Pod Insights Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips Google Organic and Paid CTRs Hit New Lows About this episode In episode #2916, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss the declining click-through rates (CTRs) for both organic and paid traffic, particularly in the context of AI overviews. They explore the implications of these trends on overall traffic and conversions and also tackled AI tools for lead generation. Don’t forget to help us grow by subscribing and liking on YouTube! Check out more of Eric’s content (Leveling UP YT) and Neil’s videos (Neil Patel YT) TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: (00:00) Declining Click-Through Rates: A Deep Dive (02:46) Shifting Focus: From Traffic to Revenue (05:50) Leveraging AI for Lead Generation (12:07) The Human Touch in Sales: Balancing AI and Personal Connection (15:31) That’s it for today! Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe! Go to https://www.marketingschool.io to learn more! Leave Some Feedback: What should we talk about next? Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric’s ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel X @ericosiu
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0:34 Speaker 01 Google organic versus paid CTRs hitting a new low. Have you seen the article of the Sears data?
0:39 Speaker 02 I'm opening it.
0:40 Speaker 01 So Sears published data. And I'm going to read Jan 2024 versus Jan 2025 numbers. So when you look at organic CTRs, when the AI overviews is not shown, from Jan 2024, it's increased from 2.68% to Jan 2025 of 3.97%, okay? When you look at organic CTR with AI overview shown, in January 2024, it was 1.41% to Jan 2025 was 0.64%. So there's a big drop when there's AI overviews. When you look at paid CTRs, when the AI overviews is not shown,
1:23 Speaker 01 it's gone from 23.07% all the way down to 17.27%. And paid CTR, when the AI overviews are shown, it's gone from 8.76% all the way down to 6.56%.
1:41 Speaker 02 Wow.
1:42 Speaker 01 Yeah. This was for 10,000 informational keywords, and they just looked at the top 20 positions.
1:51 Speaker 01 I don't think what data we've seen when you actually look at Google as an aggregate, I don't have on, you know, we probably have it somewhere in our system and we should look it up. But when we look at overall organic traffic, we're actually seeing Google drive more organic traffic than before and more paid traffic. That doesn't mean CTRs are up. It just means when we look at over time, more people are just using Google.
2:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:16 Speaker 01 Right? So you're able to get more traffic in total, even though the click through rate is lower. And when you look at keywords, the study was done on informational intent. A lot of these informational intent keywords are not really driving direct conversions.
2:30 Speaker 02 Yep. And that's, that's why people like HubSpot, for example, are losing all that traffic. But it doesn't matter because it's a lot of irrelevant stuff.
2:38 Speaker 01 Correct. Yep.
2:39 Speaker 02 This is interesting.
2:40 Speaker 01 In our industry for you and I, most organizations get their business from word of mouth.
2:46 Speaker 02 Yep.
2:46 Speaker 01 Employee referrals, client referrals, RFPs, they're not necessarily in that order, but those are usually the four ways to get the most business for a consulting shop.
2:55 Speaker 02 Yep.
2:56 Speaker 01 In none of those ways that I say ranking number one on Google helps or hurts. I do think it can add more revenue than decline or than hurt you, but it's not gonna change your business. And the reason I would say that is when someone goes to the RFP process, it takes them so long to choose a vendor that a lot of times they want to have that contract for multiple years. So it's just more stickier.
3:21 Speaker 02 You know what's funny? Side note with the RFPs, when we talk to the enterprises, they're just like, dude, procurement with us is going to take forever. The move is you guys go to one of our agencies and slip in through one of the agencies that have gone through procurement already, and that will make it way easier. And so they'll, they'll try to find ways around their own organization. Like it's funny like that. But I mean, look, here's a question before we move on. For us, I don't, I see website traffic slowly declining over time, but it's not like drastic declines for us right now. How's it look for you guys?
3:51 Speaker 01 Uh aggregate or just our own website?
3:53 Speaker 02 Your own website.
3:55 Speaker 01 Our blog or our corporate website?
3:57 Speaker 02 Your blog.
3:58 Speaker 01 Blog has been going down, but we've intentionally shifted resources years ago to our corporate site. Corporate site's climbing fast. It has been.
4:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, corporate side's been. What do you put on the corporate site? You have your webinars there?
4:11 Speaker 01 Uh, webinars, uh, I don't know what's on our corporate site. I just know the team focused on it. A lot of press, news. Um, we're adding a stats section on our corporate site that we'll end up pushing, but um, corporate site's been actually growing really fast. And what we found is wherever we spend our time and resources, we can directionally usually move things up. The number one reason our blogs started going down is years ago, we started looking at the pages that drive revenue, like the specific pages on our blog. Then we looked at the keywords that drive traffic to those pages. The pages that get that generated us the most amount of leads were things like
4:57 Speaker 01 how to generate more traffic from Instagram, how to get more Instagram followers. The pages that drove the most revenue, because we look at what pages are driving leads and what pages are driving revenue, the leads actually are closing into customers, are really detailed pages like uh, how to do SEO on a blog that's in 10 different languages.
5:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:22 Speaker 01 And it doesn't drive much traffic, but it drives a ton of revenue. So what we started doing is we started shifting our SEO efforts from the pages that were driving leads to focusing on the pages that were driving leads and those leads that converted into revenue. So in essence, we're focusing on the revenue metric more versus the lead metric. Because for an organization like ours, we have a massive sales team. Salespeople are expensive. If they're calling and following up with leads that come from an Instagram page and getting tons of Instagram traffic and it never in a year, and we looked at our data literally over a 12 month period, like lead quantity to revenue, some of these pages like that Instagram followers page drove a ton of. Leads, never one customer. And then we started calculating how much time our sales reps spending following up with the leads
6:07 Speaker 01 trying to close, it was costing us an arm and a leg. When I say an arm and a leg, hundreds of thousands a year. And then when we looked at all the pages, we're spending millions of dollars a year on sales efforts that were driving zero revenue. Cause these pages were just junk. So we're like, you know what? Forget these pages, delete some of them, let them wither away. Focus and double down on the ones that actually drive revenue. And when we look at our company right now, we generate less leads than we used to by far, by magnitude, right? By I think one third.
6:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:36 Speaker 01 But when we look at the revenue per lead, it's way more than three X. So the numbers have panned out for us.
6:43 Speaker 02 That this actually brings me to a good point here is how to generate enterprise leads using inbound and outbound AI reps. And this will be helpful. I, I think you like to, I actually tested this in the last two weeks. And so Maya, the chief of staff was moving over to the marketing. She set this up. So my friend sent me this thing, this email written by an AI. I didn't know it was written by an AI, right? And so what it does, it's called AI SDR. And so I'm going to talk about the good parts about it. I'm also going to say where it, it actually screwed up on something. So sorry guys, I'm just going to tell the, the truth here. So what it does is you can add a tag to your website.
7:19 Speaker 01 Well, let's go back here. I'm a little bit confused. Is this a tool that you, what's a cut tool that you're using?
7:24 Speaker 02 It's an AI SDR tool called AI SDR.
7:26 Speaker 01 Okay. All right. I thought you were just talking about AI SDR. I didn't know those.
7:30 Speaker 02 AI SDR.com. Okay. And I'm not being paid to say this. And so what it does is let's go, imagine you have a sales development representative. Let's focus on inbound first and then we'll move to outbound. Okay.
7:43 Speaker 01 Okay.
7:43 Speaker 02 All right. So it's simple. You can add a tag to your website. And what it does is it just looks at all the people visiting your website. So this is first party data. You can see Neil Patel visited your site. There's five, he has 500 to 1,000 or 10,000 employees or something. He's a VP of marketing, you know, does this fit your ICP? And I'll scan through all the people in there and then you can have it float.
8:03 Speaker 01 Well, let's go back. Okay. I just want to make sure I get this. So I go to a website. It's a Neil Patel. I'm assuming it knows this Neil Patel because I filled out a lead form.
8:12 Speaker 02 Correct.
8:13 Speaker 01 How's it assuming I'm Neil Patel then?
8:15 Speaker 02 It's first party data. So you can do this in America. So they didn't fill out a form. Okay, it's like using our B2B or something like that. So there are like 37 different competitors right now.
8:24 Speaker 01 Yes. So. Which doesn't work for all the visitors as a heads up for anyone listening.
8:29 Speaker 02 No, it doesn't. But if you have a good amount of traffic, which you do, whether it's corporate or on your other site, what it does, it crafts these AI-generated emails and then they're actually really good. What it does is the first line to look at your LinkedIn, right? And they'll say, okay, oh, so I saw you share this about, you know, this company over here. And then you give it a prompt and it'll just write about like what it is that you do. Maybe it relates to the page that they're visiting, right?
8:54 Speaker 01 So sorry to interrupt. I just want to make sure I get this right. Let's go back a little bit. So I use this tool, AI SDR. And it's saying, all right, this is Neil Patel who visited the website. Because it has it on a lot of websites and they're probably paying for data from other sources. They know my email address.
9:14 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:14 Speaker 01 Okay. And then because it knew I visited the site, is it also tracking which pages that I visited?
9:20 Speaker 02 Yes.
9:21 Speaker 01 Okay. And then it's spitting off an email to them right away or is it waiting?
9:26 Speaker 02 It's basically right away.
9:28 Speaker 01 Okay. Continue.
9:30 Speaker 02 So let's say you visited a page on SEO services or something, right? You could have a persona that's just dedicated to talking about the things you do around SEO and it'll customize every single one. And it's not like all the emails look the same because you've given it a prompt for that campaign, right? And so it'll send out an email and I'll say, okay, Neil, saw you visiting this. Oh, saw that you posted this about SEO over here. By the way, we have this SEO software called Answer to Public that you might be interested in that can help you do X, Y, and Z, right? Would you be interested? Let's say they don't respond. I'm going to finish off the sequence here. What happens next is they'll add you, it'll automatically add you on LinkedIn. Okay. Two days later, it'll automatically send you a message on LinkedIn. That and that LinkedIn message will look at what you've said on LinkedIn recently and try to tie something in that relates to it.
10:14 Speaker 02 And it writes pretty damn good emails. The problem I had with a lot of these first party data tools is like, okay, I have the data. What do I do with this, right? Now you have something to do with it. And I will say that I just, we just set the inbound one up, but the outbound one, and I'll move over to outbound in a second to see if you have any questions before you do. The outbound one is actually generating us demos.
10:37 Speaker 01 So let's go back to the inbound one before one last question.
10:40 Speaker 02 Yep.
10:41 Speaker 01 Add someone on LinkedIn. So it would take your personal profile or your corporate profile?
10:45 Speaker 02 Your personal.
10:46 Speaker 01 Okay. And then add me on LinkedIn. What does it do after it adds me on LinkedIn?
10:49 Speaker 02 So wait a day or two, you can decide how you want to space it out. You can message every day or every two, three days. So I have it where it will take an action every three days, right? And so two, three days later, I'll, I'll send you a message on LinkedIn. And again, it'll scan what it is that you, you've talked about on LinkedIn and it'll like try to follow up with something creative.
11:10 Speaker 02 And from there, if they don't respond again, I'll send them another email. Basically it's like five touchpoints before it gives up. And the whole logic here is if you don't get them in the five touchpoints within in this quarter, try again next quarter, right? Try with something new, not just keep following up, keep following up, keep following up. So that's the inbound side of things and I can't see that not working for you.
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12:05 Speaker 01 One caveat to anyone listening, you gotta watch out which countries you use this in because there's a lot of privacy laws in it. You cannot, I know for a fact if there's certain countries where you cannot do this and it creates legal issues.
12:16 Speaker 02 You set US only there and you have to double check to your point. One thing it did say that it did do, this is for outbound. Let's move over to outbound. This is the caveat.
12:24 Speaker 01 One, one quick thing for anyone listening, even though you set US only for privacy laws, you also have to look at state by state laws. But from my understanding, and I would double check with the lawyer, you can use stuff like this in the United States. I'm not saying you should or you shouldn't. That's up to you. We don't use it at our organization, but just keep in mind it's a state by state. It's not federal for privacy laws in the United States.
12:46 Speaker 02 So you have to filter by state too. Yeah. Okay, let's move over to outbound now. Outbound, I wasn't sure that this would work. But the messages that send, like I looked at it yesterday. It was like, oh, hey, Neil. Saw you talking about, you know, ABM, you know, XYZ on LinkedIn, right? We have something that will help you generate scalable personalized LinkedIn ads in minutes instead of weeks, right? Would you be interested in chat? That's all the message is. It's not complicated or anything. And it came up with that itself. And then, by the way, a lot of the emails look pretty different, but they're all very simple. It's like, you know, you, once you prompt it well, it's like, good, right?
13:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:24 Speaker 02 So it has done a good job. It's, we've sent probably like five or 600 emails. We got five meetings booked.
13:31 Speaker 01 That's awesome.
13:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's incredible, right? And so here's where it screwed up. So that part's amazing. Here's where it screwed up. Imagine, because it scans your LinkedIn. Imagine if you reposted something about your friend's home getting burnt down. Okay. I messaged you, I say, Neil, I'm so sorry you lost your home. Because you reposted something about your home burning down. That's what it did. So it, it misinterpreted one of the recent LinkedIn posts and it said, oh, I'm so sorry you lost her. That's really bad, right? So you have to be very careful there. And I've been like, because my team's been setting it up, but I'm in that Slack group. So I've been on them like, guys, you can't do that. You, like, anything negative, you gotta like, flag it or like, just do not post that.
14:17 Speaker 01 Is it able to show you all the messages it would send out and it's queued before it actually goes out or no?
14:24 Speaker 02 They claim they can. I don't think they can quite yet. Yeah.
14:30 Speaker 01 Because then you can just say, send, send, send, deny, deny.
14:32 Speaker 02 They should. I think eventually they'll be forced to add that. Right now, I think it's more on the automated side because it's still early days from them. But I think there's like 17 of these AI SDR tools right now. I think it's pretty saturated, but I think for you and me, it's going to become table stakes at some point.
14:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:46 Speaker 02 So.
14:47 Speaker 01 I haven't tested out AI SDRs, whether it's this tool or another tool. I do like the concept of using it for outbound. I don't like the concept for using it for inbound, even if it can drive leads. I think a lot of people will just be creeped out and will be pissed off. I think from a privacy standpoint.
15:07 Speaker 02 You're right to an extent, I think, but if you think about all the stuff you generate, the webinars, you have the eBooks, you have the data that you have, if you just send them that stuff, maybe that's more disarming than saying, hey, combine my shit.
15:21 Speaker 01 We believe for our organization, and I'm not saying we're right on this, we like having sales reps. So even for our webinars, we have BDRs following up. Oh, no, SDRs. Is it SDRs or BDRs? Same ones who first call. Or it's not account executives, but we have people dialing. And we like the human touch, even if like AI could send out mass emails or do mass phone calls. And I know it's a little bit archaic. We really do like the human touch in a consulting business, and we believe that our sales reps should be humans and they should be the ones reaching out. We don't mind using tools to help them
16:05 Speaker 01 become more efficient, but we still love that human one-to-one connection versus AI just doing it at a mass scale and trying to handle phone calls eventually.
16:15 Speaker 02 I don't think we should get rid of humans. So I'm with you on this. I think to your point, though, what I'm looking for, the key point you said, is I'm looking for more efficiencies so my humans can go work on things that are higher leverage.
16:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:28 Speaker 02 And to me, higher leverage is like a relationship like this, because you can't, at least for the next decade, I don't think you can just have a human, you can't outsource relationship building to a robot in person. I don't think you can. Yeah. All right, guys. That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io/agency if you want to grow your agency faster, and we'll see you tomorrow.
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