The 1B User Podcast Platform, How Effective Has Trump's Marketing Been? And, The Biggest Marketing Mistakes Large Companies Have Been Making Over the Last Few Years

In episode #2931, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss the significant milestone of YouTube reaching over 1 billion monthly active podcast users. They explore the impact of content creation on channel growth, the importance of branding in marketing strategies, particularly in the political arena, and the common mistakes corporations make by cutting brand budgets during economic downturns. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) YouTube's Podcasting Milestone (03:04) The Power of Discoverability on YouTube (05:54) The Impact of Content Creation on Growth (09:10) Marketing Strategies in Politics (12:13) Branding Mistakes by Corporations Prefer 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 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

  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. The CEO of YouTube, Neo Mohan. Incredible news. YouTube has reached over 1 billion monthly active podcast users. Huge thanks to our amazing creators for making this possible.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Which is ironic, because Spotify has been spending billions to create YouTube is just like the number one podcast, podcasting platform. And why we continue to do this. We're primarily, we're doing this for discoverability on YouTube.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can see that.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  But number one podcasting. I think YouTube is the best opportunity, because there's little to no discoverability when it comes to Spotify, or Apple. And with YouTube, you actually have the opportunity for discoverability. Now, we still haven't gotten into the good graces of YouTube, but once we have, once, once you start to take off, every, all your videos start to take off. And actually, no, you've seen that with, with my channel back in the day, right? Like, any video I would publish around marketing, and you've seen this with your channel too. 400,000 views, 300,000 views, 500,000 views, right? You had that happen a couple of years ago, and now it's just so different. But, that's what I love about YouTube, because it's so, discoverability is there. And I, even our videos that we might have posted two, three, two, three years ago or so, those might take off later. Because the algorithm never stops working for you.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't. But even for me, I haven't posted a YouTube long-form video, I think, in roughly a year. I think my team or something posted one somehow. I don't know where they got it from. It was like a conference speech or something like that. But when I look at my YouTube page, we recently started posting long-form videos. And I posted two in the last, uh, two weeks. I'll post another one tomorrow. Um, and then, it was five months ago, and everything else was a year plus. Alright? The one from five months ago got 66,000 views. It was me speaking at some event, based on the screenshot, I'm guessing, I'm pretty sure, though. The last two were in a studio. And my YouTube channel died down to like five, six hundred thousand views per month.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  And if I look at March, I should hit over a hundred thousand, I mean, over a million back again, and it should keep climbing back up.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  I'm using Mr. Beast's view stats tool. It shows you're up. This is, I think this data is a little delayed. Yours is probably more up to date, but it shows eight hundred ninety-one K in the last twenty-eight days, and you're up ninety-five percent. So you're, you're, you're up probably even more than that.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  But in the last twenty-eight days, I only started posting two weeks ago.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I'm looking at your sub count, like the way it's, it's moving, look, it's, it's moving in like,

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  pretty significantly, right? Um, your last video was a two out of ten, um, which is a, a number two out of the last ten videos and ninety-five thousand views. You know what? It says SEO will be dead by the end of twenty twenty-five. Um, we have the RIP SEO video did around the same. And then your video on, um, I think AI. How did that one do overall with views? Is that one still growing?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  It's still growing.

• 3:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, dude, your monthly views according to, look, it's, it's a, it's a hockey stick. It's, it's steep.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Check this out. Hard work paying off. Publishing more content has helped your channel grow with eighty-seven views. So this is the last twenty-eight days. Eric's looking at the screen, nine hundred and forty-nine thousand views, right?

• 3:38Speaker 00

  How much money? I see how much money. Guys, you made thirty-five hundred dollars.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  I just started turning on ads. So then, look, look right here. This was February seventeenth, roughly halfway through. Cause it's been roughly two weeks. Barely any views. Most of the views that have been, have came from the last two weeks. Cause they publish content. That was really the only difference. I started publishing long form videos.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Your AI video here, um, three hundred sixty-five K views and still climbing. Like it's, it's, it's not slowing down. You see that?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then my subscriber growth, which is mainly from the last two weeks, twenty-four thousand plus subscribers. My ad revenue, uh, three thousand five hundred and twelve dollars. Uh, I turned it on for all videos a few days ago.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Are you gonna keep going?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  With content?

• 4:20Speaker 00

  On YouTube.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  See, I like, cuz cuz now it's like, I'm just putting myself in your shoes, like, oh, this slot machine feels good. I'm gonna keep pulling this slot machine.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  It's not really a slot machine. Maybe, I I think the ad revenue can get to like fifteen, twenty thousand dollars a month, pretty fast.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  But even then.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  All that, all that matters is, will this, will this drive more leads and more?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I don't think it'll drive a ton of leads.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  But no, no, you said primarily this was for brand awareness.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Level, yeah. And I think it'll definitely do that.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  I think it'll definitely do that. And that's the goal cuz I'm trying to speak less at events. And I still am, but if someone has a large event.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  I will go, like, the one I was doing in Arizona, it wasn't large from a headcount. But imagine five hundred people in the audience, all B two B companies, uh, all publicly traded or private equity owned. And most of them generate hundreds of millions a year in revenue, if not billions of dollars a year. It's like, perfect audience.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  You know, speaking back, going back to the event, we're talking about, um, so guess how big? This is one of the things that we workshop. How big do you think the ABM industry is?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  In revenue for software? Or how much people are spending on account-based marketing?

• 5:33Speaker 00

  For software.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  For software? Two billion a year, three billion?

• 5:37Speaker 00

  Exactly. So about, about two billion, right? Um, and how big do you think the B two B industry is overall?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Just general B two B?

• 5:46Speaker 00

  General, just super general, broad.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  I don't know how many trillions, but it's well into the trillions.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  Twenty trillion.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  And so it's like, you know, for us, it's like, okay, well, let's attack ABM first, let's nail that. Cuz there are some players doing a couple hundred million in in ABM. Um, then we can always expand if we want to later, but, um, that's, that's.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  It's a big enough market.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a big enough market. And and I think, you know, the the TAM thing can't be, um, overstated enough. Because it it does matter a lot. Because I remember, we talked about, we joked about this cuz I remember I had that SEO tool, Click Flow. And there's no TAM for that.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  No. So, so.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  It's just like ad agencies. I don't have the number, but the amount of money that companies spend on ad agencies a year have to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Well, I'll tell you how big the services industry is, and this isn't just for agencies, but the overall services industry. Um, SaaS is like three hundred billion, right? Um, services is, I I saw this graph from Menlo VC, um, it's ten trillion.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  I believe it.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, so.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  And when you're talking about services, you're not talking about.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  I'm not talking about like plumbing or whatever. I'm talking about like how these B two B.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  You're talking about Accenture, McKinsey, consulting, accounting firms, all that stuff.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. So do you wanna?

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Let's go for it. I'm curious on, well, I already have my own two cents on what Trump has been doing amazing since he got into office, specifically from a marketing standpoint. And I'm not saying the marketing is accurate or inaccurate. I'm just talking about the one thing, if I had to pick what he's done the best in marketing has been what they call MAGA minute, I believe it's called.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Every week, they give a one minute update to the population of the world, not just US. They publish it online. And people can end up seeing, here's everything that they accomplished this week. And the reason I think this is brilliant is, most people, including me, don't understand politics. They don't really have like in-depth knowledge on the matters or what's happening. So you get a minute update. And this is the reason why I caveat it with, I'm not saying it's accurate or inaccurate. I don't know if the stuff is actually inaccurate or accurate. I do know for a matter of fact, and I'll put this as a fact. If they say like, Apple is now investing $500 billion, well, a year ago before they were saying that he was investing

• 8:02Speaker 01

  300 billion or four, whatever the amount was. So they're increasing, but they're not all of a sudden investing 500 billion new money. It was more so they're adding to what they were investing. So what is the net gain? I don't know. And people can believe whether things are accurate or inaccurate. And I'm not saying he's doing a bad or a good job, or he's lying or telling the truth. I don't want to go there. It's more so the concept of updating the general population and what a president does each and every single week is.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  I I think it's important. We elect these people and we don't know what they're doing. Now, in the long run, I think somehow they need a vet what is being said on what they do on a weekly basis. Um, but I think that is a really uh, smart thing that they're doing. I've never seen that being done before. Everything is usually behind doors, like seeing the uh, Zelensky, uh, you know.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  Fight.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Fight.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  It was entertaining. I don't know if it's quote unquote presidential on either side. Um, you know, some of these things, I think it's good for the public to see. I think some of these things they probably should keep behind closed doors, uh, but I'm not a politician. Uh, but from a marketing standpoint, I think it's amazing awareness and PR. But what you're gonna do is you're gonna be polarizing when you do some of these tactics. Other than the weekly updates, assuming the weekly, if the weekly updates are a hundred percent factual, I don't think it'll be really as polarizing. But people can skew things however they want, good or bad. And I'm not saying Trump is good or bad. I'm just saying people can do whatever they want in marketing.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  So what I'll say is, the one thing Trump has done since he came into office is he's blitzing you with all. Like you don't even know what to react to. There's so many things coming at you.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  It's like all of a sudden, Stargate over here. All of a sudden, oh, TSMC today. Um, okay, yeah, we're, we're gonna build the factories, uh, one hundred billion dollars. We're gonna build factories in Arizona. Um, okay, executive order here, executive order here. Okay, Doge this. And then it's like thing after thing after thing. And then, and also at the same time, he's answering a ton of questions. He's just, he's, he has boundless energy and I think his family has said that about him where he's, all he does is work, right? Um, and so to me, I feel like it's almost a form of, hey, I'm doing all these things, but I'm also gonna confuse you. And you guys can't react as quickly. I'm just gonna blitz you hard. Um, and so obviously he, he has a lot of um, political enemies too. And so he's blitzing hard with um, the, all the,

• 10:37Speaker 00

  the MAGA minute stuff that he's doing in there, the Doge stuff that's happening. And um, it's all, it's all. If he's a master of anything, he's a master of entertainment. He knows how to pull your strings. He knows that he has to be polarizing. And if you, the more polarizing is, the more people talk about him, right? The more deals he's doing with people, whatever, when he, you don't have the cards, Zelensky. You don't have the cards. I have the cards. You don't have the cards, right? It's all a spectacle. That's what it is at the end of the day. And so I don't think there's been any time in my life where politics has been so, I guess I'd be dared to say entertaining.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  And you can, you can love or hate Trump, right? We're not saying we support either side. But it's entertaining, right? And it actually gets other countries to talk about this stuff too. And so I think if I had to just grade him on his marketing, 10 out of 10, dude. I, I like, I, I'm not going to grade him on the politics and his effectiveness. I'm just talking.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Totally agree. I think on the marketing, 10 out of 10. On whether it should be done or not, or whether it's right or wrong. That's a whole separate conversation.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, and.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  And neither of us are saying we're one way or another. We're both pretty in the middle when it comes to politics.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  And plus, by the way, um, the dose tracking thing too, that accountability, sure, they made some errors, um, in terms of like how they track the numbers, but to have that transparency, I didn't even know before, it, it caused me to think differently. I'm like, oh, we, we can hold the politicians accountable? I can know where my tax dollars are going? I didn't know I could do this. I, oh, we're going to hold the government accountable like to, we, we now can, we can see what they're doing? That's kind of, that's interesting. See, the fact that we're talking about it right now is marketing.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Dude, Warren Buffett had the solution for the economy and the government for a long time.

• 12:27Speaker 00

  What?

• 12:27Speaker 01

  And his version of it was really simple. Operate in a deficit, you can't run for reelection. And you want to add to it. If you started paying these people like you can get wages working in the corporate world, saying, "Hey, you're a politician. You can't trade stocks. You're gonna get a base salary of four to five million a year and with bonuses you can get up to 15. That's expensive with all the politicians we have, but it's cheaper than burning, mismanaging the money. And if you just take the Warren Buffett philosophy and you just did that, it would solve a lot of problems.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  I also think there's a, there should, not to be ageist or anything, but there probably should be an age cap, uh, age cap. Um, at the end of the day, I, I think you probably want people that are really energetic and really mentally sharp. Um, and I just think if you're in your eighties or so, um, it's a little tougher. So.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yes. And, and, and to keep in mind, Eric and I are really neutral. Um, I don't think, you know, we're ecstatic either way. Um, we just want everyone to be in a better place and we're both.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  We love our country. We're, we're, we just want things to go well. That's all. And I think everyone could be aligned on that.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this is like the same thing, right? Like if, if someone told me, "Hey Neil, you pay a little bit more taxes and all these other people get helped out who don't have healthcare and stuff like that." Eric and I would do it, right? We're all for, uh, helping out people. We don't, we're not saying we're the richest, but if we can do anything to help out others, we're all for it.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Um, all right. Next topic.

• 13:58Speaker 00

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• 14:35Speaker 00

  So you put here, "The biggest marketing mistake large companies have been making." over the last few years or has anyone built a large ad agency without M and A I'm interested in both of those

• 14:43Speaker 01

  yeah let's start with the first one uh the first one was I remember the second one dude I'm blinking for

• 14:51Speaker 00

  the biggest

• 14:51Speaker 01

  oh yeah biggest marketing mistake dude the biggest marketing mistake that I'm seeing a lot of corporations make when the economy started shifting a few years ago and the stock market started going down a lot of corporations started cutting their brand budgets and even though you and I are performance marketers were big believers that you need to get a brand out there like Nike wouldn't be what it is today if it didn't have all those brand dollars same with American Express or even Tesla their brand has gone out there they've done you could say Tesla doesn't do a lot of advertising and marketing but they do in their own way similar to Apple and they are spending money from you know the launches to the events to having their showrooms these are all forms of marketing

• 15:32Speaker 01

  and if you don't spend on brand building it bites you in the butt it just takes a few years to bite you in the butt and we're seeing it now with corporations a lot have started cutting back on their brand dollars and they're not as top of mind anymore and because they're not top of mind people are looking and switching to alternatives much more than we're seeing before um and you're noticing it too in their brand queries the companies that have doubled down because we have data as an ad agency similar to you they double down on brand marketing within the timeframe where the economy started getting bad we've seen their brand queries go through the roofs and at an exponential rate not because they invested in it but because they invested in it well everyone started pulling back so they

• 16:16Speaker 01

  they didn't just maintain they doubled down in an environment where a lot of people started pulling back and the people that pull back we're seeing them exponentially get hurt right now

• 16:26Speaker 00

  here's the thing I think you and I again you you said this earlier but we come from a performance marketing background I thought early in the days when I was learning marketing that it was all about performance marketing brand doesn't matter anymore but what you actually learn is that once you're you start to cap out because every channel you can cap out there's only so many um there's only so many so much reach or impressions you can get right um you start to Cap out and if you you still have more to spend you there's still more to give then that's when you start to consider branding at the at the base level right um but there's like these brands aren't stupid Coca Cola is not stupid Nike is not stupid and so um why does Gary V like to say that the the Super Bowl ad is still the best spend because you can still get in front of people for eight million bucks you can get in front of 120 million people

• 17:12Speaker 00

  still good spend that's all that's all branding spend

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah uh the my problem with the Super Bowl is they make you buy media outside of Super Bowl so it becomes

• 17:19Speaker 00

  You said it was like 27 minimum

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Uh it depends each year but I believe a few years ago they were making you buy Olympic ad spots which then really started getting expensive

• 17:28Speaker 00

  Yeah but bottom line is um and I don't I mean which large companies come to mind that have been making this mistake of not doing brand

• 17:37Speaker 01

  A lot it's we see we see it heavily in the B to B category some of these massively publicly traded organizations

• 17:43Speaker 00

  Yeah alright guys so that is it for today please don't forget to rate view subscribe and we will catch you tomorrow