Readly: 1m+ organic YouTube views and 1,100+ trial clicks with no media budget.
We ran a YouTube-first creator campaign that reached a demographic paid social cannot touch, UK adults 35+, and improved month on month until one week in month three outperformed the first two months combined. Paid spend across the campaign: £0.
Book a launch callReadly sells digital magazine subscriptions to people with deep print habits. UK adults aged 35+ are loyal to what they know, sceptical of subscriptions and largely unreachable through the short-form formats performance marketing relies on. YouTube is where they go for long-form content and trusted recommendations.
The brief was awareness and free trial sign-ups through YouTube, with no paid budget at all, so creator selection and content quality had to carry everything.
One week in month three beat months one and two combined.
Niche creators over mass reach
We chose lifestyle creators with proven credibility among mature UK audiences over large general channels. A creator with 20,000 loyal followers in the right demographic drove more sign-ups than one with 200,000 general ones. We picked each one for their ability to fold a brand into their content so it read as a personal recommendation.
Educational, value-led content
Three pillars: the convenience over physical subscriptions, the value of hundreds of titles for one price, and the low-risk free trial. Longer formats, soft sell, honest tone.
A monthly optimisation loop
We put out around ten videos each month. Sign-up data from each batch decided which creators, angles and formats got more of the next one. The campaign compounded: month three significantly outperformed months one and two.
B2B buyers behave like this audience at every age. Sceptical, immune to ads, and open to a recommendation from someone they already watch. Gen Z decision makers simply take it further: creator recommendation is the default way they discover anything. This is the case for LinkedIn and YouTube as launch channels and for treating distribution as a rhythm rather than a one-off blast.
At Ignita this is the logic behind company content systems and storyteller recruitment: the voices with the most credibility in a B2B buyer’s feed are often the ones inside your own company. We either get your team posting in a 90-day sprint or find and place a face-to-camera storyteller who can carry the brand every month, and we run the same data-led loop so the output improves rather than fades.