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.

Eric Siu: Today, we're going to talk about the fun topic, because everyone's talking about this right now, what Bitcoin can teach you about marketing. This is interesting because both Neil and I are kind of dabbling right now in different respects. Neil, what are your thoughts about what Bitcoin can teach you out the gate?

Neil Patel: It's crazy. It's a phenomena. What I mean by that is everyone talks about it. I'm even getting people who I know that are elder, and they're just like, "Oh, my God. Do you think this Bitcoin company is legitimate, or are they gonna go bankrupt?" I have people telling me, "You should sell your Bitcoin. This company's a scam." I'm like, "It's not even a scam," but everyone's talking about it, which is crazy, and it's not even a company. It's more of a digital currency. The reason it's crazy is it's exploded so much. If you go to Google Trends and you type in any popular celebrity, the most popular one you can think about and you compare them to Bitcoin, Bitcoin is talked about more than them. That's how popular it is. Anyone in the world, almost any topic in the world, Bitcoin is still talked about more than them, and you can see it on Google Trends. That's how crazy it is.
The biggest thing that I've learned about marketing from Bitcoin is, and it's not specifically Bitcoin, but it's more so if you can leverage a trend in marketing, being Bitcoin or any sexy topic, and you sell products around it, you can make a shit-load of money.
I was talking to my buddy, Tim Sykes, and they're in the financial space, and they started promoting Bitcoin-related stuff, and they're like, "Dude, the conversions are through the roof. It's converting higher than our own product, you know, to even our own list." I'm like, "What?" They're like, "Yeah. We can make more revenue selling products that aren't even ours because our conversion numbers are through the roof because it's hot."
Then you look at publicly traded companies. They're buying up people in the crypto space or blockchain space because when they create that news and that press, that marketing message out there. Their stock is popping, more than what they're buying the company for. In other words, a lot of these guys don't even care about the companies they're buying or what they're getting involved in. They're just like, "Oh, this is the latest buzzword, buzz thing. If we just piggyback on it and create press releases around it, our stock is gonna pop."
The same thing happened with 3D printing. When 3D printing first came out and publicly traded companies talked about how they're getting involved in 3D printing, their stock would just tick up.
It's all just about integrating your marketing message around what's really popular right now.

Eric Siu: Great. What I'll add to this, what's funny is, man, when you hear about Bitcoin, my mom sent me an email. She's like, "Do you have any Bitcorn? Bitcorn?" Said it in a very funny, loving, Asian mom way.
Anyway, what Neil's point is, ride the wave. When people are talking about something as much as it's going right now, even when you're starting a business, you're kind of trying to ride some kind of wave. Is it a big wave that's coming? Are you riding it too late? Think about that. There's different seasons.
What I think about Bitcoin, and I got this from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. This is a book written by Dan Kennedy, which is a great marketer. First mover advantage. When you think about soft drinks, you think about Coca-Cola first, and then, second, you got Pepsi. You got other drinks, too. First mover advantage, with Bitcoin, they are number one. That's why they're the word so much. That's where the technology came from.
Then you have all these other alt coins. You have Ethereum. You have, I don't know, Litecoin and things like that, but when Bitcoin tanks, all these other ones, for the most part, they tank, as well. When you're the first mover, even from a business perspective or marketing perspective, you have the advantage, and that's what Bitcoin can really demonstrate.

Neil Patel: Eric mentioned something really good about the seasons. You have to keep in mind that once this has been out where everyone's already caught onto it, and I'm not saying Bitcoin is here, it's a scam, or anything like that. I'm talking about any type of thing that's latest and is buzz-worthy and everyone wants to end up talking about. If you piggyback on it, you'll notice that you get some marketing love, you may end up seeing your stock price go up or you may see your income rise, but it's seasonal in which, yes, what goes up also comes down. Even if Bitcoin is here for the next 5, 10 years or 100 years, and I think it's pretty much here to stay indefinitely, just because you piggyback off of it and you tie your marketing around it and you're saying you're getting involved in the blockchain space, it doesn't mean that you're going to see any marketing love for it or any uptick in revenue if you get in too late. You got to also time it right and you got to be early.

Eric Siu: Where there's money, you're going to have the shady agents get involved, too. You have people who are ... There's pump and dump schemes. A lot of these alt coins, you don't know if they're legit or not. A lot of these ICOs, which are these centralized apps being built on top of Ethereum, a lot of them aren't legit. Here's the thing. There's going to be shady agents in the very beginning of things, and you have to be aware. You have to be able to protect yourself. You see these exchanges getting hacked. You have to be able to CYA, cover your ass.
The other thing I'll add on top of this is you got to be patient for the long term. When I look at these other people, when I look at the Winklevoss twins, which they helped Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, when I look at Chamath Palihapitiya, who's the VP of Growth at Facebook, they put a lot of money into Bitcoin, and they just rode the waves over time, and they stayed patient.
If you really believe in something from a marketing perspective and there's all these other people saying, "It's not going to be legitimate. This thing will never work, dah, dah, dah," and they just hold, think about that. If you really believe in something from a marketing perspective, same thing with my first podcast, nine downloads a day after the first year. You hold, you stay the course, you know that there's something that's going to manifest over time, you're going to be able to get there.
The final example I'll add before I turn it back over to Neil is when you think about the advent of IP addresses, I think it was 1972, it didn't really start to take off until maybe the late '80s, '90s or so, where it started to hit the mainstream. This Bitcoin thing, it's only been 10 years. I saw another post a couple weeks ago about how it's been 10 years and Bitcoin is useless or whatever, but that's the first 10 years. Wait another 10 years. Wait another 10 years after that and see what happens. These things take a long time to eventually manifest, and you just got to stick with it.

Neil Patel: If you're looking for that quick hit and you're looking to just make a quick buck or you're looking to pop in marketing, get a shit-load of traffic off of something that's buzz-worthy, don't waste your time. You have to be a long-term believer. If you're not a long-term believer, you're just going to be spinning your wheels, doing a ton of marketing stuff, and getting very low results, versus focusing on what is a long-term play.

Eric Siu: Great. Before we go, just go to SingleGrain.com/giveaway to learn more about our special giveaway just for you, and we will see you tomorrow.

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