[00:00:00] Voice-over: How powerful is the Cox Network? So powerful that one day the internet will let your doctor perform miracles from thousands of miles away. Connecting to remote operating room, giving a whole new meaning to the term house call operation complete. The Cox network with gig speeds everywhere. It's internet built for tomorrow.

[00:00:23] Today, Cox bringing us closer in Cox serviceable areas, speeds vary and are not guaranteed. Cox terms apply. Other restrictions may apply.

[00:00:47] Neil Patel: When we're born and we grow up and we started getting into elementary school, we have these ideas of what we wanna be astronaut, policeman, firefighter people believe that a lot of others just know what they wanna do, and then they grow up and that's what they do, [00:01:00] but that's not actually true. The way most people find their passion is they actually try a lot of different things.

[00:01:05] When people try a lot of different things, they stumble upon stuff that they're naturally good at, and you tend to be more passionate about it. The biggest trend that we're seeing right now in marketing is podcasting. It's a wide open ocean. There's not tons of competition. And what's really cool is when you do podcasts, a lot of times people are doing 'em with other people like you and I are, and we're both gonna push this on all our social profiles and we're both gonna get played from this.

[00:01:31] So it's actually a really amazing win-win strategy for both of us.

[00:01:40] Hala Taha: What is up Young and Profiters, you are listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, where we interview the brightest minds in the world and unpack their wisdom and to actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. I'm your host, Hala Taha. Thanks for tuning in and get ready to listen, learn and profit.[00:02:00] 

[00:02:11] Welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast, Neil.

[00:02:14] Neil Patel: Thanks for having me. 

[00:02:16] Hala Taha: Really excited. YAP fam, one of my favorite topics to talk about is marketing. As you guys know, I am a marketer, and today I'm thrilled to report that we have one of the most legendary and popular marketers in the world joining us. And that's Neil Patel.

[00:02:29] If you don't know Neil, he's a digital marketer, a New York Times bestselling author, an entrepreneur, and an investor. After founding Crazy Egg, Kissmetrics and other multimillion dollar companies, Neil now focuses on running his SEO tool Uber suggests, as well as his agency, NP Digital, which specializes in paid campaigns, SEO, social media, and content marketing.

[00:02:50] He's worked with Global Rams like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP, and Viacom to name a few. And in terms of accolades, Neil has received dozens [00:03:00] over his two decades as a marketer to name a few. Forbes says he's one of the top 10 marketers. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and the Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web.

[00:03:14] So we're obviously very excited to talk with Neil. And in this episode, we're gonna share his journey of how he became one of the world's most recognized internet marketers. He'll break down his biggest digital marketing tips. We'll try to cover everything from social media to email marketing to SEO.

[00:03:30] And lastly, we'll get his insight on marketing trends for 2023 and how we can future proof content in the age of AI. So Neil, like I mentioned earlier, you are one of our generation's most notable marketers. You're basically a household name when it comes to marketers, so congratulations on all your success.

[00:03:48] Neil Patel: You're too kind. I don't know if my name is that household, but you're too kind. 

[00:03:52] Hala Taha: When it comes to marketers, you are for sure, and you've always had an entrepreneurial and hardworking spirit, and I was surprised to [00:04:00] learn that you actually started your first company when you were 16. And so I'd love to understand some of the jobs and experiences you had as a teenager and also how you ended up getting into internet marketing and dabbling into that just as a teenager.

[00:04:13] Neil Patel: So when I was a young kid, I always had a drive to make money, which isn't the best reason to start a business but from everything. When I was like around 15, I was selling like CDs and music from there, sold cable TV and stuff like that to parents. Without getting into too much detail, I probably shouldn't have done some of those things.

[00:04:35] Then as I grew up, I was just like, you know what? I want a high paying job, and the reason I want a high paying job is my sister at the time, was working for Oracle consultant and this Oracle consultant was making like $120 an hour, sometimes like 200 plus dollars an hour. That's a lot of money. And keep in mind, that's around 21 years ago, so 21, 22 years ago.

[00:04:58] That's even right now. Even though [00:05:00] when people are like, I make a hundred bucks an hour, people would be ecstatic with that. A hundred, 200 bucks an hour, 20 plus years ago was much more than it is today. So my sister worked for this Oracle consultant. I started looking online for Oracle Consulting jobs.

[00:05:14] So I went to this site called monster.com. It's not popular now. Everyone uses LinkedIn, which you know all about. But back then people were using monster.com to find jobs. So I was typing in all these Oracle financial consulting jobs, and I couldn't qualify for any of them, didn't have a college degree, didn't have Oracle certifications, so I was missing out just on a ton of revenue, but I wanted that revenue.

[00:05:38] So I started taking nighttime college classes and whilst taking nighttime college classes at the same time because they didn't qualify for any of those jobs. I noticed that monster.com was making hundreds of millions of dollars. I'm like, you know what? If I just replicate this business, even if I make 1% of what they make, I'll be a rich kid.

[00:05:57] So I created my own job website, paid some [00:06:00] contractors that I found online using money I made from picking up trash at a theme park, to cleaning restrooms, to selling CDs. Gather all the money that I could find, raise, I think it was like 500 bucks or $900 from college kid. High school classmates.

[00:06:15] So I would go to around my class, try to get money from some of 'em, and started the business. The job board also was going to college at nighttime. Job board, started getting more traffic learned internet marketing on my own, did a ton of research, got traffic, but made no money. Literally just making zero money.

[00:06:32] I was devastated. I was like, I'm getting like a hundred thousand visitors a month. No money. This sucks. So I'm like, forget this. I'm just gonna go forward, go to college and wrap things up, and just go get that Oracle certification. Just get the a hundred, $200 an hour. So I tried going down that route, and while I was in high school, still at 16 at this time, my first class was speech 101.

[00:06:54] Gave a speech on how Google algorithm worked and how to get Google traffic. Someone in the class was working [00:07:00] at a power supply manufacturer and they're just like, man, can we end up hiring you? My boss is looking for someone like you. I'm in sales here, brushing up on my sales skills. Hence I'm in that speech class, but I know they're looking for someone who understands Google.

[00:07:13] So they gave me a gig. Long story short was for five grand a month, I was ecstatic. That's a lot of money. Even right now. That's a lot of money. So 60 grand a year. I didn't know that I was what kind of impact I was making on that business. Eventually I found out I was driving around 25 million a year in revenue to the business through online marketing.

[00:07:31] So then the owner of the company had a son, the son owned a ad agency, and then he introduced me to Blue Cross Countrywide, ING Direct, which was like the first online banker, what is one of the first well known online banks, and he was giving me five grand a month per client and just arbitraging it and charging more on the other end.

[00:07:50] And over time, I was around 16, 17 years old. At this time I was making 20 grand a month, and that's how I got my start. 

[00:07:57] Hala Taha: It's so amazing. It just goes to [00:08:00] show that if you find your passion early, if you stay focused, you've been doing this basically for two decades now. Your company is running ad campaigns, spending billions of dollars with huge global brands, and it just goes to show how much you can do when you focus and you become like a true expert in your field.

[00:08:18] Neil Patel: You're totally right, but I didn't learn the focus thing probably until 13, 14 years into my entrepreneurial journey. It was late. If I focus on from day one on doing the right things, I would have a much, much bigger business. But that's a mistake that I learned better late than never. I just wish I could turn back the clock and focus.

[00:08:38] Hala Taha: It's funny now we have all these resources, like Young and Profiting Podcasts where we get to talk to Alex Hormozi and he scolds us on like why we need to focus and all these things. So it was a different situation when you first started. You didn't really have as much resources as everybody else.

[00:08:53] So speaking on, getting your start, I've got a lot of young listeners and these young listeners often are [00:09:00] really confused about where to focus their attention, how to find their passion, how to understand. Where they should focus in terms of their passion that will also make money. What's your advice to them considering the fact that you've basically dominated this internet marketing niche?

[00:09:14] Neil Patel: This is one of my favorite questions or topics, more not really questions, but it's one of my favorite topics. I met a lot of young people. They've asked me the same thing. I didn't know my passion would be internet marketing. Back then, it wasn't really popular. And what I found is when we're born and we grow up and we started getting to elementary school, we have these ideas of what we wanna be.

[00:09:33] Astronaut, policeman, firefighter, I wanted to be a doctor when I was a little kid, and people believe that a lot of others just know what they wanna do and then they grow up and that's what they do. But that's not actually true. Majority of the people that I've met and talked to, and I also wrote a book called Hustle It to my co-founders or not co-founders with I had co-authors and we did a lot of research and we found that majority of the people.

[00:09:59] Aren't really born and be [00:10:00] like, I wanna be a doctor, and then they grow up being a doctor. The way most people find their passion is they actually try a lot of different things, and typically the stuff that they're not good at, they just don't do much of or if they don't like it. They just don't do much of.

[00:10:13] But typically what you find is when people try a lot of different things, they stumble on upon stuff that they're naturally good at. And you tend to love the stuff that you're naturally good at, and you tend to be more passionate about it, and that's what you should end up focusing on. But the way you end up figuring it out is not spending 10,000 hours to master something.

[00:10:33] It's just a ton of trial and error and you just constantly try new things. 

[00:10:37] Hala Taha: I totally agree with you, and I think one of the reasons why you probably found your passion so early is because you were doing a lot, even as a young kid and experimenting and getting a lot of experiences. 

[00:10:49] Neil Patel: Totally right. Did too many businesses, some I love, some I hated, but live and learn.

[00:10:54] Hala Taha: You learned from it. Talking about niches, let's talk about picking your market. I know that's selecting the right [00:11:00] market when you're starting a side hustle or when you're becoming an entrepreneur is so important. And I was talking to you offline about how I have this LinkedIn masterclass and I teach people how to grow on LinkedIn, how to master their content, go viral, how to convert leads into sales.

[00:11:14] But where I see them struggling is that they don't have product market fit. Their offer isn't really right. They don't really know who they're marketing to, and then my strategies may not work if they don't have that all lined up and perfected. So I'd love to understand from you what makes a good audience market.

[00:11:31] Neil Patel: What makes a good audience market to me is a big tam. So assuming you find something you're passionate about by just through trial and error, you gotta make sure you're focusing on a big tam. Everyone says the riches is are in the niches. That's far from true. If you look at the majority of the large corporations out there, like Tesla Automotive people need cars in this world.

[00:11:50] If you look at Microsoft, everyone needs software to run these computers and digital devices that we're on. If you look at Google, we're relying on search for anything [00:12:00] and someone organizing data and feeding it to us in a very organized fashion. If you look at Apple, we need all these hardware pieces that they're selling from headphones to cellphones, to laptops.

[00:12:12] These are large markets. If you look again, look at the biggest companies in the world. They're going after large markets and not niches. So the key is to go after a big tam. Now you can start in a niche if you want, and there's nothing wrong with that, but you need to make sure that you can expand that niche into a large market because the amount of effort it takes to market a business, whether it's on LinkedIn or any social platform, or even SEO for a niche compared to a large market, is almost the same amount of effort.

[00:12:41] Sure, it's harder in a large market. It takes longer to see results, but it's the same process in the same time and energy that you're putting into it. So might as well go after something big, because it's very unrealistic to be in a niche and being like, you know what? I'm gonna dominate this niche and gobble up a hundred percent of the market share.

[00:12:58] Or even [00:13:00] 20, 30%. That's very hard to do. But on the flip side, it's easier to say, Hey, I'm gonna go after this multi-billion dollar market and I'm gonna gobble up 0.1% of it. You go love even something small, that's enough money where you're generating millions of dollars where it's meaningful. For example, if it's a 10 billion market that you're going after you gole 0.1%, that's big enough to create amazing life and a business.

[00:13:25] Hala Taha: Totally. And just to define some things from my listeners who may not know, TAM is total addressable market. So you're saying you need a big sort of more broad market. You don't wanna get two in the niches because they're really hard to find. That's like finding a needle and a haystack. When you're a marketer, you wanna find your audience in mass, you wanna target them in mass.

[00:13:44] That's how you're gonna target them in the cheapest way, most effective way. If you have to find 10 people here or 10 people there, or 10, it's like you are just gonna exhaust yourself and it's gonna be very expensive. 

[00:13:54] Neil Patel: Exactly right. You need to go after a big market, so that way you don't have to have [00:14:00] frequency issues of oh, I've shown my ad to 500 people.

[00:14:04] All right, how many more people can you shoot? That's my only audience. Or even 10,000 people. It's not enough. You need to go after the masses. 

[00:14:10] Hala Taha: So I know that you have a formula for marketing that you talk about. Could you break that down for us? 

[00:14:16] Neil Patel: Sure. So number one, go after a really big TAM. Once you have a big TAM, then if you wanna do well, you needed to take a omnichannel approach from LinkedIn to Facebook, to Instagram to WhatsApp marketing through text.

[00:14:31] Through email marketing to SEO, to paid advertising. It doesn't matter if you like paid ads on Facebook or not. If it's profitable. You gotta keep leveraging it. And then from there, you gotta figure out how to add into upsells and down sales. Because if you look at marketing over time, it continually costs more and more.

[00:14:48] So you gotta add into upsells and downsells. In other words, build that funnel, figure out how to generate more revenue from that same customer. And if they're buying more right at purchase, it allows you to spend more money on marketing. As well as [00:15:00] figure out a way to generate reoccurring revenue. So how do you sell to 'em multiple times?

[00:15:04] And it may not be reoccurring in the sense that most people think we're someone's subscribing for $10 a month. But it could be reoccurring as simple as, I built amazing product or service. I have product market fit where I'm Amazon and people will just buy toothpaste from me. Oh, in the next day, they'll buy toilet paper and then they buy some shoes, and then they buy a t-shirt or a headphone or a laptop, and Amazon is continuing making money from you each and every single month, even though a lot of people aren't subscribing to reoccurring products.

[00:15:36] Hala Taha: Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. 

[00:15:40] What's up Young and Profiters? Do you have a CRM platform? A CRM tool can help you accelerate business growth by keeping track of leads, improving customer retention, automating daily tasks, and enabling data sharing across your entire organization.

[00:15:55] If this sounds like what you need, say hello to Brevo formerly Sendinblue [00:16:00] a platform that helps you build customer relationships across email, SMS chat and more. With Brevo, you can easily create customized emails, engaging SMS or WhatsApp campaigns, stunning landing pages and automated workflows, no matter your goals.

[00:16:15] Brevo has the complete toolkit to turn one-time browsers into long-term customers. It's the perfect growth tool for marketers, small and medium sized business owners and sales teams looking to build a consolidated marketing and CRM toolbox. I'm especially impressed with Brevo's sales platform. You can automate repetitive tasks from meeting reminders to follow ups.

[00:16:37] I'm all about less admin work and more time closing deals. And with all leads and deals in one place, you can keep a closer eye on your progress and streamline your pipeline. Brevo can also help streamline your sales and marketing efforts. With more transparency and all customer interactions during the buying journey stored in one central location. Your team will have a better pulse on what's working and what can be improved.

[00:16:59] And at [00:17:00] the same time, your customers will enjoy a consistent end-to-end experience that keeps them loyal to your brand. Best of all, Brevo's pricing structure is based on the number of emails sent, not the number of contacts stored. So this will lead to a lot of cost savings. Get started with Brevo for free by going to brevo.com/profiting and use the promo code profiting to save 50% off your first three months of the starter and business plan.

[00:17:26] Again, that's brevo.com/profiting and sign up for free. 

[00:17:29] YAP Fam. Many of us are freelancing or running a small business. We love flexibility, control, freedom, and being creative. I love being an entrepreneur. I thrive in this type of role, but there's certain parts of entrepreneurship that I'm just not good at and I don't enjoy.

[00:17:48] Namely finance and taxes. I'm a highly motivated person. But nothing demotivates me more than paperwork and paying bills, and I procrastinate. Oftentimes, I miss deadlines and don't get [00:18:00] things done because I don't like doing that kind of stuff, but that stuff still has to get done. If you wanna focus on your passion and not your paperwork, you have to know about collective.com.

[00:18:09] Collective is an all-in-one financial solution for freelancers, contractors, and entrepreneurs making north of $60,000 in profit a year. Collective handles your corporate formation and compliance, paperwork, taxes, bookkeeping, accounting, and even payroll. Take away your busy work and maximize your tax savings.

[00:18:27] Don't worry about hiring a CPA, bookkeeper or an attorney. With Collective, you'll get access to tax and accounting experts, and it's gonna cost you a fraction of the cost. Trust me, I made the mistake of hiring senior roles way too fast. It will suck your profits dry, and unless you pay top of market, the talent is just gonna be lackluster.

[00:18:46] Wait as long as possible and instead leverage a platform like collective.com. If you've already made money this year, but don't have an S-Corp election right now through June 30th, collective can save you thousands of dollars on taxes in [00:19:00] 2023 because they're able to backdate your S-Corp election to January 1st.

[00:19:04] I actually did this exact same strategy last year for my company, and this year I paid significantly less taxes, literally half of what I paid for 2021. I can't promise the same results, but it really worked for us at YAP Media. In fact, collective members save on average $10,000 per year on taxes with this structure.

[00:19:23] With those kind of savings. Collective will pay for itself act before June 30th to save potentially thousands of dollars in 2023 taxes. Go to collective.com to save on taxes this year and have somebody who knows what they're doing. Handle your setup, accounting, bookkeeping, and taxes, even your personal taxes.

[00:19:40] That's collective.com.

[00:19:45] And I'd love to dig deeper on a couple things that you mentioned. So can you help us understand some examples of an upsell and a down cell? 

[00:19:53] Neil Patel: No problem at all. So with upsells and down cells, this key is speed and automation. And I learned that from a guy named Ryan Dice and he [00:20:00] was spot on it. And I did a lot of testing and I found that if you're offering a upsell or down cell, anything that gives a results. Faster or in an automated way tends to perform better, but to keep it simple, before we go into that, let's just take McDonald's as an example.

[00:20:17] So with McDonald's, if you buy anything from McDonald's, at least when I was a little kid, they would say, would you like fries with that? That's an example of a upsell. Or would you like a Happy meal? And typically an upsell is you're selling something that could be more so you order a burger. And that is a upsell to get 'em into a Happy meal or a combo where they're getting a drink and a fries.

[00:20:38] A down sell could be, Hey, you want a burger? All right, cool. You already bought that. Would you like large fries? Oh no, it's too expensive. How about a small fries? We're running a promotion on that. It'll only cost you 30 cents more when you combine your burger with a small fry. You don't even have to spend a dollar more, it's just 30 cents more.

[00:20:57] That's the example of a down sell cuz you're getting 'em on a lower price [00:21:00] point. When they're saying no to something that is more expensive. And typically what you wanna do with your marketing is how can you sell something, that will get 'em the results faster in a automate way. So let's use beauty as an example cause it's the easiest example that I can think of.

[00:21:15] Let's say people want wrinkle cream. You can probably tell, I don't use wrinkle cream, but let's say wrinkle cream cuz people don't want wrinkles. If you say, Hey, check out this light, it's purple or red or blue in color, and if you put it on your face, it'll get rid of the wrinkles faster. So instead of three months, maybe it'll take you only one month.

[00:21:36] That kind of upsell those really well because you're getting the results faster. Or another way is, Hey, here's some wrinkle cream. Here's this device that you can just wear when you sleep, and it just puts it in your face for you overnight, and it just injects it. I'm making it up. Or, here's this toothbrush.

[00:21:53] Instead of buying it, here's this attachment that you can add on for another 50 bucks, and you just put in your mouth and it brushes your mouth for you. That's the [00:22:00] example of automation where people pay for that because they're like, oh, cool, so I can walk around my house while this device brushes my teeth for me, and I'm good to go. 

[00:22:08] Hala Taha: So the reason why all of this is so important is because we wanna increase the lifetime value of our customers. Every customer costs a certain amount of money for us to acquire if we're using paid ads. Sometimes it's free if you're using organic strategies. And at the end of the day, we wanna make sure that we're increasing the LTV or lifetime value of our customers.

[00:22:27] So can you further break down your perspective on that, or any tips around increasing lifetime value? 

[00:22:33] Neil Patel: So lifetime value is about, How can you get people to keep just buying more and more from you, whether it's reoccurring or upsells or downsells. But the key to really increasing the lifetime value is just understanding, what issues people have with your business, your products and services, and just talking to them.

[00:22:53] And saying, Hey, what can I do better? How can I more delight you? And just getting that feedback and continue adjusting your products and services [00:23:00] is how you optimize the experience and increase your lifetime value. 

[00:23:03] Hala Taha: Let's get into SEO. So you're really known for your SEO tactics. SEO is search engine optimization.

[00:23:10] For anybody who doesn't know that acronym, what are entrepreneurs getting wrong about SEO today? 

[00:23:16] Neil Patel: What they're getting wrong about SEO is they believe that the key to winning is Hey, you need more links. You need better on page code. And don't get me wrong, those are actually factors and they're important factors, so I'm not trying to downplay them and you need to do 'em to rank higher.

[00:23:34] But when you do a search on Google, have you ever thought to yourself, man, this result should be number one. When I'm searching for cars, let say I'm trying to buy a new car, they're like, this result should be number one cuz that's a million back links and the number two result has only 500,000 back links.

[00:23:51] It doesn't cross your mind. No one cares. Which site has more back links or less back links are better on page code or worse on page code. [00:24:00] Now don't get me wrong, fast, low time, more links, all these things are signals and you do need to do 'em and they will help you with your SEO. But the key to really ranking high in the long run is building amazing product or service.

[00:24:15] If someone goes to your website, no matter how fast your website loads or how good your content is, or any of those factors, if they don't find what they're looking for, they're gonna go back and go to the next site. And if everyone keeps going back and they don't find what they're looking for on your website, even if you're ranking right now, your rankings in the long run will decrease because it's user signals.

[00:24:36] That Google and Bing are picking up and it's telling them, Hey, other people prefer other types of content. 

[00:24:42] Hala Taha: So don't just focus on the tactics to rank. Focus on keeping people on your page and having a good content and good product. So you mentioned on page SEO for those non marketers out there, what's the difference between On Page SEO and Off Page SEO?

[00:24:56] Neil Patel: OnPage SEO is the stuff you're doing to your own webpages that [00:25:00] you can control, like speeding up your website, low time.

[00:25:02] It shouldn't take a website, five seconds to load. Or making sure they have keywords on your page. Cuz if people type in dog food but there's no mention of dog food on your page, they're not really gonna rank for dog food. Off page is signals from other sites to yours. So a great example of this is it's like votes.

[00:25:21] First will win in a presidential election based on how many votes they typically get. Typically, the more votes you get, the more likely you are to win. Similar, it goes with Google. If other websites are linking to your website, it's like a vote. Someone's saying, I vote for Neil, I vote for John. I vote for Cassidy or New York Times, or I vote for whatever site there may be.

[00:25:42] Another aspect of a vote is the person voting for you. So if. Trump or Obama or Biden say, Hey, you should vote for Neil. Whether you like those political figures or not. It's another politician saying, vote for Neil. We endorse his political viewpoints and he knows [00:26:00] what he's doing. That's more relevant than Joe the plumber, or Sally the plumber saying vote for Neil.

[00:26:05] When it comes to politics, the same thing goes with SEO and rankings. If I'm trying to rank for marketing related terms. It's more effective for another marketing website to say, Hey, Neil's amazing or authoritative website, like a New York Times or CNN saying, vote for Neil versus a small mom and pop plumbing site linking to my website and say, Neil should rank higher.

[00:26:29] Hala Taha: You mentioned keywords, and I know when it comes to SEO there's like lots to talk about keywords and a lot of people overdo it with keywords. So is there a right way and a wrong way to think about keywords when it comes to your SEO? 

[00:26:41] Neil Patel: Yes. You don't need to shove in tons of keywords in your content Google and being understand what you're talking about when from a topical standpoint, as long as you have some keywords in there. The key is you need to find the right keywords to target.

[00:26:55] What are the ones that drive revenue? What are the ones that have a lot of search [00:27:00] traffic? So what you wanna do is you wanna use tools like Uber suggest or, and to the public. They both have tons of free plans where you can type in any keyword. It'll tell you what's popular from a search volume perspective. What's not competitive and what has a high cost per click.

[00:27:15] So a CPC stands for cost per click. The higher that number, that means more people are willing to spend money, more unpaid ads, which means that keyword tends to drive more revenue. 

[00:27:25] Hala Taha: Okay. And Uber suggests we'll put the link in the show notes. So let's talk about if you had a choice between organic SEO and investing in Google Ads as an entrepreneur, would you suggest that people like where should we start first?

[00:27:39] Should we try to optimize organically first, or should we just go straight to paid ads? 

[00:27:45] Neil Patel: You can try either or. There is no right answer for that. It varies per market and also varies on your skillset. If you think you're gonna struggle with SEO and you also don't have the time to wait, then paid ads is the best approach.

[00:27:58] If you think, Hey, I don't, or [00:28:00] if you're in a circumstance where you don't have the money, but you have the time, SEO is a great first approach. Or if you have both and you're a venture funded startup where you have capital from previous ventures or parents, then you can do both at the same time. Generally speaking of marketing, one social channel or one pay channel, or one SEO channel, one's not really better than the other.

[00:28:20] It's you leverage all channels as long as they can cause you to grow in a profitable way. 

[00:28:25] Hala Taha: Awesome. Okay, so let's move on to email marketing. Everyone and their moms is trying to grow their email list. It's a really popular thing. Email still has really great ROI, and I know you're full of creative ideas when it comes to growing your email list.

[00:28:41] So what are some of your most innovative creative tactics when it comes to actually getting people to subscribe and opt into our email list? 

[00:28:50] Neil Patel: My favorite one is give away a tool for free. So you can go to sites like Code canyon.net, find tools in any industry, mortgages, cars, automotive, whatever it may be.[00:29:00] 

[00:29:00] Buy 'em for 10, 15, 20, 50 bucks. And it's white label, so you can put it on your website and pretty much say it's your own. And as people keep using the tools, they use it once free. They use it twice. Have 'em collect a, or collect an email address, have 'em register so that way you can keep generating more emails.

[00:29:18] And we do that with Answer the Public and Uber suggests, and we generate close to 300,000 email addresses per month from that strategy. New emails. And it's one of our favorite strategies that not too many marketers use. 

[00:29:31] Hala Taha: Wow. 

[00:29:31] So what is the name of that website that gives the tools? 

[00:29:34] Neil Patel: Code Canyon, codecanyon.net.

[00:29:38] Hala Taha: I love that. I've never heard of that before. Really. Cool. And let's stick on lead generation and go a little bit wider now. What are some creative ways to generate leads? Now, I know I've heard you on an interview in the past say that you've even acquired companies to generate leads for your agency. So I'd love to hear some of the creative ways that you've generated leads in the past.

[00:29:58] Neil Patel: So great example of this [00:30:00] February. We're in 2023 right now, but February, 2022 we bought a tool called AnswerThePublic for 8.6 million bucks and answer the public was this tool similar to Ubersuggest, which accounted for roughly 40% of our consulting revenue at NP Digital. And at that time, I think AnswerThePublic had around 60% of the traffic.

[00:30:20] Uber says did, but they only monetized it by charging for the tool. We felt a, there's more money in services in marketing, and we've seen that ourselves. If you look at any of the marketing software companies, none of them generate anywhere near the amount of money as a marketing services companies like WPP or Omnicom.

[00:30:36] So we're just like, wait. It's similar to our Uber says tool. They don't even monetize this from a lead perspective, giving away free tools. Is a much better approach to generating more and more leads. And again, you can use that same strategy from Code Canyon. Buying tools drives a lot of traffic organically.

[00:30:52] You don't have to do tons of marketing cuz people love free tools and you generate leads from there. Another strategy that we love doing is LinkedIn [00:31:00] ads. You can end up going out there targeting the specific company type and person and job title and show them ads and only them ads and get really qualified leads from that.

[00:31:13] We also love doing webinars, going live, doing podcasts with other people. Omnichannel, of course, just being on all the platforms helps generate a lot of leads. Another unique strategy that we do is we speak at conferences and then instead of charging, so I used to charge money for speaking at conferences.

[00:31:31] Now we're like, don't care for the money. But what we love doing is having the conference organizers set us up with the right meetings. So great example of this is I was in Brazil speaking at event, got set up with meetings with Michelin, the tire company. One of the biggest marketplaces is like their version of eBay down there got set up with one of their biggest life insurance companies in Latin America.

[00:31:55] So what we'll do is, again, speak at some of these events and then get set up with meetings like [00:32:00] Whirlpool, right? Whirlpool's a global company. And it's been an amazing strategy to help us get customers. You can also then B to C, like if you're selling nail polish, speak at an event where you can meet potential distributors, or the event organizer can set you up with the introduction to, let's say Walmart, who can carry your nail polish and put it in all the stores.

[00:32:20] Yeah, these are such great ideas and I love that you pointed out LinkedIn ads because too often I feel like when we're thinking of social ads, it's just meta, right? It's Facebook and Instagram and nobody's really thinking about LinkedIn or the other platforms. So I think it's really cool that you mentioned that there's some really good targeting on LinkedIn.

[00:32:36] So back to email, I'd love to understand the importance of cleaning up our email list and how we can actually make sure that our emails hit the inbox in the right folders. 

[00:32:47] The simplest thing to think about with emails is if someone keeps sending you emails and you never open 'em, and a lot of other people get similar emails and they don't open 'em from the same people, even if you don't mark 'em as spam, Google and [00:33:00] Outlook and all these email providers will start putting 'em in the other inbox or spam box and less people see 'em.

[00:33:05] So what you wanna do is scrub your list. A lot of email solutions have this option. Like for example, I use Convert Kit. Convert Kit has cold subscribers. And they label 'em as cold because they mean when you send 'em emails, they don't open and they don't click. So what we do is we look at our cold subscribers on a monthly basis and we delete 'em that simple.

[00:33:25] So we only send emails to the people who are engaging and that ensures that our emails stay in the inbox and have much better deliverability. 

[00:33:34] Hala Taha: We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. 

[00:33:38] Your dog is an important part of your family. Don't settle when it comes to their health. Make the switch to fresh food made with real ingredients that are backed by science with Nom delivers fresh dog food that is personalized to your dog's individual needs.

[00:33:52] Each portion is tailored to ensure your dog gets the nutrition they need so you can watch them thrive. Nom Nom ingredients are cooked individually [00:34:00] and then mixed together because science tells us that every protein, carb and veggie has different cooking times and methods. This packs in all the vitamins and minerals your dog needs so they truly get the most out of every single bite.

[00:34:12] And Nom Nom is completely free of additives, fillers, and mystery ingredients that contribute to bloating and low energy. Your dog deserves only the best and Nom Nom delivers just that. Their nutrient packed recipes are crafted by board certified veterinary nutritionist made fresh and shipped to your door absolutely free.

[00:34:33] Nom meals start at just $2 and 40 cents, and every meal is cooked in company owned kitchens right here in the US and they've already delivered over 40 million meals, inspiring clean bowls and wagging tails everywhere. Ever since I started feeding my dog, Nom he's been so much more energetic and he's getting older.

[00:34:51] He's a senior dog, but now we've been going on longer walks and he's much more playful. He used to be pretty sluggish and sleeping all the time, but I've definitely noticed [00:35:00] a major improvement since I started feeding him Nom Nom. And the best part, they offer a money back guarantee. If your dog's tail isn't wagging within 30 days, they'll refund your first order.

[00:35:11] No fillers, no nonsense. Just Nom Nom. Go right now for 50% off your no risk two-week trynom.com/YAP. That's trynom.com/YAP. For 50% off, trynom.com/YAP. 

[00:35:27] Hey you. I know you're all about leveling up in life and one of the quickest ways to do that is to learn from those who have already been where you wanna go.

[00:35:36] With Masterclass, you can learn from the world's best minds anytime, anywhere and at your own pace. Speaking of best minds, Chris Voss holds the record for most episodes on Yap. He's been on five times and that's because this man spits pure gold on masterclass. You can learn the art of negotiation straight from the goat himself by taking his class.

[00:35:57] And if you wanna take it a step further, there's [00:36:00] also a sales and persuasion class with two, two-time Yap. Guest Daniel Pink. And we all know that when it comes to being young and profiting in life doesn't just mean making more money. With masterclass, you can brush up on your art, cooking, or storytelling skills.

[00:36:14] With over 180 classes from a range of world-class instructors, that thing you've always wanted to do better is just a few clicks away. I have to be honest, and this is embarrassing, but for the longest time I thought that Masterclass was this super fancy, expensive platform. I would always get served ads for masterclass because as you may have gathered, we have a lot of overlap in terms of their instructors and my guests, and I was very tempted to take these crisp Voss and Dan Pink classes in particular, and finally, by the grace of the universe, I took action.

[00:36:47] And to my surprise, their annual membership is super affordable, starting at just $180 for the entire year. This is what I spend on sneakers or a dinner date. Masterclass is just as fancy as [00:37:00] I always imagined. Clean, modern interface, beautiful videos, and easy to navigate. 10 minute modules. But honestly, I'm just really blown away by the value.

[00:37:10] Just one class in and masterclass felt like it paid for itself. And now I'm using Masterclass in ways I never imagined. For example, Naomi Campbell has a modeling fundamentals class, and I'm gonna take it before my next photo shoot. If you catch me on the cover of Vogue, you can thank Masterclass. I highly recommend you Check it out.

[00:37:28] Get unlimited access to every class, and as a Yap listener, you get 15% off an annual membership. Go to masterclass.com/profiting now. That's masterclass.com/profiting for 15% off Masterclass.

[00:37:44] I know a lot of people are doing this thing where they're scrubbing emails or scraping emails off LinkedIn and in other ways where people are not actually opting in. What would you say about that strategy? 

[00:37:55] Neil Patel: You want, you can do it, but you're gonna run into a lot of privacy and legal issues, so I would [00:38:00] definitely recommend avoiding it.

[00:38:01] Even if it was legal, I would still avoid it because they're not opting in and they probably don't care for what you have to offer. Instead, you wanna engage with them in a way where they're interested about your products or services, and they're much more likely to convert. For example, we sell into all CMOs and VPs of marketing.

[00:38:19] For me to just go and just email all of 'em. People are gonna get irritated and hate me. But on the flip side, If I show 'em some really cool tactics or strategies or show 'em ads on what they could be doing better, or if I try targeting 'em for a webinar that breaks down how to solve some problems and provide value first. That's much more likely to do better than if I just go and start spamming people and say, Hey, pay me money for marketing services.

[00:38:45] Hala Taha: It's totally a turnoff. Can hurt your brand reputation. I agree. So let's say we do it the right way. We have a legit email list, people have opted in, we're scrubbing our lists and our emails are hitting the inbox. How can we actually get people to open our emails? What are your [00:39:00] suggestions? 

[00:39:00] Neil Patel: Casual subject lines is one of the biggest thing when a friend emails you, it's not all capitalized and proper.

[00:39:06] It just could be as simple as something like, Hey, what's up? Or Neil, you gotta check this out. And all lowercase. And basic things like that. What we found really help boosting open rates. In addition to that, make sure your emails provide value and you're not selling all the time. So 90 plus percent of the time we like providing value.

[00:39:26] You can go down to 80% time providing value, 20% selling. That also helps with open rates. The other thing that we like doing is making sure you're scrubbing your list, which we already talked about that helps with opens and deliverability. And lastly, make sure every time you email people, I want you to respond to them.

[00:39:47] When they ask you a question, so a lot of times when you send emails, you're gonna get responses back or replies back with questions, and you can encourage more of that by just putting a question in your email and people will be like, yes or no. It adds you to their address book. A [00:40:00] lot of times, depending on the email provider, but it also causes people to engage with you and build that relationship.

[00:40:04] So they're much more likely to remember your name, the company name, open up the emails and buy from you. 

[00:40:09] Hala Taha: These are really good tips. Like I'm just thinking about our own email marketing campaigns and I'm like, wow, we're not doing enough educational content in the emails and we have so much educational content that we could just repurpose for emails, but we've just been selling.

[00:40:22] So that's really eye-opening and I think the casual. Subject lines make sense because no matter what marketing platform you're on, pattern disruption always works, right? So you're just breaking up the pattern of things always looking the same. Everybody has an emoji in their subject line. So try it without an emoji.

[00:40:38] Try it all lowercase like you said. 

[00:40:40] Neil Patel: That's right. As long as you rotate things up, it really does break things up and even if you have a marketing tactic that works really well, if you keep doing it over and over again and your competition all starts doing it, people tend to drown it out over time.

[00:40:54] Hala Taha: Sensory adaptation. Totally. So one last question about email marketing and then I would [00:41:00] love to move on to trends before we close out the interview. So let's talk about what good looks like for an email marketing campaign. What are the metrics that we should be looking at and are there any sort of metrics or benchmarks we should be trying to hit in terms of open rates and things like that?

[00:41:15] Neil Patel: If you wanna shoot for 30 plus percent open rates and you wanna shoot for click rates that are at least in the one two percentile, if you can do that, you're doing really well and you're doing a great job. 

[00:41:25] Hala Taha: Do you suggest that we have just like one main link or is it okay to have multiple links in our emails?

[00:41:31] Any advice around that.

[00:41:32] Neil Patel: Either strategy works. You don't wanna have 10 links in an email that starts getting overboard, but one, two or three links isn't too bad and sometimes you should be sending emails with no links. 

[00:41:41] Hala Taha: How about emails with video and picture and things like that? Do you suggest that's an effective tactic?

[00:41:48] Neil Patel: We found that text-based emails work the best and they have better deliverability than when you start adding in rich media from our tests. 

[00:41:56] Hala Taha: Love it. Okay, so moving on to marketing trends. What would [00:42:00] you say in the general marketing space, we don't have to stick to any particular channel. What are the biggest trends that you see this year in marketing?

[00:42:09] Neil Patel: The biggest trend that we're seeing this year right now in marketing is podcasting. So people look at podcasting. We survey over 8,000 companies, and we found that the two big trends were podcasting and AI. And here's what I mean by that. When we look at the total number of blogs out there, it's over a billion.

[00:42:26] When you look at the total number of podcasts out there, it's less than 10 million. It's a wide open ocean. There's not tons of competition. And companies are either A, starting to create podcasts, and B, they're starting to advertise on podcasts. And what's funny is we're seeing 'em advertise on podcasts to promote their own podcasts, to get more listenership.

[00:42:45] And then people are starting to repurpose that content and use it all over the place. Because you can use a podcast content to turn it into text-based content. You can use it to turn it into social media, EC clips, whether it's shorts or long form video. And what's really cool is when you do [00:43:00] podcasts, a lot of times people are doing 'em with other people like you and I are.

[00:43:03] And we're both gonna push this on all our social profiles, and we're both gonna get played from this. So it's actually a really amazing win-win strategy for both of us, right? So companies are really pushing hard on podcasting and they're pushing really hard on AI. What can they automate? And most people look at AI oh, I can use open AI to help write content, and I can use them to figure out how to create images.

[00:43:25] But there's much more to AI from when we interviewed companies. A big portion of what they're looking to use AI from in a marketing standpoint is analytics. How can you have AI analyze your analytics on a daily basis and tell you where the wastage is within your marketing campaigns and where you can cut costs and reallocate money.

[00:43:44] Because if you look at the biggest expense in marketing, it's not services. It's not riding a piece of content. It's actually spending money on paid advertising. Look at the revenue that Google is generating and Facebook is generating. I think Google still is like a trillion dollar company or somewhere [00:44:00] around there, depending on the month you're in, and Facebook's still a massive company.

[00:44:03] We spend so much money on ad dollars. Imagine if analytics were analyzed by AI and it told us quicker when to cut our losses. 

[00:44:12] Hala Taha: AI is something that I wanna spend so much time trying to figure out how I can optimize my business. Especially as a marketer. I feel like there's just so much information out there, things that we can experiment with.

[00:44:24] There's so much to learn right now, and it happened out of nowhere. And now as entrepreneurs, we've gotta dedicate time to actually learn and experiment and figure out how we can leverage it for ourselves. Somebody, I don't remember who told me this. But they say AI is a really good intern.

[00:44:39] So how can you leverage AI and use it like it's a really good intern to help you just level up everything that you do. And if I just told you I had 60 employees, now, my 60 employees all have a really good intern that they can use to level up their work. 

[00:44:53] Neil Patel: Yes. And they give you more efficient, which helps you increase your margins, which helps you give that cost savings to the customer or give them better results [00:45:00] and spend more time on each campaign so that way they're happier.

[00:45:03] AI is a friend. 

[00:45:05] Hala Taha: Okay. So let's talk about another trend, hot topic, and that's IG verification, paid verification, Twitter, paid verification. What are your thoughts around that? 

[00:45:14] Neil Patel: I was reading an article, something like 40 something million people in the first 24 hours. Got the blue check mark, which was 600 and something million, I think six 60.

[00:45:24] It was somewhere around there. It was around 600 million in revenue. That's massive. I think the problem is what's gonna happen is everyone's gonna start getting these check marks and they're not gonna mean much anymore. 

[00:45:35] Hala Taha: I know the social proof's gonna be gone. 

[00:45:37] Neil Patel: Or they're gonna have to have different colors or variations for it.

[00:45:40] Kind of like how Twitter has like a government official version. So then that way they have some sort of meeting, at least for some of the check marks. 

[00:45:48] Hala Taha: Totally. But I'm happy because I personally am having trouble gaining verified, and I have three bot accounts that are like selling fake crypto to my fans, and I'm like really happy about IG verification, even though I don't [00:46:00] have the capability yet.

[00:46:01] Okay. So we always close out the interview with two questions that I ask all my guests. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our Young and Profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? 

[00:46:14] Neil Patel: One thing you can do every single day is I would first start off right now, doesn't matter if it's a starter year, middle of the year, end, a year, break down what your goals are for the year, what you need to do to achieve them, break down those tasks into a monthly basis.

[00:46:28] Then they take those tasks and break them out into a weekly basis. Then break 'em down to daily and then break those tasks down into what you need to do each day within the hour to achieve them. And don't go to sleep until you hit those tasks and complete all of 'em. Do that every single day, and what you'll notice is maybe the next day you don't make money or the next week or next month, but if you fast forward a year, you'll notice a huge difference in your business growth or your income as long as you are not going to sleep without completing those tasks.

[00:46:57] Hala Taha: I think that's a really good piece of advice because a lot of [00:47:00] people, they're all talk and they're no action. And so this ensures that they're taking daily action and being consistent. And I agree that's the recipe for long-term success. What would you say your secret to profiting in life is?

[00:47:11] And this can go beyond just business and financial. 

[00:47:14] Neil Patel: So I try to be content in life. I don't think like when you're really happy it's a state and then you go back down to reality. I try not to be where I have crazy ups or crazy downs, and I always realize when things are going really well, keep in mind someone else has it better than you.

[00:47:30] And when things are going really bad, people have it much worse than you. There's people in this world without a home, without clothing, without food and clean drinking water. Like a lot of us are so blessed when we just really think about it from the grand scheme of things. And I try to stay really content and levelheaded because then it allows me to think logically and appreciate what I have.

[00:47:50] Hala Taha: And I think that's really great advice for entrepreneurs because as an entrepreneur, life is a rollercoaster, and a lot of my listeners are entrepreneurs. So you gotta keep an even keel in the highs and lows, like [00:48:00] Neil says. Neil, where can our listeners learn more about you and everything that you do?

[00:48:04] neilpatel.com is where I blog. NP Digital is my ad agency. 

[00:48:08] Awesome. Thank you so much for all of your wisdom today. It was an absolute pleasure. 

[00:48:13] Neil Patel: Thanks for having me.

[00:48:19] Hala Taha: I get to interview all the goats. YAP Fam, all the goats. And Neil Patel is definitely a goat when it comes to marketing. He's one of the most well-known marketers in the world. Now I've had the chance to finally interview him. I got to know his come up story, which I didn't really know before, and I'm even more impressed now that I've gotten to know him better.

[00:48:40] Neil gave us some great SEO and email hacks that we can implement straight away, and he has so many resources online for you guys to check out for free. If you enjoyed today's conversation, my favorite tip from today was when Neil schooled us on email marketing. He talked about scrubbing your list to help with opens and delivery.

[00:48:57] Using casual subject lines, [00:49:00] keeping email campaign topics at roughly 80% value and 20% selling. And lastly, using questions in your emails to get people to respond, engage, and build a relationship with you. And this tactic also does double duty to support an increasing your delivery rate. In terms of benchmarks, Neil says that if we're getting open rates above 30% and click through rates at one to 2%, we're doing a great job.

[00:49:23] Thank you so much for listening to Young and Profiting Podcasts. It means the world to me. It is our baby. We work so hard on this show and I hope that shines through, and if you listen, learned and profited from this episode. If you find value from this podcast, please take a couple minutes and drop us a five star review on Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast platform.

[00:49:43] It's really important for social proof, for rankings and all that kind of stuff. So please drop us a five star review on Apple or your favorite podcast platform and share this episode with your friends and family. Spread Young and Profiting Podcasts by word of mouth. If you guys like watching your podcast videos, [00:50:00] you can find us on YouTube.

[00:50:01] Every single full episode as well as clips is uploaded to YouTube. Just search Young and Profiting. You'll find it right away. You guys can also find me on Instagram @yapwithhala. Beware of the fake accounts. I've got lots of fake Instagram accounts, but if you find me @yapwithhala and shoot me a dm, I will definitely respond to you.

[00:50:19] It's pretty easy for me to find you guys on Instagram, and then you can also find me on LinkedIn by searching my name Hala Taha. Now my LinkedIn inbox is a little bit more congested, so if you wanna reach out to me, shoot me a question or talk to me about a podcast episode, try me on Instagram. Big shout out to my amazing and hardworking YAP team.

[00:50:37] Thank you so much for all your hard work behind the scenes. I appreciate you guys so much. This is your host, Hala Taha, a k a, the podcast Princess signing off.[00:51:00]