Gozney's brilliant video content strategy

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If you’re not familiar with Gozney, they’re an outdoor pizza oven brand with an inspiring origin story, streamlined product mix, and brilliant content strategy.

Their founder, Tom Gozney, grew up in the UK, ended up addicted to drugs in his teens, and thankfully got into treatment to get sober in 2007. After treatment, he knew he needed to find hobbies that were healthier but still allowed him to be social, and threw himself into cooking. He eventually built a pizza oven in his backyard, and realized he was on to something.

It was such a hit that his friends started asking him to build pizza ovens for them, and the Gozney brand was born.

What are they selling, and who’s it for?

Gozney’s core product is its pizza oven, which has four models. Their entry-level oven is $500, whereas the top-of-the-line oven costs $2,000. This isn’t an impulse purchase — their customer does plenty of research both across brands and between products before they make a buying decision (ask me how I know!).

Gozney describes their ovens online as “restaurant-grade outdoor pizza ovens for your backyard,” appealing to a well-defined audience — the advanced home cook with disposable income and at least enough patio space for something the size of a small grill.

They also sell accessories as add-ons, from utilitarian items like pizza cutters and pizza peels (aka the giant pizza spatulas you need to safely move a pizza in and out of an 800 degree oven) to cookbooks, co-branded aprons, and their own dough mixes.

Gozney’s Youtube channel

Gozney has a popular Youtube channel that plays a big role in its status as a beloved brand. They’ve mastered the art of a strong content strategy by:

• delivering value to viewers,

• solidifying their credibility, primarily through chef collaborations, and

• making you want their product, without them needing to sell it to you.

If your brand is considering going on a video content journey, read on to see how Gozney does it — and take note.

The stats

As of this writing, Gozney’s Youtube has…

• 265k subscribers

• Almost 500 videos uploaded, going back 8 years — that’s an average of about a video a week

• Engagement rates between 2% - 4% on the latest content, at or above YouTube’s average

• Views over 1 million on their top 5 videos — none of which are even specific to pizza!

The strategy

There are two notable elements about Gozney’s Youtube strategy that make it a winner:

1. While they sell a product that could be for anyone — meaning it’s not limited to a demographic or geographic subset, or a customer that must meet certain conditions — they don’t try to speak to everyone.

   Even with unique content buckets, it’s clear they know their audience, and are speaking to the advanced, into-food, home chef.

2. There’s very little self-promotional “here’s how our pizza oven works” or “why our pizza ovens are the best” content. There are a small handful of videos like this that are meant to help you compare models or understand the technology, but these tend to have lower views.

   Content is focused on actually utilizing the product and its versatility in a fun and attainable way, without being salesy.

The content

Content on the channel varies in length and style, but is all high production value. They have some content specific to their entry-level pizza oven, but tend to feature their highest-end model, creating a subtle-but-smart upsell by showing you just how good their best product is.

There are a few key content pillars, organized into clear playlists:

• GozneyTV: 10-15 minute videos, featuring mini-series with different food personalities that, in their words, “bring to life people, places, and inspiring food.”

• Pizza Recipes: How-to content featuring all kinds of recipes from all kinds of people. There’s everything from classic margherita pizza with authority Chris Bianco, to frutti di mare pizza with Bangkok-based Instagram food personality Feng Chen.

• Outdoor Recipes: More recipe content that shows the versatility of Gozney ovens, featuring everything from camping-style grilling, to scratch-made bagels, to whole fish.

• Cook Different: These videos highlight chefs using Gozney ovens to make their own creative recipes.

• Pizza for Beginners: Short, 2-3 minute, tactical content. Videos here are high production quality like the rest of the channel, but are focused on cut footage and on-screen text rather than people, making production of this type of content a much lower lift.

A clear theme across most content on the channel is consistent collaboration with well-known chefs and food personalities. Folks like Matty Matheson of The Bear, Frank Pinello of Best Pizza in Williamsburg (highly recommend if you’re in the area), Thomas Straker of social media food fame, Brad Leone of Bon Appetit, and Chris Bianco of Pizzeria Bianco and Bianco diNapoli tomatoes all make regular appearances.

Gozney is able to build deep trust and credibility with viewers with this approach — after all, respected folks in the food world, and specifically, the pizza world, enjoy these pizza ovens enough that they’re willing to regularly collaborate.

It’s worth noting that these are not A-list, Hollywood celebs, and they don’t have to be. They’re just personalities that Gozney knows their audience will get really excited to see.

The TL;DR

Gozney’s content strategy is ultimately pretty simple:

• They show their product being utilized in a fun and aspirational, yet attainable way.

• They build deep trust in their brand by focusing on featuring recognizable personalities.

• And the common thread through all their content is that they don’t push their products on you, but you’re left really wanting to experience them for yourself.

✨ One marketing thing: The Olympics may be over, but the advertiser drama is not. (Semi-relatedly, how do we think laid-off employees feel when they see their ex-employer as a major Olympic sponsor? 😶)

✨ One fun thing: Here’s a pizza pic from my own backyard pizza oven experimentation to close us out. This dough recipe wasn’t my favorite, but I’ve since tweaked it:

Questions? Comments? Topic requests? Just hit reply ↩