Marketing School | Digital Marketing | Online Marketing

In Episode #59 Neil and Eric discuss the most important things you need to do before publishing a blog post. Listen as they illustrate the seven things you can do to increase your online presence, click-through rate, and drive online traffic to your blog post.  Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:28 – Today’s topic: Seven Things You Should Do Every Time Before You Publish a Blog Post 00:36 – First thing?—A/B test the headline 00:43 – Search for WordPress A/B testing plugin 00:50 – Why this is important 01:14 – Second thing?—have a very engaging image 01:26 – Images affect your click-through rate when running an ad 01:30 – Sites like StockUnlimited gives you unlimited stock photos 01:40 – Subscribe to DesignPickle monthly subscription plan to get unlimited design 01:46 – Single Grain blog 01:56 – Third thing?– email every single website you link out to 02:06 – Sending a cold email 02:20 – An additional note to add in the email 02:27 – Fourth thing? - building a promotional aspect 02:33 – Con

In Episode #58 Neil and Eric highlight how they create a marketing budget. Listen as they illustrate the differences between short-term and long-term budgeting, the value of content for link building, and the one place you should spend at least $10K per month if you can. Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:25 – Today’s topic: How to Create a Marketing Budget 00:34 – Short-term versus long-term budget 00:48 – SEO is a front-loaded cost 01:18 – Takes a long time to get going so you spend a lot early on to get it set up 01:25 -- Social media 01:29 – Ad buys can be done on a monthly basis…it’s ROI driven 01:55 – Fan building, another front loaded cost 02:18 – If you have something that’s working, go all in on it, don’t stop arbitrarily 03:10 – When you’re starting out, you don’t have unlimited budget, so it’s important to invest where returns are greatest 04:30 – Content marketing and link building 04:40 – With CRO you need at least 10K visits per month 04:48 – Content is KEY for link building, an

In Episode #57 Neil and Eric talk brands, specifically, how many you should have if you want to be successful in your efforts. Listen as they explain why brand diversification is not only unnecessary in most cases, but how it can actually damage your business. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:25 – Today’s topic: How to Decide if You Need Separate Brands for Your Business 00:35 – If you’re creating different products and they’re not related at all, obviously you need different brands 00:45 – Having said that, you put SO much into building a site and brand, why not bring everything under one umbrella? 01:28 – Talking about QuickSprout 02:12 – The brand split wasn’t intentional 02:35 – Crazy Egg was such a different concept, it couldn’t merge with QuickSprout 03:10 – Most people create too many businesses 03:39 – Focus on your CORE business until it flat-lines 03:55 – Talking about Growth Everywhere versus Single Grain 05:05 – Just look at all the effort Neil had to put in to build NeilPatel.com 05:

In Episode #55 Neil and Eric discuss tried and true strategies for making the most of a website that is no longer in use. Listen as they talk 301 re-directs, domain name investments, scrappy partnerships, and more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:25 – Today’s topic: What Should You Do with a Website that Is No Longer in Use? 00:35 – Neil usually does a 301 redirect to another digital property, or sells the domain 00:50 – Check out flippa to sell 01:09 – Rent the website as well 01:29 – Empire Flippers and FEinternational.com 01:58 – Eric just acquired another gun blog 02:10 – Used a 301 to drive that blog to his site 02:38 – 301 redirect EACH page and renew the domain for a very long time 03:10 – Redirect no less than the Top 25 pages driving traffic 03:35 – See what competitors are doing to make money 04:00 – If you drive the same amount of traffic, why aren’t you making the same amount of money? 04:20 – Finding website brokers 04:35 – Owning a premium domain name is a GREAT way to make mon

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 pre

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

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/adchoices See 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/adchoices See 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/adchoices See 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 sm

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

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 tha

Welcome to The Marketing School Podcast—your 10-minute resource to learn, grown, and nurture your passion for online marketing! In Episode #42 Eric and Neil discuss their favorite marketing tools, like Infusionsoft & LeadPages—and why. 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/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Episode #41 Neil and Eric talk about how to generate more leads. Neil stresses the importance of not just getting people to sign up, but getting qualified leads that are viable for your business. Learn as they share. Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:30 – How to generate more leads for your website 00:39 – Tools you can use 00:40 – Hello Bar 00:45 – SumoMe 01:03 – Figure out why someone should become a lead 01:19 – Give something to convert them into a lead 02:15 – Make sure content is categorized 02:35 – Segmenting your audience 02:57 – Example on marketing funnel post 03:15 – Give a bonus on the topic 03:39 – Sending people to case studies 04:33 – It’s about getting qualified leads 05:01 – Taking people down to a long funnel 05:16 – Putting click to action after getting leads to sign up 05:35 – Drip and Infusionsoft 05:50 – Make sure to segment people from your website 06:04 – Lead scores 06:39 – Breaking leads into multiple steps 07:14 – Try storytelling as a strategy 07:5

In Episode #38 Eric and Neil teach you how to promote a blog post. Whether you have a tight budget or an endless one, one of these plans will help you get people to read your content and share it. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:24 – How to promote a blog post 00:43 – In the beginning, 80% of your time should be spent on promotion. 01:00 – Find people who have already shared content 01:15 – Use Buzzsumo and Twitter 01:50 – Think about how you can stand out. 02:10 – Link out to influencers within the blog post. 02:55 – Link out ten times for every 1000 words. 03:10 – Linking to companies. 03:28 – Paid social ads. 03:40 – A huge chunk of funds go to promotion. 04:14 – Drive people to your site using Facebook. 04:29 – Also use Google. 04:40 – Figure out how to write amazing headlines 05:00 – Copyblogger Headline Formulas 05:30 – Headlines make a huge difference! 05:45 – Portent Headline Generator 06:05 – Build up a group of people that will help promote your content. 06:35 – It wi

In Episode #37 Eric and Neil discuss the value of a good infographic. Neil has seen more traffic and backlinks from infographics than from anything else. Learn how you can create an all-star graphic that drives up traffic on your site. Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:24 – What goes into creating a viral infographic 00:40 – Links effect Google rankings 00:53 – Take complex info and make it visual, and people will link to it. 01:15 – Your rankings will skyrocket 01:30 – For Neil, backlinks and traffic have come mostly from infographics. 02:00 – There are a lot of crappy infographics. 02:10 – Start at Visual.ly to see examples of good infographics. 02:40 – Pull out elements that work in those designs. 02:50 – Dribbble is another resource to contact designers. 03:17 – The first step is to get good data. 03:28 – Get a researcher off of Upwork to collect and outlined data. 03:45 – Don’t have more than six main points. 04:05 – Flow these points into a story. 04:25 – Publish the blog and get an embe

In Episode #36 Eric and Neil talk about why you should create blog posts, and what the best process is to do it. Learn the tricks of the pros, and find out what resources are available to you to make your blog writing not only entertaining or educational but actually capable of converting customers. Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:24 – How to write amazing blog posts 00:35 – Educate and provide great information, and people will see you as an expert. 00:55 – People will share you and refer friends to you. 01:15 – The number one way they generate sign-ups for multiple companies. 01:20 – Thomas Tunguz’s Post 01:55 – The effects of content marketing over time 02:05 – It’s like compounding interest. 02:34 – You need one thing that stands out. 02:45 – Long-form blog posts backed by data. 03:04 – Not just content for content’s sake. 03:15 – Show something unique and useful. 03:29 – eHow is a great example of what you shouldn’t do. 04:12 – WaitButWhy.com 04:25 – Humor and long-form articles with

In Episode #34 Eric and Neil discuss how to perform a competitive analysis. This process is not just a way to steal from your competitors—it’s also a great way to motivate your team to see where you’re lacking and start making changes. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:22 – How you can do a competitive analysis. 00:45 – If you use a tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs, you can find top performing pages. 01:10 – See what you can steal from those pages. 01:45 – An example: Companies using a hub-and-spoke model 02:40 – The BuiltWith Tool 03:04 – WhatRunsWhere captures your competition’s ads 03:20 –SEMrush tells you the keywords your customers are bidding on. 04:19 – Using ahrefs to look at a monthly graph and see how many links your competitor is adding 05:20 – Moz to compare competitors side by side 05:50 – You can show your team where you are lacking and ultimately drive action. 06:30 – Go to NeilPatel.com for his social media analysis tool. 07:35 – Use SimilarWeb to see even more details of your competit

In Episode #32 Eric and Neil describe influencer marketing and teach you the most effective way to use it for your product. If you thought influencer marketing wasn’t for your new company, think again. It’s a lot easier than it may seem. Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:22 – What is influencer marketing? 00:35 – The Beats by Dre example 00:57 – Famous and popular people using products to attract more customers 01:30 – How can you leverage influencer marketing? 01:45 – Paying models per post. 02:10 – The numbers can be very lucrative for your company. 03:00 – One key thing: How loyal is someone’s following? 03:50 – Don’t pick the influencers with the biggest following. Look at their followers’ engagement. 04:25 – Buying ads in bulk packages 04:50 – You don’t have to reach out to these influencers on their own. Use Famebit.com. 05:50 – Make sure your influencer is the right fit for your product. 06:25 – Sporadic posts don’t have a big impact. 06:40 – A consistent weekly post will have a bigge

Welcome to The Marketing School Podcast—your 10-minute resource to learn, grown, and nurture your passion for online marketing! In Episode #30 Eric and Neil continue the discussion from yesterday and talk about how to cut your Google AdWords costs. 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/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.