In episode #552, Eric and Neil explain how you can get the best marketing tactics from other marketers. Tune in to hear how you can learn the latest techniques and get ahead.
Time-Stamped Show Notes:
- [00:27] Today’s Topic: How You Can Get the World’s Top Marketers to Share Their Secrets with You
- [00:36] Once people start to share a tactic, it starts to get over-used.
- [01:00] So how do you learn about great tactics without becoming one of many using the same technique?
- [01:24] Neil thinks marketers like to party, spend money, and talk themselves up.
- [02:25] The creator of Growthhackers.com created the site because he wanted to have a community to share tips.
- [02:52] Marketers are going to try to outdo each other; by putting together a panel or roundtable, you will learn great techniques because they will all spill the beans just to impress each other.
- [03:36] You also want to share your tactics with others in order to get information back.
- [03:55] Neil likes to share tactics that work, but are kind of on their way out.
- [04:37] Sharing techniques that are new and on their way up, it will get spread around and overused.
- [05:07] The key is to be really careful who you share things with.
- [06:10] If you want marketers to share their secrets with you, your best bet is to go to conferences.
- [06:24] Conferences are where everyone wants to show off.
- [06:35] That’s it for today!
- [06:37] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special edition of Crazy Egg, the heat mapping tool.
- [06:42] Tweet at Eric @Ericosiu and let him know if you want them to curate/bundle their podcast content.
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The post How You Can Get the World’s Top Marketers to Share Their Secrets with You | Ep. #552 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 guile 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: And I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Siu: And today we are going to talk about how you can get the world's top marketers to share their secrets with you. Here's the thing with marketing. Once people start to share a tactic, let's say, you read it on GrowthHackers.com, or Inbound.org, or you hear about it at a conference, it starts to get really saturated. People start to repeat the same thing over and over. Even from a sale's perspective, when you look at the book, Predictable Revenue, by Aaron Ross, everybody starts to use the same template afterwards and things start to get really kind of overdone, and the strategy or tactic is no longer effective. The question is, how do you go learning about how the best people share the best stuff? I guess, Neil, what are your thoughts around this? Because people kind of hold this stuff close to the vest, right?
Neil Patel: Well, and actually, have you noticed that marketers have pretty loose mouths?
Eric Siu: We do.
Neil Patel: We do, exactly. In general, they do, right? You go to the affiliate conferences, such as Affiliate Summit, what you'll find is marketers love to party, they love to drink alcohol, and they like to be like, "I'm the biggest baller in the room." To show that they're the biggest baller, not only do a lot of them spend a ton of money on stuff like alcohol, table services, partying-
Eric Siu: Cars.
Neil Patel: Cars, especially cars. They also run their mouth and talk about all this cool stuff they're doing. I was at an event the other day and people were like, "Dude, I know the best Facebook marketing hack. Did you know that when you throw up an ad, at the beginning, Facebook right away starts giving it premiere placement to see the click-through rate and where they should place it?" He was like, "I'm just going to continue rotating up my ad images and copy every few minutes," right? He was showing the tactics that he was doing. I'm like, "If it's working well for you, why would you tell everyone that, 'Hey, this is what I'm doing?'" I would just keep it to myself and call it a day.
Eric Siu: Yeah. It's completely true, right? Here's the thing, and this is ... Sean Ellis, that has GrowthHackers.com, when I had him on the podcast a couple years ago on Growth Everywhere, the reason he made that community was because he understood that the best marketers are going to hold the stuff closer to their vest, they're going to wait a while to reveal something, but there are going to be that longer tail of people that are kind of more open to running their mouths. When I was ... When I helped moderate a panel on his conference last year, we kind of had a side-chat, and we had four or five really good marketers on the panel, and what you kind of do is, is exactly like Neil said. People are going to try to outdo each other, right?
If you are able to throw some kind of meat up, or some kind of fireside panel, or something like that, you can get the best marketers in your area, and they're going to try to one-up each other, and the problem is, when they try to one-up each other, they have to reveal their best tactics, and that's exactly what I got to do. I got them to disagree with each other. I got them to say the things that are working really well for them, because they don't want to look like they don't ... They're the one that doesn't have much to offer, right? That's one way to go about it. Like Neil said, when you're able to attend a conference, or you can attend a dinner, or you can attend a mastermind. These people are going to share the best stuff with you and that's how you learn from the best marketers in the world.
Neil Patel: You also want to end up sharing tactics with others. One of the best strategies to get marketers to share their secrets with you, is for you to share your secrets with them. I'm a big believer that if you have something that's working really well, you shouldn't share it. You may share it with your close friends, but in general, you don't want to share it with mainstream marketers. What I enjoy doing, is sharing tactics that still work, but are on their downfall. What I mean by that, is tricks with, let's say, Facebook's algorithm that could be hacks to get quick social media traffic. They won't last forever.
If you've been using them for three, four, five, six months, you've probably found that it's working less and less each month. As you're starting to see these tactics diminish, what you want to end up doing is sharing them with other marketers, and you'll find that they'll start sharing tactics with you. You can tell them, "Hey, I've been doing this for six months. Doesn't work as well as it used to, but it still works pretty well." As you start opening up and sharing tactics with other marketers, they'll start sharing them with you, but you have to be careful.
If you're sharing ones that are on this upward swing in which they're working really, really well, and you share it with one or two marketers, they're going to share it with four or five more marketers, and then it creates a network effect, and the next thing you know the tactic won't work as well. In addition to that, if these guys aren't sharing good tactics with you, then what's the value? You have to make sure there's some reciprocity, and if you end up doing that, and you share some tactics with them, and you can end up asking them, "Hey, do you have any tactics that you think that work well?" You'll find that people are really open, but the key is to be really careful who you're sharing stuff with, and don't share things that are on its upward swing.
Eric Siu: Yeah. Here's a real life example. Remember when we were speaking at NextCon and there was a guy in the room that came up to you and just started sharing around, that Facebook stuff, around, eCommerce? Do you remember?
Neil Patel: Yeah.
Eric Siu: Yeah. That's an example, right? When we're out here sharing stuff with you, it leads to other conversations, or opportunities where, okay, Neil and I are all of a sudden we're speaking at a conference where this guy's sharing stuff with us, or we can be led to, again, like another dinner, or some other kind of event, but it's because we're doing this kind of stuff initially, this sets the foundation that allows us to move forward, right? Now keep in mind, I mind, Neil, you've been doing content marketing or marketing for 17, 18 years?
Neil Patel: 16.
Eric Siu: 16 years, right? I mean, if you're looking to kind of build out these opportunities, it's just going to take time. Not saying it's going to take you 16 years, but it's a lot of kind of staying with it, and staying patient. That's how these opportunities come up where you get to learn from the best in the world. Neil, anything else to add?
Neil Patel: No. The last thing to add is if you want marketers to share their secrets with you, your best bet of getting these secrets is at conferences. You're not going to really get too many of them through emails, or chat, or Skype. It's going to mainly be at conferences, because that's where everyone wants to show off and be like, "I'm the best. Look at my Lamborghini. Look at my Rolls-Royce. Look at how much money I'm making. Look at my hotel suite." That's where you're going to get most of the data.
Eric Siu: Cool. Before we go, we have some marketing goodies for you. Just go to SingleGrain.com/Giveaway if you want these goodies. Actually, before we go, I'm curious, you can tweet at me @EricO. That's E-R-I-C-O-S, as in sugar, I-U. Eric O. Siu. Tweet at me and let me know if you guys would be interested if we were able to kind of curate or bundle all this podcast content we've done. I'm curious to get your feedback if it's interesting or not. That being said, we will 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. 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.
Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.
Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Siu: And today we are going to talk about how you can get the world's top marketers to share their secrets with you. Here's the thing with marketing. Once people start to share a tactic, let's say, you read it on GrowthHackers.com, or Inbound.org, or you hear about it at a conference, it starts to get really saturated. People start to repeat the same thing over and over. Even from a sale's perspective, when you look at the book, Predictable Revenue, by Aaron Ross, everybody starts to use the same template afterwards and things start to get really kind of overdone, and the strategy or tactic is no longer effective. The question is, how do you go learning about how the best people share the best stuff? I guess, Neil, what are your thoughts around this? Because people kind of hold this stuff close to the vest, right?
Neil Patel: Well, and actually, have you noticed that marketers have pretty loose mouths?
Eric Siu: We do.
Neil Patel: We do, exactly. In general, they do, right? You go to the affiliate conferences, such as Affiliate Summit, what you'll find is marketers love to party, they love to drink alcohol, and they like to be like, "I'm the biggest baller in the room." To show that they're the biggest baller, not only do a lot of them spend a ton of money on stuff like alcohol, table services, partying-
Eric Siu: Cars.
Neil Patel: Cars, especially cars. They also run their mouth and talk about all this cool stuff they're doing. I was at an event the other day and people were like, "Dude, I know the best Facebook marketing hack. Did you know that when you throw up an ad, at the beginning, Facebook right away starts giving it premiere placement to see the click-through rate and where they should place it?" He was like, "I'm just going to continue rotating up my ad images and copy every few minutes," right? He was showing the tactics that he was doing. I'm like, "If it's working well for you, why would you tell everyone that, 'Hey, this is what I'm doing?'" I would just keep it to myself and call it a day.
Eric Siu: Yeah. It's completely true, right? Here's the thing, and this is ... Sean Ellis, that has GrowthHackers.com, when I had him on the podcast a couple years ago on Growth Everywhere, the reason he made that community was because he understood that the best marketers are going to hold the stuff closer to their vest, they're going to wait a while to reveal something, but there are going to be that longer tail of people that are kind of more open to running their mouths. When I was ... When I helped moderate a panel on his conference last year, we kind of had a side-chat, and we had four or five really good marketers on the panel, and what you kind of do is, is exactly like Neil said. People are going to try to outdo each other, right?
If you are able to throw some kind of meat up, or some kind of fireside panel, or something like that, you can get the best marketers in your area, and they're going to try to one-up each other, and the problem is, when they try to one-up each other, they have to reveal their best tactics, and that's exactly what I got to do. I got them to disagree with each other. I got them to say the things that are working really well for them, because they don't want to look like they don't ... They're the one that doesn't have much to offer, right? That's one way to go about it. Like Neil said, when you're able to attend a conference, or you can attend a dinner, or you can attend a mastermind. These people are going to share the best stuff with you and that's how you learn from the best marketers in the world.
Neil Patel: You also want to end up sharing tactics with others. One of the best strategies to get marketers to share their secrets with you, is for you to share your secrets with them. I'm a big believer that if you have something that's working really well, you shouldn't share it. You may share it with your close friends, but in general, you don't want to share it with mainstream marketers. What I enjoy doing, is sharing tactics that still work, but are on their downfall. What I mean by that, is tricks with, let's say, Facebook's algorithm that could be hacks to get quick social media traffic. They won't last forever.
If you've been using them for three, four, five, six months, you've probably found that it's working less and less each month. As you're starting to see these tactics diminish, what you want to end up doing is sharing them with other marketers, and you'll find that they'll start sharing tactics with you. You can tell them, "Hey, I've been doing this for six months. Doesn't work as well as it used to, but it still works pretty well." As you start opening up and sharing tactics with other marketers, they'll start sharing them with you, but you have to be careful.
If you're sharing ones that are on this upward swing in which they're working really, really well, and you share it with one or two marketers, they're going to share it with four or five more marketers, and then it creates a network effect, and the next thing you know the tactic won't work as well. In addition to that, if these guys aren't sharing good tactics with you, then what's the value? You have to make sure there's some reciprocity, and if you end up doing that, and you share some tactics with them, and you can end up asking them, "Hey, do you have any tactics that you think that work well?" You'll find that people are really open, but the key is to be really careful who you're sharing stuff with, and don't share things that are on its upward swing.
Eric Siu: Yeah. Here's a real life example. Remember when we were speaking at NextCon and there was a guy in the room that came up to you and just started sharing around, that Facebook stuff, around, eCommerce? Do you remember?
Neil Patel: Yeah.
Eric Siu: Yeah. That's an example, right? When we're out here sharing stuff with you, it leads to other conversations, or opportunities where, okay, Neil and I are all of a sudden we're speaking at a conference where this guy's sharing stuff with us, or we can be led to, again, like another dinner, or some other kind of event, but it's because we're doing this kind of stuff initially, this sets the foundation that allows us to move forward, right? Now keep in mind, I mind, Neil, you've been doing content marketing or marketing for 17, 18 years?
Neil Patel: 16.
Eric Siu: 16 years, right? I mean, if you're looking to kind of build out these opportunities, it's just going to take time. Not saying it's going to take you 16 years, but it's a lot of kind of staying with it, and staying patient. That's how these opportunities come up where you get to learn from the best in the world. Neil, anything else to add?
Neil Patel: No. The last thing to add is if you want marketers to share their secrets with you, your best bet of getting these secrets is at conferences. You're not going to really get too many of them through emails, or chat, or Skype. It's going to mainly be at conferences, because that's where everyone wants to show off and be like, "I'm the best. Look at my Lamborghini. Look at my Rolls-Royce. Look at how much money I'm making. Look at my hotel suite." That's where you're going to get most of the data.
Eric Siu: Cool. Before we go, we have some marketing goodies for you. Just go to SingleGrain.com/Giveaway if you want these goodies. Actually, before we go, I'm curious, you can tweet at me @EricO. That's E-R-I-C-O-S, as in sugar, I-U. Eric O. Siu. Tweet at me and let me know if you guys would be interested if we were able to kind of curate or bundle all this podcast content we've done. I'm curious to get your feedback if it's interesting or not. That being said, we will 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. 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.
