← Marketing Against The Grain
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to a special in person marking. It's the grain. I'm your host, Kip Bodnar and I'm here with the one and only Neil Patel. Neil, you have a special presentation that you're giving here at HubSpot's Inbound 2025 where you've done a massive amount of research. You got a bunch of data on marketing tactics to help people get better results from their marketing. And I want to kind of do a greatest hits. I can't. We obviously don't want to spoil the whole talk, but the most important ones I was hoping that we would share with the marketing against the great crew.
- [00:42]
B
Yeah. So one of the ones that we see is the companies that are leveraging GEO or AIs or whatever you want to end up calling.
- [00:50]
A
We're calling it AEO at HubSpot. AI engine optimization or Answer Engine Optimization. It kind of works for both. But AEO is what we call.
- [00:59]
B
All right, so let's call it AEO right now. So with aeo, we're seeing it driving a fraction of the traffic. So when you look at traditional organic search, a lot of the websites that we had in the study that were included, they were getting anywhere from call 11% to in the low 20% from organic search for B2B versus B2C for AEO. For both B2B and B2C, it was less than a percent of traffic. Of traffic, yep.
- [01:25]
A
Okay.
- [01:25]
B
Okay. But it was no less than 50% of the conversion that they were getting from organic.
- [01:32]
A
Yes, we were finding that too. I would share like we did a study on our own traffic and a Visit from an AEO like ChatGPT. Perplexity versus traditional Google search converts into a customer at 13x the rate of traditional Google search, which is kind of in line with what you're applying. Right.
- [01:51]
B
And we're seeing a broad range. Sometimes it's 8.9x, sometimes it's 12, 13, sometimes it's 20.
- [01:57]
A
A lot of it depends on how you're optimizing for it.
- [01:59]
B
Correct.
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A
If you're optimizing for that traffic specifically, you're going to be up at that higher.
- [02:02]
B
Totally. And what we found is because it's so intent driven, just the conversions are extremely high because someone's doing research on the platform and, and normally when you do a traditional Google search, you're clicking through to tons of different links, you're doing your research and then you're figuring out what you want to do in the platforms and the LLMs, you're doing all your research. In platform you're clicking through when you want to take action.
- [02:27]
A
Like, I know this is, I've got the answer for me and I want to go do something about it.
- [02:31]
B
Yes.
- [02:32]
A
The way I talk about it is like, used to get answers, now you take action from answers to action.
- [02:36]
B
And another interesting thing that we see with companies doing marketing is, you know, especially here at Inbound, I've talked to a lot of companies today and a lot of them are starting to pull back on their blogging efforts because they're just like, oh, we don't get as much Google traffic. It's not worth investing as much. But I have data that I show with ChatGPT perplexity. Google AI overviews. The top source that pretty much all these alums are pulling from is blogs. So it's like, yes, you may not get the traffic that you once did, but if you're not creating content and getting citations in other blogs, you're going to miss out on a whole slew of traffic from these AI platforms.
- [03:17]
A
Yeah. So we're seeing that too, where all the things you did for traditional search still matter.
- [03:22]
B
Yes.
- [03:23]
A
You just need to do new things on top of that to get properly cited and recommended by the LLMs in the new AI search.
- [03:31]
B
Yeah. Like, I have a comparison of AEO versus SEO in my presentation and it's almost like a circle, but it's highlighting the different points. So it's not really a circle because not every aspect of content creation is a 10 for importance level for SEO versus AEO. But like, things like links really matter in SEO. But AEO really only cares about citations versus links. Right. SEO cares about content and quality and length, in some cases time on site.
- [04:07]
A
Yep.
- [04:07]
B
But AEO cares a lot about how the content is structured. Right. So what we like to say is you create content in today's world for humans, but you package it for AI.
- [04:18]
A
Yeah, we were moving for we made content just for humans then, now we're making it for humans and robots.
- [04:23]
B
That's right.
- [04:24]
A
Right.
- [04:24]
B
And you know, I have this stat in my presentation. Video has way more consumption than any other content format, which everyone knows, because social is where really people consume their content. And it's even more when you look at time on platform versus like a chatgpt. So people are like, oh, video is where it's at. But with AI, yes, you should create video for all the social platforms out there. And AI, some of them have deals with some of these social platforms that are pulling and they're trying to dissect information. But we still see them pulling from text more than anything else by far.
- [04:59]
A
Yeah. What we have seen is similar. Text really matters. If it's a new topic where the text is more limited, they'll often pull in videos. Like we've even seen that for like the podcast. Right. Like if we're talking about a new product or feature that just came out with like one of the LLMs, like when Kieran did a deep seek episode, there wasn't that much out there. So like they're pulling in that video and sometimes a video is like a value add. It's not that you shouldn't do video, but video can't replace text I think is the point that you're making.
- [05:28]
B
That's right. And video is still important because it builds a deeper relationship, which is why you guys do videos, podcasts and even in person events which are amazing. But we looked at long form videos and the average watch time, if you add up LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube has a higher average watch time for the same piece of content than if you add up all those networks combined by far. And it actually beats it by more than double even if you added them all up.
- [05:58]
A
That is actually the least surprising stat we've talked about because like YouTube is just playing a different game than everybody else when it comes to video.
- [06:05]
B
But the issue that we're seeing when we talk to companies is they're focusing more on pushing their content on like Instagram and Facebook. And TikTok is like, look how many more views we're getting. I'm like, yes, you actually look at the watch time and it's also how they count views. It's very different from platform to platform. YouTube has just more engagement. And what we've seen work better for a lot of companies is publish on YouTube. First promote harder because it constantly drives evergreen traffic versus the other platforms. Then go on the other platforms with the same piece of video.
- [06:36]
A
I actually agree with you on that and I'd actually. You might have data on this or not, I don't know. YouTube is also, I think the best to then monetize that engagement.
- [06:44]
B
It is by far. The ad revenue is way better. Ad revenue, you have the conversions you have. So like when we put in call to actions within our videos to generate sales and then it's not all perfectly trackable. But then when we ask the customers where'd you find us for the video content, even when we add up the views, YouTube generates way more revenue. Even if the view count is a third, it'll end up generating what we see is usually 5x more than the other platforms.
- [07:12]
A
Even with the conversion rate of the views to customers are just so much higher.
- [07:15]
B
Because the engagement is there.
- [07:16]
A
Yes. The engagement deeper and they're taking that next action or whatever, that call to action is at a much higher rate.
- [07:21]
B
That's right, yeah. And the other thing that we're seeing, it doesn't matter if it's A or SEO or paid ads or social media, we're seeing the sales cycle just really drag out and that trend is continuing.
- [07:33]
A
Interesting.
- [07:35]
B
So I have a chart that breaks down by price point. You know like sub$100 to like 500, 500 to like a thousand thousand to 10,000. 10,000 above for both B2B and B2C. Before you know, everyone was talking about the rule of seven. Engage with the brand seven times online, they're much more likely to convert. We're seeing the average touch point now being somewhere around 11.
- [07:57]
A
That's a lot higher.
- [07:59]
B
Increasing too.
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A
Why do you think? Posit me at least some thoughts there.
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B
We don't have data on why, but our assumption here when we look is there's way more competitors for any type of business. There's less moats because of AI and technology and how cheap it is to get things started.
- [08:19]
A
These products, services aren't very different.
- [08:21]
B
Yes. And if you look at business, okay, people are starting to create copycats at cheaper price points. And this isn't because they know you being quite frank. You guys actually have a lot of copycats that are much cheaper in price point. We have at our ad agency, NP Digital, thousand plus people much smaller than you guys. We're in 30 something countries at this point where we have people, 20 something where we have offices. Majority of our customers will still choose you over the lower cost alternatives. Right. Brand support, community, ecosystem, training. There's a lot of other value adds that you can't necessarily just look at a price point. Plus you guys have freemium or slash free on a lot of stuff and you plug into a lot of other tools, technology. So there's a lot of other value add. But what we found is in today's world, a lot of people will pick the cheap alternatives and then when they realize they want to create a real business, let's say like a marketing software, they realize it doesn't work the way they really need and oh, I'm spending more money hiring consultants and all these headcounts to help me out than just paying double or triple because yeah, something may have been 1/3 the price but you just spent $5,000 a month when you could have just saved the $5,000 a month on consultants.
- [09:44]
C
Look, Meal just shared some wild data. AEO traffic converts at 13 times the rate of traditional search. That's insane. That's why our team just dropped the ultimate AI marketing playbook. It's got six strategies that actually work from AI search optimization to intent engines. It gives you the tools, tactics and timelines you need to succeed. Get it right now. Scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now let's get back to the show.
- [10:12]
A
The illusion of total cost of ownership in the world is crazy right now because there's so much change and disruption and people just trying to commoditize down on price. But those hidden costs are just everywhere.
- [10:23]
B
Yeah, we used to use Salesforce globally great tool. The amount of money we were spending on consultants were so ridiculous we had to get off. And we ended up switching and you can guess to who, but we ended up using HubSpot because the cost of consultants were just extremely high. The economics did not work out for us. But going back to marketing to get back on track, we're finding that the reason people need many more touch points is because of more players. Everyone's looking very similar because you can build apps so quickly with tools like Lovable and stuff like that now. And people are very price sensitive in this economy. But one interesting thing that we started seeing with AI in B2B, that's been a really interesting trend for a lot of our SaaS companies that we work with. They're doing really well with AI because AI is dissecting full cost and giving people breakdowns. And when you actually pay for a product, what does it really cost? Which is a huge marketing angle because you can then go and create content on if you choose HubSpot. Here's a real cost versus X, Y and Z companies and do comparison tables. And AI loves comparison data.
- [11:35]
A
Yes.
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B
And then if you structured data make it easier for them, it starts spitting you out and then it shows analysis between you and the competition and it's a great way to pick up business and. And then you do that per category and use AI content to help you with that. You can just generate a lot of revenue from AI.
- [11:51]
A
That's a good pro tip for kind of like lower in the funnel marketing. Okay, I gotta ask you the question I've been asked the most here at Inbound, which is what's going on in the future of marketing? Marketing feels like it's so different and it's changing so much. Like unwrap the crystal ball and tell us like if you're a marketer now, what are the couple of things that are going to be happening that you should be focusing on in the future?
- [12:13]
B
Yeah, so the big change that we're seeing because if you look at marketing, the biggest spend is in advertising paying platforms like Facebook and Google. You can see it on the earnings calls. So people used to do full blown creatives and marketing campaigns. What I mean by that is like those squatty potty videos or even lower lo fi versions of those where you're paying a few thousand dollars to 5,000. It's huge hit or miss. We're now seeing everyone is going away from high quality production ex super bowl commercial and focusing on volume lo fi content and just cranking out creatives at mass scale, but paying quite a few people, whether it's on upwork or internal teams to come up with unique scripts and ideas for the content. So in essence, we're seeing a huge shift in marketing in which people aren't paying for creatives anymore. They're paying for ideation more. Even though AI can create it. We're seeing humans create better ideas than AI, but they're using AI to come up with it so you can test in mass quantity. The second thing that we're seeing is corporations leveraging free tools. They're taking that out of the HubSpot playbook. Dharmesh talked about that on stage years ago. Where it's not freemium. You guys go with free and that's really help HubSpot get off the ground. But they're starting to do that in all sectors. B2B. You know, B2C could be mortgage calculators or tools that help you analyze neighborhoods for schools or whatever. If you're selling a home, right, B2B free versions of a tool that lead into the bigger toolset that you're selling. Kind of like what you guys do with your grader. And what we're finding with the tools is it's a cheaper form to acquire users than paying for ads. With tools like Lovable and all these AI platforms, this is more easier than ever to crank out. But here's a caveat. We're seeing huge increases in leads, lower conversions because the quality coming from the tools isn't as high. But we're seeing on average 93% more revenue because the total lead volume, even with the decrease in close rate, is making up way more revenue in total.
- [14:19]
A
Yeah, we call that the bridge problem. How do you build the bridge from the free experience to the paid experience. And when you can build that bridge, the economics get really good. But for a lot of markets, you're pointing out, there's just not a lot of great free resources and free tools out there, and it's become easier and cheaper to build them. And so doing that can get you a lot of volume in this changing world. There's a lot that a marketer can do there, obviously.
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B
And the. The last big trend that we're seeing, and your audience is probably not going to like this one.
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A
Oh, no.
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B
Is people are actually going back to the old.
- [14:51]
A
So.
- [14:51]
B
So if we look at the first six months of 2025, everyone was about AI, all right? And everyone's like, AI is hot. I don't know what's going to happen with all these applications. Do I even need a CRM? Do I even need to do email? Do I even need a website? People were really asking us, why should we do SEO and why do we even need a website anymore? And if we start looking from July to, you know, we're now in September, we're seeing most our conversations. AI is cool, but we need to go back to fundamentals. Like, we see email, and I believe the stat is 11x more than social from conversion. Now, I get you're collecting an email lead from a lot of different channels, but people don't talk about email anymore. They really don't. I know you guys do, but the general marketing, you know, community does talk about email. SEO, paid ads. It's what's driving revenue. AEO is amazing. Companies need to leverage it. It's not going to drive 50% of.
- [15:52]
A
Revenue people for a while.
- [15:53]
B
Yes.
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A
Still got to grow a lot.
- [15:54]
B
And they're saying Google's dead. Google's growing in search volume and we're seeing more usage on Google ever than before. And they're even reporting numbers of that. And their earnings are showing that they're still growing at a healthy pace. Right. And when you look at the overall marketing lens, you know, Instagram is, I believe, the second most popular search engine. They're at 6.5 billion daily searches. We're now starting to see companies optimize, be like, huh? Even though we're B2B and very few people use Instagram for B2B. I think the number, and I have it on my site, I believe it's 6% of the usage from our study showed that people are actually looking at B2B content. It's like, oh, when they perform a search on there, even though they're searching for friends most of the time. A lot of times they're actually searching for content and information. We need to be there. Because this is a huge revenue source. It's ugly, people don't want to talk about it and it's on a lot of the channels, but it drives a ton of revenue for corporations.
- [16:47]
A
So you're like, what's old is new. Focus on email, focus on the fragmented search market, the traditional search. But YouTube search, Instagram search, where people are really spending their time. Especially if you're in B2B and you might have maybe discounted it before.
- [17:01]
B
Yes. And because the overall daily search volume is a little bit more than 50 billion depending on the sources you're looking at. Google at 13.6 or 13.7 billion daily searches is at roughly 27% market share. So there's this whole slew of other search engines like LinkedIn and YouTube and Instagram that all get billions of searches per day.
- [17:23]
A
There's all kinds of trees and stuff.
- [17:24]
B
Out and no one focuses on it. Where there's very high intent traffic that converts extremely well. And companies are just ignoring because they're focusing on this shiny object of AI. And I'm not saying ignore the future, we all know it's the future. But you can't ignore the boring and ugly that is driving a ton of revenue and still growing.
- [17:44]
A
You gotta have a good foundation while you innovate. Yes, I love that. Neil, thanks for being in it. Mel, thanks for joining us on marketing Instagram. I think you just gave everybody a pro class in what matters today in the world of marketing. Shared some great data backed examples. Thanks so much for joining us.
- [17:58]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [17:59]
A
Thanks for being here everybody. Sam.