Clickbait Doesn't Work Anymore, Stop Using It.. What We Are Doing Different In Marketing Than Our Competition, China Is Exposing US Brands

In episode #2959, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss the shift to quality content, using sub hooks for retention, and the value of authentic storytelling. They cover strategic networking, customer-focused strategy, and how consumer behavior shapes brand perception. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES(00:00) The Shift from Clickbait to Quality Content(02:57) The Importance of Retention and Sub Hooks(05:47) Creating Authentic and Valuable Content(09:07) Strategic Event Participation and Networking(12:05) Rethinking Marketing Strategies and Customer Focus(15:04) Consumer Behavior and Brand PerceptionPrefer single topic episodes? Head over to our YouTube channel. 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 agencyNP Digital << Neil’s ad agencyX @neilpatel, @ericosiuInstagram @neilpatel, @ericosiu Drop Us a Review If You Enjoyed the Episode!

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:39Speaker 01

  I've seen two things in the past, I would say, 12 months. Two things when it comes to content. The first one being clickbait. And if you look at most of the content that does well on the social web in today's world, it's people who aren't leveraging clickbait. But yeah, when marketers tend to create content, they all want to talk about like instant gratification headlines. And ones that just are so bomb-tastic, as I like calling them. And I'll give you an example of this. So I use some people that help me script out some of my social content. And they create hooks for me, and I'm gonna have a conversation with them today. And I just filmed eight videos yesterday.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  And I was recording some of this content, and let's say one of the videos was on LinkedIn. They would have sub-hooks. And the reason we do sub-hooks is, is if you look at most of the social platforms, the number one factor on how well your content does is the retention. So the more people that watch the whole video, the more likely they are to show everyone your content. The problem that you end up finding is, is if you do a hook at the beginning, you can draw people in. But after a minute or so, people lose attention and they start leaving. Which is why you want to continually have sub-hooks. So if you have a hook every minute, just general rule of them, it doesn't have to be. What you'll find is, people will continually stick around with your video much longer,

• 2:09Speaker 01

  and you'll do better. But the problem that a lot of marketers like doing with their sub-hooks is they use bomb-tastic language. So going back to the LinkedIn video I recorded, they kept using sub-hooks like...

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Now this next LinkedIn strategy is the real key to going viral. And then after you do that, and then the next hook will be, this is the number one mistake marketers make on LinkedIn. You have to avoid at all costs. And they keep using these quote unquote bomb-tastic, as I calling them hooks. And I just hate it and I think it's played out. Even if that tactic is the real tactic to go viral, or even if that tactic is the number one mistake that people make, using hook like that are just played out. And it may work well in the consumer world. It does terrible in the B two B world.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  What we're doing now with our long form YouTube videos. So we recorded in the same studio now, but I recorded for the first time last Saturday. It felt so good because it's just the old, old school marketing headlines we have like, it could just be like the 10 commandments of marketing or seven new marketing tools that we have, right? And these videos start to do well, or I might have one on, oh, AI agents, the ultimate beginner's guide, which is like not bombastic. It's like stuff you would have seen seven years ago or so. But these videos now, what I want to say, so clickbait doesn't work any, anymore, at least not for us. But what I will say, because people are tired of clickbait, right? But what's working is ultra high quality content. So we remember we talked about Chloe Shi, so she has a million followers now on, on Instagram. And it's because everything's so highly edited, right? But when I think about now, the videos you and I make,

• 3:48Speaker 00

  the, the concepts will come to us and you and I, I got this from you actually, will make, I'll make like a 20 to 30 minute loom, talking about what I want to talk about and it'll be a screencast, right? And then now, then they use a teleprompter and then boom, what used to be a five minute video is now a 30 minute video. I was like, I didn't even know I talked, talked for 30 minutes, right? And then what, what used to be like seven minutes is now like 45 minutes. I was like, how? Because we spend more time on it. It's everything now, the way to explode your social growth this year isn't to do the stupid hack or whatever. It's just to level up the quality to such an insane level because that's what everyone's doing.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude, like I released a video the other day and it was on personal branding. And in the video, I talk about how my personal brand generates 10 million a year. And that's roughly what we generate each year from it. So then they ended up using the title in the video, how it generates 100 million a year. No joke. And I was like, where'd you guys get the 100 million a year is 10. So then I told him right away and then I like, screw this, I just changed it to 10 myself. The headline didn't perform as well. So then they changed it to like the secret to building a 10 billion, a 10, 10 million dollar personal brand. And I changed it. They wanted to use a number and I just put something that was more realistic. And my version was because I break down how I did it.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  And I said, this is the blueprint I use to build a personal brand that generates 10 million a year. I'm not telling people they're going to generate 10 million a year. I'm not saying they're going to generate 100 or even one. I'm just telling people this is the blueprint I use to grow my brand. And this is how much I make and this is how it works. And even in that video, I talk about, you know, or I've talked about in many videos. I don't know if I actually do it in that video on how personal branding is not where it's at. I think you need to have a personal brand these days to separate yourself, but corporate brand is more valuable. But I don't feel that was bomb-tastic. I just felt I was just telling the truth on here's just the blueprint I use. Take it for what it is. And I don't care if I get half the amount of views. I don't want the views who are clicking on it because they want to make 100 million dollar personal brand. I don't want those people watching my content.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  You know what's interesting? Finish it off first.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, the reason I don't want them to watch my content is those people are looking for shortcuts in life and there aren't shortcuts.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  It's interesting because when I talked to this, this guy who's around, let's call him 21 years old or so. He's really good with organic social and he's really good with short form content. And he's like, you know, the difference between me and you, Eric, is you actually have a lot of life experience and you can share a lot of stories. The problem with me is I don't have a lot of experience right now. So I have to come out with something that's more bomb-tastic or like some hook, some crazy hook. And then I have to do a lot of research. He's like, but you can just riff. And that's the difference between us older creators and the younger ones. And so you have this one over here and what we're doing different in marketing than our competition. I think even in this podcast now, we're trying to share more. Stories because the feedback we've gotten is we like the stories that you guys have and I do think we tend to do pretty interesting things in our lives and business. I'm being I just think we do.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  We do.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  Because like I have a lot of fun and I'm like, I wish I could share. We're sharing more of this stuff now, but what I just mentioned earlier too, is we're leveling up the quality. We're paying more attention, especially to the YouTube videos. The products that we have too, at least on our end, I see distribution as a moat. I see data as a moat. And so what we're trying to do with carrot right now is we're trying to collect as much data as possible. And we might even give away these reporting features that a lot of people charge thousands of dollars for. We might just give it away for free because then we could collect a lot more data there and whatever ad manager stuff that we have. That's going to help guide that and then feed the AI. And then we're the click flow stuff I talked about on the SEO side, you know, a lot of that will probably be given away for free too.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  But that is, those are some things that we're doing that are a little different than the competition. I'm keen to understand from your side too. That's that's different.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  I would say similar to what you're saying and what you're doing, focusing on creating volume of content, but the volume not necessarily in the post frequency, but the length. So we're creating much longer content. We're doing more global content while our competition is focused typically on one region. We're doing a lot of events all around the world for branding. We're sticking with the bigger events. Even you and I were texting the other day or emailing on, it was yesterday, right? On the HubSpot event. So we're doing bigger and bigger events. We talked about in the past podcast where we're being more selective. Like after the YPO one, I'm going to Web Summit.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  Oh, nice. That's right. Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  So I'll go to Web Summit Rio. I do the Toronto one, although now it's in Vancouver. I don't know if I'm going to end up doing the one in Portugal. I've done that, the Lisbon one before.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  How many do they have per year?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  They have Qatar as well. They get paid to do some of these.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, the governments pay them.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, they make good money from this. But yeah, so when I was looking at events, that's what we're doing there. I'm also doubling down on our ideal customer profile. If you look at a lot of people, they understand marketing, but they create marketing for the masses. Even agencies that I'm competing against that only. Work with enterprise, they still can create content for the masses. I'm trying to adjust things and just focus on my ideal customer. And it's okay if I get less views, less comments, less followers. I just want more of my ideal customer and less of everyone else. I don't mean it in a bad way. I love everyone else too. But I believe that is what's going to cause us to do better. And then I'm also, and this is not really marketing related.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  I'm rethinking strategy in my corporations. We have so many different divisions and not all of them are profitable. The non-profitable ones, funny enough, I don't want to do anything with. I actually like them and I want to keep them and grow them and fix them up. And I think next year, almost every division will be profitable. Um, the ones that aren't, I think they'll be break even, but. I'm thinking about offloading certain assets. And then doubling down on our core competency to just grow faster. But it'll, it'll hurt us in the short run if I offload some of our core assets.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Yep. I think that's good. And there's other stuff we can't talk about, but there's, you know, just think about it this way. You're listening to marketing school. But business, both in business and marketing, you're looking to arbitrage all day. And so we talked about maybe two days ago, just arbitraging, right? So whatever you can, where you can find a misplaced, a mispriced product or service and you can charge more for it, that's what we want to do. Or it can also come down to acquisitions too, at the end of the day. I also think what's different too is so you mentioned you, you do, there's, there's one difference. I mean, you and I speak at events, but we also do events too. So next week I look at me as like the, the amount of effort I put into that, that's me very much doing that event. And so Neil might do one where sometimes, um, if we're speaking somewhere. You know, we might throw a dinner, right? And that's something I've done quite a bit. Um, Neil does that as well.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  And then usually once a year I'll do an event. So like, even though this year I'm focused on the YPO one, next year I'll bring my event back. Um, cause those have always been fun and I'll probably do it in Beverly Hills. Cause it's, you know, it's local, it's easy. I can walk there. What else are we doing that's, that's different than the competition right now?

• 10:38Speaker 01

  You're doing a lot of dinners. You do dinners.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  With the YPR groups.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. You're. Oh yeah. Oh, let me tell you. So let me tell you the format, the format we have for that dinner. So you know, YPO has like 11 chapters in, in LA. Do you know that?

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Eleven?

• 10:52Speaker 00

  Eleven.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  That's a lot. Are you include like Malibu?

• 10:54Speaker 00

  Malibu, there's Santa Monica, there's Los An- you could cut Los Angeles gold, Los Angeles.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Beverly Hills, Bel Air.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, so there's a lot, maybe even more than eleven. But my point is, so YPO guys, entrepreneur group, or, or this business operator group, we're doing these YPO plus one dinners. And so this is our little innovation here, and I didn't come up with this idea. But basically, there's like three or four core people, and then every month or every other month, we'll invite one other YPOer from a different chapter. And then that way, this group continues to grow, and we all invite them into WhatsApp, because everything's so disjointed right now. So the thing might happen here where this, this group becomes so big, it's like all of YPO Los Angeles, where we can throw like a mega event. And so it might become that, but that just goes down to the whole like, it starts at a small level and it gets bigger and bigger over time. But yeah, what else before we move on?

• 11:44Speaker 00

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• 12:20Speaker 01

  Are you doing any more of those like events that you attended where you had to spend like five grand? I forgot the name, but didn't you have to spend five grand? Or was that Syed who spent five grand to go to a conference?

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Five grand to go to a conference?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  There was a ticket that he bought. He flew in here. Was it Syed or you? It was some event in UCLA.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  Oh, that was the All In Conference?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Was it five grand?

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's, no, it's seven point five.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Seven thousand five hundred dollars? For a ticket, are you, are you doing more of that stuff? Did it work out for you?

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Okay, so, so the all in, the all in, this is the all in podcast. I went to the very first one in Miami when I lived in Miami. Right? That was seventy five hundred dollars. So, so Saied met me for that one. And that one was like, you saw Matt Mullenweg from WordPress walking around. You saw like a lot of interesting people walk, walking around. And then the next year they did in LA. I had moved back to LA already. So it's like, oh, I see LA. So I paid another, another seventy five hundred. It was, these events are too big. So I didn't do a dinner. It was too big. And so, and then I hung out with like a couple of people each time, but it didn't lead to anything really at the end of the day. Nor was I really looking for it to lead to anything. But I would just say, if you're looking for business, those types of events are too big and broad. You're better off speaking and then throwing a dinner than anything. That's what I would say. But I didn't do that.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  And then what was the one where Andrew Wilkinson also went to? Was that all in summit, all in podcast?

• 13:37Speaker 00

  Andrew Wilkinson.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  You, Andrew Wilkinson?

• 13:39Speaker 00

  No, so that was Andrew Wilkinson's partner, Chris Sparling from Tiny. So Saied, Chris and I were hanging out for lunch at the very first one in Miami.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Got it. And the first one, would you say was better than the second one?

• 13:49Speaker 00

  I think so. Yeah. It got too big, the second one. But the first one, you had like, you had like, I think Justin Khan from Twitch was there. He's like walking around. And then you had like, just a lot of interesting founders were walking around that. There's like some YouTubers there too, just hanging out. I was like, oh, I watch your stuff. So, yeah. But that's, that to me was more of a spectacle than anything. There's like, there's a really popular gambler. You probably don't know who he is, Alan Keating. He plays huge pots on, on high stakes poker and like 1.4 million dollar pot. He'll lose or win like, you know, two million, three million.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  I'll be pissed. Yeah, I lost.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I actually think that would be a great way to network. Eventually getting to the point where I would like, like be in those games. That would be a great way to network.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  I get invited to a lot of poker games. I don't know what the stakes are, but they all know I would lose.

• 14:35Speaker 00

  My neighbor, his stakes they play at are like, like people are losing, like they're buying in like a hundred, 200 grand. My neighbor, I hear chips chuffling all the time when I walk by.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and some of these people do crazy stuff. Like there's a lot of people in the background. They're kind of like semi-parties. They even have like cater chefs, people who like massage your back while you're giving, or when you're playing poker. Cause you may get tired of sitting there for like three, four hours. I don't know how long.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  That's so, so serve you drinks too. Yeah, yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  So, but yeah, not my cup of tea. I'm just gonna lose money.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. You only, you only do it when you think there's a guaranteed return.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I know there's a guaranteed loss for me.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. Have you seen that? This is funny. The, so on X at least, you can see all these Chinese people on TikTok exposing US brands like $2 immersed bag, Hermes bag, or like, I make this Louis Vuitton bag for, you know, $10 in China. They expose everything.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  I recently started seeing that on Instagram and it's like these Apple headphones. You guys pay $800. I'm making up the price. We sell them for $40. It's the same exact one. And they show you the sound and they tell you what the pros and cons, the differences versus the original and theirs. And they're like, you can test it out. And I was just like, man.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Look at this. It says China is retaliating against, by exposing, against the US, like I guess the tariffs, by exposing them 100 to 1,000% markup by US brands on items manufactured in China for pennies on the dollar. So the one is Lululemon. She's like walking around the factory exposing Lululemon. And then you have Birkenstocks. You know what Birkenstock? The shoes? Yeah. He's just like exposing them.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  And this is actually the real company. And do they sell them?

• 16:16Speaker 00

  They don't, they sell them direct to Birkenstock.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  But you can buy.

• 16:20Speaker 00

  Wholesale, wholesale. Yeah, I think you can buy direct. Yeah. Sephora, Tide Pods, Laundry Pods. This guy, LED, this guy Tony.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  That guy is funny.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you can buy some of that stuff online. Like I saw a Cartier thing. I don't buy jewelry, but they were just like, oh, you can end up getting it now from China for this much. This is how much we sell it to Cartier for. And this is where they shop and get their jewelry from. And I was like, huh. Never knew this.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's gonna do anything. I think people will just continue buying. So. People like status. Like people like, I think the fact that someone paid $2,000 or like $7,000 or $100,000 for a Birkin or something. It validates them. You know what I mean?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  I've never bought a.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Not for me. I mean.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you and I are not like that.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  You know, I propose with the one carat wedding ring?

• 17:08Speaker 00

  See, I don't know that. So this is how ignorant I am. So what, what is supposed to be standard and what's like above average for carats?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  So let's just say they say, what's the rule of thumb? No, you're supposed to propose with a few months worth of your paycheck?

• 17:21Speaker 00

  No, it doesn't know either.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  It's something like that. A few weeks or a few months. And I proposed with less than a day's worth of my income.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  But like, but what size are you supposed to get?

• 17:31Speaker 01

  I didn't even get a one carat ring.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  Is eight carat really big?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  That's really big. So when I say one carat, I'm rounding up.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, but, but, but you, you had a wife that understands your values and her values too, and that's not what she values.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, she doesn't care for jewelry. She never really wore jewelry in the first place. I've offered a buyer more expensive rings.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Oh, when I propose, you can pay for it for me.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  No, no, no, it's okay.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  Let me, okay.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Everyone has their thing. You must spend money on certain things.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  I like my technology and my health. But anyway, guys, I hope you guys enjoyed that session. That is it for today. We're gonna be recording in Miami, using my DJ Osmo next week, Neil and I will be, and we'll see you in Miami.