Can you actually get big business deals from YouTube?, and 1.2M tweet with nothing to show

15 Oct 2024 · 20 min

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Podcast Summary: Marketing School - Episode #2841

Hosts

  • Neil Patel: Co-founder of NP Digital
  • Eric Siu: Co-founder of Single Grain

Episode Title Can you actually get big business deals from YouTube?, and 1.2M tweet with nothing to show

Episode Overview In this episode, Neil and Eric discuss the potential of YouTube for generating significant business deals, the discrepancies between social media impressions and actual business conversions, and the costs and returns on investment (ROI) related to marketing events.

Key Discussions

Can You Get Big Business Deals from YouTube? (00:00 - 07:25)

  • Initial Skepticism:
  • Neil expresses skepticism about the ability to secure large enterprise deals solely through YouTube.
  • Reference to George Gammon’s success in raising investor dollars through YouTube.
  • George Gammon's Insights:
  • Claims significant monthly views (3-4 million) on his channels.
  • Notes that views have led to connections with accredited investors.
  • Emphasizes the importance of quality content over sensationalized titles.
  • Contrasting Opinions:
  • Neil argues that true enterprise deals come from traditional methods, such as targeting pension funds and institutional investors, rather than through YouTube content.

The Reality of Social Media Impressions (07:25 - 17:18)

  • Case Study:
  • Jacob Greenfield shares a tweet that achieved 1.2 million views but resulted in zero business conversions.
  • Discussion highlights the gap between social media engagement and meaningful business outcomes.
  • Cautionary Perspective:
  • Eric and Neil advise caution regarding the assumption that a large audience will automatically translate to business success.
  • They stress the importance of targeting the right audience rather than merely aiming for high impression counts.

Political Biases in Social Media (17:18 - End)

  • Platform Bias:
  • The hosts discuss potential political biases of platforms like YouTube and Instagram, citing instances of account suspensions without clear reasons.
  • Eric shares a personal experience of his YouTube account being suspended for alleged deceptive content.
  • Adaptation of Platforms:
  • Discussion on how platforms may skew left or right politically and the impact of public sentiment and events on their policies.
  • The need for brands to understand the landscape of the platforms they use for marketing.

Key Takeaways

  • YouTube as a Tool for Business:
  • While YouTube can connect creators with potential investors or customers, relying on it solely for large enterprise deals may be misguided.
  • Measuring Success Beyond Impressions:
  • High engagement metrics do not guarantee business success; it’s crucial to track conversions and quality interactions.
  • Understanding Social Media Dynamics:
  • Awareness of political dynamics and biases is essential when leveraging social media for marketing and brand messaging.

Conclusion The episode emphasizes the need for marketers to look beyond surface metrics and understand the deeper implications of their marketing strategies. It encourages a more nuanced approach to using platforms like YouTube for business development and stresses the importance of traditional methods for securing enterprise deals.

Additional Resources

  • Visit [Marketing School](https://www.marketingschool.io) for more insights and subscribe to their YouTube channel for additional content.
  • Follow Neil Patel and Eric Siu on social media for updates and further discussions.

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Transcript

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0:00Can you actually get big business deals from YouTube? uh so you have a note of george gammon yeah you had said before we had talked about this on a podcast and i believe you had said no you can't get big businesses deals from from youtube correct or incorrect i don't think you can get large enterprise deals from youtube yeah so then i got these text messages from george and first i thought i did something wrong um george just context george gammon he's amazing he's got a great youtube channel and you've seen his stuff Remember at the Beverly Hills event, he spoke on macroeconomics and all that.

0:34But what is he doing a YouTube channel for, to raise investor dollars? He's got a YouTube channel. I don't know if it's a raised investor dollars, but let me just, let me just, I'm going to say some of his points over here. So he's got two significant YouTube channels. He gets millions of views a month. He's like, listen to your last podcast, LOL. And George is a friend, guys. So he says, number one, usually the RC channels, Rebel Capitalist and George Gammon combined get three to four million views a month. You guys are looking at the last 28 days when I was traveling and doing very few vids.

1:05So I guess we had looked into his views. Notice, he's like, number two, notice average number of views per video on George Gammon channel. Three, Kenny, who's the guy we talked about, the YPO that has 3.2 billion in real estate. He's like, Kenny has a massive uptick in accredited investors due to his increased views, which is what he's after. Four, the majority of people we have in our 50K a year mastermind have come from my clickbait videos, quote unquote. and he number five this is probably the most relevant one i get a lot of calls from billion dollar hedge fund managers all the time who watch my whiteboard manager uh whiteboard videos although the big money pension funds aren't watching the guys managing their money are and then he mentioned like a couple other things he's like point is what matters most is the quality of the content the idea serious people aren't going to watch videos if the title thumbnail doesn't sound like a lecture at harvard is simply wrong and then he sent me a bunch of stats but where's his enterprise deals getting calls from hedge fund managers doesn't mean you're generating a lot of revenue from fair point fair point yeah 50 grand masterminds is not enterprise deals we should leave the 50 grand masterminds out but if the the billion dollar hedge funds are leading to big money for him which i don't think is the case that would be something i do think it's either i do think it's relevant for kenny on the massive uptick in credit investors i think that one that's not enterprise either that's just getting like that's like grant cardone getting people to put in i didn't say enterprise though this title says big business deals so big is very subjective none of those are big business deals.

2:24Accredited investors is not a business deal. If he's getting volume of accredited investors, I think in aggregate, that's significant for his business. All right. Would you agree that when you want to raise a hundred million dollars, you don't want it from a hundred or a thousand people. You're just trying to get a few checks. Yes, that's fair. And I doubt he is getting majority of his money if he's getting actually one or two people. I can't say that because the guy that works on his YouTube channel, Josh, he does tell me that some of these people are heavy hitters when it comes to the checks.

2:56But what is a heavy hitter? That's all relative. Hundreds of millions. So they're giving him hundreds of millions of dollars? No, these guys are worth hundreds of millions. Yeah, I'm talking about what is he getting? I don't know. I don't know. I just don't believe it. This is like when my dad says, well, the information in politics is incomplete. I'm like, yeah, but that's like anything. We have incomplete information. We're calling this out, right? So George says here, Neil sounded very skeptical that the content strategies on my channel's, Kenny's channels or Jeff's channel would yield leads from anyone qualified to write a big check.

3:24I think that's what I can agree with them there. Occasionally, you might get it, but it's not as predictable as some of the other stuff we've talked about. Well, I look at it this way. Can they end up raising money from this? Yes. Can they become millionaires from this? And they probably already are millionaires or maybe even more. Sure. But if you look at the majority of the people who raise money and have made a killing, They do it traditional ways in which they're going after pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors, big corporations. It has nothing to do with creating content.

3:56Look at the KKRs. Look at the Carlisles. Look at the Blackstones. They all make more money than these guys. They make more money than me, too. And none of them create YouTube content. Dude, should we talk about, since we're talking about YouTube, should we talk about how if YouTube and Instagram are playing political favorites? Let's talk about it. Sure. So Farouk tweets this. He says, since the Donald Trump announcement and interview, IG shut down the Rug Radio and FOMO Hour accounts without the right to appeal. So those are his accounts. Those are his media accounts. I'm lost. You just said Donald Trump announcement.

4:28Can you give some context here? Let me slow down. So I don't – this was September 28, 2024. So he must have had some announcement around – I don't know if it was crypto or something. But let's just say he had some type of announcement, right? So since the Donald Trump announcement and interview, IG shut down the Rug Radio and FOMO Hour accounts without the right to appeal. YouTube shut down my personal account for spam, scam, and deceptive content given the crypto nature of it. Say what you want about Elon Musk's ex, but at least I'm not getting shut down for conducting an interview as independent media.

5:01So I don't know what the context is of this, but I think it's interesting that this is happening. This isn't the first time I've seen something like this where IG or YouTube would shut something down. They might have a point that maybe there's something that's scammy or deceptive. But what do you think? I do think platforms lean one way or another. They can lean to the left or the right. It's very rare to find a platform that's in the middle. Does it mean they're going to shut a lot of people down? I'm not saying that. But does that mean every once in a while, things get shut down? Sure. Great example of this is Zuck said, hey, the government put pressure during COVID.

5:37And he adjusted a lot of the content or censored. you know i'm paraphrasing here and he regrets his decision now look i think x is more right-leaning um ig youtube are more left-leaning and you also have to look at the employee base too kind of how things are structured um elon like eliminated a lot of people um and and then he kind of like said hey this is how we're going to do things and then you know that's that but um you know i think i don't think there's necessarily like good or bad i think you just have to understand the game that you're playing. Yeah. And you got to know the platforms you're targeting and the people on those platforms.

6:15Although I do think things are adjusting in which, uh, when we see, when you looked at this election cycle, a lot of people previously were afraid to say that they are willing to back Trump. Now more people are vocal. And I think you have a much more divided world than we used to before. And it's not just the U S it's a lot of countries. I think the platforms will adjust. The reason I say that is when you have more of a divide, they got to adapt to the people. The last thing the platforms want to do is alienate. Doesn't matter what they think politically, but they're not going to want to alienate 50 % of the world and lose a ton of revenue.

6:57Agency owners. If you want to grow faster, my partner, Neil Patel and I, we are hosting live agency owner workshops in Beverly Hills, and you're going to learn how to get more clients. You're going to learn how to take yourself out of the day-to-day. You're going to learn how to recruit the right people and you're going to be hanging out with like-minded people such as yourself. So if you want to learn more, just go to marketingschool.io slash agency. Again, it's marketingschool.io slash agency and we'll see you on the other side. Now, I want to move over to this one. This guy, Jacob Greenfield says, this is the tweet that got 1.2 million views and drove how many conversions?

7:29Zero conversions, right? So he said, 1.2 million people saw my tweet, 37k people liked it. 1 ,700 people visited my profile. 557 people followed me. Eight subscribed to my newsletter. First link in his profile. 51 people visited my company's website. Second link in the profile. Zero scheduled a call on the company's website. Zero reached out via emails or DMs, right? So it's like, it's great that you're getting all these impressions, right? Sure. It's great that like maybe one of these shorts rips, right? But at the end of the day, what do we actually get from it? Most of the time, it's not that much, right?

7:59I was doing a podcast interview the other day that I think you indirectly set up with Atrefs, Tim Solo. And Tim was interviewing me. He's like, dude, Elon tweeted one of your old tweets. Did you bait him? I was like, no. He's like, what did it do for your business? I was like, nothing. I'm like, got tons of text messages being like, Elon Musk tweeted you. But I was like, I'm like, who cares? And I'm not saying who cares. I'm not saying I hate Elon Musk or love him or anything like that. I think the guy's an amazing entrepreneur, but it's more so it didn't drive any business. So I don't really care.

8:32Yep. And this is funny. Rob Walling, I think who founded Drip, he says, build an audience, they said. It'll bring customers, they said. And so we're just saying, I mean, proceed with caution. Sure, you might produce something that gets a lot of reach, but ultimately what matters at the end of the day is are you reaching the right people? So I was talking to my team a few days ago because I've been jet lagged for a while now. So you don't listen to me? You don't take time shifter? You don't sleep at the right times? It's too hard because I go through too many countries at once. Where did you go?

9:05Boston. Uh-huh. Then. Boston was with me. Boston was with you. Uh-huh. Then Hong Kong. Okay. Malaysia, Singapore, Atlanta. Okay, that's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm back. I got a week break. Then Dubai, Hong Kong, Atlanta. Okay, that stuff. No, not Atlanta. After Hong Kong, I go to Park City. And then we go to Germany. uh i although i have a few days of break but yeah yeah yeah yeah so dude i totally blamed on what i was talking that's okay that's okay no i had a good oh yeah okay so i was talking to my one of my marketing guys about our plan for next year and he focuses on some ads he focuses on maintaining and building our community and i was speaking in hong not hong kong i was speaking at well i spoke there too but i was speaking in the last leg of my trip was in singapore and i was like dude i had a better idea he's like what i was like how much do you spend on paid ads a month and i don't know what the number was but i believe it was somewhere around 20 000 i'm rounding because i know it wasn't exactly 20 000 but plus or minus a few thousand dollars and this is specifically for ads all right and i don't know what the roi that we generate from ads i know he tracks it But I was like, dude, I got a better way to generate ROI.

10:27I'll just take 10 grand more. And he's just like, what? So when I look at our corporation, forget how many offices we have. The main regions for us are Americas, EMA, right? E-M-E-A and APAC. So we split it up into three territories because there's people who handle all of them. So a guy named Dan handles APAC, a guy named Mark handles E-M-E-A and Mike handles Americas and everyone else also rolls up into mic. So I was just like, I get paid to speak at events. A lot of them that we've been choosing over the last few years, I don't get paid to speak at. And some of them actually cost us money. Well, we had to pay for our own flight and own hotel.

11:11Sometimes we're even paying the event, but they're bringing our ideal customer and we're closing businesses. We're finally seeing the fruits of our labor. Like it's a one to two year payoff period. So the moment you're speaking at some of these events with enterprise brands, because they have cycles, a lot of the contracts have to go through procurement. So you're talking about, you know, they have to release RFPs. It just takes a while. I was like, once a month, why don't I speak in a conference from one of these regions with our ideal customers? Who cares if they don't pay? And I spoke at the one in Singapore, 500 people in the audience.

11:46majority of them were publicly traded companies that were in multiple uh countries and languages so i was like it's fishing you know what is it called shooting fish in a barrel shooting fish in a barrel or you like to use fishing with dynamite so you don't even have your your phrase in like programs right now dude like i'm so off right now this morning i was getting my daughter ready i started putting on i saw them they're looking at like they kept trying they kept looking at my car because i hadn't gotten out yet yeah and i started putting my son's clothes on my daughter because i was like just that messed up from jet lab but either way going back i was just like you know what if you look at the cost for a flight business class and hotel it's around let's round and say 10 grand per event if i did that once uh once a month per region so apac ema and americas that's three a month do that 12 times a year for each region.

12:43So now I'm at 36, right? You're looking at around$360 ,000 in expenses. And I bet you within two years, we'll get a crap ton of global RFPs from large corporations. Yeah. So it makes it worth it. I think it's going to make it worth it. I don't know if it's going to actually pan out that way because A, my team has to get me one a month, but they're working on it. And I spoke at the a Singapore event. I went, well, my, my APAC leader, Dan, he brought together the guy who's throwing their Hong Kong event in literally, you know, a few weeks from now, which I'll go back for. And he's like, oh, they're throwing an event in Hong Kong.

13:21I was like, dude, I would love to go. He's like, yeah, we'd love to have you. I'm like, yeah, you know, uh, can I get a speaking spot? He's like, oh no, we would just get you a ticket and attend. I'm like, I can't, I can't go just for that because yeah, it doesn't make sense. It's too expensive for me, right? Flight wise. Your team sources all these speaking things for you or most of them for you. Most of them. Yeah. So then he's like, oh, okay. And then he talked to his boss. She came back and she's like, oh my God, I heard you'd be willing to speak. And Hong Kong's like, yeah, but there's no speaking spots.

13:48You know, I'm like, but I appreciate you guys, you know, offering me a free ticket and stuff. She's like, no, no, we'll make you the opening keynote. We'll move things around. I was like, great. She's like, can you really make it? Or are you just pulling my chain? I'm like, no, I can really make it. So confirmed on the spot. The next day, she sent an email confirming again, and I'll end up going. Cost to go, probably 10 grand, including hotel.

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16:41Shopify lets you easily create email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they are, whether they're scrolling or strolling. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into... with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash marketing school. Go to shopify.com slash marketing school, shopify.com slash marketing school. The good events with enterprise? Most of the time. You're coming out of pocket. So they're like, okay, you can come speak, but you got to pay for your flight. You got to pay for your accommodations.

17:16You might have to pay to speak in some cases? We usually don't ever have to pay to speak. Sometimes we have to pay to get it organized. So in some of these regions, there's marketing associations. Think of like the American Marketing Association, but for Asia or whatever it may be. So sometimes they'll be like, hey, you're doing an event in Brazil or Canada or Singapore or UK. We're going to bring together all of our VPs and CMOs of these kinds of companies. And we'd be like, yes, these are ideal customers. They're like, cool, we'll do this event. It's exclusively your event partnered with us.

17:49You guys speak, we'll have food and everything. This will cost you 20,$30 ,000 plus you're paying for your own travel. Yeah. And they'll put it together. They're like, we'll organize it, but you got to pay for everything. Correct. But that is more like our own event. It's very rare that I'm paying to speak at a conference that's going for two, three days and anyone can come. I think it's good for everyone to understand because that's the same, same case for me, at least for being speaking at events um usually they'll cover things and and pay um but if you're like doing your own event yeah it makes sense that you should pay yeah but you're going right now to somewhere in thailand okay you're getting paid honestly do you think you're gonna pick up business from it don't know i honestly haven't dude i haven't even like and this is not good for me to say because those of you that are gonna see i don't even like i haven't even looked through the notes and everything on like what I was supposed to do.

18:38But chances are it's more SMBs than it is enterprise corporations. Yeah, they're like eight figure businesses. They're not enterprise. They're not mid-market enterprise businesses. Yeah, because it's also in a really random location. Yeah. I'll tell you strategically why I'm doing it is because the people I'm going to be hanging out with there, some of them buy businesses, right? And there's like different angles. And plus our mutual friend Patrick Campbell is going to be hanging out there too. so it's always good to see him. And then there's more that we talked about offline but we'll leave that alone.

19:10That was the primary thing. Eric is single. No, you actually can't say that. That's true, you're not single. But Eric was... You should stop. We should just continue to the next one before you dig a deeper ditch. All right, that's a good place to end. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, read, subscribe and go to marketingschool.io slash agency if you want to learn more about the Agency Owners Association. where Neil and I will help you get more clients and grow your agency. Goodbye.

From the publisher
In episode #2841, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss the potential of YouTube as a platform for generating business deals, the political biases of social media platforms, the reality of social media impressions versus actual business conversions, and understanding costs associated with events and the ROI of such investments. 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) Can you actually get big business deals from YouTube? (07:25) 1.2M tweet with nothing to show (17:18) 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? Please let us know in the comments below 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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