Pod Insights Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips Closing More Leads, Losing Google Traffic, and Calling Out SEO’s Biggest Lie About this episode In this episode #3021, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss Erewhon’s creative marketing approach, earnings of top OnlyFans creators, and how entitlement can block success. They also share how luck, hard work, and networking together shape business achievements. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) Air One's Marketing Genius (02:59) OnlyFans Revenue Insights (05:56) The Role of Entitlement in Success (08:59) Luck vs. Hard Work in Business (11:51) Networking and Opportunity 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!
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot Starter Plan brings all of those details together, so it's easier to track what's happening with every deal and what to do next. It pulls information from calls and emails. Then it gets to work, logging and summarizing them. Right after your call ends, HubSpot pulls next steps from your call notes and drafts suggested follow-ups. And it stays up to date for you, so you can build demand, win more deals, and spend less time on repetitive work. Your records, insights, and next steps are ready for you to act on. And you don't have to miss a beat searching for any of it. Try the Starter Plan for $10 a month. Learn more at hubspot.com.
0:35 Speaker 01 We're starting to see some signs of agency businesses pick up. And I'll read this from a text I got from someone on my team. So this is just some stats and data. This is for S and B division where the sales cycles are smaller. So Weeks 708 and 715, so this is Weeks of July 8th and July 15th. Closed rates inside two weeks, rates rose by 40% versus 23% in late June. So we're continually seeing the close rates from a lead coming in to them willing to sign to continually increase. June increased at 23%, July increased another 40%.
1:21 Speaker 01 On top of the base number from the previous? Not from June, but from the base number or whatever it was before June. But June picked up over the previous months. And then July picked up again over June. They didn't share data from the last two weeks of July. Maybe they don't have it yet.
1:42 Speaker 01 Indicates acceleration began before August bookings, suggesting pipeline quality lifted mid-July.
1:50 Speaker 01 We, oh, Week 722, I didn't actually read all the text. Oh, there's more here. Week 722, 100% of the wins came in less than two weeks. Week 729, same 100% of the wins came in less than two weeks.
2:09 Speaker 01 So fastest turnaround all year, even in small, small numbers. That's what I'm, they're using like text language, like small N, capital N. I'm assuming that's numbers. It's a clear step change versus early June.
2:26 Speaker 01 August is usually, July, August are usually slower and it's picking up.
2:30 Speaker 00 There are slow months.
2:32 Speaker 01 The summer months are slowest for enterprise.
2:33 Speaker 00 Which is interesting for us because it's been, it's been, I would say it's been better than average. And then it does feel like it's picking up even though it's August right now. Because right like our, right now, we're still, even though our, our main, um, sales head is, is out on vacation. We still close, I think we closed like one or two this week.
2:51 Speaker 01 How'd that work? You took a sales head from a competitor. We won't name the competitor, but how'd that work out?
2:55 Speaker 00 Really good.
2:56 Speaker 01 So they, they understand sales better, it's working, the pitch is tighter.
3:00 Speaker 00 Pitch is tighter and, um, things are moving along and then it's always, in my mind, it's always been like, you know, we get this, these leads, this gold, right? And it's like, but how come we're not closing more? And so I would say that it's been, it's been good. And now I'm like, okay, how, how do we get more?
3:18 Speaker 01 So the sales rep that you took from a competitor, I know this for a fact, they get a lot of their leads from, I believe it's Clutch. Clutch is the site that ranks the agencies. I'm pretty sure it's Clutch.
3:29 Speaker 00 I think it's, their S U is really good.
3:32 Speaker 01 I'm telling you, they get a lot of leads from Clutch as well.
3:34 Speaker 00 Yeah.
3:35 Speaker 01 The last time we talked to Clutch's sales rep, they claimed that they were the largest spender on Clutch.
3:39 Speaker 00 Wow, that company.
3:40 Speaker 01 That company.
3:41 Speaker 00 Wow. I didn't know that.
3:42 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
3:43 Speaker 00 Yeah. Clutch is expensive. Clutch is great. It's expensive though. I, I like the whole, you know, get emails and webinars.
3:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, I look at it just you do everything and somehow they end up coming in.
3:54 Speaker 00 Yeah. You, you don't pay for Clutch, do you?
3:57 Speaker 01 I don't know if we pay for Clutch, but I'm going to guess with no because they required too long of a contract and we weren't willing to, uh, run it that long. We spent a decent amount on Meta. Meta does well for us.
4:09 Speaker 00 For collecting emails or webinars?
4:12 Speaker 01 No, for getting customers.
4:13 Speaker 00 Oh, really? Straight up? Yeah, you, you do run ads. That's right. I ran that little, uh, that little cursor thing. And it was just straight up retargeting or straight up cold?
4:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, uh, we do cold and redo remarketing, but we spend majority of the money on cold.
4:24 Speaker 00 That's funny. That actually works, but.
4:26 Speaker 01 We don't spend a lot though.
4:27 Speaker 00 Yeah.
4:27 Speaker 01 It depends what, it's a lot. We only spend, if I had to guess, I think we're spending around 50 grand a month.
4:34 Speaker 00 For your size, it's like, it's not a lot, it's not a little, so.
4:38 Speaker 01 Well, we only spend the money for SMB division. So it's not a ton of money. It's.
4:45 Speaker 00 But your SMB is other people's enterprise.
4:48 Speaker 01 No, not really.
4:49 Speaker 00 Okay, what are the minimums per month?
4:52 Speaker 01 I don't know what the minimums are.
4:54 Speaker 00 Okay, so is it okay for V to say?
4:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know more than me.
4:57 Speaker 00 So you told me before it was around, call it 15 a month, right? Which is for smaller agencies, that's like a lot, because smaller agencies don't charge a lot.
5:04 Speaker 01 No, that's not, that's not our enterprise. I'm saying we don't do the 15.
5:07 Speaker 00 No, I'm talking about for your SMB division, you're charging 15 a month.
5:10 Speaker 01 No.
5:11 Speaker 00 That's what you told me before.
5:12 Speaker 01 No, I said we skip the 15s. When you asked me a comparison, because you're comparing for a single green, I'm saying we don't have that. You consider that middle market.
5:20 Speaker 00 You don't have?
5:20 Speaker 01 We don't have that. We have some clients, now you're talking about average, right? We have some clients that pay more.
5:24 Speaker 00 Average for NPXL.
5:25 Speaker 01 It has to be way lower.
5:27 Speaker 00 Really?
5:27 Speaker 01 If I had a guess, my guess is gonna be around like 5 grand a month.
5:31 Speaker 00 So I misunderstood then.
5:32 Speaker 01 But what I'm getting at with SMB is we don't have that middle tier. So we have NPD, that's enterprise. We're like, we'll work with like the DHLs of the world. And then we have the SMB divisions that'll work with smaller budgets. And what I'm getting at is, we're helping mom and pops for like 5 grand a month, alright? I'm averaging it out. My numbers could be off, but I know it can't be that far off. And we do have customers at our SMB division that are paying 15, 20, 30, 40 grand a month. But that's not the majority. If you look at the average, it has to be closer than 5 grand. When I say I'm guessing, I know I'm probably within a 90 percentile of my estimate.
6:17 Speaker 01 Because I've seen the numbers, because we get monthly updates, right? I just don't know every single month, but it's pretty steady, because we've had our SMB division for a while. Our enterprise though, we have a lot of accounts paying us millions and millions and millions of dollars a year. So there's a big gap in between. So when you're talking about your agency, or Power Digital, or a lot of the other agencies that focus on that middle market, or like Mute6, there's another Mute6 alternative that I forgot the name. They're based somewhere in SoCal, they do like D to C. I think they sold to private equity maybe.
6:50 Speaker 00 Common Thread?
6:51 Speaker 01 Common Thread is another one. They have what I would consider more of that middle market, where they're selling their ideal customers paying like 15, 20 grand a month. We don't have a ton of those. We have lower end, we do have some middle. But if you look at our percentage of revenue, at least in the United States, international... I don't have the numbers off the top of my head and you can't look at it that way because of the currency exchange.
7:18 Speaker 00 Yeah.
7:18 Speaker 01 So their version of like, we have clients in Latam that are paying us 20, 30, 40 grand a month. But that is enterprise in Latin America for like in Mexico because of currency exchange, right? So, but yeah, we don't have that middle market like you or Power Digital has.
7:35 Speaker 00 That makes sense. I misunderstood it previously. By the way, I want to go back to something. Talk about getting, getting lucky, right? So I remember I told you I was doing, I started doing these AI dinners a couple of weeks ago. And so that AI dinner has now led to an AI lunch that I'm going to. And that AI lunch has actually, there's a couple of, there's like two or three billionaires there, right? And then you have a bunch of, and it's, it's like sponsored by a sovereign fund that lunch, right? And there's like 10, 15 people there or whatever. But my point of saying this is if, if some of you are asking, well, how do you actually get luckier? This is one of those ways you host these things. You don't know what's going to happen. My only, I was thinking about it this morning. I was like, I have no expectations when I host these. I was like, yes, I do. I absolutely have an expectation. My expectation is that I end up creating more luck and that good things will happen in the long term. And that just happened every single time, right?
8:17 Speaker 00 So I mean, whether you're hosting lunches or dinners, that's how you create more luck and that's how you become wealthier in the long term. Because and even this, like, it's not like I want customers or whatever, but even like I got that, the invite yesterday. And then actually the person hosting is like, oh, by the way, you should talk to this person over here. Did an intro. It's like, oh, they actually need marketing help, right? You just, by the way, I had no intention, hey, guys, come buy my shit. Nope. Didn't do any of that. So.
8:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
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9:16 Speaker 01 It's a lot of people just don't put themselves out there so they feel that they're not lucky. It's that they're just not trying.
9:22 Speaker 00 Yeah, you're actually an extroverted person. Remember the personality test? I'm actually very introverted, right?
9:27 Speaker 01 I'm introverted.
9:28 Speaker 00 On the first line, you said you're extroverted.
9:30 Speaker 01 Or let me rephrase. Forget personality. I don't do much stuff that's extroverted where I actually talk to other people or go out.
9:38 Speaker 00 But when you go somewhere, you're very extroverted. You bring a lot of energy.
9:42 Speaker 01 Yes, but my problem is I don't go anywhere.
9:44 Speaker 00 Yeah, well, like, OK, so when we go to lunch or Novakoff, you talk to the waiter, like, you're very engaging, right?
9:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:50 Speaker 00 Whereas like if I'm hosting something, yes, I'm it's very hype. People think I'm extroverted. But compared to you, when we go out and eat, when we order or whatever, like, I don't try to talk, so.
9:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, but a lot of my conversations are really awkward and my wife tells me you can't ask people these kind of questions. It's like they think I'm trying to rob them or something like that. I'm like, I'm just trying to find out.
10:08 Speaker 00 How much you've got.
10:09 Speaker 01 No, it's just more so it's like, I'm not trying to be rude, but it's just like, how many people come here through lunch? Which is, are busy or how many people for dinner? What do most people order? Because I just want to understand how much.
10:19 Speaker 00 Wait, why can't you ask those questions?
10:21 Speaker 01 Because they're rude.
10:22 Speaker 00 How does rude?
10:23 Speaker 01 I don't know. That's what I was told. I like asking.
10:25 Speaker 00 I think there's a fight.
10:26 Speaker 01 That's what I'm saying.
10:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, anyway.
10:29 Speaker 01 All right, we both have a similar topic in here. Google claims search traffic isn't declining. I don't know if you saw their press release or blog post.
10:36 Speaker 00 Yeah, you go, go.
10:37 Speaker 01 But Google just put out a vague statement that search is up, more people are using search. And they said they're not necessarily seeing people see a decline in search traffic. They're seeing some people also get gains. They did not give specific numbers and I bet you they did they did it on purpose.
10:57 Speaker 00 I think Google's VP of Search is lying about how Google is actually doing because they said, oh, total organic click volume from search to websites has been relatively stable year on year. And it's sending slightly more quality clicks than a year ago. I don't know about your traffic. I see the alligator, the open jaw. I'm just like, what? Like, definitely we're losing clicks.
11:17 Speaker 01 I think we've more so lost clicks and it's stabilized and I don't think we're losing a ton more right now. We've seen some customers get good wins. We've seen some customers, of course, get losses. We've seen the alligator as well. But we've seen a lot of companies make up the losses in traffic. Not necessarily getting more traffic, but getting higher conversions from AI traffic. So we're not seeing AI drive anywhere nearly the volume of organic traditional Google search. Or Bing search, but we're seeing ChatGPT and perplexity driving a very, very, you know, fraction of a percent in traffic, but the conversions are through the roof.
12:01 Speaker 01 And that's making up some of the losses from organic search. And as you and I both know, a lot of the factors are pretty much the same. There's some nuances, but.
12:10 Speaker 00 So, look, I, I just think they have to protect what they need to protect. Like they always, they'd always never completely tell the truth for the most part, like more often than not, even when you had the search liaison, all these people. And it's okay, right? Like you, you take what they say with a grain of salt and you try to interpret it with your own data. So that's how I look at it.
12:29 Speaker 01 We have a similar topic here. Ours is a little bit, titles are a little bit different, but go with it when you're talking about a female model. Actually, before you go into that, let's talk about Reddit losing traffic from Google and then we can get into the female model.
12:42 Speaker 00 Where's that one?
12:43 Speaker 01 Reddit is starting to lose Google traffic.
12:45 Speaker 00 Did I have that one? Oh, there we go.
12:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, okay. So this is from Glenn Gabe on X. And so Glenn, by the way, so he's an SEO consultant. And so he said that Reddit CEO said traffic from Google varies from week to week. But overall, it was a headwind in Q2, headwind meaning that it's, it's kind of going against them, right? Tailwind is when you're getting carried by it. So regarding headwind, quote unquote, check out international visibility trending for Reddit. I'm seeing that across tools, not great for them. That can change and jump back up. But I'm seeing a drop across several countries outside the US. I wonder if these AI translations are causing problems now that Google has seen that in place over time. Maybe another reason they are pushing forward with becoming a search engine, Germany, France and Italy are below. So you can see what's happening is you can see it going up and then it kind of just drops and it's slightly rising again.
13:31 Speaker 01 This one was, this is Reddit.
13:34 Speaker 00 Daily updates, I don't know what it is. But yeah, you can see it's not doing well. I think they're
13:40 Speaker 01 Quality, they were showcasing Reddit so much in their search results on page one. And the quality of the results were not relevant for a lot of keywords, but they were just pushing it.
13:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, they had to dial it back at some point. Like, but it's like, whatever Google gives in the past, if you're an SEO, you know that they're gonna take it away at some point. That's just how it is.
13:58 Speaker 01 Well, when they're giving that much.
13:59 Speaker 00 Yeah.
13:59 Speaker 01 They were giving a lot.
14:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
14:00 Speaker 01 The only one that I would say has been pretty steady over the years, they may have seen some ups and downs, is Wikipedia.
14:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
14:06 Speaker 01 But Wikipedia does not monetize.
14:07 Speaker 00 Yeah.
14:08 Speaker 01 So I think it's a little bit of a different story with Wikipedia.
14:11 Speaker 00 And it doesn't even matter that Reddit has a deal with Google or whatever, they're gonna do what they need to do, so.
14:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, they're paying them for the data, so then, you know.
14:18 Speaker 00 Yep.
14:18 Speaker 01 They can do whatever they want.
14:20 Speaker 00 Anyway, that's for today, guys. Bye.
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