, you're probably going to come up first.
If they're across town, somebody closer is probably going to come up. The next most important thing after that is reviews, and they count more now than they ever used to. And reviews are just notoriously hard and slow to collect.
So you're kind of just at the mercy of your customers for this to ever work for you. And I personally don't like being at the mercy of what other people will or won't do. But for a truly local business, it's an A.
Podcast guesting. Ooh, see, I'm torn on this one. There was a time like five years ago where I really prioritized getting booked on podcasts as a guest.
But I've hosted three podcasts myself now, and I would get just an insane number of pitches every single day, mostly from PR firms who hadn't done research. And they would just basically say, hey, look how great my client is. Wouldn't your audience be lucky to have him on your show?
And they were never even a fit for the show, honestly. When you get enough of those bad pitches, you end up tuning them all out, which means if you're the one doing this, your pitch is probably going to get tuned out too. But let's say you do get booked on a show.
Maybe 1 % of that audience ever follows you back to your own stuff. It's not all bad though. I mean, you still get to be in front of somebody else's audience that you never had to earn.
And it's really easy to do these appearances once you've got your topic and your spiel down and you get to look like the expert. It just... doesn't ever lead to as much as you want it to.
And it's a big hassle to get booked. So this is a C to me. Cold email.
Ooh, I hate this one. If you email me and I never gave you my email address, I straight up consider that to be a violation. And let's just call it what it is.
It is spam. And if enough people mark you as spam, every single email you send after that is just gonna go straight into everyone's spam folder. Even the ones that people actually want.
And AI has now made this problem probably about 10 times worse, right? Anyone can just crank out a thousand cold emails that are meant to sound a little personal.
So that just means way more people are doing it now. And I've definitely noticed I'm getting more of them. And what's crazy is they all say the same thing, which I think is funny because obviously they're all using the same AI.
Now to be fair, I will be a little objective and say They do still get a few replies. I think the last stat I heard was like three or four out of every hundred that you send.
I don't know if those replies are positive replies or not, probably not. And I think that that number is only gonna go down from here. This was just spammy bro marketing before AI and AI is making it worse.
So if this is how you get clients, I would just jump ship now. This is going straight into F. YouTube.
Okay, no surprise here, YouTube is fantastic. For anybody who sells what they know, this is the number one platform for that, period. People get to see you and hear you and really get to know you, so they're gonna trust you faster and hire you sooner.
And it's still one of the biggest search engines in the world where people go to figure out how to do something or how to choose something. And that's why I would rather see you make one longer video on YouTube than five short ones on. on TikTok or wherever.
You don't need a big channel either. I've got a student dean who gets two or three new clients every single week from videos that get like maybe 100 to 200 views each. And I have literally hundreds of examples just like that that I could talk about, including myself.
I attribute my own business success pretty much 100 % to YouTube. Is it easy? No, and that's why I like it, right?
I'd say 95 to 99 % of your competition It's too afraid to ever do it. They won't put in the work to do it.
So if you're the one who will, you get to corner your share of the market and their share too. But, and this is a big but, it doesn't really work as well if you're selling a product, right? Because nobody needs to trust you to buy a t -shirt or whatever stuff they're selling on TikTok shop.
And it's also less of a sure thing for a lot of local businesses since YouTube is going to show you to everybody basically across the country or world, not just people nearby to you. But if you sell your expertise and you can work with people anywhere remotely, this goes straight up to S. It's a no -brainer.
And by the way, if you're serious about using YouTube in 2027, and I think you should be, you're going to want to pick up my free YouTube to clients blueprint. It's pretty much my whole system in one place. And the link to get that is down below in the description.
All right, Instagram. So Instagram is great for certain kinds of businesses, specifically anything where people judge you on how... your work looks right artists photographers interior designers t -shirt brands like we're talking about or if you sell products that can work for that too but again if you sell what you know this one's going to be kind of a tough fit.
It's pretty much the same downsides as short form video. People are scrolling to kill time. They're not really looking for anything from you.
And the only way to make it work is to post a lot and do the trends. And if you're selling real expertise, why would you be wasting time doing all these little trends, right? And even your own followers mostly don't see your posts anymore, right?
On average, a post reaches less than 5 % of the people following you. So for most people watching this, it's pretty much middle of the road. I'm going to add it to C.
But if you're a photographer or a designer, I'd maybe bump it up to A for you. All right. X or Twitter, whatever you still call it.
I actually... don't hate this one, right? It can be a great second place to be because you can post your ideas and it doesn't take a lot of time and sometimes they get traction.
I don't think many people get clients like straight off of x. I've heard that it's a great place to hire thumbnail designers but that's pretty specific and it's also shrinking as in fewer people are using it year over year and posts with links in them get pushed down so it's not going to really send you much traffic. Where I think it's great is in testing ideas.
You know, Alex Ramosi, he posts a bunch of his ideas there just to see which ones get any kind of traction. And then he makes videos on the topics that people actually seem to respond to the most. So if you were doing YouTube, maybe the week before you film, you schedule a few posts on Twitter with all the ideas you're kicking around.
Then whichever one gets the most likes or whatever, that becomes next week's video. So I'm gonna put it in B. like your primary strategy, but it's a pretty decent and easy secondary one.
All right, Google Ads. So Google Ads work best when somebody needs something right now, like their pipe just burst or their AC died and it's the middle of July. They're ready to call whoever they see first, basically.
If that's your business and what you charge is high enough to cover the cost of the clicks, this can actually be one of the fastest ways to get customers. But there are some downsides. You know, Google Ads are just getting more and more expensive.
And they're pretty hard to run. I've tried it myself. And I've seen a ton of businesses just waste a lot of money on them.
So if you're going to do it, you want to get somebody who knows what they're doing to help you out. Now, Google Ads don't work so well for like coaches or consultants or people like that. because nobody's waking up in a panic searching for a business coach.
And the people who do search are mostly shopping on price and they're just not about to hire a stranger off of an ad. So I would say Google ads are almost the exact opposite of YouTube. The businesses that YouTube is worst for are the ones Google ads are best for.
I'm actually gonna put this in A because for the right business, like a local home service provider with a budget for it, it might be the best thing you can do. All right, LinkedIn. I think this is great if you have the right kind of clients.
If you're B2B, you should definitely be on it, at least as your second platform. My only gripe is it's pretty much all written posts or short videos at this point. And we talked about how shorts don't let anybody go deep with you, and short written posts are even worse at that.
And I don't know if you've been seeing this as well, but I feel like it's gotten pretty snarky on there this past year. It's just a lot of people complaining and calling each other out for stuff. It just feels like, they're rewarding drama now instead of helpful content, which I think is a shame.
And on top of all the drama, so many of the posts are obviously written by AI now, and that's another thing people are getting really snarky about on there too. But if you're gonna use it, I would actually post video there. That's what's growing there the most.
And be the person in the feed who's actually being helpful. How about that? So I'm gonna put that one in B tier.
All right, live streaming. Okay, this one I love. You can do it on YouTube or pretty much anywhere actually.
And I'm predicting right now that it's gonna be one of the biggest differentiators of 2027. I think we're gonna see a huge surge in live streaming this year. And I say that because people don't trust what they're seeing online anymore, right?
I get a comment on just about every video I make now asking me if I'm an AI avatar and I laugh. But I also kind of cringe, like, have we all gotten that cynical? But I actually think going live is going to be the antidote to that.
You know, people watch you react and answer their question right there in real time, and they see you're real and a person. Now, I go live mostly when enrollment opens up for my YouTube to Clients Academy a couple times a year, and it's always a lot of fun to do, right? People get to ask me about their situation and about the program, and I get to help them figure out if it's right for them in real time.
And there's something about for that person who already watches you and likes you and they hear you say their name live, there's just something special there that you can't get any other way. So I'm gonna be doing more of these in 2027. It's way easier and faster than doing a normal video too, right?
You don't need to write a script. You don't have to edit it. You just do it and then you're done and there's nothing more to do.
Plus people don't really expect the polish of an edited video. So it's really kind of just a come as you are situation which is a nice break sometimes. The one catch, the one downside if there is one is hardly anyone's ever gonna watch it once it's over with.
So you're really mostly just doing it for the people who come live, but it's going straight to S because it's just so powerful in the moment. Referrals, ah, good old referrals.
You know, referrals are a mixed bag. So I get so many business owners telling me that's how they get all their business and they're really proud of it as they should be. You know, a referral is a good thing.
My problem with them is you do not control how or when or even if. they come in right you're putting the future of your business in the hands of people who you probably don't even know that well to begin with and i recently heard this stat it kind of stuck with me that basically says like nine out of ten people say that they'll refer somebody to you but only about three in ten of those people actually do so referrals are nice when they come around but you know let's just look at them as the gift that they are and stop pretending that they're actual marketing so i'm putting this in d don't count on it and It's honestly not even really marketing to begin with.
Facebook. Okay, so I don't really use Facebook anymore except for there's a group I have set up for my students and I never hear anybody else talk about it either. I think it's kind of dying.
And I did hear that Meta's daily users just went down for the first time ever. It's always been kind of going up. Even when it felt like it was dying, it was always going up.
Now it's actually gone down. And for anybody who sells what they know, it's the same problem as... the other social platforms we've been talking about.
It's short videos and text posts so nobody ever really gets to know you. But I will say the grownups are still there, right? I think it's like 70 % of adults still use it.
And people in their 30s and 40s are the most likely ones to be on it. So it's one of those things where people love to complain about Facebook, but they're still kinda quietly using it. They're probably just not talking about it.
So I would say if your clients are a little older, they're probably still on there and the groups are still strong. I still kind of like the Facebook groups for that reason.
So you might as well repurpose some of your better stuff here if your audience is 40 plus. I just think it's kind of in the rear view, so I'm giving it a C. Social media ads.
Okay, so like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, TikTok, all that stuff, I'm putting them together. So this is another easy way to waste a lot of money if you don't know what you're doing. The upside is you do get to skip the posting hamster wheel, right?
You do still need new ads though, pretty often, but AI has made that easier. Even video ads with you in them, you can kind of crank those out now. I actually ran some meta ads for my own course this past year.
And the first time we did it, it was like a week test. That made about twice what we spent. So we got kind of cocky about it.
We tweaked some things. And then the second run lost money after we did that. And just like Google ads, they do get more and more expensive every year.
And part of that's AI, right? You know, MetaZone AI tool does a lot of the targeting now. So it's a lot easier for people to get started.
But if it's easier for you, it's easier for everyone else too. And the more people pile in, the more it costs you. So my rule about ads is only ever run them once your offer is already selling without them.
That can be good at adding fuel to the fire, but you cannot ever buy your way out of an offer that isn't converting. And you want to get somebody who's good at running them to do it for you. So I'm adding this to B.
Your own podcast. So yeah, starting your own podcast. This one's tough because if you could get a podcast people actually listen to, I might like it even better than YouTube, you know?
You feel like you know a podcast host, right? Even more than a YouTuber because it's longer, there's more room for personality, and people, they just put up with your tangents, which... you know makes you feel more like a real person but it is really hard to get new listeners to a podcast the apps they don't put new shows in front of you the way that youtube is going to show you thumbnails from people you've never watched before most people find a podcast because someone told them about it or maybe they saw an ad for it or something it's great in theory it just doesn't work so well in practice the work around here though would be like a video podcast on youtube which is just think of it like a podcast with the camera turned on so people can find it on YouTube and they can either listen to it or they can sit down and watch it.
And YouTube is the number one place now that people get their podcasts, believe it or not. So I'm actually gonna break my own rules and split this up. So a video podcast on YouTube, I'm giving that an A.
Audio only, I just wouldn't count on getting found with it. So I gotta put it in D. AEO.
Okay, so this is like AI SEO, essentially. It's pretty much the new version of SEO where you try to get AI chats like ChatGPT or Claude or even Google's own AI to recommend you and your business. So I'm really into this so much more so than SEO right now.
And here's why. So people are starting to ask ChatGPT or whichever AI they like best who they should hire. for their exact situation.
And it's gonna make a recommendation or it's at least gonna give them a really short list. And people trust that recommendation way more than a search result because they told it about their specific circumstances and it feels like it did the research just for them. As opposed to old SEO, you just figured that the top link was the best at SEO.
But with AEO recommendations, you really feel like that's the best business for you. And this is already happening. This isn't some future thing.
Almost half of people are now using AI to find local businesses up from about 6 % a year ago. And I also like this one for newer businesses because the AI doesn't really care how old your website is or anything like that. It just cares more about like what your website and what other websites say about you.
And the website it pulls from the most is actually YouTube. And the videos it pulls from don't even need a lot of views for AI to recommend you.
There's this gutter installer, and I think he's in Tennessee, who gets recommended by AI to people in his area all the time, and it's because of the videos he put on YouTube. So if you're a new business, I would focus on this way more than regular SEO right now. Even if you're not new, this is the future.
I'm putting it in S. Cold DMs. I can't tell you how much I hate these two, right?
I get them every day on Instagram and LinkedIn and I block everybody who sends me one of these. To be fair, again, it is a numbers game. One guy sent, I think like over a thousand cold DMs and he got five sales calls out of it.
So I guess it kind of works. It's kind of a low batting average. But half of people actually delete cold messages without reading them.
And I think like 75 % of people have already blocked somebody because of it. So it's not just me, I'm not alone. And AI is doing its thing here too.
It's making it a bigger numbers game every single year, right? People have AI dig up one little thing about you so it feels personal and then send the same thing to a thousand other people. So even if you did your homework, you're still gonna get buried under everybody else who didn't bother.
And I gotta say, hitting someone up with a cold pitch is just the wrong way to start. Even if you got the client, how much do you think they're gonna trust that you're actually good when it was your idea and not theirs? And they're probably gonna push back on your prices and all that stuff too.
It's probably gonna lead to a bad client is what I'm saying. And whatever you can probably still squeeze out of this right now, there's gonna be less of it every year. So I would just get out now before it's too late.
This one is also going in F. All right. Writing a book.
In theory, I like this one, right? You self -publish a book on Amazon, you do it on Kindle and make an audio book. So it's a good way for people to discover you and then inside you're proving your expertise and you're putting little mentions about how they can work with you.
So, and I'm actually in the middle of writing a book like this myself. And I will tell you, AI makes it easier, but... If you do it right, it's still going to take the better part of a month, even with AI.
And because it got easier for everybody, there were about three and a half million self -published books last year alone. So Amazon was crowded before AI, and now it's a lot more crowded. So the tricky part is just getting yours found.
And here's the harsh reality. You're not going to sell that many books. Even bestseller, like New York Times bestsellers sell fewer copies than you'd think they do.
So the value really has to come from what each client is worth to you. So if your client's worth like under 5 ,000 bucks a client, it's probably not gonna work out very well for you. I'd say closer to $10 ,000 and up per client, that's when it's gonna start to work for you.
In other words, this is not a volume play. You're going to get a few people.
You're trying to attract a few whales, basically, with this. And again, since it's the written word, it's just going to be harder for people to connect with you as a person as they're reading it. So the one workaround here is I would do an audiobook and I would read the audiobook yourself and load it up with stories and personality as much as you can.
So for high ticket experts only, this is a B. It's a lot of work, but with a decent possible upside. Email marketing.
Okay, so unlike cold emails that we talked about before, this is more about sending emails to people who actually ask to hear from you. So I'm a huge believer in this one. Somebody opts in for your lead magnet or your newsletter so they know they're going to be hearing from you.
And then you send them helpful stuff and every now and then a more direct sales email. Is email marketing sexy and shiny and new? No, but it's still the most profitable type of marketing there is.
All the big industry studies have said something about like, you know, you get about 36 to 42 bucks back for every dollar you put into it. And other than the occasional, you know, sometimes you'll find your emails getting into people's promotion tabs or something. Other than that, there's no real algorithm deciding who sees it.
If they asked for it, you can reach them. And this is how I run my own business and sell my program. You know, people sign up for my lead magnets.
I email them every week when a new video comes out. And then when I open enrollment a couple times a year, I email them again and we sell it out. This is S tier all the way.
Okay, so if you're paying attention, up top, we've got YouTube. live streaming, AEO, and email. Now, don't make the mistake of thinking of these as four random strategies.
Together, they are the ultimate perfect marketing strategy for 2027, especially for you expertise -based businesses. So you make a YouTube video every week, some of them with a lead magnet that ties into the video topic, and then viewers can opt in for that. You email those people every week when a new video comes out, and then once a month, you make that week's video a live stream, you use your email to tell people to bring their questions and their situations for you to weigh in on.
It's a great way to build trust. And AEO is built right into this. As long as your videos talk about the kinds of people you do your best work for and what you do for them, every video you make is feeding the AI what it needs to recommend you to the right people.
And the whole thing runs on just one weekly video. Most of your competition is never going to do this, and the people who do get all the clients.
And if you want to be one of them, your first step is to click right here to download my free YouTube to Clients Blueprint. It's my whole start to finish system for getting clients from YouTube in 2027 with everything you need to do it. So click right here and I'm going to send it to you right now.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Marketing changed more this year than in the last ten, and Wes McDowell sorts every channel into a tier list to show what still pays. The answer for people who sell expertise is a surprisingly short stack.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:45list
The four-criteria ranking
- Can the right people find you
- Do they get to know and trust you
- Does it turn into paying clients
- How much is in your control
The test applied to every channel before placing it in a tier.
Steal forchoosing any marketing channel
00:55model
S to F tier scale
- S: no-brainers
- A: great for the right business
- B: good backup
- C: you can, but should you
- D: don't count on it
- F: dead and buried
The tier meanings used throughout the ranking.
25:26model
YouTube, email, live stream, AEO stack
- Weekly YouTube video
- Lead magnet tied to the topic
- Weekly email when a video drops
- Monthly live stream announced by email
One weekly video feeds a list, the list feeds a live Q&A, and the videos feed AI recommendations.
Steal forany expertise-based business
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
26:30product
“Click right here to download my free YouTube to Clients Blueprint.”
Offered twice, once at the YouTube segment and again at the close, tied to the weekly-video system just described.
Visual structure at a glance.
