Why Most SEOs FAIL, What To Do About The 95% Of People Who Won't Buy Now, SaaS vs WaaS vs RaaS

0:00I threw up a post about how SEOs are obsolete. I think it might be helpful for us to talk about how we've adapted in our careers because we started as SEOs. And so we're not necessarily beholden to just one channel, but you can tell who's beholden to one because they start to really push back. And earlier I used that Charlie Munger quote, like if your job depends on you not understanding something, you're not going to understand it. And if you don't want to change, you don't want to understand it either. But maybe I think let's just do an experience share here about how we've adapted over time.

0:30Because when I think about, okay, 25-year-old you, 24-year-old me, I remember I was telling you all the treehouse numbers on how we were doing with courses. And you immediately, you started adapting. You started making courses, right? Then I was like, we were walking down, I think, 3rd Street near Beverly Hills, near Beverly Center. West Hollywood. West Hollywood. We're walking to creation to get some juice, right? And I was like, dude, podcasting has been great. They've been so beneficial. Yeah, let's do it. So all of a sudden, we have a podcast, right? But then you started doing a YouTube channel.

0:58So my point of saying all this is that we've never been beholden to just one channel and we've always tried to adapt to wherever the attention is. And that's what marketing is. And I think the big problem with a lot of SEOs that have been stuck in the same spot, it tends to be the ones that complain all the time, is they don't adapt and expect things to be the same. They expect the world to be the same. And when it's not the same, they lash out and they don't change. But they don't look inside and they're not like, oh man, maybe I should have done something. Most SEOs look at SEO as just pure Google.

1:27and they think they're SEO and that's a way to succeed instead of thinking, hey, my job is to drive traffic that causes more leads or direct sales. And if it is the lead approach, the leads need to be qualified and eventually a portion of the need to convert into customers and they need to be doing all of this profitably. So I look at SEO as a channel. And overall, you're in the marketing category if you're SEO and your job is to drive profitable traffic. That really sums it up. if you're not willing to adapt to the platforms and anything new that comes out to see if you can drive more profitable traffic and take the time to learn it, you're not good at what you do.

2:08Eventually, you're going to be archaic unless you are that person who's saying, hey, I'm working for a big company. SEO is one of our channels and I'm going to be really good at the technical side or the on-page side or link building side because I know it's necessary. Also, link building could drive referral traffic and sales there as well, or brand managers was going to help you with some of the LLMs. But I just genuinely believe if you're looking to do really well and make a lot of money, you need to be good at more than just one marketing technique and you adapt with the market. It doesn't mean you shouldn't specialize, but let's say if you want to be an SEO, you can do search everywhere optimization and rank on all the platforms instead of just focusing only on Google.

2:52I think ultimately what we're saying is you need to be a lifelong learner if you want to have exceptional results. And people expect exceptional results without putting in the work. And that is just unacceptable to me. So all the people that are challenging me saying, I will do a human audit versus your AI audit. You're missing the point. The point is this stuff will be better than you in a couple of years. I don't care how smart you are, right? And you have to adapt. Yes, but if you look at both you and I, people peg us as SEOs. Neither of us really put labels on ourselves. It doesn't mean that we see ourselves as SEOs or more than SEOs or less.

3:28You and I just do whatever it takes to succeed and we didn't really care if it's SEO or social media or having to create tons of content and videos. I was looking at some of your guys' numbers and my numbers. I was comparing how much marketing we do, including you, and I analyzed both of us separately compared to most of the ad agencies out there. do you want to take a guess how much more marketing you and i do compared to the closest ad agency brand that we would be familiar with and when you say times how do you want to measure that like just the amount of output that we're cranking out there i'm not saying it's producing better results or not because i don't know their results i think i don't know like 10x more around 12 to 13 times more okay if you look at how much content you and i create and i'm talking about competitors that brands that we're familiar with that are large agencies not like hey someone down the road is like i'm gonna create an agency and i'm just gonna push out and turn the content and promote the brand and by the way this is what works for us this is what we're used to too and so we're not saying what we're doing is the right way necessarily and by the way i'll say one thing like i used to hate being labeled an su i hated that right yeah but now i'm okay with it because humans need to label one thing like to keep it simple and so i think you you've never really cared i hated it early in my career but um it is what it is but you have to be a lifelong learner if you want to win otherwise you just could be like one of these people on linkedin or x that complains all the time dude totally agree with you on that yeah all right you pick one let's pick the last topic actually i think we have two more yeah uh sas versus ras i don't know what ras is okay let me let me i had one um peg before this this will feed in well with sas versus ras so i want to let's first talk about this neil what we should tell people what to do about the 95 % of people who won't buy right now.

5:16So keep in mind, there's only 5 % of people in market typically to buy your solution. 95 % that hit your site the first time or see your thing will not buy right now. So let's talk about how we go about getting those people to eventually buy. One, we get them to follow us on the social web by pushing them, prompting us. Two, we collect their email address. So when we collect email addresses, we use that to remarket to them in the future. Three, you do remarketing or we do remarketing. Four, we both collect push notifications. I don't know if you still do. And then you can do push marketing back to them.

5:51But those are some examples of ways that you can get people back. And then constantly post new content on the social web so that way they can find you. Constantly do things like webinars, email blasts, so that way you can say top of mind. We're speaking at events. That way people can do the CS for the 95 % because a lot of them have visitor sites and don't buy. We create tons of content, not just text-based content, some videos, some audio like this, podcasting. But we give people options. If someone doesn't like podcasting, watch the videos. Don't like the videos? Read blog posts. Don't like that?

6:25Look at our charts and our data or images or whatever it may be. Don't want to give an email address? Rather, you know, find our content on Instagram? That's an option. Don't want to do that? Rather subscribe to our podcast? Less intrusive? Fine, you can do that as well. and I think that's how we stay top of mind over the years. We literally hit them from all angles, including things like getting pressed for our own businesses or speaking at tons of events. Yep. So Neil just hit the nail on the head. If you want to get the 95 % of people who are not in market to eventually buy, you have to stay top of mind and it's covering as many channels as you can.

6:59One of the things that would work for you, so you mentioned texting, right? So texting's in there. Throwing events works too, like live events. those work too you do live events i do we have a live event coming up um we don't we don't text as much as maybe you do um we don't text that much but it's still in there yes the problem with texting what we found is it has a much higher click rate but it has a through the roof unsubscribe rate compared to email so we're really careful on how we text i think it's just marketing a one-on-one you have to think about where your people are hanging out and just understand that you're playing the long game obviously you have to know your numbers too you have to know your lifetime values and you have to know your sales cycles as well if you understand those numbers then you know you can play for a very long time so we talk to people at uh for carrot you keep hearing this phrase in b2b we're looking for air coverage i'm like oh that means your sales cycles must be very long right we just want air coverage right that's another thing um you over the years this can lead into sas versus ras you've continually built products and even now you have at least two products if not more i think three actually um that help that help drive more business and help I think with retention as well.

8:04So if you can build, if you're fortunate enough to be able to build something or maybe buy something that goes a long way to originally you bought Uber suggest. Yeah. We bought Uber says who I answer the public. We created as greater and then we created scalp. So four main products, three you can pay for one is completely free, which is the as greater. And then we also did another type of community building to get the quote unquote airtime that you had to start doing maybe three, four years ago where we started community building where we actually do meetups at events like at house inbound yeah oh well hubspot made us do that so i didn't know that yeah so um last year actually this is this is interesting so if you can do this you're invited to speak at an event and let's say you have a podcast um hubspot we the main session neil and i had we had about 700 people in there but they also had us do an extra session for people that are marking school fans so that was for 200 people i'm like we're not going to fill 200 people oh my god remember fully packed room two people and i totally came up with that agenda like i pulled it out of my you know my behind um but it worked we are in good ratings oh it was rated higher than your talk or my talk it was like a 4.97 out of 5 i'm like whoa what do we do differently for that one we actually had we ran a competition so um we had people meet with each other and we shared some new stuff that we wouldn't share typically and then we ran a competition where we call it growth genius at the events that i do and it's like imagine i'm like neil um you're sitting in a group of like 10 people everyone kind of names their best growth tactic and they pick a champion right and they share a table goes up shares and then everyone votes for the champion and then we're like okay you're the champion you win right we have no prize for you but you win so next year we're invited again or this year i guess probably do something so price yeah but yeah we had from all the people were sitting we made them stand up and huddle around tables and starting network and then share things and we made it much more engaging instead of us dictating to them and i think people like that a lot more yes yeah and they got to talk to us after too which which is cool but um one thing i forgot to add and we'll move on from this i don't know if you do this but um patrick campbell was the one that gave this to me it's called marketable moments and because you have four different products you guys are launching new features all the time he just takes every feature launches a new marketable moment it just blasts out to everyone so sounds like we do something similar unless it's really tiny and it's only going to impact a very small portion of our user base.

10:24We try to segment the list and then blast it out. Because by the way, people looking to buy services or software, they're so busy that oftentimes I see the behavior. Like it's just whoever comes to mind first. And then you're invited to participate in an RFP or something like that. If you've ever built a website, you know how tough it can be to keep a strong design while ensuring site performance is fast. That's where Framer comes in and it totally changes the game. Framer is the design first no code website builder that lets anyone ship a production-ready site in minutes. I recently built a custom landing page in just a few hours.

10:57Animations, fast load times, responsive layouts, all without writing a single line of code. It was easy to use, and the end result was polished enough to look like a developer spent days on it. One of my favorite things is that Framers AI handles translations with a single click, so your site can be up and running in multiple languages almost instantly. And with real-time collaboration, your whole team can jump in and work together. No issues with versions or miscommunication, whether you're starting from scratch or using one of their templates, Framer lets you focus on design while handling the technical side for you.

11:27Animations, responsive layouts, search optimization, and all the things that matter. Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded without hiring a developer? Launch your site for free at framer.com and use code MS to get your first month of pro on the house. That's framer.com, promo code MS, framer.com, promo code MS. Rules and restrictions may apply. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind-the-scenes work. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally, from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started.

12:04The best part about it, it has everything you could need. Say you're ready to launch your own design studio. Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand's style. Or if you need help with content creation, Shopify's got AI tools that write your product descriptions, craft page headlines, and even enhance your product photos. Shopify 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 a game.

12:32With 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. Okay, now let's talk about SaaS versus RAS. You know who came up with this? No, but I don't even know what RAS is. So do you want to explain that part? So this post is from Dharmesh Shah, speaking of HubSpot, co-founder and CTO of HubSpot. So software business models in the age of AI. From RAS, sorry, from SAS to WAS to RAS. You know what WAS is? No, there's too many acronyms. How about AS? You know what AS is?

13:10No, just kidding. So, okay. So sorry, guys. I was being crude. But I have written before about the ideas of RAS, results as a service. Okay. So is there software as a service, SaaS, results as a service? But there's another intermediate business model that I think we should also start to see, work as a service. So pay for the work that the software does. So let's just rewind real quick. SaaS would be you pay a monthly fee. I think Uber suggests maybe you pay$8 a month or whatever, and that's what it is. Results as a service, if I help you increase your leads by X amount, you pay me per lead. That's results as a service.

13:45Why are you smiling? No, nothing. Someone's asked me a question. Okay, continue. So work as a service. So for RAS to be effective results as a service, there has to be some objective measurable result that the customer is paying for. A common example is a customer support ticket resolution. So like intercom charges$1 for resolution, right? It makes sense in that case because we have reasonable ways to measure whether AI is quote unquote resolved. A particular support case to a sufficient level of customer satisfaction or not. Okay, you can even do this with AI agents. Yeah, the whole RAS model.

14:48But when it comes to, this is why I hate certain categories like web design. Yep. Because it's very subjective. Yep. Certain people will like it, certain people won't. Okay, so look, RAS would be paying for the number of images you might deliver, right? But that doesn't make sense because if you're paying for creative, you better hope it converts, right? Yes, and if you end up paying for a lot of images and they don't convert or you don't like the quality or it doesn't stick with your band guidelines, you're not going to want to use them. So we define RAS, we know what SAS is, but the question mark is WAS.

15:17So WASS, he says, a good intermediate step might be WASS. This is how life works for people now. Your creative director might hire a junior designer to help with visuals for your sales materials. You probably just paid them a salary, have them do work, and expect as they learn the business, they'll get better over time. So I think this is starting to make sense where, I mean, you look at OpenAI. Like, you've read about how he's planning to charge$20 ,000 for agents. Yeah, I think in that case, you're just paying for the work, work as a service, I guess. but in that case, isn't it just SaaS? But maybe it's just a one-time, so maybe it's just work as a service.

15:52Does that make sense? So WaaS is work as a service. Yep. I get the RaaS, results as a service, and SaaS is software as a service. Yep. But what he's saying to me sounds like service as a software. Yeah, yes, yes. So look, he actually has a diagram. We should just start with the diagram first. But the diagram shows SaaS, software as a service, pay for software. WaaS, work as a service, which is service as a software. pay for work software does, okay? And then RAS, results as a service, pay for outcome software delivers. And I think all three will be relevant. Yeah, but I just see WAAS as what everyone's talking about, that service does a service.

16:28Service as a software, which is a fairly new term too. Yeah. Yeah. And I get why he may be using WAAS because software as a service is the same acronym as service as a software. You should change it up from a marketing standpoint so it's not confusing. But I think all of these are relevant. I don't think SaaS is going away anytime soon, But like, for example, you know, I results as a service, by the way, we talk about pay for performance a lot. But when it comes down to it, most people don't want to do pay for performance. No. Yeah. And most big corporations do not. And anytime I've gotten someone in the past to agree to pay for performance and the moment it performs more than they're liking.

17:08Oh, that they're done with you. They're done with you. And then you don't get paid out or it creates legal problems. It doesn't matter if you have great contracts. It's always a pain. and big corporations that really can spend the money just don't they need predictability yes yeah they don't want to go crazy so by the way i mean it does work we know some people in the pay for performance space where they've built significant businesses like you know one billion dollar plus in revenue um those are few and far between but you also have to control a lot of leverage if you're going to do that you have to build the landing pages you have to build the entire funnel you have to own the the whole customer experience at the end of the day which is why they ended up buying call centers why are you smiling again no someone's missing me something funny okay okay okay but um before we head out i know we have four more minutes i'm just really curious is this from you like your own thing how to book uh top 100 target accounts in 90 days no absolutely not it's from this linkedin post all right but instead of using that one out of curiosity you've been running carrot for how many months now three four months yeah something like that uh what's your number one strategy that you've used to book your target account and collect leads fucking cold email um okay so i'll give you a couple i'll give you i'll be i was being a little facetious but also partly real so what has helped us a lot was that initial linkedin post um where it got 1300 comments and i just said a comment if you want access to this because it was a new thing it's a new way of doing things right so you know how linkedin is once you see something new okay 600 likes 1300 hundred comments that actually drove a lot of leads um and then from there john maxwell likes to say the fortunes and the follow-up so we had a lot of mid-market enterprise leads it's been a lot of follow-up um cold email has worked and linkedin in mails have worked really well it's if you we were getting a five percent meeting rate on the emails that we send um and that's pretty good and um i would say those are the primary ways we've been getting people in the door and but i would say too it's because our icp is also very defined you should post more linkedin have people comment and at the same time just repurpose the video and have them do it on instagram tiktok youtube we do i've been milking it and so this is this is the i've been milking we did it the first time right so it got it got like a hundred thousand impressions 150 000 impressions we did it a second time with a different way it did way less and then we did a third and a fourth time so diminishing returns no no but just use on new content are you reposting or creating new content no so we're gonna we're gonna be revealing marketable moments with our our new feature soon and we want to be talking about results but here's the thing this is this is something that i think it's worth for everyone to know too um we know that our biggest disadvantage right now is if we're too slow you agree or disagree with that i agree okay if and you agree we're in a world where you can duplicate features a lot faster yeah i'm also in a world where i agree where you may not agree with this but uh your product cost isn't that high yeah i'll just give it away to everyone for free so we're gonna have a version of that a crippled version of that a freemium version but my point is if we show our cards too early to the market where it's like oh these are the results here's all the features here's all the things we're launching because we know there's so many competitors looking at us the more we reveal the the worse off right no i would just take your whole product and make it free you would yes yeah you would but i wouldn't and then i'll keep adding all the features and then get the user base and then do it teams and other people including us did in which you just then start making parts and parts of it paid yeah so then your competition doesn't matter if they copy the features or not i'm not saying you're wrong so what neil's saying by the way is you give it away for free to drive as much distribution as you can right now once you get them in then you can start charging for it which is not a bad idea right um but you're in a saturated market if we're coming from myspace right now which is where everyone doesn't you can tell we've made an episode on this where people a lot of people don't know what to build next and a lot of people are stuck that's why they're kind of hovering right now doesn't matter because the moment you release something people can copy it within a few months totally and so i i actually like neil's idea on giving it away for free and trying to drive as much distribution as possible because distribution i think distribution is a moat and data is the moat in today's day and age so anyway that's where we're going to end it today thank you all for listening please don't forget to rate view subscribe and we'll see you tomorrow