Eric Siu and Neil Patel compare short-form and long-form video performance. Shorts generate far less ad revenue and lower retention, so they prioritize long-form content and repurpose it into shorts as secondary activity. In their Agency Owners Association, a VSL conversion test rose from 1% to 6-7% after changes.
Dude, here's something interesting. So we were talking about short-form videos versus long-form videos, and you mentioned how someone got a ton of views on their short-form videos, and you broke down the ad share that they were getting from YouTube Shorts.
Yeah.
It was terrible, right?
It was nothing. Well, I mean, they had the benefit of— it was a 3-minute YouTube Short test because they're doing these longer-form YouTube videos, right? These YouTube Shorts. So initially it started as a long-form video, and it was making like a cult, like, I don't know, 23 cents a day or something like that. Once it switched over into a short, it went down to like basically less than a penny a day.
And they were still getting tons of views.
Yeah.
And that's the problem because when people are watching shorts, they're—
It's entertainment.
Yeah, their action is like they just keep swiping.
That's their behavior pattern.
There's no intention. Yes. And it's like, oh, it sounds something cool. Cool. Move on. Next one. Next one. Next one. Long form, they're super engaged. It's easier to get them to convert through a call to action because they've been spending a lot of time.
And usually with long form, again, they're engaged and usually the algorithm's trying to serve you similar videos there. And your short form does the same thing too, right? But again, how much can you learn? And the thing is this, I can't remember last time I retained something from a short form video.
I can't remember. I can't either.
Yeah. And so that's the problem with it, right? It's just less valuable at the end of the day. And which is why it's literally less valuable cuz they pay less for it too.
Yeah, I'm with you though. A lot of the short form, it's more entertainment for me.
Yeah.
And it's not as, You know, action-oriented that covers other content that I would consume.
By the way, I'm not— at least on my end, I'm not necessarily thinking that people should just eliminate short form. I think it shouldn't be a priority. Like, for example, recording here, the priority for us here is the long form and the audio piece, right? And the videos, we can chop it up and all that. But like, the— I'd say the lowest priority on this one is the 60-second short forms. That— and yeah, sure, we pull it from, from this on both sides, but it's just a side effect from what we do.
Eric and I don't like creating short-form videos or recording short-form videos. We tend to record long-form videos and chop them up. I do a recording session probably twice a month where my team has me create short-form videos specifically for campaigns that they need. And no joke, I probably spend 30 minutes in each recording session.
I can tell you don't really enjoy recording those as much. You know why? Because sometimes they'll make Neil take out like an Erewhon smoothie or something, or he'll be like at his, like, you know, the bar that you have upstairs and you're like doing different scenes and you're You're probably just like, screw this, right? Yeah.
I'm like, this shit's— they're like, oh, look at this one. It got— we did a short on the previous one. It got like 500,000 views or a million between all of a sudden. I'm like, did it drive any revenue? Well, I'm like, yeah, I don't care. Move on.
Yeah. Oh, right. Well, right. It's when you get those responses, it's like, okay, we can move on.
Yes. And it's really hard working with me. Eric knows this. I'm extremely opinionated when it comes to marketing. And unless someone has data that something's going to make me more money, I'm just like, No, thank you. Because when I look at my business, we generate a lot of our revenue from RFPs. And I was actually doing a breakdown with one of my co-founders the other day. We didn't get through all regions, but we hit a 50% growth this year over last year. There's still a few more weeks, so maybe it'll be 50-something percent growth, right? That was just in the United States.
Yeah.
And so let's say in the United States, we're getting around 24 RFPs a year. That's our current trajectory, or that's what we are at for 2024. In Brazil, we're at roughly 20. I don't know the exact number, but when I was talking to Marink the other day, he's like, I think we're at 20 so far for the year. So that's just 2 regions. I know we get a crap ton in APAC, and I know we get quite a bit in Europe as well, and Canada, and for all the other regions within LATAM. So when I'm looking at it, I was talking to my co-founder the other day, I was like, I don't know the full numbers and we haven't got them for everyone, but I'm like, I bet you we get more than one RFP a week from a big publicly traded corporation. Has to be.
Yeah.
Because in 2 regions, if you're at roughly 44, you know, it's not that hard. And I know for APAC for sure, they get more than 15, 20 a year just in Southeast Asia. Then if you add in India, then you add in all the other countries that we're in, in APAC, like Australia, then Canada.
I'm like, we have to be getting more than one a week.
Yep.
If you're an agency owner and you want to grow faster, check out the Agency Owners Association that's hosted by my podcast co-host Neil Patel and myself. And we have other agency owners that are doing 8 figures a year. They were doing 9 figures a year. They sold their business for hundreds of millions of dollars, and they're going to share their experiences with you. There's a whole host of other benefits. And the cool thing is that there's a 7-day free trial, and you should check it out now because we're going to take the prices up. So just go to marketingschool.io/aoa. By the way, this type of stuff, this actually gives me a reminder. The thing we're testing in the Agency Owners Association group right now, this— we can share hard numbers here, right? Because this is like our fun community here. But basically, I added a VSL because the team was like, hey, add a VSL to the community page. So originally, we had our community manager Austin, he did a VSL on his own, right?
Yeah.
That converted at like 1% or so. So we changed the VSL to me, and it converts at like 6-7% now, right?
Oh, wow.
But it's blended because we also added a 7-day free trial too. So there's a free trial as well. Like, we don't know which one it is, right? So it could be both adding up to it. But it's like 6 or 7% is the conversion rate to trial. And then on the trial conversion rate, it's about 30-40% or so. So it's actually pretty good.
That's pretty good.
Because we've also doubled the price too, right? And we're probably going to continue to increase the price. So, you know, now's a good time for it. But that's what we're seeing. And by the way, we're doing a session on Friday.
Yes, which we can use for this podcast.
Yes, exactly. So we'd like to use that to not only help people, but to also create content as well. Yeah. Anyway, that's it for today and we'll catch you tomorrow.
