Why organic social rivals SEO today, Virality doesn't mean more revenue - David Guetta man in finance song only hits 900k listens, Was 'Stop Asian Hate' fake marketing?, and more

0:00This reel was talking about why organic social rivals SEO today. and I see the merit with that because SEO, well, one piece of it is SEO is really demand fulfillment. So there's a lot of people searching for like red shoes or whatever, right? But to me, a lot of what's going on now is like who's top of mind? Because, okay, think about it. When people reach out to agencies sometimes, sometimes people are just like, dude, who's a good agency for this, right? Sometimes just being top of mind is helpful and I see that as a benefit of reels and TikToks and shorts. You're just constantly being top of mind.

0:28You just keep seeing you over and over and eventually maybe someone might've talked to you before or maybe someone's in the market for it or someone mentioned you before. It's just everything kind of connects at that moment. And I told you at that YPO Longevity Summit, three or four people came up to me and a lot of it was like watching shorts. Some of it's long form. But I think organic social is catching up and I do think it's one of the bigger opportunities today. I agree with you. I don't know if it is better than SEO or worse. Yeah, I don't think it's better or worse. I think it's just...

0:57Yeah, I think it all goes in ebbs and flows And the reason for it is sometimes the social algorithms really help you out and sometimes they don't, but it does help keep you top of mind. And I found that when I was doing SEO over the years, most people originally found out about me through a Google search. And that's how I say top of mind. And then eventually social media and then emails and then speaking at conferences and the list goes on and on and on. But I do think even being impressed just helps you stay top of mind. but at the end of the day i learned this one the hard way in which being top of mind doesn't mean that you're going to end up generating a ton of revenue and this was like a big ego blow because when i created my ad agency np digital six seven years ago i was like oh we got all this traffic we're going to do so well and i think the first year we got to around five million i think the second year was 15 or 18 million or something like five, 10.

1:57No, it wasn't 10. It was 18. I know we didn't do 10 the second year. Yeah. 10 was just NPD. Then we also had the S and the 10s, the approximate value of your brand right now. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was 18 the second year. Yeah. And I thought that, oh, I got all this website traffic. I'm top of mind. everyone knows me for SEO, I'm going to clean up. And dude, the thing I learned really quickly, and it was rightfully so for all these potential customers, like, well, we don't care about you, Neil Patel, we care about the person working on our account. And if you can show me enough, if you can't show me case studies in our space of the results you produce, and you can't show me the people who are going to be working on my account and their qualifications, why would I hire you because I don't want to risk my job on you.

2:44And what it quickly taught me is being top of mind is great, but being top of mind and generating all this awareness doesn't mean you're going to generate crap in revenue. Well, I think for, for larger enterprise deals, being top of mind, but for known for doing good work, you're still, you know, in a sense, you're trying to stay top of mind. I'm not talking about social in this case, but it's like this concept matters across the board is what we're saying. Yes. But speaking of being top of mine do you remember that girl who created that video that says i'm looking for a guy in finance trust fund six five uis yeah right so she ended up producing a video or a song with david guetta david guetta guetta my bad yeah okay and the song was called man in finance uh-huh i checked it out today it only has 900 000 views yeah i mean some of the stuff it doesn't like that was kind of her her moment and by the way like this kind of relates to the the hawk tour girl right do you know what i'm talking about i know what you're talking about but i think the hawk to a girl will make way more cash than the girl in finance sure so if you if you think about that song with the girl in finance she then had some follow-up videos and in one of them she's doing money signs like she's pretty money and you know for the haters and good for her i don't know why people are hating on her her song was catchy yeah i watched it quite a few times but the point i'm getting at is just Just because you have fame or even whether it's for 10 seconds or 10 minutes or 10 months or 10 years, it doesn't mean that you're going to end up turning that into revenue and you got to figure out how.

4:17And a great example of this is I was talking to a buddy who deals with Cardi B. So Cardi B had vodka infused whipped cream. All right. So whipped cream. Yeah. Whipped cream, or maybe I'm saying the opposite. It was whipped cream that vodka was infused into, right? uh-huh so it was like vodka infused whipped cream yeah i think that's right that sounds right yeah so it was just vodka flavored whipped cream and she barely made any money on that yeah does she have a captivating audience yes bad product bad offering terrible way to monetize and if you have something catchy like a song it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to make money if you don't know how to monetize yeah so i mean you mentioned that the word offer everyone should go reach read Alex's book.

5:04It's 99 cents, right? A hundred million dollar offers. I think people still today, like my, my team goes, what do you think about this offer? Consulting? What do you think of this free audit? I'm like, dude, everyone does that stuff. Like what, that's not a good offer, right? It's one, it's offers gotta be relevant to it's gotta be such a no brainer that they'd be stupid not to take it. By the way, dude, there's one I wanted to finish off on here. So you remember the stop Asian hate stuff that happened during COVID? You're talking about like the Asian lady in San Francisco that got beat up. Yeah, there's random Asian people getting beat up.

5:34Some lady got pushed into the BART, trained and died. No, that's sad. I didn't know that. So the thing here is, stop Asian hate actually fake marketing. And by the way, guys, I'm a yellow person saying this right now. Okay, I'm Asian. Neil's also Asian as well. So this guy who's also Asian tweeted this. He's like, I'm trending right now on Reddit. His name's Kang Min Lee. Okay, Kang Min Lee. He's Korean. So I'm trending right now on Reddit in one of the largest subreddits with over 8 million users. The thousands of comments completely agree with me. Here are some true stories of Asian friends and families brutalized but ignored because it didn't fit the narrative.

6:11Let me just preface this, guys. So was Stop Asian Hate fake marketing? We're not here to get into the race or anything like that. I just want to talk about the media that's controlling this, right? So he asked this question, and it's got 30 ,000 upvotes on Reddit. Stop Asian Hate died overnight because people started asking, wait, who's attacking Asians? And they didn't like having an answer to that. Do you understand what I'm saying? You're saying the media didn't like answering who was attacking when people were asking that question? When people started to ask questions, okay, the media didn't like having an answer to that.

6:46So the press coverage around Stop Asian Hate started to fade. The reach around this started to fade because it was gaining momentum, right? And I know some friends that were involved with Stop Asian Hate. So the question is, again, was stop Asian hate fake marketing? Now, when you look at this guy's tweet, which has 13 million views on it, which is a lot, all the evidence that he's showing right now is Asian people being attacked mostly by African-American people, right? And again, this is not about race at the end of the day. This guy's revealing this right now. He's trending on Reddit. What I'm more interested in is this was a growing movement, and the moment the narrative didn't fit anymore, they stopped covering it, right?

7:23And so then someone else covers this later and they're like, yeah, you know, because the media started going after white people. Oh, this racism over here, you know, it's, you know, white people are oppressing, blah, blah, blah. It's like that was the media's narrative. And once they found something that didn't fit their narrative anymore, they stopped covering it. And so that's what we were talking about this before. It's like the power of you being the media, that's going to happen more and more because we can't trust the media as much because they just want to cover what they want to cover.

7:50I got to take a minute to tell you about the Agency Owners Association. This is a peer group for agency owners. Think YPO or EO, but for agency owners. And I just wanted to read you a couple of testimonials. So this first one comes from Carrie. And we asked her, what do you like most about the group? She said, having a group of people to discuss and bounce ideas. The leads are great too. Yes, we share leads in this group as well. This one from Alian. He says, the ability to really post whatever I want and need. And the group responds. Great experienced members. Getting a lot of insights from conversations with other members.

8:20getting a lot of value from sessions from Eric, getting advice from others as well. And so if you want to grow your agency faster and you want a peer group to do so, just go to marketingschool.io slash agency. This is a group that both Neil and I created. And our hope here is to create a vibrant community of agency owners and do a lot more with it in the future. So again, marketingschool.io slash agency, and we'll see you inside. The media covers what they want to cover, but they own the properties and it's their right to. Totally. Right? And it's just like - But they have their incentives. You know what I mean?

8:49Their incentives are whatever they want. Their incentives to drive as much reach as possible. And it's whatever narrative. And make money. Yes. Yes. So show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome again. This is not a race thing. But was it fake marketing? I don't think it was fake marketing. It's just the media didn't want to cover it anymore because it didn't fit their incentives. Got it. Yeah. No, I never saw that tweet. I also, being Indian, didn't experience any hate from COVID. Me neither. Yeah. so we can't really speak too much but we can only speak to the marketing of this and this tweet over here so that is that what else do you have you know it's funny enough you saw the elon musk uh can stuff on how you know he was trying to woo back uh advertisers yeah and when you think about what was happening with cans and him just getting people advertising back i was talking to a really important journalists and when not important i'm not saying they're unimportant but uh journalists that covers a lot of advertising stuff right and they're well known in the space and they're talking about big corporations how they're boycotting and i'm not saying companies are right or wrong for boycotting but some of the examples they gave was oh x has adult content you know and is this acceptable should companies have their brand there and then i said you also can find adult content on Instagram and you can find it on Google, right?

10:20If you look at some of the most popular Google searches, they're for adult related content. And then they're just like, they didn't know how to answer that. And then they're talking about anti-Semitic content. And I'm like, yeah, anti-Semitic content sucks. You also find that on Facebook. You also find it on Google and other places too. You can just do a search on the web on Google and it'll showcase results from other places. But it was funny because a lot of brands stood up and says, we refuse to advertise on X. And I've talked to a lot of big brands that don't advertise on X. And I've questioned some of them.

10:58Would you ever pull out from Facebook and Google? And if I show them examples of some of the things that they say and why they don't advertise on X, and I'm not saying they should advertise on X or not. You know, the real truth comes out in which one of the reasons whether they like the content on google or facebook or um you know and i get the founders of google and facebook don't really say much elon you know saying whatever he wants does cause problems for x as a business when it comes to revenue generation at least that's my opinion google and facebook or google and meta drive so much volume companies can't just pull out and stop spending money on them they're just too big but it's too good for them it's too good it drives too much revenue and it's funny and when you actually confront some of these businesses and tell me like well x is a platform it doesn't really drive that much volume meta and google drive volume what'd you pull out and then their tune really changes and yeah i haven't met one business that's a big publicly traded company that, you know, in marketing, and someone would have told me that they would pull out.

12:10And the main reason being is it moves the needle. You can't actually, you know, cut off the juice that's driving your revenue and your growth or a portion of it. The number one challenge for businesses is hiring. And more specifically, the number one thing I get asked for all the time is Eric, where can I go find an amazing marketer. And the reality is right now, when you think about the world, we have inflation that also means wage inflation right now. And it means that when it comes to hiring talent, you can't spend as much as you would have in the last couple of years because it's just become too cost prohibitive.

12:43And so we've partnered with one of the best offshore recruiting firms when it comes to marketing, they've been a great asset for us. And I believe that they will be a great asset for you. All you have to do is go to marketing school.io slash hire. Again, it's marketingschool.io slash hire to learn more. You can fill out the form there and we're going to place you with the best marketing hires that we can help you find. Woke advertisers are colluding to stop Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and others. So this tweet came from the House Judiciary GOP. So this is official government account as a silver check mark.

13:16It says new report, how the world's biggest brands seek to control online speech. New info reveals that woke advertisers and brands are colluding together to attack people like Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, political candidates, and news organizations. So we can read the whole thing. I mean, it's actually a very long document. I should have taken the PDF and dropped it into Claude to give a summary, but here's the executive summary. I'm just going to read this real quick. So it says, the Committee of Judiciary has jurisdiction, it's a word soup, over the protection of trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies, and exercising oversight of the adequacy and sufficiency of existing U.S.

13:52antitrust laws, the committee has been investigating apparent collusion within the World Federation of Advertisers, and specifically its Global Alliance for Responsible Media. I didn't even know what these two were things. So WFA and GARM. Through GARM, large corporations, advertising agencies, and industry associations participated in boycotts and other coordinated action to demonetize platforms, podcasts, news outlets, and other content deemed disfavored by GARM and its members. This collusion can have the effect of eliminating a variety of content and viewpoints available to consumers. I'm just going to list some numbers over here.

14:28WFA was created in 2019. GARM quickly amassed tremendous market power in the advertising industry. WFA members represent roughly 90 % of global marketing spent, or almost$1 trillion annually. Are you in WFA? No. Okay. Garm includes every major advertising agency holding company in its ranks and includes the world's largest media buying agency, Group M, on its steer team. So Group M is a big agency. Yeah, it's owned by WPP. Yep. Garm's steer team, which acts as a board of directors and is closely involved in Garm's day-to-day operations, includes four large corporations, Unilever, Mars, Diageo, and Procter & Gamble that spend billions annually on advertising.

15:10And the last bullet point I have over here, GARM reports to the WFA Executive Committee, which must endorse GARM's work and includes representatives from Anheuser-Busch, L 'Oreal, Nestle, IBM, as well as many more large corporations and household name brands. And Elon was the one that shared this today. The Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend is where systems get stress tested. Traffic surges, inventory moves fast, and every second counts. You need a platform built for the moment. That's Shopify, the commerce platform behind millions of businesses and 10 % of all US e-commerce. With Shopify, you can launch fast with thousands of templates and tools that make your site not just beautiful, but conversion ready.

15:48Shopify is packed with helpful tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography to increase your reach during the busiest time of the year. You can also stress less knowing that Shopify's award-winning customer support team is on standby 24-7 to help with any issues that arise, allowing you to get back to business as fast as possible. This Black Friday, join the thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing this for the first time with Shopify. Sign up for your free trial today at shopify.com slash marketing school. That's shopify.com slash marketing school.

16:21Go to shopify.com slash marketing school and make this Black Friday one to remember. you know who the largest advertiser in the world is right if you tell me i will be yes but i forgot you said the name earlier right now procter and gamble yes procter and gamble yeah so they spend more money than anyone else when it comes to marketing it's funny we talk about this it's not really funny but like it's no surprise yeah and this is why i just stay out of all this stuff because from a business standpoint keep your head down do the best you can make money and try not to get in people's ways and try not to get political and affect stuff it's weird how it's actually not weird i mean the larger you get the more so here's the thing the larger you get the more stakeholders you have the more you're getting influenced by people right just like the more people you have on your cap table right um but for you i think you're in a really good spot right now because you own the lion's share of the equity right and um you know largely you don't have to worry about outside influence and that's that's more power to you at the end of the day, right?

17:20You're not going to be, you're not easily influenced as you are as a person. You're also, you don't have any board or shareholder. You don't have a board, right? Not like a formal board. Okay. So yeah, there you go. May have one. I don't know. You probably will have one eventually the larger you get. So yeah, but yeah, I think when it comes to X, Elon caused a lot of his own problems. Yeah. I mean, look, but, but we talk about Joe Rogan here and political candidates too, right? Like don't do what it takes with whatever power they have and it's fine it's their incentive yeah and and people should do whatever they want i've learned in life if if you want to succeed you're better off just staying out of the limelight and staying out of people's ways when i'm saying staying out of the limelight i'm not talking about trying to build a personal brand i'm talking about saying stuff that's just gonna get a lot of press yeah and is gonna paint you in a really bad that stuff will bite you in the butt which is why we tend not to talk about that stuff.

18:16And it doesn't matter how rich you are. The government can make an example out of you. People can make an example out of you. They can come after you. You're better off just keeping your mouth shut with a lot of this stuff. The stuff you do want to say, go say it to your friends, right? Don't say it in public. Not smart. You might not get as many views as you want, but that's for the better. So cool. All right. Well, I think that's it. Make sure you guys all go to markingschool.io slash agency to join the Agency Owners Association. You got it. And leave a rating, review, and subscribe too because we haven't gotten one for a while.

18:46So give us one. All right. Goodbye, guys.