Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips

In Episode #54 Neil and Eric share their secrets for measuring the success of SEO changes you make to your website. Listen as they talk Google Search Console versus Google Analytics, and highlight how you should approach each tool. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:25 – Today’s topic: How to Know if Your SEO Changes are ACTUALLY Working? 00:34 – Checkout Google Search Console 00:58 – As long as it says you’re going up—everything is typically all good 01:05 – Look at impressions 01:49 – When you make a technical SEO change, make a note of it and check back in 20 days via Google Search Console 03:23 – One framework to use, Brian Balfour experimentation framework 04:04 – All you need is a spreadsheet 04:14 – Neil lists the columns in his spreadsheet 04:30 – Tracking against 1 EID 05:15 – Set weekly growth meetings to review changes 05:40 – Take screen shots 2 or 3 times a month to track your data, because you will lose your history in Search Console 07:00 – GrowthBot.io can sync with Slack and preview key analytics 3 Key Points: You MUST use Google Search Console. When using GSC, be sure to take screen shots at least 2 or 3 times a month as history is not stored. Set weekly or monthly meetings to review SEO changes. 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.

Welcome to The Marketing School Podcast—your 10-minute resource to learn, grown, and nurture your passion for online marketing! In Episode #53 Eric and Neil discuss their favorite marketing tools that save you time. Enjoy! Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:25 – Today’s topic: Marketing Tools That Will Save You Time 00:34 – Droplr—take screenshots and videos with ease 01:23 – Ahrefs—links to all your competitors 03:14 – Drip—a fresh, effective take on email marketing automation 03:24 – LeadPages—build landing pages with ease 04:49 – HelloBar—collect email address, push out marketing message, etc. with ease 05:15 – Google Tag Manager—Add snippets to whatever pages you want, add pages at-will, etc. 06:29 – Rescue Time—Identify where you’re inefficient 07:06 – Text Expander—Save snippets so you don’t have to re-type paragraphs 08:09 – Gmail Canned Responses—a great time saver for email marketing 09:03 – ScheduleOnce – Just a great time saver in terms of booking people 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 #52 Neil and Eric discuss the all-too-common challenge of finding great ideas for blog topics. Listen as they share a number of their favorite tools, proven techniques, and secret sources for marquee content. Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:23 – Today’s topic: How to research new blog topics? 00:42 – Hold weekly meetings and crowdsource idea generation 01:00 – You can also tap into your email list 01:50 – Tap into feedly.com 02:05 – Neil only sources his audience for blog/podcast topics 02:31 – What type of problems are you hearing about again and again at conferences and industry events? 02:50 – BuzzSumo and Brian Dean's Skyscraper Technique 04:00 – TrackReddit 04:48 – Tap into article sub-headers and use those sub-headers to create individual posts 05:30 – What have people engaged with in the past? 06:56 – Digital Marketer – Headline Ideas 07:15 – Aaron Ageis Quick Sprout 3 Key Points: Tap into the hive mind (aka the crowd). Listen into your industry’s buzz. Try transforming sub-headers from older content into stand-alone pieces. 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.

Welcome to The Marketing School Podcast—your 10-minute resource to learn, grown, and nurture your passion for online marketing! Links affect two types of traffic sources: organic traffic and referral traffic. In Episode #51 Eric and Neil discuss how to drive a lot of traffic to your website without building links. Enjoy! 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.

Welcome to The Marketing School Podcast—your 10-minute resource to learn, grown, and nurture your passion for online marketing! In Episode #50 Eric and Neil discuss why they decided to do this podcast in the first place, what their hesitations were, and the benefits of doing it. Enjoy! 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.

Welcome to The Marketing School Podcast—your 10-minute resource to learn, grown, and nurture your passion for online marketing! In Episode #49 Eric and Neil discuss how often you should be tracking your keyword ranking. Enjoy! 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 #48 Neil and Eric discuss their respective strategies for studying competitors. Listen as both hosts explain why examining the competition—while occasionally valuable—is not as helpful as examining customers, and why your big strategy shifts should be determined by YOU as opposed to the competition. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:10 – How much should you focus on your competitors? 00:15 – Neil doesn’t focus on competitors too much 00:29 – Remember that the market is HUGE 00:45 – There’s a LOT of room out there 01:03 – Making a shitload of money as #2 or #3 is awesome—you don’t need to be #1 01:47 – Just focus on building your OWN business 02:12 – SEMrush 02:15 – Use it to gain keen insight into what your competitors are doing 02:49 – AdBeat 02:54 – See what your competitors are doing with more granularity 03:13 – If you’re going to pay attention to competitors, may attention to new products and market shifts 03:55 – If you don’t, you’ll get left behind 04:10 – Don’t sweat the small stuff—look at their roadmap 04:46 – Talk to your customers BEFORE making a big shift 05:05 – As long as you’re talking with your customers, you’ll never miss a beat 05:50 – Don’t do legwork for free 06:35 – When all you do is monitor your competitors, you’re playing a constant game of catch-up 3 Key Points: When it comes to competitors, only pay attention to their new products and market shifts—the rest is small potatoes. You do NOT need be #1. Never forget the market is HUGE. 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 #47 Neil and Eric walk through their Top 10 Plugins for WordPress—they’re not only talk about the plugins and their features, but best practices for making the most of these WP add-ons.  Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:15 – Sharing the Top 5 Wordpress Plugins 00:35 – Yoast SEO plugin 01:03 – ThriveLeads is all about content upgrades 01:20 – Allows for opt-ins that are relevant to specific content topics 01:52 – Allows for the addition of an easy CTA for every post 02:02 – Pretty Link 02:09 – If you’re promoting someone else’s product as an affiliate, you can cloak the affiliate link 02:47 – Also great for Facebook ads 03:03 – PolyLang 03:13 – Requires more work, but it creates SERIOUS ROI 03:49 – Most people don’t speak English, yet most of the content available is in English 04:16 – Manual translate your content 05:05 – CoSchedule 05:19 – A wordpress plugin that organizes everything into an editorial calendar 06:56 – WPSmush 07:09 – Condenses images to make to help pages load faster 07:12 – WordPress Popular posts 07:47 – link every page to popular posts 08:20 – WP Checklist 08:26 – Creates a checklist for each and every piece of content 09:20 – HelloBar 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 #46 Neil and Eric explain how to measure the results of your content marketing efforts. Listen as Neil and Eric illustrate why measuring your content marketing, while important, isn’t necessarily KEY until your content marketing and its reach has hit a certain level of exposure. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:30 – How to measure the results of your content marketing efforts 00:40 – What gets measured gets managed 00:55 – One thing you can do?—start simple. Track what’s important using a spreadsheet 01:45 – With content marketing, it takes time to measure results so be patient 01:50 – Neil never measures ROI from content marketing 02:25 – When you’re spending your OWN time on content marketing, there’s virtually no cost 02:45 – Content marketing is a LONG-TERM play 03:00 – As long as traffic keeps going up, you’ll be able to find a way to monetize 03:20 – Once traffic exceeds 10,000, start collecting emails 04:15 – Calculated Risk 04:55 – Content marketing is a 12-18 month journey before you see any traction 05:35 – Think of content marketing like you think of PR 06:35 – Writing eCommerce posts didn’t get the most traction…but they were the most loyal 06:50 – Moral of the story, buzz does not necessarily equate to sales 07:58 – Each visitor isn’t the same, attract the RIGHT type of readers 08:28 – Cyfe will allow you to build out dashboards with ease 09:10 – Make something people want before you start measuring 3 Key Points: Content marketing takes time, there won’t be short term wins. Attracting the RIGHT type of readers is more important than attractive LOTS of readers. What gets measured gets managed. Resources Mentioned: Calculated Risk – Blog from a WSJ journalist CYFE – Social media, analytics, marketing, sales, support, infrastructure... all in one place. Track your entire business in real-time. 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 #45 Neil and Eric talk testimonials—what they are, why they’re important, and how you can go about collecting them for your business. Listen as Neil and Eric share their personal experience with testimonials—both good and bad—and illustrate why you should never create a fake testimonial. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:30 – How you can get testimonials from your customers 00:39 – Testimonials are KEY because they do all the hard legwork in terms of winning new business 01:28 – Add company badges and testimonials to your homepage 01:49 – YesInsights 02:39 – Email people asking for feedback 03:03 – Roughly 3 people out of every 100 will give you feedback…at least one of those should be good enough for a testimonial 04:32 – A testimonial will give you a conversion lift of around 8% to 10% 05:19 – Net Promoter Score 06:05 – Be sure to ASK people if you can use testimonials…if you don’t, you can get in BIG trouble 06:15 – However, when it comes to logos, it’s better to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission 07:14 – Do NOT make-up testimonials 08:15 – Bottom line?—testimonials are powerful and awesome, but you need to be careful when using them 3 Key Points: Don’t make up a testimonial—people will see it from a mile away. Always ask permission before using a testimonial. Testimonials will help your conversions, but not by any astronomical amount…10% if you’re lucky. Resources Mentioned: YesInsights – Get Customer feedback with simple one-click surveys. Net Promoter Score – A management tool that can be used to gauge the loyalty of a firm's customer relationships 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.