Episode #96 – Neil Patel on Traffic, Content Marketing, & Getting BUYERS To Your Site (traffic gen at it’s finest)

Podcast: Download (Duration: 27:53 — 22.5MB)

Hey, it’s John McIntyre here, the auto responder guy and it’s time for episode 96 of the McMethod email marketing podcast, where you’ll discover, how to get more sales in life? That’s pretty much, it’s basically how to make money every time you send an email to your list, how to convert more of those people had activate that database. All of the above, and have a great time doing it and really automate the whole thing. So, you can chill out, go to the beach and catch some waves or climb a mountain or do whatever you like to do. Today, I’ll be talking to Neil Patel. Now, finally enough, Neil’s a content marketing guy and interestingly, I use to say and it’s still on my website on the email option, why concert marking is bullshit, okay. In many ways just to believe that because, the way content marketing is done by most people, it just doesn’t work. People think, I’m gonna set up a blog and I write some blog posts and I’m gonna get rich. I’m gonna yeah, I mean, let’s say actually read that formula.  There are lot of they’ll say, I mean it’s little bit more complex and now on maybe they, this is bit more good idioms behind it, that’s just above. As some people out there, are doing blogging profitably, right you know they content marketing profit. They’re putting out the right kinds of content, to get the right kinds of thing that I am gonna buy their stuff. But a lot of people aren’t, they just think well! I just write lots of articles on my subject matter and that’s gonna work. But that’s not how it works and that’s why, I got Neil Patel on the show, because I wanted him to spill the beans on content marketing. Why it works and what you have to do, to make sure it works properly. When you know what stuff and mistakes to avoid and how to do it properly, because once you learn a bit about it, it’s actually not that hard. Just to correct some of those starter mistakes. Neil Patel is a massive guy in this field. He’s got a couple big companies’ crazy egg is one and KISS metrics is wow, this is also. So, that’s Neil Patel for you and we get into that in just a minute to get the start for this episode of the email marketing podcast. Go to the micmethod.com/96.  Now gotta an interesting Mic-master inside of the week, for this week. It’s got nothing to do with email marketing, nothing to do with marketing, nothing even to do with sale. Not even anything to do with the computer. The easiest thing, why we all spend too much time on a computer, I know I too. How someone will spend all day on the computer and that not the end, the day I can’t sleep. So, today’s insider of the week is to eat healthy, right. So much exciting and say and how he’s had a 10 actual sales and he is had a double your conversion rates and all that sort of stuff, but look likewise pretty similar when it comes to getting healthy, people think that you go to devote sorts of  you know you have to get on the right diet, right exercise plan and really complex you get a plan on that and count the calories and all this stuff right and it’s really not that complex you know when I talk to people about this, is eat more good food, eat less bad food, get some exercise, that’s it and you’ll be blown away when you get in the habit of eating right and getting bit exercise and also sleeping. Sleeping is another bravo thing about those parties you die. Better eat some sleep. When you do this right you will be amazed at how much energy you have. How much vitality you have and how much more optimistic you are about life. This is gonna make you better in business, this is gonna make you even write more emails if you’re writing in yourself or you just can make better decisions when it comes to hiring other people to doing the stuff for you. And, I know this is the sort of thing that appeals, I wanna know. I know it will be healthy. Tell me something that I don’t know, tell me something exciting but this is a stuff that you gotta do like this is common sense, its fundamental and it’s really easy to understand, but how many of us actually do it. How many of us actually take the time to be healthy to cook the right food, to go to the gym, to do all these things. But this is like 80 % of the game, if you can be healthy and strong and well slept its gonna make everything else in your life better, okay. That’s this week insider of the week. Now, Mic-Masters, if you wanna learn more about that, that’s a private membership community that I have. VIP training community, if you will and inside that community you get access to bunch of training products, that’s on how to write emails, how to write stories, how to write a landing page.  It’s gonna get you turn in sales. All these different things like that’s, pretty simple and there’s also a private training form and some webinars. So, you can get in there, you can engage with me, the other members and solve your sales and marketing problems with email. So, that’s, if you wanna learn more about that, go to the micmethod.com and in the top menu bar there is a link to members. Click that, last but not least please, please, please if you can, if you have just thirty-seconds, jump over to watching and leave me a review. It doesn’t have to be 5 stars. Though, I will appreciate it, if it is. But if you have a second and you have enjoyed the show and you have been getting a lot out of this podcast, I would really appreciate it if you jumped over there. Leave the review, all we did out on the show and I’ll buy you a beer or coffee or even a bunch of flowers if you prefer, when we meet one day we get some shop, that’s enough, for that anyway, let’s get into this interview with  Mr. Neil Patel.

Interview Begins:

John McIntyre

 It’s John McIntyre here. I’m here with Neil Patel. Now, Neil is the co-founder of crazy egg, kiss and kiss metrics and he helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP invite him grow their revenue. Now, at the Wall Street Journal call him the top influence r on the web. Forbes says he is top 10 online marketers and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world.  Now, when I think of Neil Patel because I’ve you have a I know a lot of people in this the online market but when I think of Neil, I think of traffic and its all stuff to be puts out, from what I can see is very much about traffic and how to get more people to your site and not just people with credit cards, people with money in their wallets that they’re ready to spend and ready to buy stuff. So, what I wanted to do is to get Neil to come onto the show, the email marketing podcast and to talk about not about email but about some other traffic generating stuff working these days. So, that’s what we’re gonna chat out. Hey! Neil, how you going?

Neil Patel:

I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.

John McIntyre:

Thanks for coming on the show. Before we get into some of the traffic stuff, can you give the listener, may be a bit more of a background on who you are and what you’re up to?

Neil Patel:

 Sure, I’m just a Entrepreneur for the few software companies, crazy egg and kiss metric and on these companies I help people to get more conversion rate and understand how people behave on their website.  I’m also a marketer by heart and what I do is, I teach people or companies how to get more visitors to the website and how to convert those visitors into customers.

John McIntyre:

 Easy, that’s really good. Well!  Let’s talk about that first is you are teaching companies; how to get more visitors to their site that are gonna buy stuff. Do you do it primarily with content marketing or you’re doing all you know like paid traffic and content you do with the whole thing?

 Niel Patel: 

I did the whole thing. I did paid content, content marketing, social media etc. So, I do the whole thing.

John McIntyre:

 Okay, Okay. So, what I’m curious about is, it is lot of people who listen in this podcast and they’ve got a website, they market some the modes doing a bit of paid traffic. You know most talked about paid traffic before. I’m curious to find out what you think? What sort of working right now, because like I’ve spoken to a number of people, I have been running my own stuff and advertising and marketing in some ways to fundamentals you know also the fundamentals that we’re going away but at the same time it’s changing very rapidly as the more and more people come online and more and more going on ad words. So, it’s timing to you know the approach that’s working seems to be changing so, that everyone want to take a different approach now. So, what are you saying?

Neil Patel:

 So, the big thing that I’m seeing right now, just working in marketing is content marketing in which people were writing exceptionally good content. Now, I’m not the certainly average blog posts that break something new. There is something that’s happening or some general tips. But, people are giving like specialized. They are sharing something unique that others aren’t.  They’re not only getting in term of traffic exactly, they’re generating comments, they’re generating loyal key from potential readers and eventually few small percentage of those readers, whether it’s one percent, 2-3 percent  are like it. What is coming, it’s creating great content. The content is good. Their product is so much is good, I wish you check that as well! And that’s actually what causing into generate sales.

John McIntyre:

Because one thing, like when I first started content marketing a couple of years ago, I noticed that there’s a lot of people who, this is mindset when I write content marketing. Why does write the whole bunch of blog post descent then I’m gonna stop making the whole businesses explode and its gonna be wonderland but what I noticed is that it’s content marketing works but it takes a little bit more finance than just a post but you know person’s good articles. So, like you have to understand where exactly your prospects sits and say like a levels of awareness chart and then start creating content that’s going to, like strategic content that’s gonna move them from where they’re right now to the next step which is when they’re ready to buy.

Neil Patel:

 That’s true, that’s right. so you can just … your content. You can actually concentrate on your external and someone tries for projects service and in the trial phase you can actually, great contents are actually help some better understand how to meet things they’ve cost you this. Well, get more of better result and to actually encourages the people to spend more money with your blog.

John McIntyre:

Okay, So, what like when we talk about content marketing, how do you when someone ask you how to explain, how to actually do it? Always you sit down and write something, create some content. Now, this podcast would be an example of content marketing but how do you go about it, when you think about alright, we’re gonna create some content and we’re gonna get some traffic, you just create an article for someone and put it on the website or you go through a process, I help you do to go through a process where you always you create the article, put it on the site it is probably some marketing that goes into it.

Neil Patel:

Yes, so, there is a big process, it’s never decided to run content on a site, right? And you’re specifically looking for the process of being used and you’re wondering, what that specific process is that I’m using?

John McIntyre:

Yeah.

Neil Patel:

Okay, so to clarify what are the processes being used, let’s begin with the beginning of the content marketing process and getting traffic in conversion.

John McIntyre:

Okay.

Neil Patel:

So, what we’re trying to do is, if you want successful content marketing is. One medium is to find out what are the readers and potential customers wanna learn about. Even if it’s not related to your product, it’s okay. As, long as it is around the same industry,  a sector. Helping himself with problems within your space eventually does call finance. But, we can find out what problem they’re facing by paid surveys. Looking in Survey Monkey, email out people or just call people. You know, when your website runs, you can add some quick questions to your caller’s worldwide. Well if you wanna learn about what companies help you solve etc. Once you do that, then when you need to do is outline the post so, enough people explaining hey! I have this problem. The problem is that I can’t get enough traffic on my website. Can you help? Teach me about that. So, you may say alright. A lot of people face that problem. One near percent they should be looking at is content marketing. So, I would actually outline the post on content marketing, how companies collaborate. You make, you know pretty welcome the post pretty detailed and thorough. Then you start writing it, once you write it, you publish it, see if there is no errors etc. When’s and where, what you end up feeling is anyone who you read out see what’s in the post, you email them saying Hey! Just want you to follow email to appreciate your audience etc. And the rejection key that, what you wanna do is email out to any potential users or website owners that may have a audience of development of your article left the knowledge well, usually share it like it on Facebook, whenever it may be and last thing what you wanna do is see who keeps repeating articles, there has some work in paradise, email those website owners. Talking about how you feel that you’re linking to someone else article and how this article provides a different perspective and they should also consider adding a link to it. And then from there what you analysis, you get traffic and may be some of the people convert it into customers. May be none of them do. May be the articles doesn’t do as well. Once you’re done with it, you can look at the analytic’s and determine, alright these type of post do well, these one’s don’t. I should like left on this kind of stuff and I should like ones, the similar kind of topics.

John McIntyre:

Hmm! I like it, I like and in order to when nothing like content marketing is intends, it seems to be it to me anyway like a fairly slow process where you don’t put up an article and then whole bunch of traffic. Maybe you get lucky in this one article,  that happens with, but usually what seems to happen is you stop with, well obviously stop with nothing and helps you start gradually adding more and more and more articles and overtime each article brings in pulling a small amount of traffic and this probably some sort of  80-20 split in terms of small amount of articles bring in the majority of the traffic, but it seems to build up, if you build up the site with tons of blog post and podcasts and pieces of content, over time, over a year or two years that’s when it really starts to kick in. What are you saying in terms of the speed in which someone you can grow their site, grow their traffic with content marketing?

Neil Patel:

It will take six months to year and content marketing within it fair typically. Start to create some majority of their traffic.

John McIntyre:

 Okay, I’m wondering like examine when I was getting the online stuff, when I was came there writing blog posts and articles, it was right keyword influence, jump in the Google keywords, so you searches some keywords relevant in that. Then go and create an article for each keyword and that worked to some while and obviously it did work but it ends up being that you, the articles some comes the bit dry or bit almost to not very inspired because you are just writing it for a keyword. Where is, I’m not sure how much you bring that in but I find when I just taken article that i like the topic that people keep asking me about and then I write that it has nothing to do with keyword and the article got you know it’s inspired. This probably bit of passion in and then and it’s tapping under that need that people have. Usually, that gets more traffic than going down to keyword focus first. So how much do you bring in keywords. How much do you try to game it versus trying and just, I just doing inspired article.

 Neil Patel:

 I actually don’t used keywords one day within my blog post or content marketing. Naturally, I need keyword, what I mean by that, I don’t do any researcher etc when I can’t find these keywords  or let’s say the word content marketing 10 times in my blog post, just to being I’m writing on content marketing. I instead write some fresh piece of content for the person reading it. Because, if I do that eventually the search engines will exchange your ad words and in the long run and the RD working on it in which the best content, what’s most valuable to the user is why should be at the top. And, they really are trying to do that, they are getting way better of that over the years. In addition to that people like this are great. I mean I subscribe on the page you made etc. But it’s just all about writing great information.

John McIntyre:

 I like it, I like it. What about someone mistakes that people, because in these kind of situation people get hint if they would tend to get into a lot of trouble at some at point. That’s lot of like challenges that people face. I think one big line is people have writer’s blog, to sit down and try and write something and it’s just pretty difficult to write instead of the curiosity they write a few lines and then it’s a exam any goods they go back. Everyone challenge, but what are some other challenges all the mistakes that people have and what they make and how do you suggest to overcome them?

Neil Patel:

 So, the big mistake people are making in content marketing is they’re focusing on writing content that generates the most traffic verses writing the information that’s most relevant to your ideal customer. It’s not a quantity game, it’s a quality game you can get a million visitors in a month but that’s not really likes the content. A good example of this is I was talking at Leo from bufferapp.com, the greatest product and their blog is extremely popular and I was like hey! How can we get too many conversions? Seems like why I’m like, you talk too much about productivity, your social sharing tools and you’re trying to get businesses to pay for your social media product. You think they care or read about productivity. Now productivity brings in way more traffic then social media marketing topics. But to conversions I’m gonna be there is [No Audio] 

John McIntyre:

 Yeah, drop down one fuzzy for second. You just are trying to talk about the buffer app. It just been like oh yeah no, we don’t actually seeing many conversions.

 Neil Patel:

 That’s great because they were writing about productivity. How many social media business owners that are actually going to social media traffic care to read about productivity, because they read about social media marketing, that’s right it’s more relevant. Productivity is way more popular and generating a lot of traffic but little to no conversion. So, as it’s trying to shifting the strategy, they started seeing more signups in it.

John McIntyre:

 I’ve got you notice that when I’m saying that the above has been a little on that. Their articles at pop-up and I’ve used the app once or twice in the past but they come out with these articles that like on meditation a bold things.  Then has almost nothing to do with sharing my content on a social media sites. 

Neil Patel:

It doesn’t matter one bit, right. Don’t get me wrong I don’t have anything at meditation. Reading this meditation is not going to commit me the signup for your social media marketing product. They’re smart so they are shifting strategy in their habit and it’s a work and I love.

John McIntyre:

  Yeah, was funny though is I mean the articles for them, they were really high-quality articles even if they weren’t relevant, they were like running a buffer and the articles without putting at, they might not have been relevant at the time, they were pretty high quality.

Neil Patel:

 Get there, the exceptionally good writers and it just goes back to shown that just writing good information and good content is enough is not relevant, it’s not gonna convert. You can’t go after quantity without go after quality.

 John McIntyre:

 Right, right. I mean that’s one thing that I’ve mentioned to people that come to me.  So, I was, it’s a you know it’s a side of email marketing. People sign up at daily email tips and one of the bulletins the sign up form. Actually, says why content marketing is bullshit and the reason why? right there was a while I given write that but it was because if this this issue where people come at internet they got content marketing, been around for a while and gets a lot, people read about into how content marketing is this massive thing that’s gonna totally change their business but yes if it is not relevant, if it’s not content it’s going to appeal to that target customer then it’s not gonna work.

 Neil Patel:

 Totally and you gotta right and I think a lot of companies still have to learn that they are all conceptually understand that when one comes to practicing it they are not getting it.

John McIntyre:

 I think because when I speak to people, one thing that I go on and on and on about is empathy and taking the time to understand your prospect and your customer who you really trying to connect with and then creating not just content but creating like everything being influenced by the core idea of you know what person you’re trying to attract, but it’s amazing how many people here that and I do this myself, done this myself, where it’s easy to hear that and go why that’s a great idea and they go to the opposite thing, where you should be surveying people getting on the phone with them and talking on and then finding it what they want to hear about but instead it’s probably easier to sit down and write a blog post live disc pay someone else to write a blog post, so even just go paste someone else to write a blog post without doing the research.

Neil Patel:

 Yeah, and it’s like when you do it without doing the whole process and the research etc. on your audiences, what to provide to them, what they want to read etc. Like you can end up spending in terms of time and money on content marketing that won’t convert, right? Any other form of marketing if you don’t write doesn’t mean it can be effective just throwing money at something doesn’t solve it.

John McIntyre:

One thing I’m curious about is, people getting in this internet thing, when they think it’s gonna be at least at the beginning that you know when go to paid traffic but they’re not going to pay a dollar, three dollars, five dollars, ten dollars wherever per click on Facebook or ad words and that’s really expensive. So, I’m going to some content marketing because, it’s free. That stays in the boots-trapping state, so that began and write the articles themselves and put in the other and like it’s hot free articles, free traffic and one thing is this not because they miner we’re paying money to write the articles or put them on the site or get the traffic. But they’re paying in that time and the time may that might be more valuable. So, what do you think in terms of like what’s more expensive when it comes to getting traffic is going down to paid traffic or going down to content marketing from when you add up like the time, the money, the resources that go into it.

Neil Patel:

Yeah, the way I look at it all on forms of margin your expenses, whether you’re paying with time and money. One or another you’re gonna pay, so you just got a buyer where your first thing goes from there.

John McIntyre:

How do you like we do in content marketing, how you attract when it’s gonna take you 6 to 12 months on average. So, you know for the traffic to kick in with the articles you’ve been putting out.

Neil Patel:

Well! What you wanna do if you want to test the water so, as you’re doing it. You would wanna see all right, to getting relevant comments from people could be potential customers. Am I, getting relevant traffic. All of these things helps in determine if you could potentially convert those visitors into customers later on, it’s how I could leap of faith. We only at ten thousand visitors a month you know you can up converting or make you much money from it. These gonna take some leap of faith.

John McIntyre:

Right, right so it’s a little bit less in the intense of tracking it’s a little bit, like it’s less precise than say it is even not going to paid traffic. Spend a thousand dollars get a thousand visitors and you know very quickly if that ad campaign works.  Comes with content marketing you say you testing the waters, you see what happens and after a set of meta time will have 10 thousand visitors, it looks like it doesn’t really work. Can’t be100% sure, but you’ve gotta, I guess caller.

Neil Patel:

Yeah, exactly right and that’s why this thought why paid advertising is going more popular. It’s easier at CRI. There is a direct order line and not one.

John McIntyre:

Okay, and how important is the quality when it comes to writing an article. Some sites go all out with the way it’s put the flow, the design the images in that. Just everything looks amazing in the other size. Its super basic like Steve Pavlina, I don’t know if you know him, the personal development blogger. His sites like notoriously born in terms of the design and the way it’s put together it’s from a design perspective it’s pretty average. Yet, he’s probably one of the biggest personal development bloggers on the Internet and gets huge amount of traffic and so it’s far as the quality I mean, the article, the written quality is quiet high  but other than that it doesn’t look like anything special. Whereas, other sites go all out with the design and stuff. So, how important is that so the quality.

Neil Patel:

I think having a good design is important but not that important. It doesn’t affect the traffic. I see the same thing when my boss started to have an ugly design and they got the traffic. A blog is a blog; people go there for content not the design. Having that better design can’t help you get more traffic. It’s not that biggest requirement. I recommend it’s a minimal version. Something that’s like get on like not fancy etc. Throwing it out there, as a blogger actually get more attraction than invest dollars in it.

Neil Patel:

I like it, I like it and one last thing I’m curious to know because I have done podcast. I do when if doing and sometimes people come up with this question. I love this question but it’s for you wish you are asked that’s a content marketing in traffic or even when marketing in general. This probably gonna be stuffed, you don’t get asked about very often because it’s a standard questions that comes in my all we talking about today. But what something that you don’t get ask very often that’s really important that maybe you wish that you were asked more of them. So, one thing is known really talks shows are these days, how to convert visitors into customers and I think that’s important because if you look at marketing trends, it’s becoming more and more expensive, not just from the aspect that paid advertising is increasing on your cost per click over time because it is more competitive. Even content marketing is increasing in cost. So, I because you’re putting in time and eventually you even hire someone to attend the blog. Any, content marketers on cheap rate. They’re going up in price, quarter over quarter. So it’s like I feel so many companies are focusing on getting traffic to their site versus just converting what they have into customers.

John McIntyre:

Alright, So put some resources into doing the content marketing, doing the traffic but also invest in the convergence.

Neil Patel:

That’s correct and there’s no one trick in proving conversions. It just comes down to solving objections, right? Things with this, you go website you don’t buy. There is a reason you don’t buy and you didn’t care to buy right now. Maybe you don’t have enough money, maybe the price is too high and you don’t trust the site you are on. Whatever the reasons are they all considered objections. So what you have to do is you have to find out what are the common objections which you can usually get from callerview.com. Just throw a survey on your site and as you start noticing similar patterns and multiple people with the same objections. So, you can ask a question like: why didn’t you buy from us, right. You get enough responses or you could ask what could be have done to complete the purchase and their technology will figure out probably technology will figure out what to show people the question, right. Once you get the responses then you can say okay everyone a is complaining that they don’t trust our site to put their credit card in and then maybe getting their PvP feel and you know hacker safer McAfee Virus secure seal or whatever it may be may give people more trust and that could help with your conversion rate, right. But you won’t know unless you get these objections and then you a/b test if your solution actually helps or not.

John McIntyre:

Right, right, I like it. So, it goes back to this,  gotta find out what the basic find out what’s going through your prospects said, the visitors have when they are on the site. Together I say an empathy really understanding who they are and what they want, what they don’t want and then tailoring the site to them.

Neil Patel:

Yes, just like sale, that you go and tell salesman you’re trying to close the deed, you try to figure out the physiology behind the person that you are selling to, what they’re thinking. You keep your figure that out. You’re more likely to call the deal.

John McIntyre:

Absolutely, it’s funny how simple this stuff gets when you really get down to it. You don’t need like tons of you know you read whole bunch of books of courses ran like that to do this stuff it comes back to some very simple ideas.

Neil Patel:

yes 

John McIntyre:

Before we I’m going about to wrap it up here but before we go if people want to learn more about you, can I get a little more about Neil Patel and find out what you’re up to. What is the best place for them to do that?

Neil Patel:

They can either go to quickstart.com or Neil Patel.com

John McIntyre:

Okay, I know you have a a training course for a product on  traffic or content marketing, that’s on quick start.

Neil Patel:

That’s on quick start, yes.

John McIntyre:

Alright, Well! Thanks for coming on the show Neil. What I’ll do is I’ll have the links to your website in the show in micmethod.com. So, the listener didn’t hear them, they can go to micmethod.com. Get those links and got check that out. Thanks again for coming on the show Neil.

Neil Patel:

Thanks for having me.