Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

In episode #612, Eric and Neil discuss their craziest marketing schemes. Tune in to hear some out-there ideas that may work for you, as well. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: The Craziest Marketing Tactic Ever [00:36] The craziest thing Eric has ever done was bet an entire company (54 employees, 5 months of cash in the bank). [01:02] He bet everything on video marketing in order to hit numbers. [01:19] He was even surprised that it worked. The company now does $25 Million/year in business. [01:39] At the same time, Neil was spending $20 to acquire a customer and generating $200. [02:02] The craziest thing Neil has ever done was to launch the “Who is Neil Patel?” campaign. Though he got a lot of hate for it, it proved to be very successful. [02:42] It caused everyone to Google his name, which made his brand query shoot up, his search traffic skyrocketed, and his ranking improved. [03:12] You can achieve this by creating quizzes or paying celebrities to be part of an ad campaign, as examples. [03:50] Marketing works whether people love or hate the campaign. [04:32] Buying websites is another great way to improve your ranking. [04:55] Eric wanted to rank for elder-care related keywords, so he bought out some elder-care sites. [05:45] The site would then redirect to their main landing page. [05:52] That’s it for today! [06:01] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In episode #611, Eric and Neil discuss how you can improve your SEO without writing more content. Tune in to hear what steps you can take to increase site traffic without having to write new content. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Do SEO Without Writing Content [00:35] Use Google Search Console to see which pages have a high impression count, but low click-through rate. [01:01] In order to increase traffic to your site, improve your title or meta-description. [01:26] Neil’s most popular pages are the ones with a tool, his blog, and his homepage. [01:44] Whatever business you’re in, create a tool for it. You don’t have to do this from scratch! You can buy a script for what you need. [02:18] Buy other websites via BizBuySell, Flippa, or FE International. [02:49] Brian Dean runs Backlinko, has thirty-something blog posts and gets near 200,000 visitors per month. [03:05] He gets good traffic by improving his existing content. [03:33] You can generate traffic and raise your ranking by improving your website’s design. [03:37] Neil was the co-founder of Kiss Metrics and they added a lot of infographics to their site, which increased traffic. [04:01] That’s all for today! [04:04] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In episode #610, Eric and Neil discuss 7 useful hacks that will double your leads. Tune in to hear what you could be doing to increase your business. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Double Your Leads With These 7 Hacks [00:33] Hack 1: Use the most relevant lead magnet. [00:38] A lead magnet is an ebook, a checklist, etc. [01:07] Hack 2: Remarket visitors to your site. [01:15] Show them a landing page with the opposite pitch of your main landing page. [01:33] Remarketing is effective, because people come to your site via different pages. [01:55] Hack 3: Use a pop-up tool to collect leads. [02:02] Great pop-up tools: Hello Bar and Opt-in Monster. [02:21] Hack 4: If you are doing B2B, use LinkedIn’s pre-populating forms. [02:48] Your conversion rate will go up, because it fills out the form for the potential customer, saving them time and effort. [02:52] Hack 5: Use chat bots. [03:02] You can use Facebook’s free tool, Intercom, Drift, or Many Chat. [03:33] Hack 6: Get people to subscribe or opt-in via push notifications. [04:05] Try using Subscribers. [04:40] Hack 7: Build tools and give them away for free. [05:12] UberSuggest is a great example of this. [05:20] That’s all for today! [05:22] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In episode #609, Eric and Neil discuss whether you really need more backlinks to outrank your competition. Tune in to hear what you can do to improve your ranking. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: Do You Really Need More Backlinks to Outrank Your Competition? [00:34] Eric doesn’t think you need more backlinks. [00:54] Sometimes, a wikipedia post will rank higher than others because they have domain authority. [01:15] However, Eric and Neil don’t even check their domain authority anymore. [01:21] When you’re starting off, this is something you need to check, but once you are more established, it doesn’t matter. [01:41] Neither Eric or Neil even knows how many backlinks they have. [02:15] To win business, Eric’s company will show companies how many backlinks they have as compared to their competitors. [02:30] Once you’ve been working with a customer for a year or two, you produce good content, build natural links, create videos, create podcasts, and you no longer check on backlinks. [03:00] The simplest way to outrank your competitors: go to Google Search Console, check your URL’s with a lot of impressions, but low clicks, then re-write it by fleshing it out and adding in pertinent keywords. You will find that your ranking for those keywords will increase and you will outrank your competitors without having to build more links. [03:30] Sometimes, checking backlinks is based merely on ego, as nothing annoys people more than their competitors having more backlinks and higher domain authority. [03:55] Clickflow is a great tool that shows you when your impression count is too low. This means you should improve the title or meta-description. [04:16] Sometimes, adding popular keywords to your title will help boost your ranking. [04:42] That’s it for today! [04:46] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In episode #608, Eric and Neil discuss what you should do in light of the fact that email marketing is dying. Tune in to hear what avenues you should pursue to mitigate the loss of traffic through email marketing. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: Email Marketing Is Dying (and Here's What You Should Do Next) [00:34] Everyone thinks no one uses email anymore, which is a false assumption, especially if you work in the corporate world. [00:55] Although email marketing is dying, that is only for the younger demographics. [01:15] Email isn’t as effective as it used to be, but as long as you leverage all the other channels, you can still do well. [01:40] Combine emails, push notifications, and chat bots; you will get back some of the traffic you lost through email marketing. [02:00] Neil spoke to someone who works in Dubai and he still makes all his money through email marketing to an older audience. [02:21] Eric loves to use Subscribers.com, Many Chat, and text messaging to market to a younger audience. [02:58] Sly Broadcast is a great tool that Eric loves. [03:18] This tool will allow you to drop a voicemail into someone’s inbox without having the phone ring. [03:40] Cut the fat on the tools, though. Too many tools spreads your focus too thin. [04:25] Neil’s team uses fewer than 10 tools internally. [04:32] They use Skype, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, AHREFS, SEMRush, Subscribers, Hello Bar, Hubspot, and possibly one or two more at the most. [05:00] Don’t go beyond ten tools, because it is overwhelming. [05:15] If you want to do well and remain actionable, using too many tools will prevent that. [05:30] That’s it for today! [05:32] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In episode #607, Eric and Neil discuss what happened when they purchased backlinks. Tune in to hear whether this is still a valid marketing method. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: We Bought $100,000 Worth of Backlinks (and Here's What Happened Next) [00:40] Eric and Neil no longer buy links, but did so during the earlier parts of their careers. [00:55] They purchased random sites with no relevance to their industries. [01:30] Link buying is bigger than it used to be and Google isn’t banning any of the purchased sites. [01:55] Sites will spend $100,000 on backlinks, but they are not getting the traffic that they used to. [02:02] Google is now using a lot of factors such as brand queries, user metrics, on-page SEO, Hummingbird, and Rank Brain. [02:45] Paid advertising is the biggest trend right now and it’s working. [03:00] Buying links is the old SEO, instead you should think about ways to repurpose and create great content. [03:26] Neil uses blogging, video, and podcasting as marketing methods. [03:31] This all can lead to bigger and better opportunities. [04:12] That’s it for today! [04:16] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In episode #606, Eric and Neil discuss how you can outrank your competitors simply by copying them. Tune in to hear how and what you should be copying. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Outrank Your Competitors by Copying [00:53] Single Grain went from 4000 visitors/month to 100,000 visitors/month by copying great ideas from his competitors. [01:20] Take the best techniques, posts, podcasts and spin it to make it more useful. [01:36] Dr. Axe is a website that crushed the competition. [01:58] Dr. Axe checked which of their competitors’ URLS were getting the most traffic, had the fewest backlinks, and then wrote better versions of those pages. [02:57] This got them to 20 Million visitors per month. [03:34] AHREFS is one of Eric and Neil’s favorite tools. It can do a content gap analysis, which will help you see where others are failing. Fill in that gap! [04:25] Neil wrote The Beginners’ Guide to Online Marketing. It cost him around $20,000 or $30,000. [04:51] It was a combination of the strongest pieces out there; he made it more detailed, easier to digest, and combined text with infographics to make it more appealing. [05:05] A lot of people are doing 10x or 100x content. [05:20] Think how you can apply Neil’s techniques to your product or service in your industry. [05:52] If you continually create new content on the same topic, Google won’t know which page to rank higher, so they won’t rank them well at all. [06:07] Make sure your pages are more detailed and don’t repeat content. [06:11] That’s all for today! [06:13] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In episode #605, Eric and Neil discuss whether you should focus on quantity or quality when it comes to link building. Tune in to hear what you might be doing wrong. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: Quantity vs Quality: What's Better For Link Building? [00:43] Neil finds that neither proves more useful than the other. Slow and steady wins the race. [01:02] This means whether you post ten links per month or three with high quality content, consistency is the only thing that matters. [01:52] You never consider link-building when you’re starting your business, but it matters. [02:20] When starting out, focus on letting people know who you are and what your brand is. [02:45] Eric builds the majority of his links on Singlegrain. [02:56] He and his company focus on quantity and find that quality isn’t always a factor. [03:15] Now, Singlegrain pulls in 100,000 visitors per month. [03:25] Don’t post junk, but quality rarely matters. [03:45] Don’t always link back to your homepage, rather provide relevant information. [04:25] Though it’s not the sexiest answer, time is always your friend and visitors will grow in time if you remain consistent. [04:28] That’s all for today! [04:31] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In episode #604, Eric and Neil discuss ways you can convert site visitors into repeat visitors. Tune in to hear how you can increase your conversions and revenue. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Convert Your Visitors Into Repeat Visitors [00:45] 25-30% of Single Grain’s visitors are repeat visitors. [00:48] Most people will have this percentage of repeat visitors. [01:12] Collect email addresses and re-market to them. [01:30] People on your email list will be the highest converting channel. [01:36] Emails account for 30% of Overstock’s sales. [01:55] Made a lead magnet. [02:10] Use Beacon.by to make checklists and ebooks. Other helpful tools are: Canva and Hello Bar. [02:40] Use multiple channels; try push notifications. [02:45] To facilitate this, try Subscribers, Push Crew, or One Signal. [03:00] Chat bots are still effective (not as much as last year). You can get 40% of those people to your website. [03:24] You can use RSS to blog. [03:50] It’s a quick and easy way to blast everything. [04:10] Neil write his emails manually, which may make his blasts more successful. [04:30] Tailor your titles and content to each outlet (email, social, etc.). [05:00] Use email, push, chat bots, and any new marketing channel to get people to your site. [05:14] The goal is to engage with people as many times as possible. [05:55] Check out Neil’s guides on Quicksprout. [06:12] If you Google online marketing, Neil is always one of the top results. [06:38] Don’t forget about retargeting! [06:50] That’s all for today! [06:52] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In episode #603, Eric and Neil discuss ways you should emulate HubSpot. Tune in to hear the ways in which HubSpot is successfully converting people into customers. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Growth Hack Your Company by Copying Hubspot [00:35] Eric had one of the HubSpot VP’s, David Cancil, who is now the CEO of Drift, on Growth Everywhere. [00:47] David said that Hubspot got a lot of its clients/sales from it website grader tool. [01:04] When it comes to software, you want to give away something everyone wants. [01:18] Even if you release a cheaper version of coveted software and give it away for free, you will get a lot more traffic. [01:43] You can even apply this to physical products. [02:10] “Marketing is a race to the bottom.” -Neil [02:25] Neil bought and re-launched UberSuggest; did little to no marketing; and offered free versions of his competitors apps or software. [02:50] Russell Brunson offered a free book for which you only had to pay shipping. [03:15] Outgrow is a great free tool you can use and customize to suit your needs. [03:35] Lead Quizzes and the book Ask help you figure out what kind of questions you should be asking your customers. [04:10] Quizzes aren’t effective unless the product is relevant to the result of the quiz. [05:05] Hubspot personalizes the site to each visitor and welcomes you back by name. [05:24] Personalizing the experience will help conversion rates. [05:35] Amazon is also good at personalizing their experience. [06:05] You can easily use Upwork or CodePen or Top Down to hire workers/developers. [06:35] Product tools are the best way to market. [07:15] That’s all for today! [07:18] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.