Speaker 1: 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 the one essential thing that most marketers miss. So, we're actually gonna talk about two separate things, Neil and I. But that way, you'll get two takeaways from this. So, my take on this is that people tend to forget about, at least for marketers, when I first started learning marketing, it was like, "Man, I just gotta make a lot of money, I need to learn all these tactics. It's all about me, me, me." But at the end of the day, you don't build something big, or you don't build something ... You can't build something great without having people helping you. We learn all these marketing hacks all the time like, what's the newest thing, what's the newest tool, what's this, what's that? You wanna suck up all the information, just do it yourself, right? But after you make the money, how do you go about and add even more value?
It's really figuring out how you can best place yourself to hire the best people. So you have to actually learn how to do that, you have to have help recruiting as well. You have to have an entire process for it. I think hiring is something a lot of people tend to forget about, and recruiting. And I think it's one of the biggest marketing hacks out there. And it is required for literally every single good business out there to have a great people. It's kind of weird to me that a lot of marketers aren't thinking about that, and keeping that type of mind.

Neil Patel: My one thing is different. It's about branding. Algorithms always change, sometimes it's really hard to get rankings on Google, sometimes it's easy. Or sometimes they do something and there goes your business. Same with Facebook, same with Twitter, same with LinkedIn, same with Instagram. Whatever marketing channel out there that you're leveraging, things always change. You could be crashing it from Facebook ads and be like, "Yeah, we're on cloud nine." And then Facebook could be saying, "Alright, we're now no longer allowing beauty products to do pay-per-click." Or, big brands like Coca-Cola come in, they jack up the rates and now, you can't really afford to advertise on Facebook because your campaigns aren't profitable.
So what's the one thing that you really need to do to survive in the long run? It doesn't matter what channel you're marketing through, 'cause the channels will always change. But it's a brand. McDonald's built a brand, American Express built a brand, Visa, Nike, you name it. Anything that you wear, you see on a daily basis, most of the things that you think about, are typically tied to a specific brand. If you focus on providing the best customer experience, in the long run, you too can build an amazing brand. Just think about Zappos. Tony Hsieh wrote a book called Delivering Happiness. And Tony, always went above and beyond. And the culture of Zappos was to do whatever to please their customer.
They would even do things like, you order shoes and right away they would just overnight or a two-day air 'em, for free and just surprise you. It's not like they're like, "Oh yeah, we're gonna upsell you or ..." It was just something that they did out of their kind gesture. Or, if you wore the shoes for six months and you decide you didn't like them, even though they're worn in. And you called Zappos and you complained, they would refund you and give you 100% of your money back. Even though you already wore those shoes and you messed 'em up or whatever it may be. They did whatever to keep you happy. That's how they built an amazing brand.
In business, if you spend time taking care of your customers, or even potential customers, helping people out, educating 'em, building a brand and really caring for 'em, in the long run, you'll stand out. And you'll survive when market conditions change. And they will change, it's just a question of when.

Eric Siu: Yeah. I remember this one story. This is from the CEO of Priceline and he's anecdote was that, there was a point in time where just everything was whelming with the company. Where he'd just walk into different departments and everyone was just trying to shoo him away. 'Cause everyone was busy doing great things. And then he realized that at the end of the day, it really has nothing to do with him. He's built a great company, Priceline's a great brand, right? But he's also realized that at the same time, it was all just about the people. Every great CEO out there, you look at the Richard Bransons of the world, which again, is another brand, right? It's all about the people.
So, if you combine these two things that Neil and I are talking about. If you combine brand and you combine great people, you have a great system for getting great people. And also getting rid of people that aren't the right fit for your company, then you're gonna build something for the long run, and you're gonna do well. Don't think about making money, think about how much value you can add and then the money is basically, well, it's an indicator of well you've done. It's a good score keeper. And then from there, well, I guess the final thing I could recommend around this is that there's a book called Who? That's W-H-O, with a question mark. So, check out that book, that's gonna teach you about all the psychology about bringing on great people, why you should do it and ... Neil, what book do you recommend around branding?

Neil Patel: I don't know. I haven't read any good books about branding.

Eric Siu: I got Primalbranding.

Neil Patel: Cool, I'll have to check it out myself.

Eric Siu: So, anyway, that's it for today. I mean, we can rife on this all day. I think these two things are probably some of the important things that-

Neil Patel: One more thing with branding is, a lot of people think, "Oh, my brand is my logo, my image, and how people feel and touch it." Yes, that is part of your brand. But instead of spending a ton of time and money, especially when you're newer, and you're younger, on that kind of stuff, spend the time with your customers or potential customers. Helping 'em, delighting 'em, knocking their socks off. And that's how you start building a strong brand. And then eventually, yes you can put the money into the design, the feel, the advertising. But first, it has to be about the experience.

Eric Siu: Alright, that's it for today. But before we go, check out our marketing goodies at singlegrain.com/giveaway and we'll see you tomorrow.

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