If you’ve been involved the Internet marketing industry for more than a minute then you probably know who Neil Patel is. Neil has a hater or two because of the level of popularity he’s achieved in the digital marketing space, but there is a ton you can learn from him. And no I’m not talking about reading or digesting his content.
I’m talking about studying the way he operates so you can get similar results. That’s what this episode of the SEO Life podcast is all about. Let’s jump in.
Lesson #1 – Create
The first lesson I’ve learned from Neil is that you need to create. This man creates new content at a blistering pace with the help of his team. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that he’s been pumping valuable content consistently for YEARS. There aren’t many people I can list that have produced as much content as he has and for as long as he’s been doing it.
Does this mean you should try to create as much content as Neil? Definitely not.
But Neil understanding a combination of content marketing and SEO is a potent way to grow any business when it’s executed correctly. If you’re a marketing nerd like me and you want to study Neil’s content marketing strategy, just go to Google and search “Neil Patel -quicksprout.com -neilpatel.com”.
These reductive queries allow you to see everywhere that Neil has published content outside of his owned assets. As you’ll notice, Neil knows that the other big piece of growing a website is to get quality backlinks. That’s why he puts so much effort and time into getting content placed on other websites so he can score relevant backlinks.
As I said, you don’t need to try to publish as much as Neil, but his efforts are a good reminder that each of us can probably work harder than we currently. Or at least, produce more than we currently are. The one thing you need to keep in mind is that Neil is able to produce at this level because of his team.
Lesson #2 – Build a Team
Neil may sit down and write some of his content, but I’m going to assume that 80% of it is written and edited by other members of his team. This is a valuable lesson because it shows what’s possible when you are willing to give up control and you build your team.
A good example of this is when I go and look at the hours that my team members have worked on UpWork. For example, my video editor, as of today, has clocked in over 700 hours of video editing work for my company. Think about that. 700 hours. It’s crazy to think that I’ve saved that much time, but in reality, I’ve saved much more 700 hours.
That’s because I’m not a video editing expert, so that means I would need to learn how to edit videos and then spend an enormous amount of time trying to implement what I’ve learned. In short, it would take probably twice as long if not three times as long to complete the same amount of work.
The point is, time is money. We’re only on this Earth for a short amount of time and you need to value your time.
Trust me… There are so many activities that I shouldn’t be spending my time on, but that’s a part of the process. All you can do is try to be self-aware and try to operate like fortune 500 CEO.
I like to ask myself a simple question:
Would Steve Jobs spend his time doing this task?
If you’re honest, you’ll probably find that almost everything you do can be systemized and given to a team member. I talked about this in Episode #1, so make sure you give that one a listen.
Lesson #3 – Never Stop Learning
The next lesson I’ve learned from Neil is to never stop learning. Now, I don’t know a ton about Neil’s learning habits, but I do know that he seeks out advice from experienced people. How do I know? Because he’s called me before to ask me about my 301 redirect method, called The Merger Technique.
In short, this is the process of finding “dead” businesses that are hyper relevant to yours and then quote on quote merging with them by 301 redirect their dead website to yours. I came up with this strategy when I was working a large data center company who was acquiring data centers across the United States and we needed to figure how we were going to handle all of these new websites. So, we simply created geo-targeted landing pages and then redirected the relevant data center to that page. We did this repeatedly and turned my client’s website into an SEO powerhouse and grew their organic search traffic by 256%.
With that said, Neil called me to learn about this method. I thought that was really cool because it showed that someone like himself who’s already very successful was still willing to learn from someone else.
Lesson #4 – Hate Stagnation
The fourth lesson I’ve learned from Neil is to hate stagnation in your business. I can tell based on Neil’s activity and behavior that he’s never satisfied with his work. That means he’s always trying to figure out new ways to bust his businesses through plateaus. That also means he’s not afraid to try new methods.
Although Neil is known for his SEO experience, you’ll notice that’s he’s always testing other channels such as podcasting, YouTube videos, and even paid ads. He doesn’t get romantic about growing his business like Gary Vee always says.
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Neil doesn’t say “I’m an SEO specialist, so that’s all I’m going to use to grow businesses.” Instead Neil probably says (subconsciously) “I will try every method available to see what works to grow my business.” Another person who has a similar mindset who I recommend you follow is Noah Kagan. Noah has a system for testing new channels for his companies. It’s definitely a good habit to get into because every industry and business is different.
Never rely on what YOU think is the best channel. Test and pivot. That’s all you can do.
Lesson #5 – Don’t Be Afraid to Sell
The last lesson that I’ve learned from Neil Patel is that you can’t be afraid to sell. Too many inbound marketers push this idea that you should almost never be pushy with sales.
This is really bad advice.
Yes, the goal of inbound marketing is to attract leads, but you need to actually sell to these leads. It doesn’t matter how good your marketing is if you can’t turn people into customers.
At the end of the day, businesses that survive (and grow) prioritize customer acquisition.
Face it:
20,000 Facebook likes on your company page doesn’t mean anything if you have no customers. Customers… People who give you money is what matters.
Marketing is nothing more than a tool to get more people to give your business money. You do that by first having something of value to sell and then explaining why your product(s) are valuable to them and why they need to buy it. You can’t be afraid to push your products and services. Your products and services are SOLUTIONS to your prospects problems.
You’re doing them a disservice by NOT promoting them.
I recommend studying Neil Patel, Grant Cardone, Frank Kern and Alex Becker because these are people who aren’t afraid to sell. I’m not saying you need to be as polarizing or as aggressive as they are. Just study their behavior, learn, and take action.
So, those are the lessons I’ve learned from studying Neil Patel. If you got value out of this episode of The SEO Life podcast, make sure you subscribe! It would mean the world to me.
Thank you so much for listening and I’ll talk to you soon.
