What Partnering Can Be a Better Form of Marketing?

In episode #3015, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss the value of partner marketing and the balance leaders need to strike between teaching and doing. They also cover the rising costs of podcast sponsorships and wrap up with a look at the ethical challenges in viral marketing. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) The Power of Partner Marketing (04:34) Teaching vs. Doing in Leadership (07:39) High-Stakes Podcast Sponsorships (10:05) Viral Marketing and Ethical Boundaries 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 00

  You have this one over here, which I think is interesting, on why partner marketing can be a better form of marketing. Because I was just thinking about this. We're both speaking at HubSpot's Inbound, right? I'm like, huh, for Carrot, I wanna, I wanna talk to more of these integration partners at HubSpot's Inbound. So I'm like, I'm gonna set up, I'm gonna set up a dinner, right?

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so dude, I got this idea from our last recording session. It was either the last one or the one before. And we're talking about getting customers from these LLMs. And I was telling you, you're like, yeah, you're seeing it too, but we're talking about two different things. I was talking about people working at like a perplexity recommending our agency. You're talking about getting mentioned in like a chat GPT or perplexy when someone's doing a search. And then chat GPT recommending you through their website, not actually an employee referring you. And then you were talking about, uh, we were talking about Scrounge, Profound, and others. And I was like, let me hit some of these guys up. So I started emailing the founders of these solutions and I was like, I should find one and just partner with them.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Because even though we ourselves have been developing AI products, and we've been doing AI products since, I don't know, maybe two years ago, three max. Um, I don't know when we first came out with our AI writer. I know February of 2025, we had a big meeting in Brazil and we were discussing all the AI stuff that we were creating, including like, uh, tracking on LLMs and stuff like that. And just because we have some of these features.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Our product isn't based on a profound or a scrunch or a lot of these other solutions. We're basing it off of what our customers want, and it's a very different customer segment. I'm assuming you agree with this, right? What we're doing with Uber Sess and Ansible Public, you've seen some of the designs. We're not trying to do what they do. We're trying to help SMB and a roadmap. I don't know what their roadmap is. And I don't even have like a login myself to scrunch or profound or any of those solutions. I don't think our dev team does it either. But more so, we're building stuff for how can we help SMB from soup to nuts?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Not just learn what's happening on the LLMs and all the channels out there. Cause we're big on the search everywhere optimization, like you and I have talked about with YouTube traditional. But also help them execute and actually get results in a way that's as automated as possible. And a small chunk, a fraction of a percent, but our user base is high. I think we have over five million users on our software tools will be ideal user for a scrunch or profound or someone like that. I was like, wait, we should partner with them and send them revenue. And we should try to work with them and get revenue from their end. And I was like, why not?

• 3:28Speaker 00

  So how many deals have you done?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  I have calls set up this week and next week.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, see, see, sometimes when you talk about this stuff, idea babies spawn.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm like, let me just email. And I just start Googling these people's email addresses like at and nine o'clock at night while I'm in bed and I'm just shooting off.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  Dude, you know what I do now? So I run perplexity labs, which does nine minute research. I was like, tell me who are all the people carrot should partner up with at HubSpot? And then find me the contact information too. And then you could probably set up with chat GPT agents now where it'll find the contacts. And then it's connected with your Gmail because you can do the, the connection, right? And you can email these people and just set it up and just do like a, do like a private dinner. Cause I'm gonna, I'm gonna arrive on the second and then stay there till the sixth. So, yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, so and that's the move too. I'm gonna throw dinner. Neil will probably be there. I usually throw dinners when I when I speak at HubSpot. So that's what we'll do.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, why not?

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'll be there at a dinner. I'll probably be spending time with my niece and nephew.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Oh, that's right, cuz this time it's local for you.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, local-ish.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Local-ish.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, alright.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, my team's like, how long do you want there? And they'll be like, what do you wanna do with the hotel? I'm like, none.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  You're usually in and out, yeah. So you're just gonna arrive? Are you packing all your speaking into one day and just going to?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I'm trying to and then spend more time at my sister's place.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Got it, cool. So maybe, guys, maybe dinner. We'll see. Yeah, alright.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Eric will still do a dinner though.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  I will for sure do a dinner, yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm bad with the dinners, even at the Miami event. You're like, do you wanna come? Just leave to the airport and then I'm like, it's okay.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Your dinners aren't your thing, so yeah.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  No.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, alright, pick one. We got two more to do.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Alright, let's talk about, uh...

• 5:11Speaker 00

  Okay, can we? Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. You pick, you pick.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Go for it.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  Okay, so, I mean, this one's interesting. So here's the quote, and I don't think you're gonna agree with this. If you're not spending ninety percent of your time teaching, you're not doing your job. Do you know who this quote comes from? Comes from Jim Senegal, the founder of Costco, and also Leonardo DiVincio, who is the Luxottica founder.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  What's Luxottica?

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Luxottica owns like Ray-Ban and all these companies. So Mark Zuckerberg paid three billion, I think, for three percent, or maybe a billion, something like that, to buy. He's passed away since, but like phenomenal with M and A. He bought all these glasses companies, like, and, you know, based in Italy. And then Jim Senegal, Costco, obviously, huge, right? So again, they're both, if you're not spending ninety percent of your time teaching, you're not doing your job. So they're very hands-on, very involved, and they're teaching people how to do things in their organization. So I thought it was an interesting quote.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if that's right. I know a lot of people, like, if you actually look at like Mark Zuckerberg, they say he himself, like, will actually just do work and focuses on not just operating, but actually doing. And then you have different management styles. Like, if you look at Elon, he gets his hands dirty instead of teaching. I think he's just going in there and actually doing it himself. Does it mean that Jim from Costco or the founder of Costco or Elon or Mark or you know, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates is right or wrong? I think it goes back to what we discussed earlier. When you're meeting up with these SaaS companies, there's many ways to get the same outcome and people just have to choose what's right for them.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  And even though like you and I teach, I don't think we spend 90% of our time teaching. It may look that way from the content that we push out and that's helped us build an audience, but I think we spend majority of our time doing.

• 6:59Speaker 00

  I think also to your point about people having different ways of being successful in business, there's also different ways of teaching too. Sometimes you do things and then I more often than not now will record a lot of the stuff and they're just just teach by doing sometimes. Sometimes I'll just get on the call with someone on a screen, record with them because I want to pass the knowledge on because that's much more scalable. And so in my mind, you know, what do I enjoy doing? Because people ask me, it's like, what are my life goals? I just love learning. I love doing and I love teaching, right? And that's like a self reinforcing thing. So I think people can have different definitions and I don't even know if Jim and Leonardo Di Vecchio are talking about the same thing here, but they both kind of ascribe to like just ultimately, I think what it comes down to is being involved and you're teaching in some way, shape or form.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  Maybe you're doing, maybe you're actually mentoring someone, but I do think maybe this comes down to involvement.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yes, and that's why when at my organization, it doesn't matter if it's a CMO or anyone in marketing or any division even sales, I expect people to be a player coach, especially executives. You not only have to go and do work yourself, but you gotta teach others and level them up and get them to perform better.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Yep. All right. Have you seen that this one business podcast charges $450,000 per episode?

• 8:14Speaker 01

  So you can't listen to an episode for free.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Sorry, sponsorships cost $450,000 to sponsor this podcast.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  I've never heard of that kind of sponsorship unless, because you said business podcast, unless it would be like a Joe Rogan or something like that.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  So click on the link. It's row 5754 here. I'm pulling it up right now, but this is the acquired podcast. So I'm looking at their media kit right now. And basically, when you look at the founders, this audience, it is.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  They have mostly entrepreneurs that listen to it, mostly CEOs, mostly entrepreneurs that listen to this, right? And you know, you have the CEO of LinkedIn, COO said, I love your podcast, I'm probably in for 80 hours. You have the chief product officer for Meta, I recommend you guys to friends and colleagues all the time. 20% of the audience is founders, executives 35%, technical operators 26%, capital ecosystem 21%, right? And when you scroll down, you look at the sponsorship cost, Neil, it shows you the packages, right? If you're looking for a presenting sponsorship in spring 2026, you're going to pay 1.875 million dollars for four episodes, and then a mid-roll is going to be 1.25 million dollars, and then the cost continue to jack up.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Fall 2026, mid-roll is going to be 1.5 million dollars, presenting sponsors 2.2 million dollars. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it. Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples, and conversations with marketing leaders, showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance, and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to Frictionless Growth Marketing wherever you get your podcasts.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Wait, so how much for, so for four episodes, it's a million bucks? That's what it shows here.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  So four episodes.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  That's in, it depends what season.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  But like, if you go into 2026, it's 1.5 for mid-roll, presenting is 2.2.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. Right now, if you and I wanted to go for fall, assuming this is a really good audience for us, right, we'd be paying 1 million dollars. So 250 grand an episode, and then it just continues to jack up. But this is like the pinnacle, I think, of podcast ads that does well. And this is nice, but I still like our businesses more.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yes, I don't like running a media company.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's tough and I think acquired has done a really good job. I think what I would do is try to look for episodes like if we're trying to podcast, do podcast ads. I know for a fact, a ton of founders listen to founders, but you can't buy ads on that one. Okay. I know a ton of founders, executives listen to Invest Like the Best. I know they listen to acquired. And so this is one of the situations where it's like, oh, the attention is there, but try to buy the underpriced attentions for maybe the up and comers. Unfortunately, founders and Invest Like the Best are not up and comers. Maybe you need to find some others that are up and comers. But 450 grand an episode, good job to them.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Yep. On a sad note, did you just see Hulk Hogan just passed away?

• 11:24Speaker 00

  He did?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  No way.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Cardiac arrest. Oh, that sucks.

• 11:28Speaker 00

  What?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, 71 years old.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  Hulk Hogan was a great marketer.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Great marketer.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  Or was it the WWE?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Uh, probably a combination of both. I think it was also his personality. I remember watching his show when I was a kid or much younger.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Thunder in Paradise?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  The one where he was on a boat?

• 11:44Speaker 01

  With his family.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  No, I didn't.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  He had like a reality TV show?

• 11:48Speaker 00

  It was like a Kardashians, but Hogan.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  And then he regrets passing up on the grill, like the George Foreman grill. I think they reached out to him earlier and that was one of his regrets in life.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  Dude, Hulk Hogan was The Rock and Stone Cold before The Rock and Stone Cold.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  So that's, that's sad. Okay, pick one more before we, uh, before we.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  All right, last one. Let's go with, uh, the Coldplay's affair. CEO daughter did something diabolical.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  Ah, okay, this is a good one. This is a good one. Okay, so do you want to explain what happened with the Coldplay? Just to say, if anybody's been living under The Rock, this happened like maybe a week ago, but.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  So the astronomer, I believe the astronomer CEO, uh, was at a Coldplay event, I believe it was in Australia.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Or wherever, somewhere like that. He had a picture of his head of HR or something, human resources. I forgot what department. I'm pretty sure it was HR.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  Not a picture, but you know the kiss cams when you're at the sports.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, kiss cam. And they were like hugging or, uh.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  You know, like a Titanic pose.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  And, uh, they turned away because they realized they were on camera and. Chris Martin, I believe his name is Coldplay, right? The singer? He said, either they're shy or they're having an affair.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  And turns, he was joking, right?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was joking, but it was an affair. It was an affair and they both have family.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Although, the CEO, I saw Instagram account with his daughter, but I'm like, he doesn't have a daughter. He only has two sons, if I'm not mistaken.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  Yep. So here's the deal. The daughter of the astronomer CEO racked up 100,000 followers and over 15 million views on TikTok overnight, right? But to your point, the only problem is the astronomer CEO doesn't have a daughter, right? So someone stole some girl's photos on Instagram and then told stories and made them go viral. And what happened was, this was really smart. They plugged all the stories. Everything eventually went towards a meditation app, right?

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Yes, I saw that.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  So this is diabolical marketing. So it's like, this is like, it's just some random girl here. It says, reconnecting with life after your dad's affair makes national news, right? And like, 3.5 million likes, 1158 comments, right? And then this one over here, 127k followers, 4.4 million likes, Mariana is her name. And then, like, it links to this, um, I think, load, download Copia. I guess Copia is the meditation thing? And you can see, I bet you're sobbing about this on a yacht or a PJ. I don't feel bad for rich people, right? She's like, hashtag true, but this person doesn't exist. And so, everything's gonna be okay. Breath work, please. I got the Copia app. It's letting me log every time I freak out, right? I'm manifesting so cute. So, basically, it was all made up and this person capitalized on the attention

• 14:22Speaker 00

  because everyone on the internet was talking about it. And sometimes you just have to be very fast on these things and creative.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Not the type of marketing that probably either of you or I would want to do, but...

• 14:32Speaker 00

  I'm just not that fast, so...

• 14:34Speaker 01

  It's not even that fast. It's just, uh, I think it's too deceitful.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  It is, it is, but you know, that's... I think if you're in your twenties, you're down to try stuff like this. I think in our twenties, we probably would have tried things like this, but it's just, um, we're a little older now, so it's not for us. Anyway, that's it for today, guys, and we'll see you tomorrow.