Tesla 20x'd Sales by Cutting 64 Clicks to 3

0:00Eric Siu:You know that feeling when the strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is you, and it's due tomorrow. Breeze Assistant can help. It works right inside HubSpot. Drafting campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice. All grounded in your actual customer data. So you don't just create content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com,

0:28Neil Patel:the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

0:31Eric Siu:By the way, Neil, I want to tell you a story here. I've been reading this book from the guy that was a president of Tesla. I think his name's John McNeil. The book's called The Algorithm, okay? It talks about the Elon algorithm. But there's a chapter I went through where he talks about how Tesla 20X sales on their site. So here's how they did it. Basically, it took 64 clicks to buy a vehicle on the Tesla site. 30 of those clicks were just signing loan documents, Neil, like going through a bunch of different things, right? And so what they did with this algorithm, there's five steps to the algorithm.

1:05Eric Siu:Question, delete, simplify, speed up and automate. I'll say it again. Question. So question all the requirements, delete whatever seems to be stupid. You probably should be over deleting and then you should be adding back later, right? Simplify what the process is. Then you speed it up and then you automate it. Right now, too many people go for automate first and that's how you screw up a lot. Elon has even said that himself and this is his algorithm. But they started to question everything. It's like, wait, with a loan document, why do you actually need to have like 30 or 60 pages or whatever?

1:33Eric Siu:So they questioned it and they challenged how it should be done. And the loan docs, I think, take like three clicks or something like that now. But they optimized the site. They optimized the whole manufacturing process. It's like, hey, instead of having like 20 different colors or 60 different colors, why don't we just have like three or four different colors? And that way you simplify the process and that simplified their entire manufacturing. So that way they actually started to get a lot more throughput out there in terms of shipping more cars. But people were able to buy a lot more cars on the website.

2:01Eric Siu:And that's how they actually 20X sales on their site.

2:05Neil Patel:It's crazy how people buy a car, like a Tesla on a website, right? I would have never imagined that like 10 years ago. I'm like, ah, no one's gonna buy a car on a website. Times have changed and people are actually getting used to making very large transactions digitally. Yeah.

2:21Eric Siu:But I love the whole thing around the first part of the questioning everything, right? Why does it have to be done this way? And the cool thing is, you've seen this, Neil. When you or I hire new people that are coming out of college or even people that are in high school right now, they naturally have that built in. Because they don't have any preconceived notions on how to work. They just naturally question everything and they just work in a new way. So it's kind of built in already with younger folk.

2:47Neil Patel:Yes. The Elon thing specifically, I believe it was Domino's Pizza that he was comparing it to. And he wanted it to be very simple like Domino's Pizza. He's just like, why can't it be like this? I also think what makes it easy to buy a Tesla is they don't have too many options. If you want to go buy a Mercedes, and I use Mercedes example because it's the most common car I tend to buy or manufacturing brand for automotive. Mercedes has tons of options. You can pick like 50 options for a car or something ridiculous like that, which just makes things much more work. With Tesla, you may not like some of the options, but you just pick from whatever they have and it is what it is.

3:25Eric Siu:Yeah. By the way, this is funny. Okay. So, Neil, I wanted to share this with you. So, there's basically this study right now that shows how AI ads are beating human creative on completion. Okay. So, let's talk about what that means. So, let me share this with you. And here's a little hack for you all that are watching right now. So this site, how dare they put a paywall up? Well, I just go to this other site over here called removepaywall.com. And you just put the URL right after and the paywall is gone. I'll just leave it at that. I got that tip from Elon, by the way, on X. So with AI becoming a common part of the creative process in advertising,

4:01Neil Patel:brands and content makers assessing its effectiveness against non-AI content have a reason to cheer.

4:06Eric Siu:According to data from global advertising technology platform VDO.ai, never heard of it, On connected TV, AI-generated ads recorded a 92 % video completion rate, VCR, okay? Slightly higher than the 90 % seen for non-AI creatives. A similar trend appeared in online video where AI-led ads achieved a 71 % VCR compared to 70 % for non-AI ads.

4:31Neil Patel:It's crazy. What are you guys seeing? I don't know the exact numbers.

4:41Eric Siu:well that's something we're gonna have to report back on and we'll report back on this in the next few weeks i just think i know we've tested it i just don't have the exact numbers off top of my head yeah that's fine it's okay because we're gonna come back to that in the in the few weeks or so but here's another one for you neil so we look at shopify's um you know q2 2026 earnings transcript so we can see here okay that um so what they basically said was that i think it's in terms of online purchases, so through Universal Commerce Protocol, which is something they developed through Google and the Shopify catalog, I think they're saying that agentic purchases have gone up by 3.6x year over year or their sales have gone up 3.6x, contributing to faster onboarding and smarter decision-making for merchants, right?

5:32Eric Siu:So Shopify reported a 32 % year-on-year increase in GMV to 116 billion and 34 % increase in revenue to 3.6 billion for the second quarter of 2026. The company emphasized its strategic focus on expanding its addressable market by providing a unified platform for merchants of all sizes, leveraging its open ecosystem model and partnerships with major tech companies like OpenAI and Google. And so its infrastructure advancements, this is enabling commerce that makes it easier not just for people, but for agents as well. And that's gone up 3.6X year over year. And I think we're going to see a lot more of this.

6:06Eric Siu:I think this is going to grow faster. Yeah.

6:13Neil Patel:So, you know, on a side note, let's actually talk a little bit about SEO. We haven't talked about SEO for a while on this podcast. I was having a conversation with an entrepreneur earlier this week, I believe it was Monday, and they were breaking down how SEO no longer drives any traffic. People don't use Google anymore. If you're not doing GEO, you're going to end up losing a lot of business because now everyone's using AI. And you can call one GEO, you can call one SEO. I know there's some nuances and differences. But in reality, what I'm seeing, and I don't know what you're seeing, you may disagree with me on this or not.

6:55Neil Patel:The platforms are becoming merged. What I mean merged is Google's experience is looking more like ChatGPT. and ChatGPT is trying to integrate some of Google's experiences within ChatGPT. In essence, I believe if you fast forward a year or two, they'll look much more similar to each other than what they do now. And whether you want to call it GEO or SEO, depending on the query type that you are going after, you're going to have to optimize for whether it's an answer or whether it's 10 blue links or six blue links or video to be included. You're going to have to just be, you're going to have to show up.

7:32Neil Patel:And what marketing is turning into, in my opinion, even though it's digital and a lot of it is performance-based where you can track the ads, it really comes down in the long run to a brand game. I believe, yes, you need a good product or service. That's always been true. But the person who builds a stronger brand is the one more likely to win in the long run. Maybe you're not the biggest, but you'll be big enough where you're happy. And a lot of marketing dollars are going to be shifted towards things related towards branding, even if it's digital, because paid Google ads really do help build your brand, right?

8:08Neil Patel:YouTube ads, Instagram ads, they all do help build your brand, even though they're really trackable. And it's more so showing the right type of campaigns to the right type of people on the right channel. and in the long run, I think that's gonna drive the majority of sales and every big company we work with, the majority of their revenue comes from their brand. But ranking on Google, being in GEO, being on Instagram, it all helps.

8:33Eric Siu:If you're building an e-commerce brand, you should check out DTC Pod, hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas on the HubSpot Podcast Network. They speak with founders, marketers, creators, agencies, and platform experts about what it actually takes to grow a direct-to-consumer business from paid ads and influencer marketing to conversion, email, brand building, and consumer trends. I particularly enjoyed their conversations around scaling a brand without losing what made customers care in the first place. Listen to DTC Pod wherever you get your podcasts.

9:02Neil Patel:It's with the brand.

9:03Eric Siu:Real quick, if you want to acquire customers faster and more efficiently this year with the latest strategies and tactics, then check out singlegrain.com. That is my ad agency. Again, www.singlegrain.com. Check it out. And if it seems like a fit, We'll get in touch and help you with a free marketing plan.

9:19Neil Patel:Yeah.

9:20Eric Siu:So what I would say is this. Neil had this saying called search everywhere optimization. It applies even more today, even though we haven't heard him use it on this podcast in a while. But it is search everywhere optimization again, right? Just a little different, but same, right? And so the way I see it is, you know, the good news now is like you see a lot of kids. They're actually starting to create content. I actually saw like a seven-year-old create like a Instagram thing yesterday. I was going to send it to you. Wait, seven or 70?

9:49Neil Patel:Seven years old.

9:51Eric Siu:Oh, cool. Yeah. She was talking about something that I think is funny that I would have sent you, but I didn't send it to you on Instagram. But anyway, so the whole, you know, it's not back in the day, by the way, just so everyone knows, like the SEO game was the game in town, right? You optimize it. It was pretty like, you kind of knew what you get back. If you produce more content, you get more links, and maybe you acquire some websites, and then you make sure you're updating your content, you're deleting your content. Everything that people were sharing, it mostly worked, right? Today, a lot of different things work, which means attention is spread.

10:25Eric Siu:Remember, we talked about in marketing, it used to be the rule of seven for people to get your attention and take an action. Today, we think that's probably more, we went up to rule of 14. It's probably more rule of 21, rule of 28 today, because attention is so fragmented. But to Neil's point, even if you're a niche creator, let's say you are creating something around like interior design for Amish people or something like that, right? Very niche. Guess what? The people who buy from you, when they can use, are they allowed to use technology, Neil?

10:53Neil Patel:I don't think they are. Because we have them at the ranch. And they typically don't use technology when they're taking the logs off and stuff like that.

11:04Eric Siu:Okay, well, just if we entertain it for a moment, let's assume they can use technology. you would have a very niche audience, right? But again, like using the example, looking at Neil's YouTube channel, looking at my YouTube channel, for my YouTube channel, just speak for myself, when I used to go wide, it didn't drive conversions. But now when I go lower, when I go more niche with like not just marketing, but talking about the latest AI marketing and business trends as it relates to my business, that is very niche, right? And that's gonna get the right attention that I'm looking for at the end of the day.

11:34Eric Siu:So what we're really saying is that you have to work even harder today than you did before. And whether you want to use the word omni-channel or search everywhere optimization or whatever it is exactly, just know that it goes back to what we first started with this episode is that you have to be not just adaptable as an entrepreneur, if you're an entrepreneur listening to this, but you have to be very adaptable as a marketer. Those are the ones that are going to thrive in this new world. And I think everyone's going to realize in the next few years that they have to become more adaptable. It's just the most adaptable ones today are already winning.

12:04Yep.

12:06Neil Patel:a lot of life just comes down to adapting um i was watching an earnings call for a sass company and or not an earnings call they're at the goldman sachs event and they're talking about how they're working on other channels to diversify away from the seo hit that they ended up taking and they're talking about how geo isn't driving them out of traffic but they're focused on youtube and other things like that. But yeah, no, it's, you know, it's... What's the company?

12:35Eric Siu:Can you name the company? Is there anything dangerous if you name the company?

12:41Neil Patel:No, no, there's nothing dangerous. It's, yeah, I don't want to name the company. People can look up their own analyst reports and stuff like that, but they need to adjust and they are adjusting. and if they don't adjust, you're pretty much going to struggle and not do as well. Yeah. A few more things to talk about before we get out of here.

13:05Eric Siu:So I wanted to share this Mark Pinkest thing and then I wanted to share a bit on Meta's Muse, which I want to share some takeaways from that.

13:10Neil Patel:I've also been using this new bot called Instinct, Neil.

13:12Eric Siu:Neil, you know how you have a lot of points, right? I think you still have a lot of points, yeah? Yeah. So, okay, Instinct, I'm like, hey, I want you to find all the events. I want you to find all the events I should be speaking at in the next 12 months. I want you to also, I have X amount of points over here. I want you to, and I want to go to Japan, for example, and these days, I want you to find the reward flights. They found me all the reward flights and how much they would cost. They found me all the events I should be speaking at and all the different angles and how it would reach out for me.

13:39Eric Siu:I said, oh, by the way, I'm doing this global AI summit in November. We're looking for maybe one more speaker or so. And I want you to find the people who are nearby in that area because it's in Europe because this organization doesn't have budget to necessarily fly all the Americans over. And it did that, right? And so Instinct is pretty interesting. I think a lot of these bots are gonna become interesting, but because I'm talking about MetaMuse already, let me just talk about that real quick. MetaMuse is the autonomous agent that Meta released earlier this week. Neil, you know why I like it?

14:12Eric Siu:Because it's connected to your Instagram. So I can say this, I can say, hey, I would like to go to Italy with my girlfriend in the next May, okay? And I want you to create an itinerary for me, a visual itinerary based on who I follow on Instagram and also all of my saves. And it has all your bookmarks, all those useless bookmarks that I was bookmarking over the years. They're now useful now, right? And so I said, hey, that's cool. But I'm like, I want to use it for business. So I was like, hey, can you actually handle all of my meta ads and you can see everything? And then like, is that going to be more useful with you?