The Marketing Advice You Need to Hear, But Don’t Want To | Ep. #539

In episode #539 of Marketing School, Eric and Neil talk about some hard choices all marketers will have to make in the future. Tune in to hear about the future of marketing and what you can do to survive in the industry. 

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

  • [00:27] Today’s Topic: The Marketing Advice You Need to Hear, But Don’t Want To
  • [00:37] Facebook Ad costs are on the rise. They had more advertisers than inventory in the US this last year.
  • [01:05] SEO is changing because of voice searches.
  • [01:25] Marketing is going to change so much over the next few years, that whatever you’re doing now will probably be defunct.
  • [01:50] AI is going to affect the future of marketing.
  • [02:15] In the next five to ten years, we will see more change than we saw in the last ten or fifteen.
  • [02:42] Eric and Neil are aware of what is coming and are trying to plan ahead.
  • [02:57] Build a micro-brand, stay connected, and adapt!
  • [03:42] If you have a team, make sure people are experimenting with and testing methods.
  • [04:12] The data from this will help you adapt.
  • [05:00] Google Authentication was performing well for a few years before it started tanking.
  • [05:10] The market is moving at such a quick pace, things that worked 6 months to a year ago, will no longer be effective.
  • [05:24] Rocket Fuel is a great book to refer to. It’s about being a visionary and an integrator.
  • [05:49] Managing Oneself is another good resource. It talks about feedback analysis and will help you understand how to take stock of your strengths.
  • [06:43] Hire people with skills that are complementary to your own.
  • [07:00] Eric and Neil believe you need to be prepared for the future of marketing. Learn to adapt! Be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
  • [07:22] That’s it for today!
  • [07:25] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special edition of Crazy Egg, the heat mapping tool.

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The post The Marketing Advice You Need to Hear, But Don’t Want To | Ep. #539 appeared first on Marketing School Podcast.

Full Transcript of The Episode

Neil Patel: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and [inaudible 00:00:08] 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 Su.

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

Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.

Eric Su: And today, we are gonna give you the marketing advice you need to hear but don't want to, and there's a couple things in here. So Neil, why don't you kick it off?

Neil Patel: The big overall thing is there's an apocalypse coming, and you're pretty much going to be shit out of luck. And here's what we mean by this. Facebook ad costs continue on the rise. In 2017, Facebook had more advertisers than inventory, at least in the United States. Ad costs are just going up. Google adwords, costs started going up again as well. It's going to make your conversions harder and harder. Even SEO, you're doing really well with SEO, well it's changing. They're trying to focus on voice, because they believe that's the future.
You think people are going to be googling with voice and they're going to be clicking on ten results in the future? No. Your traffic's going to go down. If you're not at the top, you're shit out of luck. I hate to say it, but that's the truth. Everything is going to get screwed up. With voice, with all these automation and artificial intelligence and augmented reality, marketing is going to change so much in the next few years that whatever you're doing right now to generate your sales and your business, it'll still be around, but it's not going to be your main source. You're going to end up having to do so many different channels out there to just get the same results, and things are going to be tough, that if you don't adapt, and you don't move fast, you're pretty much going to be shit out of luck.

Eric Su: Yeah, and it's interesting, I was watching an interview with I believe was a private equity guy, and Mark Cuban yesterday, talking about how there's going to be a ton of job displacement when artificial intelligence really starts to kick in, especially general AI, which we're maybe 10, 15, 20 years out, but you think about it, right? A lot of the things that we're doing, people writing articles, things like that, and even like people that are helping me kind of edit these podcasts and then write at the same time ... Things are going to change very quickly, and here's the thing. What Neil is talking about in the next five and ten years, we're going to see a lot more change than what we've seen maybe in the last 50 or 100 years or so. Things are just more is [inaudible 00:02:27], things are moving along a lot faster, so you have to be able to adapt.
But how do you actually adapt? So I think what's really fortunate for both Neil and myself is, Neil's got a brand in the marketing space, I kind of have a little micro brand, and so the type of people that we get to connect with, whether it's different entrepreneurs, different marketers, we're aware of what's coming, and we're hedging our bets to make sure that we're not going to lose everything. So we're not just going to rely on one traffic source. We're not going to just rely on one different thing.
A) I think what's really important is that you are able to build some kind of micro brand for yourself so you can connect with the right people to be aware of what's going on in the world and stay connected. You have to be able to adapt and that means learning a lot on the fly. So building a micro brand and then adapting is, I think is really important, and if you're not able to do that, if you're kind of like, "Well I have this good, this SEO agency or whatever", and you're not looking ahead, and you're not aware of algorithm changes, to Neil's point, Google Voice, or let's say you have a paid advertising agency, and you're just going to do things the same way for the next five to ten years, and before you know it, everything's automated, and the work that is being done is no longer being done the same way, well you're going to lose your shirt. So you have to be able to adapt, and to be able to do that, you have to have some kind of influence and connect with the right people. That way you're able to hedge your bets and shield yourself.

Neil Patel: Yeah, and if you have a team, or you, yourself are doing everything, make sure people don't just execute fast, but they experiment a lot. Eric and I test so much with things changing so rapidly, and we don't know where they're specifically going to go and what's going to work and what's not. You need to have the testing and experiment mindset in which every week, how can you run a test. It's okay if they all fail. But by running tests, you'll learn what's working and what's not working, and eventually, you'll be able to take that data and start adapting your business based off of the feedback that you're getting.
For example, we used to run tests and being like, oh we found that everyone's lazy to sign up because they already have a Gmail, they already have a Facebook login, they have a Twitter login, they have 100 different logins. People are lazy. Then they just want to use Google authentication or Facebook authentication to sign up. Then, privacy issues started coming about and security issues and all this hacking stuff, and now people don't want to end up just doing Google authentication anymore, and it can hurt your numbers compared to what I was producing before.
If you're not continually experimenting and learning and adapting with the times, you're going to end up losing out when it comes to marketing. Now I know that example I gave you is like a broad example, and some of you guys may already know about it, but it took years for that to happen in which Google authentication was performing well for two, three years, and then it started tanking. These days, the market is iterating so fast, and technology is moving at such a quick pace, that things what worked six months ago or a year ago will stop working.

Eric Su: I'm going to give you two books here. One I talked about just a few episodes ago, it's "Rocket Fuel", the concept of having a visionary and integrator. Both Neil and myself, I can look at it and say, okay we're both probably the visionaries of our companies, which means, here's the thing. Both Neil and I are very similar in like we like to test a bunch of different things, and it probably drives our team crazy sometimes with the speed, but that's what it takes.
So what I recommend is, in addition to reading "Rocket Fuel" and figuring out whether you're the visionary or integrator in kind of what you need to look for, also there's a book from Peter Drucker who writes a ton of great management books. But there's a really good one for just anyone that's listening to this. It's called, "Managing Oneself." And there's one excerpt from there that I really like where you basically ...
You can create like a Google sheet, and I think it's called a something analysis ... feedback analysis, I believe. So you're basically looking at all the big bets that you've tried in the last year or so. Let's say you start recording today. Maybe in 2020 or 2021 or so, you look back at this sheet, and you look at all the bets, the big bets that you've taken, and every single big bet that's worked for you, and then you're able to start to figure out what your true strengths are. But it's important that if you're going to test these things, you're going to make these big tests, that you kind of audit yourself over time so then you're aware of what your strengths are. That's kind of a side note. But I mean you have to be able to look ahead of time, test rapidly ... And here's another thing. Don't try to hire people that are exactly like you. Because I guarantee, if Neil tried to hire another Neil, it wouldn't work out that well. They'd probably butt heads all the time. So you have to have people that are complimentary to your skills. That way you're going to be able to solve problems quickly and effectively.

Neil Patel: So wrapping this up, Eric and I, we're big believers that you need to end up being prepared for the future. What lies ahead in marketing, who knows? It's getting really crazy, but just make sure you're willing to experiment, learn fast and adapt. Because if you don't, you're going to be shit out of luck, and don't rely on all the channels that are working for you right now. Things are changing so fast. The results for them won't be the same.

Eric Su: Yeah, just be comfortable with being uncomfortable. So anyway, before we go, we have a special one year, I think it's one year giveaway of Neil's heat mapping tool, Crazy Egg. Just go to singlegrain.com/giveaway to learn more, and we'll see you tomorrow.

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