Marketing School | Digital Marketing | Online Marketing

Welcome to The Marketing School Podcast—your 10-minute resource to learn, grown, and nurture your passion for online marketing! In Episode #63 Eric and Neil talk about the art of emailing your list. Listen as they talk about the frequency with which you should email your list, how you can better preserve the trust between you and your list, and why email-based sales promotions should be both tactful and scheduled.  Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:28 – Today’s Topic: How often to email your list 00:47 – Make your audience look forward to the next email 00:56 – Put value in your emails 01:11 – Email audience as long as they’re engaged 01:18 – Don’t send emails to people without engagement 02:14 – Send emails based on how often people engage 02:23 – Drip 03:07 – Tell a consistent story 03:27 – Consider what you are emailing 04:13 – Build trust with you audience before sending sales stuff 04:27 – Have a ratio between value content and sales emails 3 Key Points: Each email should make your audience look forward to

In Episode #62 Eric and Neil discuss their secrets for successfully recording and promoting podcasts. Listen as they share the physical tools they use, they software they rely on to produce The Marketing School, and the key concepts you need to master if you want to successfully promote your show. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:25 – Today’s Topic: The Art of Promoting and Recording Podcasts 00:35 – Microphones and recording multiple times 01:15 – Recording software 01:18 – Quicktime 01:25 – Issues Neil and Eric experienced 01:58 – ECamm 02:25 – Screenflow crashed twice 02:33 – Microphones to use 02:35 – Blue Yeti 02:40 – ATR2100 02:55 – iPhone microphone for backup 03:35 – Neil and Eric save 3 files for every recording 09:50 – Promoting a podcast 03:53 – Email blast 04:20 – Libsyn is not that accurate 04:41 – Product Hunt 05:59 – Email digest 05:29 – Shure MV88 06:30 – The BEST strategy in promoting 07:42 – The Art of Charm Podcast 08:37 – The more you can automate, the better 08:45 – Edgar

In Episode #61 Neil and Eric talk about the differences between hiring in-house, hiring consultants and hiring agencies. Listen as they highlight the pros and cons, share what works for their own businesses, and the stunning advantages of outsourcing. Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:29 – Today’s Topic: The Pros and Cons of Hiring In-house Versus Agency Versus Consultant 00:42 – Neil never hires agencies—only specific consultants 01:08 – Eric has an agency but would not hire an agency 01:45 – Eric would go to Angel List, Indeed or Forced Hiring 02:08 – How the Forced Hiring tactic works 02:10 – Using LinkedIn 02:52 – The easy way is to just look for an agency 02:58 – Agencies do not fully understand your product 03:18 – Be mindful of relationship dynamics 03:26 – Think about why you want to hire 03:34 – In-house for managing the whole process 03:42 – Freelancer for a specific task 03:48 – Consultant for helping in strategy 04:10 – It depends on the task you want to get done 05:00 – Optimize costs an

In Episode #60 Neil and Eric discuss the relationship between digital marketing agencies and their customers—specifically how agencies treat their customers, and what agencies are getting wrong. Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:28 – Today’s topic: What Do Most Digital Marketing Agencies Get Wrong? 00:36 – Neil had an agency in the past and Eric has one in the present 00:53 – Oftentimes, big agencies hand your account off to a junior person 01:09 – The results are going to be limited 01:26 – Creating an agency should be about driving results to clients 01:33 – Another mistake is not understanding the client 01:42 – The relationship won’t work out 01:45 – Neil’s experience related to this 02:10 – An understanding between an agency and client is important before running a project 02:37 – Most agencies exclusively focus on building their client rosters 02:48 – Agencies lack client profiling and they shouldn’t 03:14 – Try a foot-in-the-door type of engagement 03:48 – Agencies and clients can’t focus on e

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 – Connect to a com

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, and you can’t

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 05:30 – You do

In Episode #56 Neil and Eric highlight how they go about hiring the best freelancers no matter the industry. Listen as they share websites, tools, and creative strategies for finding freelancers that are truly masters of their given craft. Time Stamped Show Notes:  00:25 – Today’s topic: The Best Services for Finding Great Freelancers 00:40 – Talking designers 00:47 – Dribbble for designers 01:18 – 99designs.com a contest driven resource 01:39 – visual.ly – great for infographics 01:53 – upwork.com 02:05 – A lot of the freelancers suck, but a lot of the people offering jobs suck too 02:31 – You need to find people who’ve done EXACTLY what you’ve done 02:40 – Check out freelancer.com as well 02:50 – Toptal.com is great for engineers and developers 03:10 – The Code Pen is where Eric sourced his developer 03:14 – Don’t forget about word of mouth sourcing 04:32 – Consider searching LinkedIn—it’s not as unusual as it sounds 05:05 – angel.co Angel List means you’re plugged-in 05:52 – ProBlogger.net has real

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 money 05:03 – Wh

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 ana

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 abou

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 f

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—lo

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 0

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 a

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 t

In Episode #44 Neil and Eric talk about generating more blog topics for your website—why it’s so important and the tools you can use to ensure your content is always fresh. Listen as they share their personal strategies for creating winning blog content that’s not only interesting to them, but interesting to their readers. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:30 – Generating more (and more exciting) blog topics 00:37 – Use BuzzSumo 00:53 – Take what BuzzSumo gives you and IMPROVE upon it 01:54 – Look at posts that are fairly new 02:20 – Take the sub-headers and turn those into individual posts 02:58 – Use Google News or Trends to see what’s hot 03:23 -- Learn how to write content that’s fresh AND informative 04:00 – The internal search feature on your website isn’t sexy, but it is valuable 04:35 – Go to NeilPatel.com in the footer click on TOOLS and then type in your competitor’s URLs 05:00 – Don’t copy your competition, outperform them 05:55 – Convince and Convert 06:30 – Look into your analytics and figure o