In short
Marketing School Podcast Episode Notes
Episode Title Zapier's traffic jump secret from 1.2 to 6.3M monthly visits, $800M studio expansion halted because of AI, Klarna AI assistant handles two-thirds of customer service chats in its first month, and more
Episode Description
In this episode (#2705), Neil Patel and Eric Siu discuss
- The significant increase in traffic for Zapier, an automation tool.
- The implications of AI on industries like animation.
- Klarna's use of AI for customer service and its early successes.
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Key Takeaways
- Zapier's Traffic Surge
- Traffic Growth: Zapier's monthly visits increased from 1.2M to 6.3M.
- Strategies Used:
- Internationalization: Implementing pages in multiple languages (e.g., French, Spanish, Dutch).
- Programmatic SEO: Creating specific pages (like AI templates) to attract traffic.
- ChatGPT-Related Content
- Traffic Source: Pages related to ChatGPT generate significant traffic:
- "How to use ChatGPT" brings in 1.1M visits/month.
- Revenue Discussion:
- Neil Patel speculates that less than 5% of revenue may come from these pages, with Eric suggesting it could be even lower (possibly under 1%).
- Internationalization Strategies
- Importance of Cultural Adaptation: Merely translating content is insufficient; it requires understanding local keywords and cultural context.
- Effective Execution: Successful internationalization involves:
- Keyword research in target markets.
- Adjusting content for cultural relevancy.
- Using technical SEO practices (e.g., hreflang tags).
- AI's Impact on Industries
- Animation and Content Creation: Tyler Perry halted an $800M studio expansion after witnessing AI capabilities, highlighting AI's potential to drastically reduce production costs.
- Cost Efficiency: AI can streamline operations, leading to higher profit margins.
- Klarna's AI Assistant Success
- Customer Service Improvement: Klarna's AI chatbot reduced ticket resolution time from 11 minutes to 2 minutes, equating to the work of 700 customer service agents.
- Potential Profit Increase: This AI implementation is projected to add $40 million to Klarna's annual profit.
- Future of Marketing and M&A
- Increased Efficiencies: Businesses adopting AI will likely see improved efficiencies across various operations, not limited to marketing.
- M&A Opportunities: Companies lacking AI capabilities may become targets for acquisition by firms seeking to enhance efficiencies.
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Discussion Highlights
- Conversion Rates of Traffic: Despite high traffic to certain contents, the conversion rates are hypothesized to be low, particularly for generic articles.
- Challenges in Implementation: Many firms struggle with the necessary work to effectively implement internationalization strategies, despite their proven potential.
- Growth Cycles: The discussion touched on historical cycles in business where growth strategies fluctuate between cost efficiency and growth at all costs.
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Conclusion The episode emphasizes the importance of adaptability and strategic implementation in digital marketing, especially in leveraging AI and internationalization for growth. The discussions encourage marketers to focus not only on traffic but also on meaningful conversions and operational efficiencies.
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Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Did you see Zapier's traffic jump from 1.2 million to 6.3 million monthly visits from SEO? Did you see that? No, what did they do? They just created a ton of pages on these apps. They've had that for a while, though. They've done that. So they're pretty good at programmatic SEO. But I looked at their Ahrefs. So in Ahrefs, by the way, Ahrefs isn't sponsoring this, but they have a site structure section. I don't know if you've ever clicked on this. Okay. But it's fairly new, it seems. So I clicked on their site structure section after looking at this tweet. And they basically added a lot of international pages.
0:34So French, Spanish, Dutch, right? And so that added a bunch of traffic, but there's also a lot of programmatic content. They're creating AI templates and things like that. So they've been pretty on top of it. I'm going to click on this tweet over here, just so everyone can see it. The globalization, I'm talking about that for years. It's worked. I've been running that playbook for more than six, seven years now. What percent of your traffic comes from global? Like the international pages you made, the translations. Because that's what they did, translations. Oh, like 80 plus percent. Yeah, it's a lot.
1:02Okay, so check this out. I'm looking at it right now. Template-based pages, we've done that a lot too in the past. We don't do it anymore. Most of those template-based pages, like AI templates or whatnot, you can increase your visitor count, but the visitor count to sales count, when you just create a lot of pages that aren't necessarily exactly what you do, you don't get tons of conversions. You just get extra traffic with no extra revenue. So get this. I didn't say this part, but this is a genius. They got so lucky they ranked for this. So they rank for how to use ChatGPT. And that drives, right now, that drives about 1.1 million visits per month.
1:39And how does ChatGPT work? 300 ,000 visits a month. Best AI chatbot, 263 ,000 visits a month. Okay, but check all this out. You're talking about ChatGPT. Do you think any of this is going to convert into real revenue for Zapier? I think it might. Because they have all these ChatGPT workflows on how it ties into, like, you can do this. Because they have that little AI prompter, right? It's like, hey, connect my Google this with that, right? Using ChatGPT. Do they connect anything with chat GPT to something else? Yes. So it actually feeds them well because then you have a product like growth motion with the blog content and it probably converts well.
2:11I actually don't think it converts well. I think the content that converts well for them is MailChimp to WordPress integration. I bet you that converts better. Yes, that converts. I'm not saying from these type of posts like how does chat GPT work? They're not getting any conversions. but I bet you this increase in traffic from those kind of pages isn't even like, let's say if that makes up 20 % of their traffic now, I bet you it doesn't even account for 5 % of their new monthly signups. I bet you it's lower than 5%. How well did these pages? I'm sending this to the Zapier CEO right now. What was your last question that you just asked?
2:46I bet you it's less than 5%. All these pages, if you're saying they make up call at 20 % of the traffic because one's at 1 million, You add in a few more. You get to 20 % really quickly, if not more than 20 % on these how Chad GPT type articles work. I bet you it drives less than 5 % of their revenue. So I said Neil Patel and I are betting. And I said if I lose, I will never marry someone. So that's what I said. Anyway, let's continue here. By the way, if you want to date Eric, he's single. Go DM him on Instagram. If you can find me. but eric osu isn't that your instagram it is it is well thank you but um so anyway i we i found that to be interesting we'll know the metrics i think wade will probably respond to me so he's a zapper so stick stay tuned tell all your friends about this in the next couple episodes we'll probably be able to get the answer on this i'm telling you i can talk about how we can help companies with their discord marketing we used to rank for discord on google on page one guess what it did for us drove zero revenue like we've had a lot of generic dude i've ranked for like how to get more Instagram followers, how to get more engagement on Instagram and all these keywords.
3:55We help a lot of companies with their social media marketing. It doesn't drive much revenue at all. Dude, this guy, Wade, I'm sure if you listen to this, Wade, he deleted his wade.foster at Zapier. Now I have to email Wade at Zapier. Anyway, so I believe they convert at less than 5%, but - I bet you it's way less than that. It's just too generic. I think it's highest as 1%, probably. Because if you look at the articles, what was the one 1.1? It's not even related to Zap. It's just how to use chat GPT. Most people don't have a business. If I had to really guess, I'm going 5 % to be conservative because I'm like 99.999 % sure it's under that.
4:36If I had to really guess, I bet you it drives less than 1 % of their new monthly signups. That's exactly what I just said. But the internationalization I bet you converts pretty well. Internationalization converts really well. I've been running that playbook for seven plus years now. And now we just uncovered another one. So go do internationalization, especially with all the AI stuff going on. Yeah, but what people get wrong with the internationalization, they just go to Chad GPT and they translate their content. You got to transcribe it. So if Chad GPT, translate your content, you got to actually do keyword research within those regions and adjust based on what's popular within those regions.
5:09And you got to adjust the content to work for them culturally. And then if you post it, you'll do much better. You still got to build links. You still got to get awareness in those local regions. You can do that from conferences, advertising, whatever you want to end up doing. It works. But if you miss those few steps that I talked about and if you don't use hreflang, it just doesn't work. Yep. So, and didn't you create a fat resource on this? No. I did. I have tons of resources on going international. I started blogging about it so heavily when I was doing it because my traffic was just going through the roof.
5:39But what was funny is very few people actually do it. But it's perfect for our agency because we focus mainly on enterprise. It gets us amazing enterprise clients who are global and have issues. This message is brought to you by Leveling Up Founders. And Leveling Up Founders is an invite-only event for founders. It happens once a year, usually during August. And past attendees include people such as Ali Abdaal, Cody Sanchez, Neil Patel, Vanessa Lau, and the list goes on and on. And ultimately, it comes down to the quality of the group with the people. We tried to keep the group high caliber. That's why it's invite only.
6:17So if you are a founder at the top of your game, you can go to levelingup.com slash founders to learn more about it, and then you can apply and we'll see you on the other side. By the way, Neil and I have an agency owners group called the Agency Owners Association. All you have to do, just go to marketingschool.io slash agency. Once again, it's marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more. And now back to the show. You know why we're so open to sharing everything with everyone? It's because we know that less than 1 % of people are going to do something about it. It's more like less than 0.1 % are you going to even do it?
6:51I know that sounds bad, but like, look, by us giving away everything for free, we're getting notoriety for it. We get branding from it. We get followers from it. It drives us leads. And it actually doesn't create that much competition. The revenue outweighs the extra competition we're getting. I talked about this with my team. We're having lunch at Eataly, right? And then I was like, you know why most people, when you come back in America, there's this thing called global entry and that lets you walk right past the lines. And Neil and I have it. We just walk right past when we come back. We don't need to go through security, right?
7:19But the vast majority of Americans are sitting in security. Well, why? Because most people aren't willing to do the work. That's so true. I think the real reason by a lot of Americans are sitting in that line is because they don't travel often. Well, you and I travel a lot. Most people who travel like us have global entry. Okay. I don't know. There's some people I know that don't have it. It's like, oh yeah, I should really get it next time. I should really, they just never get it. Right. Sayed have it? He for sure has it. Knowing him, he for sure. I don't know. I'm telling you, most people have, if you do like four or five international trips at least a year.
7:55It's worth it. Yeah, but you and I do way more than that. I think I'm on like 30 plus. But even getting to TSA, a lot of people, to this point, a lot of people still don't have TSA pre-check. That's basic. I'm telling you, dude, most people don't fly. Watch, check this out. how often does the average person fly each year? Okay, check it. What do you think the number is? Like two times. You spot on 1.5 to two flights a year. That's why most people don't do this. All right, fair. Let's move on to the next one. $800 million studio expansion halted because of AI. Did you read about this? No. Okay, so this guy.
8:35What kind of studio? like creative shop it was a here i'm going to read the tweet right now okay four months ago so this is from ai safety memes that's the handle four months ago dreamworks founder katzenberg said ai will cut animated movie jobs by 90 in three years it's already happening after seeing sora so open ai sora that which is the it makes like cool videos for you just text text the video right tyler perry halts 800 million dollar studio expansion and so what specifically convinced him, he said, I had gotten word over the last year or so that this was coming, but I had no idea until I recently saw the demonstration of what it's able to do.
9:12It's shocking to me. Being told that AI can do all these things is one thing, but actually seeing the capabilities, it was mind blowing. Okay. Here's the main piece over here. I think it's going to be a major game changer because if you can spend a fraction of the cost to do a pilot that would have cost 15 million, 20 million, or even 35 million, if you're looking at HBO, of course, the bottom line of those companies would be to go the route of lesser costs. So that's what's going on. It is. And they're going to crank out way more volume in content, and then they're going to double down on the hits and spend the money there.
9:42It'll be a much more profitable model in the long run. Did you see the Klarna example? Did I share it with you? I did not. Okay. Well, Neil was traveling this way. Let me update you. So Klarna, I think there's like e-commerce, right? And they launched an AI bot. It's an AI chat bot, right? Here's what happened. 2.3 million conversations happening with this chat bot. And the time to solve a ticket, like a support ticket, went down from 11 minutes to two minutes. This AI bot did the work of 700 chat customer service people. They're estimating that this AI alone is going to add$40 million in profit per year.
10:16And so they're saying - For their company. For their company. They're saying, hey, this is happening right now. This is going to have a big shift. They wrote a blog post, a press release about it. And yeah, that's pretty significant. That is significant. And you know where that money is going to be spent? The savings? It's going to be spent on R &D. Sales and marketing. In the long run. I kind of lump two and two together. Yeah, because AI, the big thing that it's going to do is going to help companies be more efficient, which is going to allow them to increase their CAC. Because if the profit is way higher per customer, they can now just go and spend more money.
10:51And just grow faster. Yes. And then we're going to get back into the old cycle. Everyone's like, growth at all costs. They're more profitable. The cycles. Yeah, it's all cycles. Dude, and this has happened before too. We're like, oh, you can't, you grow at all costs. Oh, this is foolish. This time it's different. Yeah, this time it's different. Then grow at all costs. It's like, it happens. Will it happen in the next five years, 10 years? I don't know. But if you fast forward 20, 30 years from now, I bet you will have another season of people talking about growth at all costs. I just, I'm really excited about this because we're just trying to build like a customer acquisition system where it can handle the initial call bookings for you and then it can handle discovery call, book the meetings for you, eventually hopefully even gift wrap the customer for you at the very end.
11:32It's going to take a long time to get there, I think, maybe sooner. But if you can build an entire customer acquisition system for people, then you're going to be good because you're cutting a big cost for people. I think this works really well in SMB. I do believe this is going to be much harder for enterprise. And the reason I say that is when you typically have a business that's servicing enterprise, each enterprise corporation typically has their own unique set of problems, which is why they're willing to pay a lot of money for a solution versus S &B, it's a lot more cookie cutter sales. And I think that's easier to replicate over AI.
12:09Exactly. So what if you did, there's an S &B angle for this, but there's also an enterprise angle where you custom build for each enterprise, right? And you're only doing it for maybe a couple of them. Depends what volume you're closing, right? If you don't have tons of customers, it may not be needed. Yeah. 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.
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14:38Remember we talked about all the pay for performance marketing agencies out there? The one doing 80 million, 30 million profit, 30 employees. Forget the pay for performance piece. We're going to see a lot more efficiencies with these companies. That's all. You're going to see way more efficiencies. And you're not going to just see the efficiencies on customer service or marketing. You're going to see it on all ends. I do think marketing won't have as many efficiencies as people think because they're going to take the savings in the efficiencies and spend it all on acquiring more customers. I think the shift is going to be less spent on human labor and more spent on ad dollars.
15:16Or buying more companies. Yeah, but marketing doesn't really do that, right? Here's the question, right? If you add all this profit, and it's like M &A used to be a big lever, but the other thing is companies are going to get a lot more efficient. And so then what do you do? You have to constantly underwrite all these companies that you're looking at buying because you don't know who's going to be staying and who's not. Well, the other cool thing too is if you're doing M &A and you see that they're not using technology like this e-commerce example you gave, they're like, oh, this is a competitor.
15:46They're actually RSI. They do terrible margins. They spend a lot on customer service. Let's just buy them and use this. And oh, that$40 million drops to the bottom line and it helps kind of pay for the business. M &A with AI, looking for AI efficiencies. because anytime you do M &A or private equities looking at stuff, they're looking for efficiencies. Yeah, there's no difference. Yeah. All right, well, that's a great place to stop or end today, but go to the next episode. Don't forget to rate, view, subscribe. It helps us grow. I know some of you like to give us nice ratings when we talk about certain subjects, but marketingschool.io slash agency if you want to join the Agency Owners Association, you can apply for it.
16:23We've got different groups for you if you're an agency owner. And Neil and I look forward to meeting some of you in person. So go do that. Oh, and Eric's looking for a new girlfriend. Oh, my God. Go DM him on Instagram. Eric Osu. All right. Goodbye.

