Marketing School | Digital Marketing | Online Marketing

In episode #660, Eric and Neil discuss how often you need to blog. Tune in to hear how often you should be blogging and why it matters. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How Often Do You Really Need to Blog [00:35] Some people say quality, others say quantity. [00:48] Hubspot has a $4 Billion market cap. [01:02] They also get 6 million visitors per month. [01:26] From a traffic perspective, you want to blog as much as possible. [01:33] This means 4-10 times per day! [01:36] Look at how many posts Business Insider, HuffPo, Mashable, and Buzzfeed generate each day. [01:46] Quantity is key if you just want traffic. [02:00] Neil posts once per day. [02:30] HuffPo has a contributor network. The more contributors, the more content. They are playing a numbers game. [02:56] Neil’s site is more balanced, because the quality is much higher than sites that publish a bunch of stories each day. [03:38] You absolutely must be consistent. [03:55] Neil likes blogging frequently, but also makes s

In episode #659, Eric and Neil discuss how you can be an introvert and still network effectively. Tune in to hear how you can overcome shyness and build connections. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: The Introverts Guide to Networking [00:48] Eric is an introvert, so networking was a struggle. [01:18] Eric and his friend had no idea what to do at their first event. Then they realized that other people were just as introverted. [01:40] At future events, they just introduced themselves to anyone in the room they wanted to speak with. It was a simple opening to future connections. [02:08] Storytelling is an important way to connect with others. [02:15] When people feel that they know and understand you, they will connect with you. [02:40] When people feel a commonality, they are more likely to work and connect with you. [03:00] Don’t force connections, just find truths and similarities that can facilitate a bond. [03:35] Don’t be the person just throwing their business cards at every si

In episode #658, Eric and Neil discuss how you can be creative when you are not a creative-minded person. Tune in to hear where you can find inspiration. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Be Creative When You're Not Creative [00:34] At a retreat in Cabo San Lucas, Eric met a man who makes commercials for companies like Burger King. [00:50] His tip about creativity was zig when everyone else zags. [01:15] If a customer requests something, see if turning their approach on its head would be more effective. [01:50] If everyone is moving away from Snapchat, you should go towards it. [02:05] See what your competition is doing and see if you can build on what they are doing or flip their ideas. [02:32] Blogs and podcasts are more popular than ever. [02:49] Listen to Growth Everywhere and use the strategies that others have used to grow their businesses. [03:04] Take creative ideas that worked for others and run experiments using these techniques. [03:24] If an approach is working fo

In episode #657, Eric and Neil count out the 7 LinkedIn marketing tricks you must use. Tune in to hear what you could be doing do boost your visibility on LinkedIn. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: 7 LinkedIn Marketing Tricks That You Have to Deploy [00:33] Tip 1: Consistently post videos to YouTube and make sure you link to them through LinkedIn (LinkedIn tends to promote video content). [01:05] Tip 2: Use LinkedIn Autofill as a means to get people on your email list with minimal effort on their part. [01:45] Tip 3: Videos ads for LinkedIn are expensive, but well worth it. [02:20] Tip 4: Don’t post as often on LinkedIn. Only post your best content. [03:23] Tip 5: Use Duck Soup or LinkedIn Helper when visiting profiles: it collects their info for later contact. [04:07] Tip 6: Make sure your profile is set to let people know you are looking for full-time work. [05:05] Tip 7: Growth Pods came from Instagram, but are now available on LinkedIn. It’s a way to boost your likes and visibil

In episode #656, Eric and Neil discuss why Trump has such an effective social media strategy. Tune in to hear how and why you should use his so-called technique. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: Here's What Donald Trump Can Teach You About Social Media [00:35] Every time Trump tweets about Amazon, the stock value goes down (however, it always bounces back). [01:02] The reason his tweets are effective is that he is “super emotional”. [01:18] Whether you agree or disagree with him, his messages are always emotional. [01:54] When you get emotional with your tweets, your followers are more likely to engage (with hate or love). [02:30] He is a “master marketer”. [02:47] He knows how to manipulate the media and continues to use his platform to his advantage. [03:06] He apparently has a strong brand. [03:25] It’s a game to him and he knows how to play it. [03:40] Take time to reach out to people and find out who your most loyal followers are; find out what they want to hear from you. [04

In episode #655, Eric and Neil discuss how you can market your business at speaking engagements. Tune in to hear if it’s wise to use the hard sell while on stage. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: The Art of Speaking: How to Market Your Business From a Stage [00:35] Neil has been speaking for over ten years. [00:45] He never joined Toastmasters, he is just naturally outgoing. [01:11] Neil creates his slides, but doesn’t rehearse, because he doesn’t want to sound robotic. [01:55] You have to cater your approach to each audience. [02:12] Anyone can read slides, it takes someone with public speaking abilities to keep an audience engaged. [02:33] Eric and Neil never do a hard sell in their speeches. [02:47] Russell Brunson makes a lot of money from his public speaking engagements. [03:15] He spoke at the 10X conference and made $3 Million because of that event. [03:30] Russell is great at creating the “FOMO” feeling. [04:00] Some conferences want speakers to sell their businesses. [04

In episode #654, Eric and Neil discuss ringless voicemails. Tune in to hear how you should be using this tactic. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Grow Your Business Through Ringless Voicemails [00:37] Ringless Voicemail is a way to drop a voicemail without ringing through. [01:01] If someone opts into your email list, this is a great way to thank them and direct them to a webinar or other service. [01:37] A lot of people check their voicemails and it’s a personal touch. [01:55] Eric and Neil agree they wouldn’t answer a call from an unknown number, but they would check the voicemail. [02:17] Sly Broadcast or Stratix Network are ringless voicemail services. [03:00] Don’t call, but if you also send a text, people will at least read it. [03:18] Form fill and Zapier are tools that will help you round out this process. [03:37] The more automated a process, the smoother it will go. [04:04] That’s it for today! [04:09] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool gi

In episode #653, Eric and Neil talk about the simple hack that will help you get more valuable leads. Tune in to hear how you can up your conversion rate. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: One Simple Hack That'll Make Your Leads More Valuable [00:33] Lead scoring is getting more details, a number, or ratio on your leads. [00:46] The issue is, your sales team will talk to leads that they may not close and the closing ratios will go down. [01:09] You want to give your sales team leads that they can close. [01:29] Hubspot will lead-score for you. [01:45] Neil lead scores by using a customer’s URL and how much traffic they think you get (SEMRush and Alexa help with this). [02:00] Neil and his team look at so many facets of a client’s background that will help them understand whether they will be a good lead (country, spending habits, job title, etc.) [02:28] Eric loves using ClearBit to do some of this work. [02:57] From there, you can use MadKudu will look at all the actions people tak

In episode #652, Eric and Neil discuss affiliate marketing. Tune in to hear what steps you should take to be successful at affiliate marketing. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: Affiliate Marketing Made Simple_A Step-by-Step Guide [00:44] Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing. [01:15] It has a bad rep, because some affiliates are really aggressive and don’t put out quality work. [01:59] Read Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day [02:45] It’s important to have an affiliate manager. [03:10] If you can find the right affiliate, they will help you scale your business. [03:22] TapFiliate is less expensive and great. [03:35] Get Ambassador is another good affiliate service. [04:00] A lot of affiliates won’t work for you if your funnel isn’t fine-tuned. [04:10] ConvertKit is a great recruitment tool. [04:33] They reach out to ideal customers and do joint webinars with blogs that have the target customers. [05:05] Educate and offer a deal, otherwise webinars won’t con

In episode #651, Eric and Neil discuss how you can fix your declining traffic. Tune in to hear how you can fix problems with your SEO. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: When SEO Goes Wrong How to Fix Your Declining Search Traffic [00:54] When you haven’t changed anything and traffic declines, it could be the link algorithm, your content is outdated, or user experience isn’t that good. [01:22] Read Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable to see if you’re up to date on algorithms and changes to sites. [01:50] Use SEMRush and Moz to see indicators of change. [02:25] Look for correlation across the board. [02:38] Rusty Bricks looks for chatter on forums to see what problems arise for traffic. [02:55] It’s important to have quantitative and qualitative data. [03:00] Wicked Fire and Blackhatworld are good resources. [03:30] When traffic dropped for Neil, they ran experiments and tracked everything. [04:10] Make sure you are diversifying. [04:30] Don’t put all

In episode #650, Eric and Neil discuss how often you should be running experiments. Tune in to hear when, why, and how you should be running experiments. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How Often Should You Run Experiments? [00:39] Eric thinks you should be running experiments every single week. [00:55] For Eric’s site, they run experiments on the site itself and the business. [01:05] They use North Star to run these experiments and Eric loves the Leaderboard function. [01:45] The more experiments you run, the better off you are. [01:52] However, it’s hard to run experiments when you don’t have enough traffic. [02:04] Once you get enough conversion points (500 per month), you can run 1-2 experiments per month because you will be able to see micro and macro conversions. [02:28] A micro conversion could be someone going to your checkout page. [02:36] A macro conversion could be more sales in general. [03:00] If you’re a small business, it’s ok to track micro conversions only. [03:

In episode #649, Eric and Neil discuss whether Twitch is worth your time. Tune in to hear why you might want to consider a new outlet. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: Is Twitch Worth Your Time? [00:37] YouTubers are starting Twitch channels. [00:54] First and foremost, it claims to be the sixth most trafficked website in the world. [01:20] They have 15 Million daily active users. [01:28] 81% of users are male and 55% are between the ages of 18 and 34. [01:47] The numbers are impressive. [02:12] There are a ton of gamers on Twitch. Just because they are gamers, doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in other things. [02:39] Twitch is fourth in traffic in the US. [04:00] You don’t need a professional set-up. [04:11] There is a misconception that high-quality video is the only option. [04:52] If you create video, why wouldn’t you post it on every site available? [05:50] The content re-usage framework applies here. [06:11] If you’re already doing the work, you may as well post to Twit

In episode #648, Eric and Neil discuss how to prioritize your marketing. Tune in to hear what you should be doing before anything else. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: What Runs First? How to Prioritize Your Marketing [00:50] If you are improving every week by 1-2%, this means you are improving by 50% per year, which is a good place to be, [01:16] Look at the funnel first: you can see in Google Analytics what’s working and what isn’t. [01:41] From there, you can determine what to focus on. [01:57] Look at what’s causing the biggest drop-off and run AB tests. [02:38] If you have a leaky bucket, you wouldn’t pour more water in. [02:53] Make sure your funnel is optimized before you drive a lot of traffic to it. [03:00] Both Eric and Neil know a man named Shaun Ellis who was on the growth team for Dropbox. [03:10] He went on to create Growth Hackers. They have since released a growth management tool. North Star. [03:40] North Star uses the ICE model (Impact, Confidence, Ease) [04:36]

In episode #647, Eric and Neil discuss why you should post less frequently on social media. Tune in to hear what you should be doing instead. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How Posting Less Frequently on Social Media Will Get You More Traffic [00:36] Eric used to use a tool Meet Edgar, but he doesn’t use it anymore because the engagement was too low. [00:55] By decreasing their social media posts, they focused on quality content instead. [01:30] MeetEdgar made the team lazy about social media traffic. [01:45] It should always be quality over quantity when it comes to social media posting. [02:24] If you keep posting crappy content, social media sites might bury your posts. [03:05] Don’t post for the sake of it, focus on high-quality content. [03:23] Neil would be lazy and just post a link to Facebook, but now he makes sure to add titles and descriptions, as well. [03:53] The VP of Marketing at Sales Hacker will write mini blog posts on social media, then add links to the full cont

In episode #646, Eric and Neil discuss how you can use social media to dominate Google’s search results. Tune in to hear how you can leverage social media to rank higher in Google. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Use Social Media to Dominate Google's Search Results [00:40] You have to create a lot of content. [00:50] You can use social media to rank for your brand, but also for a lot of other keywords or terms. [00:56] If you search for anything, Google will also bring up Twitter results. [01:30] By participating in all social media sites, you can show up for everything! [01:45] Eric helped an alarm company push up the results for their social profiles and buried their one negative Forbes review. [02:35] Link to your social profiles from your website. [02:52] The domain authority to these sites is so high already, that Google will push the results higher. [03:08] Participate actively on social media. [03:24] Make sure you engage other users on social media. [03:48] Listen

In episode #645, Eric and Neil discuss how SEO is changing. Tune in to hear what will become of SEO next year and how you can adapt. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: [00:38] SEO is heading towards voice search. [00:40] However, it’s not just SEO, it’s the world. Consider Amazon’s “Alexa”. [01:03] Search is changing, because people will ask an AI assistant as opposed to Googling. [01:56] There is a tool that was developed to help with semantic searches. [02:08] It looks for the meaning of what you are looking for (ex. What is love? And it will produce results that offer resources to answer that question). [02:50] AI and semantic searches are melding together. [03:09] Alexa the product is better at SEO, but the voice device outranks it. [03:25] Mobile is huge now. [03:33] If you are using a mobile phone, the search index you see is different than what you would get on a desktop. [03:50] It’s unclear how to monetize voice search thus far. [04:04] You need to be there, so once it’s mo

In episode #644, Eric and Neil discuss why you should never rely on SEO or social media marketing alone. Tune in to hear why and how you should diversify your efforts. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: You Should Never Rely on SEO or Social Media Marketing [00:35] With social media sites, you are never in full control of your own destiny and you never want to put that in someone else’s hands. [01:00] Paid ads are great, but costs can go up or you can get banned. [01:26] Leverage SEO and Social, but you also need to diversify into things like paid advertising, email marketing, etc. [02:04] Be patient, get ONE thing working before you diversify. [02:47] When relying on social media channels, take your profits and diversify as quickly as possible. [03:05] Spend the money earlier on. [03:20] Once you have that multi-channel approach, make sure you are creating really high quality content. [04:00] Slow and steady wins the race with SEO. [04:11] It takes time and money to create great con

In episode #643, Eric and Neil discuss the best marketing tools for under $100. Tune in to hear which marketing tools are free or low cost and still get the job done. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: The Best Marketing Tools For Under $100 [00:33] Eric likes BuzzSumo, because it lets you track your brand, certain keywords, and traffic coming into your site. [00:56] Neil likes SpyFu. It’s not as popular as SEMrush and AHREFS, but it’s a lot less expensive and has a lot of good data. You get similar results, so if you can’t afford the other services, this is a great option. [01:16] Wistia has a good free version you can use to make and post videos. [01:50] Sumo is a great way to collect emails and remarket to people. It’s an all-in-one free tool. [02:18] Frame.io streamlines the video-making process. It may run you over $100/year. [02:42] Survey Monkey is a great tool to help you get feedback from your customers; this is a way to qualitative data. [03:14] For heat mapping, Crazy Egg ca

In episode #642, Eric and Neil discuss the social media site that will drive more traffic to your site. Tune in to hear which social network you should be leveraging and what tactics you need to use. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: The Social Network That'll Drive You More Traffic Than Facebook [00:36] The social network that will get you more traffic than Facebook is LinkedIn! [00:45] It’s not popular, but it works better. [01:05] After the Microsoft acquisition, LinkedIn has stepped up their game. [01:14] When you post on LinkedIn, the post stays up longer and you get more engagement. [01:27] Facebook can do whatever they want, while LinkedIn is starving for content and needs to compete. [02:02] If you want organic traffic, use LinkedIn. [02:12] When Neil posts a video on LinkedIn, he gets anywhere from twice to seven times as many views as he would on Facebook. [03:03] To succeed on LinkedIn: take your video content and put it on LinkedIn. [03:11] To succeed on LinkedIn: Take

In episode #641, Eric and Neil discuss the simplest way to lure people back to your site. Tune in to hear how you can increase your traffic and conversions. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES: [00:27] Today’s Topic: The Simplest Way to Bring People Back to Your Website [00:55] You either collect emails or get them to opt into push notifications. Then you have to continually urge them back to your site. [01:10] You can also get people to follow your social profiles, but they don’t convert. [02:00] Subscribers is a great email service, but you can also use ManyChat to push people back to your site. [02:40] Try retargeting, as well. Google Retargeting and you will probably come across Neil. [03:07] It is just putting a pixel on your site that alerts ad networks and lets them track visitors. This will then allow ad networks to spot your visitors and post relevant ads in their browser that will send them back to your site. [03:20] However, retargeting is expensive. [03:27] Neil agrees that email is a great techniq