How to Start Being Successful with Marketing | Ep. #521

In episode #521, Eric and Neil discuss how you can start to be successful with marketing. Tune in to hear specific ways you can achieve daily success as a content marketer.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

  • [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Start Being Successful with Marketing
  • [00:33] Establish a goal first, so you are not just shooting in the dark.
  • [00:51] When you don’t have any set KPIs, it’s hard to nail anything down.
  • [01:16] Once you have your KPIs, you want to break them down into specific small tasks that you need to complete in order to achieve them.
  • [01:33] This way, as a marketer, you have a daily plan in order to hit your numbers.
  • [01:48] A more specific goal would be to say, “I need to rank on Google for all the marketing-related terms.”
  • [01:52] Then you do that by writing content and break your tasks down from there. You keep setting goal, upon goal, upon goal. It helps to break everything down into smaller bite-sized tasks.
  • [02:26] You have to hold people accountable.
  • [02:30] Their goal is to reach a certain number of YouTube viewers. To do this, they use a tool called 15Five and it checks in on your goals.
  • [03:09] Document the process!
  • [03:20] By the end of Q4, their goal is to have everything documented. In order to hand off your process to a new person and keep it seamless, you need to document your work.
  • [03:55] You can use an internal Wiki to document your processes.
  • [04:04] Document your wins and your losses so you can learn from them.
  • [04:30] Eric and Neil found that when they gave more information before they asked them to become a lead, they are much more qualified and you collect more leads.
  • [04:46] When they document, they also put in time stamps, because every six months to a year, they re-test they processes.
  • [05:05] If you force people to Google Authenticate, you may lose business because people are worried about privacy.
  • [05:44] You want to be able to have a feedback loop, but also use outside sources to gain knowledge about your company. Always be learning and innovating.
  • [06:26] You’re going to make mistakes, but the key is to document and systematize everything.
  • [06:47] Be ok with failure.
  • [06:53] Eric received an anonymous feedback comment saying, “Less surprises, more planning.” However, they like to try new things very quickly and jettison whatever didn’t work.
  • [07:30] That’s all for today!
  • [07:32] Go to singlegrain.com/giveaway if you want to get in on a special giveaway opportunity!

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The post How to Start Being Successful with Marketing | Ep. #521 appeared first on Marketing School Podcast.

Full Transcript of The Episode

Announcer: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the gile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Siu.

Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.

Neil Patel: I'm Neil Patel.
Today, we are going to talk about how to start being successful with marketing. Number one, the first thing you want to do is establish some kind of goal first so you're not just shooting in the dark. You got to establish some kind of KPI first so you know where you're going. A lot of people, they just tend to dive into tactics. I still fall into this sometimes where it's like, "Oh, that sounds like a good idea. Let's go and do it," but when you don't have any set KPIs, when you don't have a goal, you don't know what you're aiming for, you're just shooting in the dark. Have that set up first before you decide to jump into something new because, in marketing, it's really easy, especially you listening to this. You're getting new tactics from us every single day. We're not saying, "Jump on everything." Try to get some signal first from what makes sense for your business and then decide what success looks like and then jump into it with some more thought.
Once you have your KPIs, and this is going to be a bit of a fun episode for Eric and I because we're going to make sure each of our ideas tie into each other so they can be all streamlined, once you have your KPIs, you want to break them down into specific small tasks that you need to complete in order to achieve those KPIs. This way, as a marketer, you can be like, "Okay. Here's what I need to do on a daily basis in order to hit those numbers."
You can't break them down to big things, such as, "I need a rank number run on Google for all the terms." That's too broad. More specific would be, "I need a rank on Google for all the marketing-related terms." How do you do that? You write content about everything online marketing-related. What are the topics? All right. Once you got the topics, how long do the content need to be? Oh, posts that are over 2,000 words tend to rank higher on page one. Now that I got that down, how can I write one a day? Then once you got that down, how can you promote those things on a daily basis and streamline data, as well?
The point I'm trying to make is unless you break them down into smaller bite-sized tasks, if you don't do them on a daily basis, you're not going to hit your numbers.

Eric Siu: Also, at the same time, when you have these numbers set, you got to be able to hold people accountable. We talked about holding people accountable a couple of episodes ago. You got to be able to check in. For example, right now, our goal is to get to 50,000 YouTube subscribers, and I have this one goal on the tool that we use every single week. It's called 15Five. It's number 15 and then the words five spelled out, 15Five, and it checks in on their goal every single week. It's super uncomfortable sometimes when you're not hitting your goals, but it's sitting there. They have to fill out. How are you doing on your goal, on the 50,000? You can see when people are getting a little uncomfortable. They're trying to wiggle out of it, but the important thing is you hit the thing head on. It's often those uncomfortable conversations that need to be had so then you can come through with that breakthrough idea to figure things out.
Then once you start to figure things out, once you get the process down, what I like to talk about all the time is documenting things, documenting the process. Right now, as of Q3, coming into end of ... Actually, for Q4, by the end of Q4, one of our goals, prerogatives, for the company is to have everything documented so that the process is really easy to follow because when you do all these marketing things and you can repeat them over time, you have to be able to hand it off to somebody to duplicate afterwards. That way, you have a process, because what if that person quits, what if that person gets sick, what if they go on maternity leave, whatever it is exactly? You're building a system. A company is able to scale when it's a machine, when it's a system.
I know some of you don't want to think about it that way, but the big companies and corporations, they call them robots or whatever, it is a machine. It's because they built out their systems.

Neil Patel: You can document most of these things within an internal wiki for your company. That's what we ended up doing, and when you're doing that, you need to be documenting everything from the wins, the losses, and the processes. When you have the wins and the losses, whether it's a win or a loss, you need to document what you learned and why was it a win or why was it a loss, and what'd you learn from that, because without the documentation of what's causing it to go up or down, in the future, you're going to end up making more mistakes, but by knowing the levers that you can push and pull in marketing, that's what's going to allow you to grow more.
For example, we found that when we give people more information before we ask them to become a lead, they're much more qualified and we collect more leads, so we document that, and then in all the future marketing tests that we run, we keep that in mind.
In addition, when we're documenting, we also put timestamps because every six months to a year, we retest. The reason you want to retest is conditions change within the market. For example, it used to be where you force everyone to Google or Facebook authentication. Your conversions go up usually by 30+%. What's happened these days is if you force everyone into a Google authentication or a Facebook authentication, in many cases, you'll lose sales and leads. The reason being is people are afraid of privacy issues. You weren't having all these hacking and privacy issues four or five years ago compared to what you're seeing now.
As marketing conditions change, so do the tactics that you use, and that's why you need to document them, put a timestamp, and retest six months plus later.

Eric Siu: The final thing I'll add from my side is, ultimately, Neil and I just gave you a system, and we're not saying, "This system is something that fits for every single person." I think you need to use this as inspiration to figure out what kind of system works for you, what kind of marketing system works at the end of the day.
The final thing to close it out, I would say, on my side, is you want to be able to have that feedback loop. Neil's talking about recording things, things like that, but also what are some other areas where you can get signal from? Is it hiring a strategy person? Is it looking at other areas, like other podcasts or this podcast, whatever it is exactly, so you have a concept flow of new ideas for all the time because, certainly, yes, you can have brainstorming sessions with your team, I think that's really important, but, oftentimes, these little one or two ideas that can make the big difference for your company, for one year or years to come, it's by having that continual learning and innovation process that feeds the loop.
Then you build out that system. You keep the loop going, and then you're going to start to scale.

Neil Patel: That's pretty much it. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to do well, but the key is document, follow this process, start systemizing everything, and you'll improve as a marketer. Even Eric and I, we don't have successes every single week. A lot of the stuff we do is failures, but when you run 10, 20, 30 of these, the 2 or 3 or 5 or 6 wins make up for everything, plus more. Be okay with failing and that's all right.

Eric Siu: The final thing I'll do, I want to jump in here, is I got a comment about ... We put in supervisor feedback, so everyone gets feedback, and the one thing is I got an anonymous comment from someone saying, "Less surprises, more planning," but the way Neil and I operate is we like to try new things really quickly, and then [inaudible 00:07:10] whatever doesn't work. That's just our style. Just keep that in mind. What works for us might not necessarily work for you, but from a marketing perspective, man, you're looking at running tests/experiments all the time, and that's certainly how I see my business, and I think that's how Neil sees his business, too. You're just running tests rapidly. You're trying new things. You're discarding things really quickly.
Before we go, we have a giveaway for you. Just go to SingleGrain.com/giveaway to check it out, and we'll see you tomorrow.

Announcer: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of, and don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on Marketing School.

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