A lot of times, I’ll come across a YouTube video that I didn’t expect.
I don’t mean I didn’t expect the content. I mean I didn’t expect the video to be as good as it was based on the thumbnail and title.
And that’s a big problem for struggling YouTubers.
Some good videos feel smaller than they should.
What I mean by that is this: a strong video can still underperform when the packaging frames it as the weakest version of the idea instead of the strongest one.
A lot of these videos have fantastic premises. They’re well researched, well edited, and strong on the content side.
But nobody clicks them anyway, and the reason is simple.
A video can be the next best thing since sliced bread, but on YouTube, the title and thumbnail are the things doing the selling.
Step 1: Find the Real Promise of the Video
When it comes down to it, there are a few different ways to solve packaging issues like this.
And in this article, I want to walk you through how I would personally repackage a strong video that still feels underpowered, as someone who has worked as a professional freelancer and thumbnail designer for over seven years.
Better packaging usually starts by identifying the one angle that makes your video worth clicking on right now.
When I was younger, I took a course on marketing, and one statement really stuck with me:
Marketing is salesmanship in print.
And honestly, that’s true.
If you can identify what people are looking for on YouTube — and your video clearly answers that — people will click.
What This Usually Looks Like
A lot of times, I see videos with broad titles, generic or confusing thumbnails, and no obvious reason for the viewer to care immediately, even though the content itself is solid and may even excel in its category.
There’s a reason the competition on YouTube often comes down to thumbnail design and title design.
It’s very similar to the cover of a book.
When you’re reading a book, you care about the content of the book. But before you ever pick it up — as much as some of us like to pretend we don’t — we all judge a book by its cover.
How to Fix It
So how do you fix weak or unspecific packaging?
You have to ask yourself:
What is the surprising, risky, emotional, costly, or unusually specific part of the story I’m telling in this video?
What makes this video unique? What makes it stand out compared to everything else in the same category?
Whatever that answer is, that’s the idea you need to isolate.
That is your strongest angle.
Take DreamWasTaken, for example, a popular Minecraft YouTuber who went viral through his Minecraft videos.
The idea he optimized around in many of those videos was essentially one hider versus hunters.
Now, let’s be real: there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people uploading Minecraft videos every day, and most of them don’t stand out.
But he took that broad idea and added a standout factor.
That unique twist became the thing people cared about, and for a period of time, it helped make him one of the fastest-growing YouTubers on the platform.
Step 2: Strip the Thumbnail Down to One Idea
A lot of times, once you find the angle, it becomes very tempting to cram everything into the thumbnail and title at once.
You want the viewer to understand just how much your video offers, so you try to put everything into the packaging.
But many underpowered videos look weak and perform poorly for exactly that reason.
The thumbnail ends up trying to summarize the entire upload instead of delivering one clean visual read.
And that’s where the problem starts.
What This Looks Like
If you’ve spent enough time scrolling on YouTube, you’ve definitely seen thumbnails with cluttered layouts, too many objects, tiny text, weak contrast, or images that only make sense after the viewer clicks and watches part of the video.
You might not even remember most of them.
And to that I’d say: exactly.
These thumbnails are forgettable.
They don’t offer the viewer what they want. They offer confusion instead of a clear promise — and if there’s no clear promise, there’s nothing strong enough to sell the click.
What to Do Instead
Instead of trying to squeeze every good idea from your video into one thumbnail, you need to build around one subject.
There’s a concept in marketing and salesmanship called the elevator pitch.
The idea is simple: whatever you’re selling should be explainable in the time it takes to ride an elevator.
If you and another guy step into an elevator and he asks what you’re selling, you need to be able to explain both the idea and the benefit before the elevator door opens and you go your separate ways.
Your thumbnail should work the same way.
Pick:
- one subject
- one emotion
- one point of tension
- one visual cue that still reads at a small size
And build around that.
Nothing more, nothing less.
And if you need a way to check how your thumbnail actually looks at a small size, I’d suggest using my free title and thumbnail viewer tool here.
Step 3: Make the Title Carry the Tension
Titles are far more important than people realize.
We rarely click on a YouTube video because of the title or thumbnail alone. Most of the time, it’s the combination that makes the click happen.
Pretending that either one can carry the entire video by itself is part of the problem a lot of newer YouTubers run into.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in the end, having a few extra words that strengthen the picture can make it worth far more.
That’s what the title is supposed to do.
The title should add stakes, contrast, or payoff instead of simply restating or naming the topic.
If your title is accurate but flat, boring, or too explanatory, then there’s no urgency to click.
There’s no curiosity.
And curiosity is one of the most important forces on YouTube.
The goal of your packaging should be to create curiosity in the mind of the viewer. If it fails to do that, your video simply isn’t going to get clicks.
So ask yourself: what in this video would a viewer be curious about?
That is what should be carried by the title.
What to Do Instead
Instead of using the title to describe everything that happens in your video, or to summarize it as accurately as possible, you need to write for the person who would actually want to watch it.
In other words, you need to think about the user avatar.
If you can rewrite the title around consequence, conflict, novelty, or the promised outcome — without revealing too much — then suddenly you have a video that sells.
Take MrBeast, for example.
Whatever people think of the controversies around him, he remains one of the most popular YouTubers on the platform for a reason.
When you read one of his titles and look at one of his videos, the packaging works together to spark curiosity.
Take “Trapped on an Island Until I Build a Boat.”
That title doesn’t reveal everything that happens in the video, and it doesn’t summarize the full experience.
Instead, it captures the conflict and novelty of the idea in a way that makes you want to click.
You immediately start thinking:
- How does he do this?
- What happens?
- Does he actually make it out?
That is how you write a killer title.
Before-and-After Test
If you really want to compare your original packaging against a sharper version before publishing, you need to look at it from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about your video — someone who isn’t already invested in the topic the way you are.
That matters because we, as YouTubers, are usually very passionate about the videos we make.
We put hours into them. We pour our time, energy, and effort into making the content as good as possible.
But the average viewer doesn’t see any of that.
They don’t see the effort.
They see your title and your thumbnail.
So if you can step back and look at those two things the way an average viewer would — and they still feel interesting — that’s usually a good sign you have strong packaging.
Videos Need Sharper Framing, Not More Effort
Believe me, I’ve seen a lot of YouTubers publish a video, watch it fail, and then assume the video itself was the problem.
Ninety percent of the time, that isn’t the case.
Most of the time, a packaging pass is the fastest way to improve the odds of a good, solid video getting the attention it already deserves.
This is what you need to focus on when you’re producing content.
Don’t spend all your time reworking the video you’ve already edited for the hundredth time just to make it a little bit better.
Focus on selling the video to the viewer a little better instead.
You’d be surprised by the results.