AI Will Not Replace Your Website, Cluely’s Hiring of 700 Clippers – Smart or Dumb?, 2% of Creatives Drive 53% of Ad Spend – Meta, When Marketing Yields a 98% Profit Margin on a Commodity

In this episode #3011, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss the future of websites in an AI-driven world and how clipping strategies can drive viral content. They explore the power of women in consumer spending, Google’s resurgence in advertising, and why generalists remain valuable in the age of AI. The conversation highlights that while AI shifts business, traditional strategies still matter. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) The Future of Websites in an AI-Driven World (03:04) Clipping Strategies for Viral Content (05:54) The Power of Women in Consumer Spending (08:54) Google's Resurgence in Advertising (11:53) The Importance of Generalists in the Age of AI To suggest a topic, go to https://www.marketingschool.io. For more content from Eric and Neil, check out Eric’s Leveling Up with Eric Siu YouTube channel and Neil’s Neil Patel YouTube channel. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric's ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel, @ericosiu Instagram @neilpatel, @ericosiu Drop Us a Review If You Enjoyed the Episode!

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:35Speaker 01

  AI replacing your website. You know, we talked a little about the cookie company. What is it? Warm cookie? Warm house cookies. You know, I do think less sales will happen on a website. I just don't see AI fully replacing a website. And people are already telling me, like, I was on a call with a big global company, they're publicly traded, they're in the energy space, and they're just like, we don't know if our website's gonna be important anymore. We think people will just deal with agents, and agents will take care of everything, and there's gonna be no need for a website. So we're thinking about spending less and less money on our website. And I was like, well, first off, people go to your website to pay their bills.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Energy, right? I'm not talking about like petroleum, I'm talking about like, energy, like electricity and stuff like that. There's not tons of options in their space, but they still want the brand. And a lot of these energy companies also make money in other avenues than just selling electricity to homes. And I was just like, I think this is a big mistake. No, you gotta keep up the website for people logging in and paying their bills and making things easier. And it is an acquisition channel for them, because they're in some markets where there are choices. And I was just like, and they have multiple product lines. I'm like, some of the products you sell are, you know, contracts for like five, 10, 15 million dollars. Like, yeah, I'm like, you think someone's just gonna use an AI agent and just

• 2:03Speaker 01

  sign a 15 million dollar contract without it going through checks and balances and people reviewing stuff on your website and all this stuff? Like, I don't know, maybe in the future, I'm like, it could be, I don't know how many years from now, but it's not gonna be happening in the next five years, guarantee it, most people aren't gonna sign 15 million dollar B2B contracts through AI agents. I don't see that. Do you see that?

• 2:26Speaker 00

  No, and Aaron Levy from Box tweeted something interesting today. I think what's gonna happen, you're still gonna get usage based pricing like per seat, right?

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  The agents, the AI agents that are doing the work, they're gonna get, they're gonna be charged on like a usage basis, cuz you gotta have so many agents on the web, right? But to your point, I don't think this is gonna happen for like five years or so, so I think websites should still be prioritized. I think over time, they become more and more deprioritized. Cuz I saw this tweet um, um, from Elon the other day. I think Greg Eisenberg tweeted something like, oh, which browser is the cool one, right? And then Elon responded like, what's a browser? So I do think long term, like, he's usually right about trends, right? Let's just call it what it is. But I, I think that there's still, uh, websites are like a cigar butt type of thing too. I think, um, don't throw it away right now. It's too early.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  I, I don't look at them as like a cigar bud. I look at them as more like, um, oil. There's alternative energy sources, but you still need oil. Like, people don't talk about, you know, when you build like a lot of these like windmills in these areas where, um, they're trying to do clean energy. You know how much cement they're using and how much oil is needed to make those cement trucks?

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Uh, or to make that cement and those trucks that are there to, with the cranes to pull that are using diesel fuel to get that, you know, big pole up in the air, like, you still need it. Maybe you don't need it as much, but I don't see it going to zero.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  We need all energy right now, and I think with websites, you're still, I think you're always gonna need to have something to show off your business online, whether it's a website or something else. Um, and so, yeah, that, that, that, that's my take on it, so.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  And yeah, whether it's your website. Website, but at the same time, I think businesses are not investing enough onto their presence on like social media. Because they're not seeing as much direct ROI from the organic stuff. When that is a version of your website, just like with Warm House Cookies and their Instagram profile. And you can also run transactions on a lot of these platforms. So you need to make sure that you're taking what you're doing with your website, but porting that over to all the channels that you're on.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Dude, speaking of organic social, I was looking at the Clue Lee founders post this morning on Twitter. So he actually shared their strategy. So what they do is clearly they hire, they hired 700 clippers. So I, I want, I want us to kind of give, give our take on whether we think this is smart or dumb, but let me just give the, the, the, the strategy here, right? So clearly, just so you guys know, it's cheat on everything, like you, you have this interface, like if I'm talking to Neil on a Zoom call right now, I can see. You know, Neil is from this, this county over here. Here's where companies you worked at and all that type of stuff, right? Like a heads up display. So what they do, number one is they find clippers. As always, the answer is to scroll more. So they scroll on Instagram, Tik Tok. Every single time you find a clip of anything, DM the account. What he DMs account is paid clipping opportunity. Okay.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  Paid clipping opportunity gets responded to nine out of 10 times. So 90% response rate. And so he says here, the people running these accounts are hungry Slovakian teenagers. Okay. Number two, pay per view, not video. We pay clippers $0 per video. We only pay per, uh, we pay bonuses, right? So maybe let's call it every like a dollar for every thousand views or so. This makes sure we lose nothing from bad clippers and only pay what we want. Number three, when you find someone good, pay them more. Power law exists in everything, including clippers. 1% of your clippers will generate 99% of the views. Make sure the top 1% are rewarded well and stick with you. Number four, and then the number five is the last one. Make sure you have enough content to clip. I go on at least two podcasts weekly. Everyone at Clue Lee creates content. Our clippers clip everything.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  The biggest reason not to have 400 clippers is because you don't have 400 clips a day to post. Make more content. Number five, not sure about this one, tracking ROI. Don't do it. Clipping is cheap and it's Value is isn't in direct product ROI. It's squeezing all the virality out of potentially viral moments. Everyone has made a single post that flopped, posting 699 more times. We'll make sure you get the virality it deserves. So what do we think about this?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  It reminds me of the Andrew Tate model.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  It is the Andrew Tate model.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. So what's interesting is.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  But his was better in which he just pays per sale.

• 6:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And then I don't, he probably had more clippers than 700. But I, the, the question is like, is this smart or dumb? I think even in consumer, I think this, this might work. This is interesting because I asked them, there's a Mr. Beast guy that we were talking to. Guy used to work for Mr. Beast and I, I showed him this post, right? I was like, this morning, I was like, what do you think about this? He's like, one, he's like, I hate the Clue Lee founder. I was like, yeah, you know, he can be a little polarizing. That's, that's fine. You can have your opinion. Two, he's like, I think this is stupid and won't work for a long time. I actually sent him a reply saying, I'm like, hmm, like, why, why don't you think this will work? Because it's clearly worked for Tate. I think, I think Mr. Beast has done this as well. And then now you have a SaaS, a consumer SaaS company doing it. And so I, I think it'll work for them. I just, you know, I think it's smart.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  I think it clearly works right now. So we'll see where it goes.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  I, I, I think it can, it won't be as effective for B to B. But for B to C, it's effective. I think this works extremely well for personal brands who create content. So if you want to become famous and you create a lot of content like Alex Hermosy, and the content's good and already does well, you can pay a crap ton of people to start clipping and you can go viral and you can probably like 10x your views and get your brand way more out there.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  I think, look, did the Andrew Tate model is just very controversial. Okay. Whatever you say is like, it's going to get views, right? This guy tries to play a little controversial too. I think with Alex Hermosy, he's very well spoken. And he, he does, it takes a lot of work to, to actually simplify a topic. And most people don't see that, but that's why his stuff does really well too. It's like he simplified these topics. And he spent a lot of time and effort on them. So, yeah.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's, it's, I think it's worked out really well.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's great.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  And I think with Cluely, one of the biggest reasons why the clips work is because they are controversial, like you said. And they have been that way because it's, you know, if you look at their business from day one, it's not like here's your software and it can help you with X, Y, and Z. It's cheat on everything. They're taking a controversial take and because they know cheating is bad, but they're just like, people still like cheating. It makes life easier. So we're going to help you cheat everywhere.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Dude, did you see that 2% of creatives drive 50% of volume on Meta?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  I did not see that stat, but I believe it. I assumed it would be like 1% drives the majority. I would have assumed it's more than 50%.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  So this Meta post over here says, matching creative volume to audience complexity helps you reach more people. Just 2% of creatives in gaming categories account for 53% of total ad spend. So this is known as the Pareto Principle. So like 20% can yield 80% results. And then it says advertisers in non-gaming categories are increasing creative output by 18% year over year, with the top 2% of creatives accounting for slightly lower share spend, 48%. So it doesn't matter if you're gaming or whatever. That's what it is.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  See, I assumed, yes, I assumed it was like 1 or 2% on Meta, more so 1%, makes up like 70, 80% of the ad spend. Because there's so many creatives and people running ads. It's just most of them just suck and don't work.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think most people don't run enough creatives. I think the cool thing about organic is like you just keep pushing it until stuff works and then you make it a creative, right? Did you see this one? No, you definitely didn't see this one, but I want to show you how marketing yields a 98% profit margin on a commodity. So have you seen this before? This is like one of these like water sprays. It's called a Avine. Have you seen this?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  What do you mean water spray?

• 9:53Speaker 00

  Literally, it's a can of water where you can spray water.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Well, I don't get the purpose.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  So, okay, here's what it says.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Can I just turn on the faucet?

• 10:03Speaker 00

  This guy, this guy Level, Levels, yes, you can. So, so Levels tweeted this. He's like, I need to learn how women marketing works. They are able to sell 300 milliliters of literally water in a pressurized spray bottle for $19.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Cost of water, cost of water is 0.005 and with packaging is 30 cents. 98% profit margin. It's exceptional.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Good for them.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  When you look at the bottle, it's like written in French and all that. It's, it's, it seems really like, I don't know, high end, right? When you look at it.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Like water from the Swiss Alps or something like that.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Or like, you know, when you buy like an aquapana or like a Fiji, it's like, oh, it's from Fiji, right? Yeah, I should pay more for that. So that's, I mean, that's the power of marketing, but like he, he, he's asking a question. I, I don't quite know how this works either, but did you know that 80% of spend, consumer spend comes from women?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  In general?

• 10:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Look it up.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  For women related stuff like them buying for themselves or them buying for the household?

• 10:58Speaker 00

  I heard, I heard it's just in general, like everything, all in.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  I, I know the majority of the people who make purchasing decisions in the household are women.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  And they tend to buy for the household.

• 11:08Speaker 00

  Sure that factors into it too.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, but what I'm getting at is, is that 80% that they're spending on themselves? Cause I'm assuming that's too high. It's women are spending 80, you're saying, I, I'm assuming it's women are spending 80%, but that's for household and themselves and everyone else in the family.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  All in. They, they basically make the call. So I mean, the interesting thing about Level saying this is like, I need to learn how women marketing works because I, I guess that product is for, for women. So.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:33Speaker 00

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• 12:08Speaker 01

  For a consumer, I, I agree. 80 plus percent of, I, I don't know if it's exactly 80%, but I'll go with it.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Yep. Cool. You picked the next one. We have like, we can do like one or two more.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Google Shopping Ads. Have you seen the click surge? 18%? Tnudie actually had an interesting graph on this. Um, and they're surging while Amazon and Timu pull back.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  Dude, hold on. I, I'm sorry.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  You finish and then I have the consumer data here.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, Google has been doing exceptionally well and they've been picking up a lot of ad revenue where there's been pullback in places like Timu. But some of that's impacted by things like tariffs and stuff like that that Timu can't control. But Google Shopping Ads are surging and doing extremely well for marketers right now.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  And Google's a great, like, I don't know what your holdings are, but Google is in there for me. So I think it's a great business. You look at all the things, right? Like Waymo, Android, you know, they still have the main browser, just all these things, the quantum computing, all these things, right? And the the the search, like, people like to say, oh, it's dead. It's not quite dead yet, so.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  No, and in theory, they're, from what I've seen on television and what I've read, Google's ahead on quantum computing.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Quantum computing and they're, you can say they're right up there with self-driving right now, too. So they they've got a great business and then they're up there with with the models that they have, too. Gemini, pretty good. VO3 is great, too. I don't know how much you guys have used VO3, but it's it's pretty great.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  I have. I've used a lot, even me personally. I've used it.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  For your kids?

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Sometimes it tells stories and stuff like that, but like, I'll talk about my kids about like, like someone taking a stroll down Rodeo Drive and actually have it create the video and stuff. But it doesn't really look like Rodeo Drive. It's trying to make it look like Beverly Hills, but it it it's off, but it's good for a free tool.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  Imagine if you wanted to teach your kids a lesson and then you hire like a kid that's really good with VO3 from like high school or college. And then they basically storyboard everything out for you on basically like, here's why you shouldn't steal or whatever. Or here's why you shouldn't walk into like dangerous areas. And then it tells a story and it like, it like, I watched one video where it's about like genetic engineering and it was the VO, it was all VO3. I think, I don't know if I linked it to you, but that guy spent 500 bucks on the video, spent like 16 hours on it. And it was like a 15-minute video or 30 minutes and it was like, really well done. It's like watching a movie.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 14:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  I thought it was free. It costs money.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Dude, I pay like 100, right now it's a discount. It's $129, I think, but when the discount's over, it's $249 a month.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  I've used it. I thought it was free.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  No, well, you probably using where it gives you like a couple, but I I pay for uh uh Google like Ultra or whatever.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I should probably cancel.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  And I don't know if it makes a difference that we have uh Google corporate.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  No, you'd have to just add on.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Just still add on?

• 14:46Speaker 00

  It doesn't make a difference, yeah.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  So, okay, I want to go back to the spin real quick.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  But yeah, that makes sense because my usual video clips are really short.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  I'm not making anything long.

• 14:54Speaker 00

  Well, no, I think each one's caps you at a 30 seconds or something like that. And then you have to figure out how to stitch them together. And then the problem is also the character consistency is like they keep making new characters every time.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  So, but like this video that I saw, they seem to keep the characters consistent. I don't know how they did it. But, okay, so the question I asked ChatGPT, I was like, do women handle 80% of consumer spend? So the answer is yes. And guys, ChatGPT isn't gospel, but let's just go with this for now, right? Yes, it's commonly cited that women drive around 70 to 80% of consumer purchasing decisions in the US and other, and many other developed markets. Here's the breakdown. Purchase influence. While women may not make every transaction themselves, they are the primary decision makers or influencers for the majority of household purchases, which you were saying, right? Including groceries, healthcare, education, home goods, and even cars and financial services. And that sounds like Michelle.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:42Speaker 00

  We'll say handles.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Do you know how I know this?

• 15:44Speaker 00

  How?

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Because?

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Because you look at your bill.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Uh, a lot of conversations in working with Procter and Gamble and Unilever.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Household goods. And I, you know, I've been to their offices all around the world, like Procter and Gamble, Brazil, Unilever, UK. Like, I've literally been to so many of their offices, given speeches, worked with them on projects.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Um, and they all tell you the same thing. Doesn't matter what country you're in.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And look, there's sources here would be like BCG, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey sort of cited in here, HBS. Uh, sorry, not HBS, Harvard Business Review, Forbes. But I think it's interesting. So it's, it's, uh, you know, you have to figure out how you can make your marketing favorable uh, in the eyes of women, right? Because they call 70, 80% of the shot.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Assuming your product is for household goods.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  If you're selling like trousers for men, I don't know if you need to go that far.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, trousers. Who calls them trousers?

• 16:38Speaker 01

  You call them trousers?

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Trousers? Dude, we're getting old, man. Okay, this will be the last thing here, so. Dharmesh posted this on LinkedIn. This is interesting because we've heard this, right? A jack of all trades is a master of none. You've heard that, right? But the full version, we don't, do you know what the full version of that is?

• 16:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  Okay, the full version is a jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one. Okay? So which turns the meaning around, actually. I didn't know that. So now it's basically saying that being good at many things, like being a generalist, is often better than being great at one thing, i.e. a specialist, right? So I think this distinction is even more relevant now because the age of generative AI is the age of generals. So, okay, people might look at you as a marketer, look at me as a marketer, but if you look at us over the years, like I've known you for 14 years, 15 years maybe, you've evolved a lot over the years. You've picked up a lot. Like, did you know about M and A in the beginning? Not a lot, no. Did you know a lot about like organic social? No, you didn't. Did you have a family? No. Like, did you know about marriage?

• 17:38Speaker 00

  No. Like, you learn all these things over time and you become masters in these other areas too, or jack of all trades, obviously.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  That's true. And if you want to just focus on marketing, you and I are both pigeonholed by a lot of people as SEOs. And we both know how to run our own paid ad campaigns, like actually logging into Meta and running them.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny because when I get on the calls, I'll tell people how they're doing it wrong.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  And they'll look at you like an idiot, right?

• 18:00Speaker 01

  They'll look at me as like, what do you know? Yeah, exactly. And then when I tell them what they're doing wrong, they're like, oh no, it doesn't work. And I'm like, oh, try this. And they're just like, oh, okay. Or like, oh, you're not running Hiros. Try Hiros and you'll get a higher ROI depending on the campaign type. And they're just like, like, oh, yeah, no, it doesn't work. And then you get them to like, oh, it did convert better.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  And what I've found over time is people still pigeonhole us. But you and I have learned everything from running our own paid ads, to modifying our own website, to writing copy, to doing our own organic social, to scripting, to video editing. We've tried it all.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  I find it's good to be pigeonholed because it's easy to focus. Just like when you think about Kleenex, you think about tissue, right? Or when you think about dude wipes, you think about wiping, you know, your butt, right? So like, it's, it's good that that's happening, but don't let that stop you from continuing to learn, which is what we've done over time, right? Oh, did we just become good at sales all of a sudden? No, like we learned how to talk to customers.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  We become good at customer development, yeah. Did we learn how to work on product? Like, those are all things you learn over time. And by talking, like, you talk to people a lot. I like to read a lot. I like to do like these little networking things. It just, you figure out what works for you. Like, did we know how to do events before? Well, actually, you've done events before.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  But like, we learned that over time is my point.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  But same with the talking to people and doing sales. When you do sales and you learn what resonates, this also helps guide you with your marketing campaigns because you know what works. When you're testing different marketing campaigns, you know what resonates, what messaging, what value proposition, all that kind of stuff. And you're A B testing, you know what's more likely to work on a sales pitch based on the data that you're seeing from advertising. It all, a lot of it ties in with each other.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  And you gotta continually, you know, sharpen your knowledge and your skill sets.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  And this will be the final thing I'll say, but if you think about any of the founder friends that we know, are they a master of one? I don't think I know one.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  I think they're more generalists.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're generalists.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  They may have, they more, they may have specialty and they typically all have a specialty in one area over another. But they, if you want to classify them, they're more generalists than anything else.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  They're T-shaped, right? They're, they might be deep in one area, but they're, they're pretty broad. And it's also because they like to learn.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  And they learn in different ways. So, anyway, that's all I'll say. A jack of all trades, guys, is better than a master of one. See you tomorrow.