The Pricing Model of The Future?

Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

Eric Siu and Neil Patel

Business, Careers, Marketing

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2026

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Need marketing help? Visit: https://www.singlegrain.com/ and https://npdigital.com/ Want to recruit great marketers? Find them here: https://marketingschool.io/hire Neil and Eric dig into McKinsey shifting a quarter of its fees to outcome-based pricing and what that means for agencies built on billable hours. Then they run through seven AI marketing trends for 2026: hiring AI-pilled marketers, optimizing for agents instead of just LLMs, AI-built sites and landing pages, integrating directly into LLMs over chasing their traffic, the documentation boom, the backlash against using AI to market to AI, and why HTML artifacts are becoming the new way to package and share ideas. Key takeaways ◾Outcome-based pricing is reshaping how agencies charge ◾Optimize for agents and integrations, not just LLM traffic ◾Using AI content to win inside LLMs will get discounted Chapters 00:00 McKinsey goes outcome-based pricing 01:01 How outcome-based deals get structured 02:51 Quantum Black savings example 03:35 Why performance-based deals get renegotiated 04:53 Seven AI marketing trends for 2026 04:58 Trend 1: Hiring AI-pilled marketers 05:45 Trend 2: Optimizing for agents 07:57 ClickFlow AI SEO break 08:36 Trend 3: AI-built sites and landing pages 10:07 Trend 4: Integrating directly into LLMs 11:35 Trend 5: The documentation boom 12:32 Trend 6: Backlash against AI marketing to AI 14:15 Trend 7: HTML as a marketing trend 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗟 Welcome to Marketing School, one of the top business podcasts with over 61 million downloads. Each episode delivers actionable marketing tips and strategies from two entrepreneurs who truly practice what they preach. The show is hosted by Eric Siu, founder of Leveling Up and Single Grain, and Neil Patel, co-founder of Neil Patel Digital and recognized by Forbes as a Top 10 Marketer. 🎙️ Learn More About the Hosts Eric Siu – Leveling Up: https://www.youtube.com/@LevelingUpOfficial Neil Patel: https://www.youtube.com/@neilpatel 📩 Free Resources Ubersuggest: https://www.ubersuggest.com/ Answer The Public: https://www.answerthepublic.com/ ✅ Subscribe for Daily Marketing Insights!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Does your experience with AI sound a little something like this?
0:03.1	You've been prompting for 20 minutes.
0:04.8	The output is polished, confident, and completely useless.
0:08.5	That's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business.
0:11.6	HubSpot's AI works with your actual customer data.
0:14.5	Every interaction and every signal your team has generated over time.
0:17.9	So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it.
0:21.5	Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
0:25.6	Do you know what percent of McKinsey's fees now are outcome-based?
0:29.8	I'm going to take a guess and say 15%.
0:32.5	25%.
0:33.6	Oh, wow.
0:34.5	As of November 2025.
0:36.3	Yeah.
0:36.9	So it's interesting because I was sitting on the couch yesterday.
0:39.7	I was watching before I was about to watch the Spurs' Knicks game, but I was watching Patrick
0:45.9	by David talking about how consultancies have changed, right?
0:48.1	Where they used to charge you $5 million.
0:49.7	And now like the work, maybe it's like $10,000 or so.
0:52.8	So like a lot of people are customers, past customers or current customers of McKinsey are applying pricing pressure. Just saying, hey, yo, like, I know you need to charge us, but like this work doesn't take that long anymore. Right. And so then he's like 25% of McKinsey's fees are outcome based. I was like, that doesn't seem right to me. I Googled it, looked it up. As of November 2025, someone from
1:11.4	McKinsey, I think, had said that. And that's interesting to me because agencies,
1:16.4	consultancies are so used to charging on typically time, materials, and hours, right? So I don't
	...

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