The Basics of Internet Marketing with Guest Neil Patel: MakingBank S1E35

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Summary

Internet marketing is a maze of ins, outs, and unexpected dead-ends. The methods that are working and worthwhile today, might be those that are a waste of time and money tomorrow.

Even if you know your audience intimately, how do you use that knowledge to your advantage, and keep traffic not just flowing, but flooding to your website?

How can you be sure you are marketing efficiently and effectively on the internet?

That’s what we’re going to find out from today’s Making Bank guest, Neil Patel.

Neil is a SEO expert and unquestioned internet marketing guru. Not only is the Co-Founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and Kissmetrics, but he has also helped companies like Amazon, NBC, HP and Viacom grow their revenue.

Listen to hear Patel talk in-detail about:

●      Generate more traffic to their websites and businesses

●      The 3 Key Components to generate more traffic

○       SEO

○       On page code optimizing

○       Content marketing

●      How Neil is growing his multiple business

●      Fear of failure and making mistakes

●      When a dream starts to become a reality

●      Keeping focused

●      Testing what works for you and your business

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Transcription

I’m Josh Felber and you’re watching Making Bank. Where  we uncover the success strategies of the 1% to help you elevate your life,  create the business that you want, and be able to have the time and the  freedom to spend with your loved ones.

Welcome to the show today. There’s so many options to market  our business. Whether we have a retail establishment, and it’s pretty [nerds  00:00:30] in the newspaper with Encore, the group owns and the living  socials, or as an online business.

We may be thinking okay, well we can put our posts on  Facebook, we can try to figure out this whole internet marketing approach but  just how do we do we do it? How are we able to figure this out as well as not  get down the wrong path with this internet marketing? You can spend a lot of  money and go to the wrong directions. I have, I’ve been there before and as I  was growing my business I just didn’t take the time for myself to learn  internet marketing, and to really figure out the ins and outs of it. I just  paid someone to really help me do this, but unfortunately there’s a lot of  people out there that say they know internet marketing but have no clue what  they’re doing.

I spent a lot of money no results, no results. Person  after person, after person and finally it’s like “okay, I got to figure  this out. I have to do something,” because I didn’t know if they knew  what they were talking about or not. They sounded like they did and maybe  you’ve been in this situation before. They say all the right buzz words, they  say all the right clues, but just don’t deliver. They don’t get the results  for you. It’s not your fault, you just don’t know.

I took the time. I learned, I’ve been educating myself,  and really understanding the all the ins and outs of online internet  marketing and what it takes to be successful in that field. We have to start  with the basics. The very first basics are what we have to start with even  before we go out and we start running Facebook ads, and we start posting and  we try to do pay-per-clicks and click throughs and all these different kinds  of things.

The very first thing that we want to do is make sure as  we have our website, as we have our sales funnel, whatever that may be. As we  want to make sure we have it optimized for search engines. Whether having the  right content on the page for the search engines to find to specific key  words that relate to what we’re doing, and be able to utilize that in a way  that oppose our ranking higher on the search engines.

It can be a complicated process, and so with that for  you the basics is making sure you have the right content on your page. Making  sure you have your image header tags. Making sure that your website or your  funnels are optimized for mobile as well. That’s a really big thing that  Google is taking a look at these days, is how is your website or you funnels  optimized for mobile.

For myself working with all these different people, not  getting the correct results, spending way too much money on people that  didn’t deliver what they said they were going to deliver, and now learning it  myself and learning this process. I’ve now been able to implement and I’ve  implemented in different various businesses that I own. One of my businesses,  I own some crossfit gyms and I was able to take those and I was able to have  them ranked number one on Google through the different search engine  optimization techniques that I learned about and that I was able to  implement.

For you, what I challenge you is don’t rely on someone  else, don’t think that they know what they’re talking about. Don’t go and try  to think “man this person knows what they’re talking about.” Do  some research, do some learning on your own, study, figure out “hi,  here’s how you need to learn how to do search engine optimization.” Go  in and start adding into your website or if you have a website guy he should  know how to do it, but make sure you know so you know he’s doing it right.  Because once you have the right information here people can’t take advantage  of you anymore. Once you have that right information you’re now making sure  your website is doing what it’s suppose to be doing. Your sales funnel is  doing what it’s suppose to be doing and getting out there, and getting in  front of people.

Once we have all that kind of optimizing deals then  we’ve got to take a look at “okay, how do we get more people to come to  our website? How do we get traffic to come to our website.” We can do  that with various different ways all over the internet. That could be just  joint venture partnerships with other like minded people. It could be driving  traffic from Facebook, from Google. It could be having banner ads on related  sites where that’s our key demographic. After we really know who our target  audience is and we’re going after it we can now think it’s specific on who  our traffic is and where we want that traffic to come for our business.

That doesn’t matter if you’re on online business or  retail business. You can utilize these techniques to build your retail  business as well as your online business. We’ll actually have a whole other  episode on driving traffic, and Facebook traffic. Also check up my interview  with Russel Brandson and how we talked about online marketing and how to  build you business online and make it as successful.

I’m really excited. Up next we have a search engine  optimization expert, a internet marketing guru that all the other people look  towards for help when they’re building there businesses online. How to take  their business and maximize its results and actually start generating their  profit. I’m excited to have Neil Patel who’s taken several different  companies, build them up, sold some of those off and now is out there and  with a passion helping entrepreneurs. Helping entrepreneurs by giving back so  many information, so much advise. I’m excited today to have Neil on the show.  Stick around and we will be right back. I am Josh Felber, and you’re watching  Making Bank.

I am Josh Felber. You’re watching Making Bank. I am here  today with an awesome guest, Neil Patel. He’s the co-founder of Crazy Egg,  Hello Bar, and Kissmetrics. Neil has helped companies like Amazon, NBC, GM,  HP and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top  influencer on the web, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he’s created one of the  100 most brilliant companies in the world. He was also recognized as the top  100 entrepreneurs under under the age of 30 by President Obama, and one of  the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by The United Nations. Neil’s  been awarded the congressional recognition from the United States House of  Representatives. Wow! Man that’s awesome. President Obama, United Nations  you’re crashing it.

Neil: Thank you. I’m like I could be doing better but  [inaudible 00:08:07] so far.

Josh: No, that’s cool that’s some good creds there. Just to  kind of start off Neil give our audience … They’re all entrepreneurs,  they’re business people. Try to be high achievers, looking to kind of move  their business to that next level. Give a little bit of your background and  how you got started as an entrepreneur.

Neil: I got started as an entrepreneur due to the fact that I  just wanted to make money.

Josh: Awesome.

Neil: Yeah. I grew up in middle class America, my parents  didn’t do that well, they weren’t doing that bad either and I wanted to be  rich because I saw all these rich people around me. I was so young. I  couldn’t get a job. You’re 16 years old, 151/2 and you can’t get a job that  pays well, right?

Josh: Right.

Neil: It’s kind of hard. I was thinking of [inaudible  00:08:53] at 151/2. You can’t make 100 grand doing that and my goal as a kid  was to just make six figures. That’s all I want. I was like I will be rich if  I make 100 grand a year.

Josh: Nice, that’s awesome. What was that first business then  when you’re right around that … Which 16, 17 that you got started in?

Neil: It was a job board. I was searching for a job and I  couldn’t find one but I found out that the job board I was searching on  monster.com was hundred and millions of dollars.

Josh: Sure.

Neil: I was like “let me copy them.” I wasn’t creative  either so I copied them. I couldn’t get much traffic so the business failed.  I thought that you pop-up a website, you become [inaudible 00:09:30].

Josh: Right.

Neil: I did learn to generate my own traffic because I didn’t  have much money. I was reading, practicing on my own site and that’s what I  got good at. That was my first real business was a agency that helped other  people generate more traffic to their site.

Josh: Awesome. With that do you still have that business then  today or?

Neil: I do still have that business today but it [were  00:09:56] kind of and kind of not.

Josh: Okay.

Neil: With the agency the job board doesn’t exist. With the  agency did it for a long time, stopped doing it and I just get so many  consulting inquiries like 4-5,000 a month.

Josh: Wow!

Neil: That we do cherry pick projects. Like right now I’m  helping Google get more customers to [inaudible 00:10:18].

Josh: That’s cool.

Neil: That’s some good clients that pay well and the work  isn’t that hard for the money.

Josh: Sure, no that’s awesome. With the job board and  everything and I guess driving traffic. What were the maybe three key  components that you found as an entrepreneur I guess those tricks of the  trade that for our audience that is the “hi, I could implement this  today and start hopefully getting more traffic there?”

Neil: A few things, times have changed but I’ll give you the  modern version-

Josh: Sure.

Neil: -of that because that was 13, 14 years ago.

Josh: Right.

Neil: Google and all these search engines have changed. The  main one was the SEO. There’s a few things the link building which is still  effective.

Josh: Okay.

Neil: I would use [AA traps 00:11:07] or [inaudible 00:11:08]  to see who linked to the competitors. Email them one by one and beg for  links. It’s a tedious task, people hate it. They were like “oh, this  sucks it’s boring” but it works.

Josh: Sure.

Neil: That was one. Two, just make sure your on-page code is  optimized. Use Google Webmaster tools. You look at your URL and [inaudible  00:11:27] address site and they’ll tell you errors that they see. Fix all  those errors. You’ll be shocked Google tells you the errors. I think they  call it search console now. That if you look at the errors that Google tells  you and you fix them magically you’ll get more traffic.

Then the next one that we ended up doing is content  marketing. When you write a blog posts it’s hard to get your blog post all  promoted up, but we ended up learning if you link to other people in your  blog post, when it makes sense, you don’t want to link for no reason.

Josh: Sure.

Neil: When you link and it makes sense and you say “hi,  so and so I link to you” what ends up happening is a portion of those  people will actually share your content because they’re flattered that you  linked to them. I would be like “hi, Josh just wanted you to know that I  linked to your site. Your content is amazing, feel free to check out the  posts that I linked you in. If you like it, share it on your favorite social  network.” That’s it. Those are the three tactics that worked really  well.

Josh: Awesome man. Those sound pretty simple. Obviously maybe  the link building like you said is tedious so you’ve got to get out there,  find out what your competitors are doing and just re-model who they’re  connecting to.

Then the next part would be then just optimizing your  website. Utilizing Google’s tools to figure out “hi, what’s wrong with  my website. If I got holes, if I have links that are [inaudible  00:12:50]” things like that. Pages that are not there and then just  optimizing that will help us get a better ranking. That’s really awesome.

Then the last part is content marketing. I think we see  a lot of people that are having blogs now and doing well to some degree with  the blog post, but I think as you mentioned that key is, is being able to  link back to certain people and referencing them in that blog post. Hopefully  then that they’ll share it out with their audience and everything else as  well.

Neil: That’s correct.

Josh: Cool, awesome man. As you guys are listening to this  make sure you’re taking notes. Neil is a world expert in internet marketing  and he’s going to be filling you guys with lots of great information to take  your business to the next level. One of the things that we want to do when  when we come back here shortly is, if Neil is willing to stick around for a  little more segment with us, is dive into a little bit more about what his  other businesses are doing, how he’s built his consulting business and where  he can cherry pick who he wants to work with. As well as maybe a couple of  other really cool tips and tricks to help us launch our business to the next  level.

Real quick Neil, what was one of your secret ingredients  that you found that’s made you so successful in your career so far as an  entrepreneur?

Neil: I’m a really fast executor.

Josh: Fast executor?

Neil: Really execute extremely fast. That’s it, that’s one of  my best qualities.

Josh: Awesome, and so you find something and then you just get  out and do it. You don’t sit there and try to study and learn and you just  make it happen?

Neil: Yeah. I don’t care if it’s perfect [inaudible 00:14:34]  I just crank.

Josh: Awesome, and that’s a great thing. I think so many times  as we try to roll out a project to do something we’re like “oh, this is  got to be perfect.” Then you’re trying to get it right, trying to get it  right and all your competitors have gone by you because you’re still sitting  there trying to get it right. I think that’s a great strategy and a great tip  is grab it, and start running with it and just tweak and modify it as you go,  and that’s going to help you become more successful in the long run.

Awesome, Neil. Stick around for a few more minutes with  us?

Neil: Sounds good.

Josh: Great. I am Josh Felber you’re watching Making Bank and  we’ll be right back.

I am Josh Felber and you’re watching Making Bank.  Welcome back. Today we have Neil Patel. We’re discussing SEO strategies,  internet marketing, entrepreneurship, and how you can take your business to  the next level. Neil, welcome back.

Neil: Thanks for having me.

Josh: Sure thing. You have what Crazy Egg, Kissmetrics those  are your companies that you still have today or?

Neil: Still have today. I don’t work at Kissmetrics, I spend  almost all my time at Crazy Egg and Hello Bar.

Josh: Okay, so Crazy Egg and Hello Bar [crosstalk 00:16:06].  What do you guys do there?

Neil: Crazy Egg helps you maximize your conversion rate. You  have to first come into your site, you’re not generating sales, why? Crazy  egg helps you figure out why and helps you generate more sales through  Heatmaps, AB testing all that kind of stuff.

Josh: Sure.

Neil: Crazy egg will help you determine what makes you more  sales, or makes you less sales.

Josh: Okay.

Neil: The Hello Bar it’s something that you put on your  website. It’s think about it as welcome mat. Someone comes to your house it  greats you. If you want to collect emails, or you want people to go to a  sales page, if you want to go out on a check out page or offer a special  discount in there, or you can get more social media followers. You can do all  that in Hello Bar through bars, pop-ups, sliders all that kind of stuff.

Josh: Okay. Is Hello Bar basically a plug-in then for your  website that allows you to do all of those items like the pop-ups and the  slider bars and stuff?

Neil: It’s a plug-in or it’s a [crosstalk 00:17:00] script,  however you want to do it. Then now we’re adding marketing automation to it  as well. If you click emails in our system you can do trigger based emails  where you could say “hi, this first email I want this, second email I  want that.” We’re actually writing all the email templates for you so  that you’ll just have to modify [crosstalk 00:17:17].

Josh: Wow! That’s awesome. It’s almost plug and play.

Neil: That’s right.

Josh: That’s cool and so that where your focus is right now  with these two businesses?

Neil: That’s correct, yes.

Josh: Okay and I know in your bio-interview [inaudible 00:17:31]  is you’ve worked with people like NBC, Amazon, GM and you said you’re working  with Google helping drive more people to them now. How did you get to that  position from where you are just starting out when you were 16, 17 years old?

Neil: It really came down to word of mouth.

Josh: Cool.

Neil: People will be shocked. Two things I learned. One is  [inaudible 00:17:51] conferences, blogging, networking, like doing a bit of  everything helps you get customers.

Josh: Sure.

Neil: The bigger clients tend to meet during conferences.  They’re just so many of those companies at these big events. Two, these big  companies typically don’t pay the best. The mid-sized businesses are much  more flexible with their budget and it’s more likely to get them. The big  companies spend the most money with the big agencies. If you’re not one of  those big agencies you’re not going to get the majority of their budget-

Josh: Right.

Neil: -But the middle sized, medium sized businesses they’re  really flexible. If you can provide them a ROI they’re going to pay you more.

Josh: Okay, cool. With the bigger accounts you’ve connected  with them at the events, more likely they don’t pay well, but for you and  anybody that wants to try to go after and work with them it gives you a good  resume builder. It’s like “hi, you know, I’m working with Google.”  Which leads to a lot of other opportunities for you I’m betting.

Neil: That’s correct.

Josh: Cool, awesome man. What was a time in your career, I  know you’ve mentioned initially with the the jobs board that took off,  started to get going and it just failed for you. What was another time Neil  in your entrepreneurial career that you had a business, or you were working  on something, and it just completely failed, just no matter how hard you  tried to make it happen?

Neil: There’s a lot of businesses like that. One was a hosting  company, we were trying to do cloud hosting before it was even popular.

Josh: Okay.

Neil: It failed because we couldn’t execute and get something  out fast enough and we tried for many years, but just like with everything if  you can’t get something out fast enough or you can’t figure out you’re not  going to succeed.

Josh: Right.

Neil: Not all businesses are meant to succeed. Look at Mark  Zuckerberg he’s a smart guy, not everything he’s done has succeeded. Even  [inaudible 00:19:39] I bet you … I don’t know about any of his issues but I  bet you he’s run into a lot of roadblocks, right?

Josh: Right.

Neil: Smart guy and probably we’ll never be as successful as  either as those two, or anywhere near it. What I’m getting at is even some of  the most successful guys out there on the web or just in general in business  have had their failure, or the ups and downs as well.

Josh: Sure, and what was the biggest component for you, what  did you learn from that, and what did you use to take to move yourself  forward in the next business?

Neil: We all make mistakes. It’s not necessarily when  learning. [inaudible 00:20:11] “all right I’m not going to do this in  the next business.” It’s more so “hi, I made all these mistakes  through out my career what can I do to avoid making the same mistakes over  and over again?”

Josh: Sure.

Neil: If you avoid making the same mistakes over again you’ll  increase your odds of succeeding.

Josh: Definitely as entrepreneurs I think we just a lot times  we get into a position like “man, I just don’t want to go try that  because I might fail,” or “what are those people going to  think.”We just kind of get into that mindset that failure mindset or  that fear mindset. We really like you said have to work to push through that  and “hi, what’s … We fail. We are not perfect, mistakes happen.”  It’s the encompassing of the whole thing that allows us to move forward and  become more successful.

Awesome, man. Well cool if you maybe have a quick moment  to share with … When you knew you were on to something it wasn’t a dream  anymore and you’re like “man this is the reality. I’m loving this. This  is a passion.” Even though I want to make money but you have that  passion in you about that business that you were doing. What is it, and I  guess how did you get to that point?

Neil: Yeah, so once you have something and you’re like  “hi, this is working out. It’s my passion.“ The way that you get  into that is through [iterations 00:21:33]

Josh: Sure.

Neil: No business is perfect out of the box. The idea you  start with is typically not going to be the idea that you end up with, or the  company you end up with.

Josh: Right.

Neil: Just learning from iterations and continue to learn from  A, to B, to C, to D etc. Everything is an evolution. Facebook isn’t the same  as it was when they first came out. [Tesla 00:21:53] has probably changed a  few times, [inaudible 00:21:55] etc. All models change.

Josh: Cool, and so what was one of your businesses that you  started out one way that’s totally different than where you started from  today?

Neil:  Crazy Egg was suppose to be a Heatmap technology where  it just shows you where people click and they don’t now it’ s an AB testing  product, right?

Josh: Okay.

Neil: We’re just like Heatmaps are cool that’s great we should  still keep them but isn’t the goal conversions. How can we just make out as  automated as possible so people don’t have to look at reports.

Josh: Right.

Neil: We were trying to create a reporting tool now we’re just  trying to do as much for them.

Josh: Cool awesome, man. Then what’s the best advise you ever  received?

Neil: Focus. I have ADD issues in which I try to do many  things. Someone once told me, “Just focus on one business and go for  it.”

Josh: Yeah I know as entrepreneurs we have that whole shinny  object syndrome and you get distracted too many ways and like you said you’ve  got to have that focus and I think that’s what gives you the most drive  forward and the most momentum in everything is well.

Neil: Yeah.

Josh: Cool, so what’s one device you can’t live without?

Neil: My phone, but I don’t even need a fancy phone I have an  old phone.

Josh: Do you?

Neil: As long as it can have Gmail on there I’m good to go.

Josh:

Oh, nice. No iPhone, no Samsung, nothing like that huh?

Neil: No I have a iPhone it’s just a really old model.

Josh: Oh, the old model okay. I was like I didn’t know if  you’re like “hi, I got my flip phone, I got my … I’m good man.”

Neil: I just got an iPhone 5 this year. I used to have a 4  forever like it’s over 2 years old and once they did a software upgrade it  really slowed down the phone.

Josh: Sure.

Neil: It was such a lag that one of my buddies gave me their  old 5 and at that time the 6 was already out so not just the 5s but the 6.  Now the new version of the iPhone is coming out or something like that. I  think today or tomorrow but [inaudible 00:23:40] this phone should last me  another year or two.

Josh: Yeah, no that’s cool. It’s funny I get a lot of people  that do say their phones and then the other day it was Tucker Max he’s like  “oh, man yeah everybody has their phone but I’ve got got to have my Mac.  That’s my thing. I write and I can’t … I have not made a full transition to  writing on my phone.“ That’s definitely cool.

Then what’s one big nugget from a internet marketing  standpoint that you could share with our audience before we go here?

Neil: One big nugget from internet marketing standpoint?

Josh: Sure.

Neil: It really comes down to test. Most people think like  SEO, or content marketing, or PPC is the next hottest thing, or CRO.

Josh: Right.

Neil: I think it comes down to testing.

Josh: Okay.

Neil: One business you’re going to have to stay in the same  space may not work the best. You’ve got to continually test.

Josh: No, that’s very true. Whether it’s internet marketing,  whether it’s your regular business and you’re going out there and you’re  selling your product on the street with a [inaudible 00:24:43] you got to  test and find out what’s going to work best, what’s going to connect with the  audience that you’re looking to attract to your business and everything.

Hi, man it was an honor to have you on Making Bank, Neil  and I really appreciate your time today.

Neil: Thanks for having me.

Josh: Yeah for sure. Again, thanks Neil Patel for coming on  Making Bank. I am Josh Felber, and it was great to be here today, get out and  be extraordinary.