Freedom Fasttrackers, listen up. Entrepreneurs, listen up. This episode with Neil Patel is absolute fire. He went behind the scenes and showed how he’s spending over $12,000 every single day on his Facebook campaigns. He shared his screen with me and actually went into detail on what he’s doing.
If you don’t know Neil – Neil is the man when it comes to online marketing. He’s the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP, and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web. Forbes says he’s one of the top 10 online marketers, entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur Magazine said he created one of the hundred Most Brilliant Companies in the world. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama, and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations. He’s been awarded the Congressional Recognition from United States House of Representatives – and he is a bad-ass! But this interview is next-level.
I have interviewed some amazing people, and they’ve all been great. This one really stood out for me. He shared with us what he thinks, in 2017, is going to happen with internet marketing. And it blew me away. I’ve listened to it and implemented everything he said, and you should too. Make sure you go and listen to this episode in full. Take lots of notes and remember, subscribe to the show and send me in any questions. I’m going to be doing a follow-up episode with Neil and it is going to be bad-ass. Honestly? Just plug yourself into this and enjoy our conversation.
[00:01:51]
Chris: Welcome to the show, man. It’s such a pleasure to have you here and, for me – I’ve read your blog for a long time. I got your book, “Hustle” – it’s actually not in the bookshelf right now, but I’m excited to have you here! So, thank you so much for being here. I know that you’ve got lots going on. Today, I was hoping that we could really dive deep into what you think the future for 2017 marketing is. I mean, who better to ask and what better time to be releasing this show than in January 2017, and to get it from you, what you think’s going to happen. So thanks for being here, man, I really appreciate it.
Neil: Sounds good! Thanks for having me.
Chris: Yeah!
Chris: Before we dive into that, I don’t know if everybody that watches the show knows exactly who you are, so I would love you to maybe give us a quick rundown of how you started and what it is that you’ve been doing – because you, you know – you’ve done a lot of things, but how did you get started?
[00:02:48]
Neil: I was sixteen years old, looking for a high-paying job, couldn’t find one, and what ended up happening was when I was searching the job boards, I found that they were making millions of dollars – technically, hundreds of millions of dollars. So I was like, ‘you know what? I can’t find a job, might as well just create my own job board, make 1% of what they do. I’m going to be rich.’ And that’s where I started; I created my first website job board. [It] failed miserably because I didn’t know how to generate traffic. Paid a few marketing firms, got burned.
Neil: From broke and frustrated, I ended up trying to learn it all on my own, got good at it, and then my job boards started getting tons of traffic, and guess what? Still wasn’t making any money. [laughs] Because I didn’t know how to accept payments online, didn’t know about conversion or optimization, UX – there were so many issues!
Neil: But I got good at traffic generation. I started cold-calling and pitching other people on that service, right? Like, ‘I’ll help you get more traffic to your website!’ And then … honestly, it just went from there.
[00:03:50]
Chris: And so, you just had a problem that you kind of faced, and turned that into basically your business, and now? I mean, I’ve heard so many people have used your services. I think if you type ‘internet marketing’ or ‘SEO optimization’ into Google, you’re always in the top 2 or 3 that turn up, so you’re definitely doing some good things.
Chris: Where did that take you, and what’s kind of the journey towards, now?
Neil: Where it ended up taking me was – got good at traffic generation. From there, I learned how to help other companies get more traffic. Through consulting, I ended up learning about different types of industries, issues they may be having. I learned to think on the spot. And I eventually realized that the money isn’t in growing other people’s traffic, but it’s in growing your own traffic. So then I started to grow my own traffic, started doing a lot of SEO for problems that my guys would build, and then walk from there.
Chris: And so now you do what for people? I know that you do content marketing, SEO, but what’s the thing that you’re most excited about now? You have multiple different businesses and tech businesses –
Neil: — yeah.
[00:05:05]
Neil: I mainly create software and then we market the software to marketers. They pay a reoccurring subscription for it. We don’t really do much consulting, actually. It’s –
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Neil: — I’m trying to think of how many clients we have. Maybe three? We get a lot of consulting inquiries, we just … don’t care to do consulting.
Chris: Right. And so, what’s the tech that you’re mainly focusing on at the moment?
Neil: Crazy Egg, Hello Bar. Those are the main two.
Chris: Do you want to fill us in on those?
Neil: Sure!
[00:05:34]
Neil: So, think of it this way; someone comes to your website. They browse around and they don’t purchase! You get a hundred visitors, you’re lucky if one purchased – three, if you’re really lucky. What’s causing it? You look at Google Analytics and it shows you all these numbers, but what does that mean? Some people are visual people, right?
Neil: So what Crazy Egg does is it tells you, visually, why people may not be converting. From there, you can look at heat maps, user recordings – like, videos of people with their mouse, and how they’re engaging with your website. You can look at how far people scrolled down your page, right? Like, call-to-action is too low, but people actually stop scrolling halfway down, then of course you’re not going to end up generating sales, right? It helps you spot all these problems, and then through Crazy Egg you can run AB tests … and then you can try to optimize or you can moreso. You can optimize and then use your conversions. There’s a really simple tool … shows you where people aren’t converting and why, and then from there you can run AB tests in Crazy Egg to optimize for conversions.
[00:06:40]
Neil: And then the second company, Hello Bar – think of it this way: people come to your website. Again, a lot don’t convert. It’s hard to get a lot of these people to convert. You have to do so many changes. Not everyone knows what to AB test, not everyone knows how they can optimize their designs, not everyone can change it, so we just put elements on your website to maximize conversions, such as when someone’s leaving, why not incentivize them with an offer? If you’re trying to collect more emails, why not offer or create quizzes to collect more emails – stuff like that.
Chris: I love it. It seems to me that you really help people with one big problem, and that is, you know, how do they get more conversion out of their websites. So, tell me; what’s the big problem for most people with their sites? Why are they not converting?
[00:07:35]
Neil: Most people aren’t converting because they don’t understand the pain points of their users. It’s all about serving. There’s data – quantitative – and then there’s qualitative data. Qualitative is people talking to you, giving you feedback. If people tell you, “hey, I’m not going to convert because you don’t offer free shipping,” or, “I’m thinking your competitors may be cheaper,” and “I’m not sure.” There’s all these reasons.
Neil: And then when you survey hundreds of people, you’ll see some commonalities. Businesses aren’t trying to understand their customers, because if they did, then they could adjust the messaging, the copy, on their website to maximize conversions.
Neil: That’s the number one way. It’s really through surveying and understanding them, and then boosting conversions.
Chris: You know what? It’s so great to hear you say that, Neil, because – look, I know people who always tell me, “it’s leads. I need more leads, Chris, I need more leads.” And I always say to them, like, “leads is the easy part, because you can just pay for leads—“
Neil: Yes!
Chris: “—it’s the insights that convert.” [laughs] For every one person that hits your page, if you’re making a dollar, that’s pretty easy to get someone to hit a page for under a dollar, and you’ve got great money.
Neil: Yeah.
Chris: Right? But everyone’s focused on the other one; ‘how do I get more leads?’ It’s such a – aw, I don’t want to say it, but it is! – it’s such a naïve, ignorant thing to say. ‘I need more leads,’ – no, you don’t! You need a page that’s going to freaking convert.
Neil: [laughs] – you can convert, and then you can just spend a ton of money, right?
Chris: Right!
[00:09:04]
Neil: And it’s the easiest thing. Paid advertising isn’t that difficult if your conversion rates are high. Because even if you’re going to pay campaigns like crap, you still are profitable.
Chris: Yeah!
Chris: You only need to make, like, a little bit more per click, and you can scale like crazy! And I wish that more people really got that. The focus needs to be on that conversion, because the leads and the traffic are so simple. Someone said to me, the other day, they [went]; “you know, Chris, you’re not very big on this platform. How are you qualified to help people have freedom?”
Chris: I said, “look, I don’t care about that platform. I just pay for my traffic, because I know my numbers.” For me, numbers is the most important thing online. It sounds like that’s similar to you, so.
[00:09:55]
Chris: I’m excited to hear one big thing, and I just want to spin the conversation that way, because – I think going into 2017, Neil, things are going to be different. I think a lot of people had a tough 2016. This episode’s going to be released in January 2017, so the listeners are sitting there right now – we’re in December, we’re in the past – and, so, I want to hear from you, and I want to dive deep into what do you think marketing’s going to look like, 2017?
Neil: Sure! The big thing marketing’s going to look like in 2017, is you’re going to start seeing more personalization. Not personalization in the aspect of, like, ‘Oh, this person came from Google, so let’s show him a different landing page.’ I’m talking about to really get the maximum conversion – we’ve been testing some of these things – you’ve got to really personalize it to the user. For example – here’s a crazy example. This isn’t even online-related but it kind of ties into it: you go into your fridge. You’re running out of milk. You buy, let’s say – I’m making up names, because I haven’t bought milk in years – let’s call it, uh, Blue Milk.
Neil: The fridge tells you; ‘hey, Neil. You’re running out of milk. Would you like us to order you another Blue Milk, or would you like to try Alterdina Milk? It’s very similar to Blue Milk, but we’re running a promo right now that’s 30% off.’ Right? And Alterdina could end up doing that promotion to try to get you.
Neil: Now, that’s a crazy example of personalization in the real world. For example, online: Hubspot used to do this one, you won’t see it as much – when I was coming back to Hubspot, they knew it was me, and they would say, ‘Welcome back, Neil!’ Why can’t it go one step further and say, ‘Welcome back, Neil! Based on all the posts that you’ve read in the past, here are five more blog posts that we recommend reading for you.’
Chris: Right!
Neil: Even if it doesn’t say ‘Welcome back, Neil,’ based on cookies, you know what people are reading. If they’re reading all e-commerce posts, why would you show them posts on B2B, right?
Chris: Right.
Neil: So it’s truly about personalization. What does that look like in future? Who knows. I think the possibilities are endless. For example, I was talking to my co-founder, Ethan, and … he was like, ‘wait – with support, it’s run by people, why can’t we use the Watson API – from IBM – and learn, based on what people are saying and not saying, and what responses they like, buying patterns, etc., — and then program the Watson to start giving responses that are very relevant to what the person’s looking for.
[00:12:49]
Chris: So, how does the small business owner – the person that’s not as tech-savvy as you – how do they capitalize on personalization and personalizing what they’re doing?
Neil: They don’t in 2017 – and here’s why: because this technology is not mainstream yet, and because it’s hard to actually do, you’re going to end up seeing that the big companies are going to try it out, or the small or medium – like, companies that are still making millions and millions of dollars – once they fine-tune it, you start seeing people productizing it. In 2017, I still think there’s going to be a lot of issues, but in 2018, small, medium businesses can buy these productized solutions like a Crazy Egg, Hello Bar … etc. And it’s like; ‘okay, I’m willing to pay you $30 a month to have my website more personalized.’ Is it going to be as great as someone doing it manually and fully customized to your business? No, but it’s going to be better than what you have.
Neil: And I bet you, within 2018 or maybe 2019, you’re going to see a premium version, in which – ‘oh, we’re a small/medium business, we can run our free version for up to 10,000 visitors, and then after we have to start paying $30 a month or something cheap.’
Chris: Love it.
[00:14:07]
Chris: So, for the small business owner, the entrepreneur getting started, what is your suggestion for them for how they go into this new year? How do they really capitalize online?
Neil: The way they really capture online is, they do the basic things. Because they’re still not doing that! What I mean basic things is like, create a fanpage. Why? Because it works. Spend money on Facebook ads, go build relevant fans, and then pitch them on your business, your product, your service. And the funny thing is that when most people are building fans, the reason it doesn’t work? One, they’re bidding globally, instead of within their region or nationally. The second thing is, they just bid based on keywords, instead of doing look-alike campaigns. If you upload your email list – your existing customer list and their emails – it will tell you who are all the relevant customers, and only do a 1% look-alike. It’ll sound like; ‘here are the closest people that are like your existing customers.’ And then what they end up doing is they find you more of those, you start advertising to them, you’ll get more fans. That way, when you release more content, you release more products, services, etc., you can post it to your Facebook page.
Chris: I think that that key concept of relevance and relevant fans is something that a lot of people are missing, because I see you talking about views, and you and I both know that a view on Facebook is about three seconds – I think that’s how they tick off a view.
Neil: Yeah, it’s like really crazy too. The funny thing is, it’s not even just relevance. People don’t even understand like – okay, if you get the relevance part, that’s great. But the biggest part that they miss – and this is at the beginning – think of Facebook as a well. A lot of people like doing page boosts or posts boosts. They like doing paid promotions, whether they do ads or just tell people to like them – which is fine! You can test that stuff out, and if it’s cash deposit, do more of it. But think of Facebook as a well. Why wouldn’t you build this big well where then you can keep tapping into it to get more and more customers without spending more money in the future? Sure, Facebook keeps adjusting their algorithm and you don’t get as much reach, but the posts that are still viral still go viral.
Neil: So, why wouldn’t you spend money once to build a big base, an audience, that you can keep tapping into to get more and more customers for the next five, ten years?
Chris: You would!
Neil: People look at it like, ‘Oh, Facebook’s going to adjust their algorithm and just stop you.’ Well, if they just stop you, then why would people have fanpages?
[00:16:55]
Neil: Check this out, right? I’m going to share my screen, just for fun, and I don’t know if you’re doing a video recording, but at least the Facebook Live Feed, people can see it.
Neil: Can you see my screen?
Chris: Yeah, we got your screen.
Neil: Alright, so, check this out. I put on my glasses because they’re actually prescription, I couldn’t see without it, but I know there’s a reflection, so it can be a bit irritating. But check this out: how much do you think I’m spending per day on Facebook page likes?
Chris: Uh … $5,000. A week or a day?
Neil: Day.
Chris: Uh … max $1,000.
Neil: Yesterday, $11,212. Day before, $12,889. $12,854. $12,860. $12,700. $12,870. It was at five grand here, but that’s because Facebook capped it. Today, it’s at $3,000, but the day’s not over, so I’ll probably spend – my budget is roughly $12,800 a day.
Chris: Wow. So you’re really focused on building out that fanpage.
Neil: Yeah. It’s crazy, right? Like, I spend an arm and a leg on it, but it works.
Chris: So, you build the well and serve the well, and then you just obviously – you just give them a bunch of cool content.
[00:18:18]
Chris: Do you have, like, a ratio in mind of how many times you give to when you actually ask them to take action or?
Neil: Yeah, so, here’s what I do. I share content in different languages. If you’re in the US, you won’t see the different languages. We target – this post just got posted 23 minutes ago, right, so not too many likes. Twelve likes. And that was in Spanish. And there’s another one; this is in Brazil. It was posted 52 minutes ago, six page likes. Not doing well, right, it’s not a hot topic. I don’t know why they shared that. I have a Brazilian and Spanish team.
Neil: Here’s another one that I shared, personally, an hour ago – 218 likes, 16 shares. Here’s another one that got shared yesterday, and this is Spanish. 99 likes, which is a lot for us. Here’s one in Brazil—59. Here’s one I shared in English – 1,300 likes, 168 shares. Here’s another one in Spanish, 97 likes, 62 shares. Here’s another on Brazil, 90 likes, 11 shares. Here’s one in English – 604 likes, 177 shares—
Neil: As you can see, the reach is 104,000 people. It works. Then, from there, I’m getting people to sign up for webinars, services on my website. I’m using things like Hello Bar to capture more emails and get people into consulting emails, buying digital products, getting them to sign up for my software companies, etc.
[00:19:54]
Chris: So you’re roughly spending $10,000 to $12,000 a day – so half a million dollars, roughly, a year.
Neil: No, more.
Neil: 10 to 12 grand a day would be at least 300 grand a month.
Chris: Oh – wow! Yeah. So, you’re spending—
Neil: But it won’t last forever. So, like, I don’t really spend twelve grand per day, because the reason being I do 1% look-alike audiences, and it’s based off my email list. Facebook can serve out ads quicker than I can scrub my email list. So they’ll be fatigued after, like, 30 days of doing it.
Neil: If you spend a lot on Facebook from day one, they give you a high cost per like, but if you start small and then you ramp up, your cost per like is much lower. So over a month or 45 days, or two months, I may spend a total of $200,000 max. Because it takes a long time to ramp up, right? Like, I’ll start campaigns at $25, and I just roll out a lot of campaigns. But, realistically – this ramp? Because I’ve been doing it so many times throughout the year – I’ll probably cap out at like … another hundred grand worth of spend. Maybe close to $160,000 in total?
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Chris: I love it, man.
[00:21:11]
Chris: I think a lot of people are scared of Facebook likes, because they’re not straight dollars, but they haven’t understood that core concept of you build the well before you’re thirsty, and so you can drink for the rest of your life. And so—
Neil: Yeah, but, most people are doing, like, the old-school days. ‘Oh, we’re going to walk five miles to get water, and walk back home.’ Why don’t you build a well right next to you, so that you don’t have to walk five miles each way?
Chris: [laughs] I love it, man! I love it.
Chris: That is probably one of the biggest valuables we’ve had on the show, and – listeners and viewers, if you’re not going to go take action on that, then you’d better wonder why you’re in business. I’m literally, I’ve got notes down here, we’re going to go and down that. We’re going to push this out and we’re going to drive that. That makes so much sense to me.
[00:22:04]
Chris: The only thing I have a question about is with the look-alike audiences. So you’re just getting their emails and –
Neil: Yes, it works so well. Okay, ask the question, and while you’re doing that, I’ll show you some other stats on my screen, and I’ll discuss this, so that other people can actually see it.
Chris: My question was with the look-alike audiences you choose – the 1% look-alike?
Neil: That’s correct. Only 1%. Never anything more. Because if they’re the exceptions, they don’t engage as much – the key is not to have the most amount of fans; it’s to have the highest-engaging fans. So if you only have a hundred fans, and yet those hundred fans engage way more than if you have 5,000 fans, there’s a bi-roll effect, right?
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Neil: So, then, here’s my traffic on my personal blog over the last thirty days – neilpatel.com. 521 unique visitors. So, check this out; this is just from the fanpage. This is not from ads going directly to the website, it’s just from fanpage. Of course I’m running ads to get more fans, but just from my fanpage – look, as you can see, more spend, right? You can see the graph?
Chris: Right. Right, yeah, I mean it’s going ten, twenty thousand, thirty thousand …
Neil: So this is only traffic from Facebook referrals in the last 31 days – 188,000 visitors. 101,000 unique visitors.
Chris: Wow. Wow!
Chris: And, I mean – I don’t know any business that doesn’t need another hundred thousand unique visitors a month. And this is your marketing blog? Or is this to neilpatel.com?
Neil: neilpatel.com – there’s a marketing blog on neilpatel.com.
Chris: Wow. So, yeah, because you have a lot on there.
Neil: Yeah, but – 1% audience, like – they’re so engaged. I uploaded a picture of my mom. I haven’t seen her in a long time. So I uploaded a picture of my mom and right away – worst time ever, I uploaded it literally like 9-something at night, on December 10th. I got 3,500 likes.
Chris: [laughs]
[00:24:19]
Chris: Dude, this is badass!
Chris: Basically, you’re building a massive well on Facebook, driving them to your blog, you obviously have a retargeting pixel in there, you’ll be following them around creating a 1% look-alike campaign, and then driving more traffic to that, creating a huge amount of value. That’s awesome, man.
Neil: That’s correct. And Facebook provides you insights too, which is really cool. So I go look, and I go look at ‘Competing Page.’ It’s all about engagement. If I scroll all the way to the bottom, it shows other fanpages and their engagement. Brendon Burchard has a lot – 5 million fans. He does a ton of ads; 278,000. Gary Vaynerchuk, 181,000. I’m at 17.9.
Neil: Now, the reason Gary has high engagement – same with Brendon, [but] Brendon doesn’t do too much of it, Brendan just has a shit-ton of fans.
Chris: [laughs]
Neil: Gary has figured out the trick, which is – and it’s not really a trick. Everyone knows it. But Gary is smart for leveraging it. Louis has a lot of engagement and fans, yeah, 600,900. The key is Facebook Live. The more Facebook Live you do, just like you’re doing now, everyone sees it. On mobile devices, there’s a little tab just for Live and videos – the way more engagement you end up getting.
Neil: So this is 2016. I don’t really do Facebook Live. 2017, January and February-ish, I’ll hire a whole crew just to do Facebook Live and nothing else. I’ll spend five, ten grand a month, which sounds crazy, but I bet you my engagement numbers will go up from 17.9 to, like, 40-50,000 per month.
Chris: I can’t wait to check in – I’m going to send you an email, and I’m going to ask you to let us know – and I’m going to send it in like, end of February, maybe like; ‘Neil … how did it go? I really am so interested to hear how it went.’
Neil: And the key is to not do advertising based on keywords. Hubspot is a prime example. They just did a ton of ads early on for keywords and other things that were within their space. They didn’t do the 1% look-alike. 1.3 million fans, they have decent growth, posts this week – 23, 1,200 engagement. That’s shit for how many fans.
Chris: Very.
Neil: Right? Even I’m not doing as well as Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary is crushing it. He has a bit more than double the amount of fans, yet he has 10x more engagement. Why? Because he does Live. So if I did Live, I could probably boost my numbers to 40-50,000. I probably won’t get to half of what Gary’s getting, because he has a more loyal audience, but my audience – as you do Facebook Live, they see you more, they become more loyal. Over time, it can increase. That just shows you, right? Facebook Live is where it’s at.
Chris: That’s so badass, man!
[00:27:03
Chris: And, you know what? Thank you so much. I love that you’ve done this. I didn’t expect you to share your screen and show us stats and numbers, but – for me? Stats and numbers are everything.
Neil: Yeah!
Neil: And, think of it this way: Facebook, the way they’ve done it – and I’m doing the same thing with YouTube, and my goal next year is I’ll burn like half a million dollars to see how many YouTube followers I can get, and I’ll just like grow a crazy YouTube following. It’s like your own TV channel. Why wouldn’t you spend, like, a million dollars – and I know most people can’t do this, but over time you can spend more. Start off with a thousand bucks. Why don’t you spend more and more money, create your TV channel, your own audience, and then you can tap into it anytime you have something interesting.
Neil: Just keep in mind, the better content you promote – not only will your fans see it, your audience – but their friends will start seeing it, and their friends will start seeing it. That’s the viral effect. That’s the key to creating something that’s really amazing.
Chris: And I think the piece that I want us all to remember is what we were talking about at the beginning, and that is: if you don’t have the converting website, if you don’t have that way to them – this may sound like an expense to people, and I always say to people, like, ‘marketing is – if anyone told you marketing is an expense, they’ve got their head wrapped wrong. It’s always an investment.’ I mean, there’s a reason why you can spend this much!
[00:28:23]
Neil: And that’s why, my website, I focus on conversions first. Because, yes, directly I’m losing money on Facebook likes. Indirectly, I’m making money.
Chris: Right.
Neil: Because the site converts so well.
Chris: [laughs] And that’s why you’re the best in the world at it.
Chris: There are so many different places that I would love people to go, so I’m just going to ask to get a bunch of links and put them in the shownotes.
Chris: I’ve got a couple questions that I love to ask every single time, and the first one is kind of my signature question. It goes like this: if you were to start today, and you had no contact. You have no money and no relationships that you built. The only thing you’re allowed to have is your knowledge. How do you start?
[00:29:09]
Neil: I’d build a blog on a niche, get traffic, and then try to monetize later on. But blogging’s not hard because Google loves ranking good content. So you do really in-depth content. They don’t want to rank pages that are shallow. They want to rank in-depth, thorough content. So the more thorough you can be, the higher rankings you’ll get. And then once you get the Google Traffic, you can monetize.
Chris: And the other half of the question is this: if you could go back to the beginning right now and you could spend just one minute with your old self, what piece of advice would you give that old person?
[00:29:59]
Neil: Focus. I don’t focus enough – back then. Now, I really focus, even with marketing. I don’t do too many things at once. I’m, right now, just focusing on Facebook. Everyone’s like, ‘oh, what social media platforms are you on? Are you on Snapchat, are you on Instagram?’ I’m like, ‘No. I’m just doing Facebook. That was my 2016.’ I’ll continue Facebook in 2017, because it’s pretty fine-tuned, and then in 2017, I’m just focusing on YouTube. So I’m like, ‘I only do Facebook and YouTube.’ Maybe 2018 I’ll mix in another channel. Everyone’s like ‘Oh, you’ve got to get in early on Instagram,’ I’m like ‘no, no, I just fine-tune one channel at a time and then expand. There’s not enough time in the day to be on Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.’
Neil: I work with my buddy … he’s really big on Instagram, and he’s really big on – what is it called? – and he’s really big on Snapchat. You can also have people help you out. Him and I use this PR guy named Richard Lorenzo, or something like that. Based in New York, guy’s really good! He helps us get the PR. If you can’t do it all, then you go find people who can help you with the other channels. Can’t do SEO? Find someone to help you with SEO. But, yourself? Don’t spread all your time and energy on too many channels. Also, if you have a small budget, you should really focus both internal and external efforts on one channel at a time.
[00:31:19]
Chris: Great advice, man, and I hope that everyone listening or viewing is taking some of that advice, and I hope that people really take action on basically everything we’ve talked about, honestly.
Chris: I feel like this just needs to be a short, punchy kind of show. Like, I’m kind of – there’s so much information that you’ve dropped. Right now, I’m feeling like if I ask you another question, I’m going to be like – I don’t know what action to take. So, let’s do this; maybe we have to do a follow-up. I would love to hear about how these things go, maybe chat to you in like February or March, and kind of get something done with this. Maybe just keep today really just on-point, because – you’ve covered a lot, dude, and –
Chris: Let me ask you this question; what would you like to leave the audience with today?
[00:32:01]
Neil: Everything’s about experimentation. If you don’t try, you’ll never know what’s going to happen. You have to take risks. You can’t play at being safe forever – especially when you’re early on, right? The gamble is what makes you a lot of money. Also loses you a lot, but eh. Starting off, you don’t really have much to lose. Once you make a shit-ton of money, then you can be more conservative, because you don’t want to – you know – risk the farm. But you can also make bigger bets, too, because you have more cash.
Chris: I feel like this has just been an episode of coaching for me. It’s like Monday morning, and – Neil, I’ve got so much to do all of a sudden because of this. Listen, I appreciate you so much man. From telling us and showing us your numbers on Facebook – which was massive – talking about how pages are so converting, and why that’s so important, that was huge for me. But I think the thing that was the biggest was really just you showing us just how much you’re focusing on building your well.
Chris: And, if listeners get nothing else from this, I would love them to hear this from me: build your well before you’re thirsty. You know, build the well makes sense if you keep walking for water like you said, so.
[00:33:06]
Chris: Brother, let’s wrap this up, and let’s set the intention for a follow-up in a couple of months, because I just appreciate you so much.
Neil: Sounds good!
Chris: If you’re out there, listening to this, live with freedom – and do everything that Neil said today, and more. Go to the site! You’ll be able to get links to follow up with Neil, to be able to connect with him on Facebook and – probably nowhere else, at the moment [laughs]. Also, links to his blogs and everything else. So, go check that out, and make sure you subscribe, like, and share this episode, and we’ll catch you on the very next show. Bye for now!
You can follow Neil Patel on Facebook or visit his blog, neilpatel.com.
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