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 Sui.

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

Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.

Eric Sui: And today, we're going to talk about simple marketing tips that we would give our younger selves. Before we do, Happy New Year. Welcome to 2018. Neil, because it's a new year, I'm going to let you kick it off.

Neil Patel: I'd like you to kick it off. That makes it so much easier for me. All right.
Tip Number One. When I first started as a marketer, I would always think "Tactics, tactics, tactics. Oh, how do I rank number one on Google for this term?", or "How do I get more email subscribers?" Everything was tactic-based. I never thought about building a brand. Sure, over time, I've built a brand, but a lot of it was on accident. It's not like I'm this genius marketer. It's moreso I've just learned from experiences.
One of the biggest things that I learned is brands are worth an arm and a leg. Always build a brand. To give you an example of this, Kim Kardashian, she ends up building a brand. She launches a perfume line. Boom, within the first day, over 10 million dollars in sales. Sells out. That's the power of brand building. It's not just her. I built a small brand. Gary Vaynerchuk has built a bigger brand than me. Seth Godin has an amazing brand. Tai Lopez. The list keeps going on and on. Whether you like a brand or not, the bigger it is, typically the more powerful it is. For example, Dan Bilzerian, he's known as a playboy, doesn't go with most companies, probably can't work with him, but the brand he's built has a specific segment, and, yes, he can monetize it. The question is, does he want to.

Eric Sui: Yeah. Even if you're thinking about the Gary Vs of the world, all these bigger brands, it doesn't mean that you can't become a micro-influencer. You can definitely get there. In many cases ... There's a company that I send a lot of leads to called Unity Influence, and their main thing is compiling these micro-influencers, because they can make a big impact when it comes to conversion and driving wins for your business.
In terms of simple advice that I'd give to myself, it's very similar. The early days, I remember when I first started doing SEO, the site that I created was a site called Light Show Videos, because I was into music festivals back in the day. I would just be focused on rankings all the time. I'd be checking my rankings every single day. I would feel really proud when I got to a number one ranking for a keyword that was not really competitive at all. I remember when I tried to sell the site to someone and then he offered me $50, those were the kind of results I was getting in the beginning. I was like, "I want to try all this new stuff. I want to look at the black cap forums, like WickedFire," and all these other things, just to learn all the things, all these little tactics.
I thought that if I knew more tactics than other people, I would have a much bigger advantage, but when you think about the long game, it's about building that, like Neil mentioned, you build that brand with people. You build that trust with people. The fact that you're listening to us on this podcast right now is amazing, because we're able to scale our voices and our expertise to you. You decide what you want to do with it. You either like us or hate us. Now, it's become the older we get, we're like, "Oh, let's forget about the ego." It's not about the rankings all the time. It's not about traffic all the time. It's about, how much reach can we get for the long term, and how can we make that into real-life relationships and make that into other opportunities that otherwise we wouldn't have seen.
That's what I would say. I think, in addition to building a brand, I would say, "Man, just stick with it. Just be patient." You play the long game. We talked about it a couple episodes ago. It just takes time. I have no doubt in my mind that what one of my friend's trying to do, as long as he sticks with his eCommerce business, no doubt he's going to hit his goals, as long as he sticks with it.
I remember talking to a mentor of mine who is ex-president of the speaker company, JBL. He's like, "Eric, look at my age right now. I'm 74, 75. It just takes time. I have no doubt in my mind you're going to hit whatever goals you want to hit. You just got to stay focused and you got to stay patient."

Neil Patel: Yeah. Focus is a big one. I remember when I started off in marketing, I tried doing everything, and not just everything in all channels, which is worth it in the long run, but I tried doing everything on multiple sights. You can't end up doing marketing on a B-to-B site, B-to-C site, and an eCommerce site, whatever the niches are. Pick one and stick with it.
A buddy of mine, Andy [Lou 00:04:55], he sold a few companies, one was to aQuantive, the other one was to Visio. He taught me something that was really interesting. B-to-B guys tend to be great at B-to-B and B-to-C guys tend to be great at B-to-C. So, if you figure that you're a consumer type of person, stick with consumer-based marketing. If you're a B-to-B type of guy, stick with B-to-B. Don't go back and forth. Specialize your marketing efforts in one specific segment. You're much more valuable, verus if you want to be a marketer who's amazing at all customer segments.

Eric Sui: I think it was Tony Robbins that said that staying within your circle of expertise ... Let's say, for example, you're known for marketing, like Neil is. Does it make sense for Neil to go start something around, let's say, selling Barbie toys online? You want to stick within what he knows. For example, Neil has this big loyal marketing following, right now. What would make sense? Marketing services, maybe new marketing tools to add on. Continuing to serve that audience and build upon that, that is something that compounds very easily, versus trying to do all these different things.
One mistake I made in the past was, "Oh, let's go try to do this other business that I really have no expertise in," senior living for example, whereas now it's like, "Okay. I'm going to stay within my circle of understanding, and then build upon that." We're going this content marketing around marketing, this podcast, or the other podcast I have is more focused around entrepreneurship, but also marketing at the same time. So, why not just stay within what you know and build on that.
I think Tony Robbins, I can't remember the post exactly, but someone that's in Hollywood should just probably stay within that circle of expertise instead of trying to branch out and do all these other things. A good example of this, is The Profit. I saw an episode on, I think it was Molly Potter, or something, or Mary Potter. This was in this season. I think it was Episode Four. Maybe it's Season Eight, or something. It was this Hollywood star that, she tried to start, basically it's a brick-and-mortar store where she sells stuff to consumers. That company's totally not doing well right now. It's all over the place, looks like it's going to go down. Marcus Lemonis, who's the star of the show, ended up not doing the deal. He ended up stepping away from it. It's because that girl was not within what she understood, and she tried to branch out into these other areas. That's something to keep in mind.

Neil Patel: Yeah, so that's pretty much it for this episode, and for our daily giveaway, go to singlegrain.com/giveaway.

Eric Sui: And we'll see you tomorrow.

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