I Ran a 12-Month Experiment: YouTube vs Blog for Shopify App Acquisition. Here's What Actually Happened.

When I was heading marketing at a Shopify app company, I spent 12 months running a controlled experiment.

Same Shopify app business. Same team. Same audience. Two channels running in parallel: YouTube and Blog.

The goal was simple: figure out which channel actually converts high-intent visitors into paying customers.

Here’s what I found.

The Problem: Blog Traffic Was Growing, But Conversions Weren’t

Like most SaaS businesses, we started with the obvious playbook:

• Write blog posts targeting keywords
• Build organic traffic through SEO
• Convert readers into trial users

And for a while, it worked.

But then something shifted. We noticed what I now call “The Great Decoupling”:

Impressions kept growing. Clicks kept declining.

Google was sending more search results our way, but fewer people were actually clicking through. The traffic we did get was increasingly shallow-people bouncing, not converting.

Meanwhile, AI tools like ChatGPT were eating into our top-of-funnel blog traffic. Google’s own AI summaries were answering questions before searchers ever reached our site.

We needed a different approach.

The Hypothesis: Bottom-of-Funnel Content on YouTube

I had a theory:

What if we stopped chasing Top-of-Funnel (ToFu) content entirely and focused only on Bottom-of-Funnel (BoFu) keywords?

And what if we did it on YouTube instead of the blog?

The logic was:

1. YouTube is harder for AI to replace - you can’t summarize a video walkthrough
2. High-intent searchers use YouTube differently - they want to see, not just read
3. Videos compound better - a good video keeps ranking for years

So we built a YouTube channel targeting three types of BoFu keywords:

These are the queries people search when they’re ready to buy, not just browsing.

The Experiment: 12 Months of Parallel Execution

From June 2024 to May 2025, we ran both channels simultaneously:

• Blog: Continued publishing SEO-optimized articles
• YouTube: Published BoFu-focused videos with voiceover + screen recordings

Same topics where possible. Same offers. Same landing pages.

The only variable was the channel.

The Results: YouTube Delivered 3.25x More Conversions

Here’s the 12-month total:

YouTube delivered 3.25x more conversions than the blog.

Let me break this down month by month.

Monthly Breakdown: Conversion Trends

The gap wasn’t just consistent-it widened over time.

Here’s what the monthly data looked like:

A few things stand out:

1. YouTube conversions grew every single month
2. Blog conversions stayed flat or declined
3. By May 2025, YouTube was converting at nearly 5x the rate of blog

May 2025 Snapshot: The Channel Breakdown

In the final month of the experiment, here’s how all our channels performed:

YouTube alone delivered 65% of all conversions that month.

The blog, which we’d invested years into building, contributed just 13%.

Why YouTube Won: Three Key Insights

1. YouTube captures “see it to believe it” intent

Shopify merchants searching for apps want to see the interface. They want to watch someone navigate the settings, demonstrate the workflow, show the results.

A blog post can describe this. A video can prove it.

2. YouTube videos compound harder than blog posts

Our top-performing videos from June 2024 were still ranking in May 2025-and still converting.

Meanwhile, our blog posts from the same period had been buried by newer content, AI summaries, and changing search algorithms.

3. BoFu content on YouTube has almost no competition

Most businesses are still making ToFu YouTube content: tutorials, tips, vlogs.

Very few are intentionally targeting high-intent, bottom-of-funnel queries with strategic video content.

That gap is a massive opportunity.

What This Means for Shopify App Businesses

If you’re building a Shopify app and relying primarily on blog content for acquisition, here’s the hard truth:

The playbook that worked in 2020 doesn’t work the same way anymore.

Google’s algorithm favors big publishers. AI tools are eating ToFu traffic. And merchants increasingly want to watch, not read.

YouTube isn’t just “another channel to try.” It’s becoming the primary way high-intent buyers research and discover apps.

The Framework That Made This Work

This wasn’t random content. Every video followed a specific framework:

1. Target BoFu keywords only - no generic tutorials
2. Use voiceover + screen recordings - show, don’t just tell
3. Structure for conversion - problem → solution → product bridge → CTA
4. Publish consistently - 4 videos per month, every month
5. Optimize for search, not virality - we’re not trying to entertain

This is exactly the approach we now use at SellOnTube for Shopify app clients.

Key Takeaways

If you’re considering YouTube for your Shopify app, here’s what I learned:

Want Similar Results for Your Shopify App?

This is exactly what we do at SellOnTube.

We help Shopify app businesses build YouTube acquisition engines using:

• BoFu keyword research tailored to the Shopify ecosystem
• Voiceover + visual videos (no camera required)
• Strategic publishing at 4 videos per month
• Clear conversion paths from video to trial

If you want to see how this could work for your app, book a diagnostic call and we’ll walk through the math together.

The data is clear: YouTube works for Shopify app acquisition. The only question is whether you start now or let your competitors figure it out first.