Digital Marketing Tips for 2023

Key Takeaways

that's the key to winning in the long run it's how do you Delight your customers talk to them survey them figure out what you can do better improve upon it I have none other than my guy Neil Patel on thank you for taking the time out of your day to interview me absolutely absolutely it's a pleasure to have you on thank you first of all let's let's hop around a little bit where do you see the market right now because I'm curious it's being 2023 right it's a lot of AI going on it's a lot of different things happening every single day like where do you see it headed towards so when I look at the Mark the mark industry as a whole I think AI is the biggest shift we surveyed it over 8 000 companies and we found that almost all of them are investing in AI this year heavily uh podcasting is a big uh place for companies are investing as well they're investing more in performance less than traditional but yeah with a lot of Uncertain economic or with with a lot of economic uncertainty you know people are definitely looking for Roi for kind of marketing and they're looking to automate as much as possible use AI to cost um and get better results and get stuff done faster gotcha gotcha yeah no that's amazing because I feel like especially how the market is everyone's talking about Chad GPT right you got this cool little software like input and everything and all these other details so I think it's amazing um but I'm very curious on how it's really going to evolve over the next few years is it is it going to expand very rapidly or is going to be like a little cluster and it just explodes and everyone like doesn't know what to do no I think it'll expand really rapidly and it'll get better and better I think we're just in the first inning of all this stuff and you're gonna see crazy improvements over the next two three years gotcha okay cool well ladies y'all heard from Neil he said it not me it'll be perfect but uh okay so I do want to hop back into you first really get into the business World in terms of like figuring out the market and trying to get this traffic like you got a lot of traffic but we weren't converting right it was like how did we get the money so how did you figure out to get the dollars rolling in what happened what triggered what clicked for you oh I I didn't figure out how to get the dollars in when I was starting off instead I was just doing consulting for other people and helping them grow their traffic and they'll pay me for that traffic okay and that's how I start off I would just pick up the phone start calling companies and be like hey I'll do your marketing for free if you like the results pay me like I was willing to take whatever I can get yeah and uh the strategy ended up working out over time and kept getting more referrals and did good work and you know that's how I started off nice nice so he was cold calling he did the old school method called pick up did you like go on internet type thing look up some names and like I want to work with this company I want to work with them or he would just like phone book one two three let's go phone book but without the phone book I would go on the internet would type in all the Google terms I know that were expensive like from an ad perspective and I'll just call all the people that were bidding on the ads wow okay okay see that's the new new form of marketing most people won't even think they would take that away right there most people like I guess Word of Mouth might help me but he was like no I'm driven I'ma find the people I'ma put the work in you know so that's that's commendable too okay so based on everything that I know about you as far as my research I know you have any marketing SEO but I know everyone's curious because I know a lot of people know about you so far for those who don't when it comes to like scaling online as far as like Google right everyone's trying to rank on Google everyone's trying to be the best number one front page what advice would you give to that you know business owner that person just getting started to help them rank on the top page your first page so do the basics there's a lot of tools out there that provide you the basics so like you can go to neilpatel.com SEO Dash analyzer and put in your URL and I'll tell you everything that you need to fix from an SEO stand for like all the basic common stuff uh and it'll break it down by priority in which what's the easiest to fix that's going to have the biggest impact and just go through that list and fixing you can do that for free the second thing that I would actually tell people this is the more important one is provide the most value to customers see whether it's content or whether it's your product or service whoever provides the best experience to the user is going to win in the long run now I'm a big believer in that Google doesn't try to rank a website based off of like oh you have more links in another side you have better on-page code you try to rank a site based on what users prefer and want more than anything else that's the key to winning in the long run it's how do you Delight your customers talk to them survey them figure out what you can do better improve upon it so right right there we go see I say the same thing when I tell my clients and partners I'm like look gotta put in the work but it's about adding the value and not just trying to fluff in keywords here and there on the page or anything because I have a I have a branding agency here in Michigan and we have like one of the top spots so far but I'm looking to obviously expand over an entire state of Michigan and then take over there you go and go over you know other areas so I'm thinking big I'm like okay let's let's figure this out and so like yeah I'm in the same boat as everyone else is probably listening like how do I continue this path and what do I need to do um but I appreciate the Insight because now it allows me to start thinking a little bit differently um but where do you see like based on platform wise um you think most people should either spend their time marketing or do you have recommendations or you think people should just taste everything and be out there omnipresent I think you're gonna have to be take an omnichannel approach eventually and be on all the platforms but at the beginning you could do a little taste approach and whatever taste the best or whatever in essence produces the best results but books on that platform and then eventually expand into the other platforms because all good channels get crowded and become competitive so you have no choice but to be on all of them but at the beginning it's too much it takes a lot of time and money so pick one or two that you think is going to produce the best results for you and focus on that first and then expand so anyway okay perfect so no so no definite answer it just varies depending on what that person is going for obviously their Niche and Marketplace and what what the Market's going okay I got you awesome awesome well look ladies I hope y'all taking some notes in gentlemen oh what are you saying so far I know this is uh one of those episodes where I'm like all right I know I got to pay attention to especially with the marketing game so um yeah okay so now I'm thinking and I like to hop around so so bear with that's all right keep going I don't mind yeah I like to hop around because my mind gets to turn when we start talking about marketing I love it I'm like a big nerd with it I'm like all right let me know every single thing possible so so do you have like a recommendation on SEO when it comes to building out a website like do you recommend people build on WordPress do they go to Shopify do they go to Wix some of the top platforms most people tend to go to um any recommendations on that or yeah morning I I like all platforms um they're all pretty SEO friendly these days they've all improved so I'm not really like picky that you do one or the other better pick my two favorites uh WordPress for like content service based website Shopify for product based Ecom type sites okay okay Wix is just not in that conversation all right nothing wrong with Wix or Squarespace or some of the other ones out there but um those are my main two gosh based on what you've obviously been through and surveyed okay makes sense makes sense okay well WordPress you can do a lot that's just for free because there's so many plugins and then Shopify it's pretty good seamless experience for Ecom right and I hear that a lot let me build it on and I get it I'm always like fighting back and forth with the designers like oh Wick so Shopify WordPress I'm like calm down it all works you know I think it's about the person who uses the platform and like what's the yes so if you know what to do with it so true yeah right so that'd be the biggest thing biggest takeaway um but Okay cool so now let's let's go another layer deep with this and like I said we're gonna hop around so if I say if I build out on WordPress right um and I want to create like a Blog right um what's the best way to Inc increase my traffic or building a block or just overall to a website if you had to say so the one do keyword research you can use tools like uber suggest or answer the public put in some keywords within your space and it'll spit you out like lists of hundreds if not thousands or sometimes hundreds and thousands of keywords that you could be targeting and two you want to create content around those keywords the ones that are relevant to your audience make sure the content you create is amazing super thoughtful thorough you can Google for those terms and see what other people rank on page one have done when it comes to their content make sure it's way better than theirs then three is you need to promote your content so you remember how you already just did a Google search to see whose ranking on page one and what their content is and Uber says it is a backlinks opportunity report you can put like two three of your competitor URLs that are ranking and I'll show you all the people that link to them but don't link to you not just one but two or three of your competitors there's a good shot they're going to link to YouTube wow that's big and that's Uber suggest right the platform you know what's funny I actually I used your platform a couple times right before I even knew it you you owned it and I was testing it out and I'm like who created this because this is like brilliant like I could literally go in hit the keyword overview see what I need to do and then I hit like related topics and I'm like wait yeah Niche down I'm like this this really works so I started truthfully implementing a lot of the things that was like being pushed out on the platform into my website and I did see a lot of updates through Google I guess Google loves constant updates new new things at it so I'm I'm a loyal client and a customer to say that this definitely works um and I definitely appreciate you for creating that like what what inspired you to create that though that platform was it like it was going through something similar or you heard a lot of people just saying man how do I figure this out it was a lot of people saying how do I figure this out and how do I figure it out without spending 100 bucks a month most of the tools out there in the space were too expensive so I want to create something that was free and also have yeah paid versions because eventually you got to monetize but I want to create a good free tool people don't have to upgrade to get value they can get enough for free and get results nice nice and that's big that's really big yeah guys look listen I'm gonna put all the information Down Below in the description and also tag Neil too but definitely go check out their website I guarantee you you're gonna love it and look it's one of those tools where it's like you got to keep in your back pocket you just it's a must-have I think if you're in business and marketing trying to get you know on Google and so on and so forth so that's a very big one um and also notice that you have obviously MP digital right now so if you don't mind can you tell us more about that and what that entails so NP digital is our Ad Agency uh we're a global Ad Agency I think by the end of 2023 our goal is to be in 20 plus countries where we have leaders um we're more countries than that but there's not always someone leading up the ship and trying to jump up to new business from that region um we're in eight right now US Canada uh Brazil UK Germany uh where else India Australia Singapore we're about to just have Spain and Portugal so that'll be 10. and then I know Italy and France are coming next we're doing quite a bit in Latin America right now in the interview process and quite a bit and um EMA as well as APAC so we're having fun clearly having a lot of fun and you guys are everywhere that's amazing that's amazing congrats to everything and uh I'm just gonna throw out there is the kiddos around I can hear like some toys I'm like I'm sorry about that I'm like I wonder if you can hear about the kids no it's totally fine as for the effect you know so everybody knows that this is a real conversation um but okay awesome so you've been doing that for a while too with the digital thing so you work with like big Brands like Amazon and Viacom and everything else how do those deals like come about and how did you feel when they did like hit your plate was it like overwhelming or were you like shocked or well so check this out you got an agency right so most people don't realize this but most people think it's like from my SEO traffic or my content marketing or social media yeah 76 of our clients come from employee referrals client referrals or Word of Mouth wow so it's those three that make the majority of our Revenue that's to say in the breakdown most those big Brands came from one of those three buckets it's if you're in business long enough you provide amazing work eventually you'll start working with bigger and bigger brands the issue is you got to play the long game a lot of people don't want to be patient but look at you you're patient right you're just like I'm gonna go after my you know the city I'm in and the state then the region and then the whole country and then you're going to go even bigger than that right you're playing the long game you're patient that's the way you work with bigger and bigger Brands just make sure in between you're producing amazing results and I know that's what your focus is as well but um without the amazing results you're not going to get the bigger Brands and that's how we get most of them just do really good for one company you get referred out more companies right being consistent that's the thing it only pays off if you consistent man I did a whole post about that the other day and so many people's like man I need to hear that and I'm glad you're speaking on it as well I think it's just nowadays it's kind of tough because the marketplace you know you get all this negativity type of videos out there it's all kind of rah-rah a lot of fluff but people don't really explain in-depth or really break it down in simplistic form like being consistent it's not too many people and if so I just get washed up right and everything else so here you say that and knowing that you have an agency and I have one and I'm sure so many other people listening are thinking about creating one or doing it it's like a breath of fresh air it's very refreshing you know so I love that breakdown and I appreciate that yeah no it consistently pays off being consistent doing something long enough really adds up and that's what most people don't do yeah definitely yeah so I would love to flip it now because I know some people are probably listening to this like okay Neil's amazing right what else can he do what doesn't he do so I would love to know has there ever been a time outside of you just starting off in business where you know you gain some success things are going great but all of a sudden you hit a wall if so what moment was that for you and how did you like get over it in order to continue your journey it happens all the time even when you're not starting something up you're in something you know you hit a wall with the economy or growth or someone's screwing up and you can't figure out how to solve it um you know the first thing to just keep in mind is when things are going tough keep in mind there's people out there who have it tougher than you and when things are going really well keep in mind there's people who have it much better than you so that should keep you level-headed and hopefully keep your mind clear the second thing that you need to keep in mind is there's other people probably have faced the same challenge that you did start doing some research YouTube Google social media look for other people who talk about that problem and how they overcome it learn from other people's mistakes uh experiences and that should also help you get a little bit further the third thing that you want to do is just experiment talk to people brainstorm whether it's mentors or just friends or co-workers brainstorm and try to find other Solutions and experiment and run some tests and figure out all right did this help solve the problem did it not did it reduce the results I'm looking for there's a combo of those three things that really helps you people overcome issues and challenges yeah that's beautiful because I think a lot of people either you know they run into a wall and I feel as though you kind of have like two decisions right to say that you you persevere right yeah right or you have to Pivot in some direction and I think that's the conversation I think a lot of people have a hard time either depicting like which which is which or what to do and I know for me I kind of went through something similar words like all right I kept hitting my head on this wall I'm like okay Dre let's think about this right do I pivot and find A New Path and when do I pivot and when do I persevere so for me I had to break it down like the only time I think you should continue to persevere is obviously you start to see some results right something's happening something's clicking but it might not be perfect it's kind of like the time Edison thing with the light bulb right he knew something was happening but it wasn't right clicking right away but he kept he kept going and eventually it happened versus pivoting where you're probably running two you know the same problem over and over hit the wall try to go under it try to go left whatever um but it's understanding if no results are happening I think that's what you need to take a step back and be like yeah okay let's go left or let's go right right so I think that's a big message I think I hope a lot of people caught that on what you said as well because I think that's that's imperative especially in the business world today so I think that's huge um and also because now I'm thinking in terms of lines like to take a little bit further you know have you ever faced that moment where you want to try something new but you might be a little hesitant on or a little fearful of because like it's going good on this side but you like yeah that looks Greener over there right that's great let's try it and have you ever had that moment it's like I don't know should I or should I not so the first one going back to fear you mentioned fear I don't really have that fear issue because remember you're going to be a harshest critic other people don't really care as much I don't mean that in a bad way it just means that if you feel it looks okay most people won't ever know or watch um so I don't really have a fear uh but yes I have that syndrome where the grass is always green and I want to try things I used to have that issue a lot more when I was younger um last four or five years I've been really good at just focusing and just having super sharp laser focus and that's it and that's done really well for me in which you know like have your focus and yes the grass is always greener on the side but if the business urine is growing and still doing well that's cool just keep at it you know you don't need to hop around and do something else when you just continually grow and grow in what you're doing great example both in the agency space you have a small agency I have a small agency I don't mean that in a bad way we both are small we could do something else and both do well at it but there's wpp and Omnicom and then still a lot of these companies do like 10 plus billion a year in Revenue we're like flies compared to their size right yeah and there's no reason to hop around because the market weren't as massive so might as well just double down on what we're all doing makes sense it makes sense yeah I feel the same way there's a lot of opportunity I don't feel like the marketplace is necessarily saturated no matter no matter what vertical you're in I think it's depending on obviously you because everyone's different right you bring something different to the table clearly like you said we're both in agencies you probably cater to a certain you know Niche breaking down as far as what you provide I do as well as so many others um and I think that's the value point that a lot of people got to lean into like what's your specialty what's your superpower right whatever that may be in order to Excel and I figured like you obviously figure that out for yourself you know pretty young and also building it up to where you are now um and I think that's that's super dope and important too so thank you definitely definitely definitely and so um when it comes to your business though uh because you have multiple you had your hands in multiple pots and so many different things that you've been into um how would you measure success in your business growth business success issue based on revenue and profit the more you grow the better off you do but you look at the public markets that's what they evaluate you on growth it all comes down to revenue and profit gotcha gotcha have your have your businesses take in any sort of I won't say a hit or any type of challenge over the past two or three years due to like covid right um like yeah have you had like brick and mortar type you know setups and offices how does that played out for you and how did you you know get through there was a challenge when it first came around we had to lay off a lot of people um sadly and we ended up uh growing over time because a lot of stuff moved online so that helped us out a little bit uh not being able to do meetings uh made it hard just internal and external for a lot of uh cities or states or whatever you want to call it we're in lockdown so we couldn't really have our teams and people meet up um the other thing that uh hurt was the economy when stock market crashed as hard like 2022 uh it slows down a lot of growth and it causes a lot of people to cancel and stuff when their stocks are down you know 30 40 50 um but you know look there's always going to be ups and downs it's the life of entrepreneur it's you know as they say entrepreneurship's like a roller coaster there's a lot of ups and downs and happy moments and sad moments and scary moments you just gotta roll with the punches as they come along yeah that's true that's true and I feel like it was definitely very different for a lot of people during covet um either some people like you say had to lay off especially if you're a bit confident it's like it's tough to let go of those employees or people that work with you and help build something so sustainable and then on the flip side of those people that's like I know for me in particular um it was like a great stride I would say um business actually started picking up more during that time just because I notice a lot of people starting to shift from obviously working at a job to being stuck at home and they're like what am I going to do with all this time I gotta figure something out and so they started creating these businesses and these these uh side hustles if you will and they're like okay I need to logo I'm like that's me okay I need a website I'm like hey I can do that too I need I need this this I'm like oh this this is perfect right and I'm like oh man this is a great moment so I caught my stride literally I would say the last two or three years just picking up speed um but I can see the the views from both sides and how that can play out and hearing your side I understand it and along with so many others um but I know that you know over time things will start to transition back hopefully and start getting back into the workforce to get to get the people back in and get those people active so um yeah it was definitely a time I think a lot of people felt that tremendously um yep and so with that because I know I'm just gonna throw it out there I feel like you're a very Hands-On type of guy like you're very intuitive um and you care about people right especially if you if you have an agency you have to right there's something about it so how did you go about like fostering that that community that you have and that company need to scale it to what it is yeah uh you just hire other people that believe in the same culture and the vision and um you know the culture fit is just super super important uh uh yeah and they just we fostered it by hiring you know just people who believed in the vision and the values yeah um at the beginning it was super important when your first 10 20 50 100 people and typically as you grow up more and more those people try to help you recruit other people that will instill the same values and have similar culture definitely definitely okay okay that's big because I'm in the face and I'm sure other people are I gotta I got a small team but we're pretty crafty right it's about a strong five of us right now but I'm like that's awesome this is the best five you know this is the best five ever yeah and so we're building we're having fun and that's what it's all about and everyone does their own thing um and just to hear that I can understand where people start to cultivate and say hey I got a friend or hey are you looking for X Y and Z or maybe you can bring them on I think that's super important it just makes for the community to grow um I feel like a lot of times though for most business owners we kind of get into the mindset of like oh man I need another another one of me right if I could just get two three more of me this would be perfect right but you don't have to worry about that over time you'll be able to find people who are better than you at certain things right like you you may be the most creative person and I'm making this up you may need someone who's more process oriented and you can find someone who's super processary to understand agency life that can help you scale faster or you may be really good at doing the work but not selling and you may end up finding someone who's better at selling than you or even if you're good at all those things you can find someone who's like I only do selling for agencies and I'm really good at this and I have this big Rolodex and they can help you scale faster right so just continue to look for people who are better than you have specific things and try to bring them on as you need them right right definitely you know that's that's the plan I'm I'm trying to be the guy like hands off I don't really like to be like Tom crunching people because I know how I am as a creative I'm like just give me the deadline when does it need to be done all right it'll be done I promise you so that's how I like to operate and I kind of get that free will to all my my people that work with me um and so yeah that's that's that's a good a good indicator coming from you so um okay okay so now if we hopping back into the business side of things um I think one of the many questions I actually have a little question list pulled up because I told some people you'll be coming on and they have about two or three questions for you so I chose a couple that I thought would be cool and uh to act so uh the first one was uh this came from Jamie and she said um how do you go about growing your email subscription list when you don't have a big audience or a big clientele base no problem start creating content on social start collaborating with other people and hit them up and start talking about your website release content on your website and just have email capture forms whether it's on socials or like link trees or whether it is um you know on your own website and when you do collaborations guest posts keep plugging away your site and as people come to your site you'll start collecting more emails boom there we go Jamie I hope that helps that was some bars in there take that take that okay so next question this came from Chris he said does having a brick and mortar office do better when ranking on SEO versus having a virtual office we haven't seen any difference all right and let's see um last one was oh this is a fun one they said uh what is the best piece of money advice you ever received easier to save it than it is to make it so save as much as possible awesome awesome perfect perfect well look ladies and gentlemen I did my part okay y'all sent the questions in I told you I was going to ask Neil so hopefully y'all listened and y'all heard it make sure um to hit him up too if you have any additional questions I'm sure he'd love to talk to as many of you as possible um but with that Neil um I definitely am very appreciative for you hopping on um I don't want to take up too much time I know you got stuff to do no worries we got agencies and stuff to run but it's been a blast man I appreciate you so much um if you want definitely go ahead and Shout out the best way where people can find you reach out to you and uh you know get in contact uh mine are all Emil Patel is my username so gotcha gotcha nice simple and sweet perfect perfect well ladies and gentlemen um I appreciate you guys for tuning in and until next time much love peace and blessings