Why the Smaller Account Often Outsells the Bigger One

Can a smaller account really outsell a much bigger one?

Regularly. One basketball channel with around 650,000 subscribers consistently outsells rivals with millions, because it chases customers, not subscribers. It stays focused on solving its audience's problems and getting paid, rather than hacking the algorithm for a bigger follower count. Followers are a scoreboard. Customers are the actual game.

The channel that outsells channels ten times its size

The channel In The Lab has about 650,000 subscribers. It recently sold out of 15,000 units of a new product, and year after year it outsells basketball channels with 1.7 million, 2.3 million, even 7.6 million subscribers.

Not because it is bigger. It is dwarfed by those rivals. It wins because it is aimed at the right target: sales, not subscriber counts.

Followers are a vanity scoreboard

Most creators quietly optimise for followers, chasing whatever the algorithm happens to reward this month.

In The Lab does the opposite. By their own account, they focus on solving real problems for their audience and getting paid for it, and let the subscriber number take care of itself. The follower count is a side effect, not the goal.

Customers, not followers

We have seen the same pattern for years in our own business and our clients'. The brands that win tend to have more customers than followers, not the other way round.

And it holds at every level. It is true whether you have 650,000 people watching or 650. Aiming at customers instead of applause changes what you make and, eventually, what you earn.

The two things that actually work

Underneath it all sit two unglamorous habits. First, show up with genuinely entertaining content, consistently, for the long haul. Second, stay relentlessly focused on solving your customer's problems.

Do both and the sales follow, regardless of what your follower count says on any given day. Chase the customer, and the numbers that matter look after themselves.

Meet Brian

Creating the kind of consistently entertaining, problem-solving content that turns an audience into customers is exactly what Brian, our AI Comedy Marketing Machine, is built to help with.

Brian helps you produce funny, useful posts fast, using the same frameworks our writers use, so you can compete on customers rather than trying to out-follower everyone in your market.

Take Brian for a spin and start winning customers instead of just followers.