Intro: 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 which marketing channels have the best ROI. I think I'm going to steal Neil's answer. This is probably an answer for both of us. Content marketing.

Neil Patel: I wasn't going to say content marketing.

Eric Siu: What were you going to say?

Neil Patel: I was going to say paid ads.

Eric Siu: Really?

Neil Patel: Yeah. It depends how you look at ROI. Do you look at ROI as-

Eric Siu: Well, yeah.

Neil Patel: 'Cause paid ads, you can keep spending money and you can get an ROI quicker. Yes, you're going to have to spend money, but-

Eric Siu: I guess we need to define short-term and easy to measure ROI versus long-term, more difficult to measure ROI.

Neil Patel: Well, you also have to look at ROI as return on investment and you also have to look at it as scalability as well.

Eric Siu: Yes.

Neil Patel: 'Cause with content marketing, I would agree with you, content marketing, SEO, whatever you want to end up calling it these days, has the best form of RIO in the long run, but it doesn't scale as much as paid ads. So, yes, you could end up hypothetically spending a million dollars on SEO and content marketing over the years, and generate ten millions in revenue. On the flip side, with paid ads, you could potentially invest 50 million in paid ads over the lifespan of your business and generate 100 million in revenue.

Eric Siu: That's true. The good thing about this title is, it's which marketing channel. So, if we combine the two, then you have a monster.

Neil Patel: That's right. You don't have to just stick with content marketing, SEO, paid ads, but if you look at what's happening right now between Eric and I, we both see that different channels have different results. Well, with every business, it's also going to be different.
For example, I was in New York. I was at one of Chris [Winfield's 00:02:02] dinner, and I had met a lady who was just like, "I sell insoles for women's high heels." I'm like, "All right. Why don't you just make women's high heels more comfortable? Why don't the shoe manufacturers?" She was like, "Well, nice brands don't want to make their shoes comfortable 'cause it looks bad." I'm like, "Okay. I don't understand this, but if this is what's causing you to make seven figures, more power to you."
At that point, I was like, "How do you drive all your sales?" She was like, "Facebook ads." Now, if she did content marketing around woman high heel insoles, yes, she can generate more revenue for how much she spends, but it won't scale up anywhere near what she could spin on Facebook ads or Google ads. So, you have to look at it also per business.

Eric Siu: Yep.

Neil Patel: So, the way I look at it, when I look at my shoes ... So, I'm wearing Allbirds, and I've been buying Allbirds for the last two years perhaps. Allbirds, they grew solely off ... No pun intended. They grew solely off of paid ads first. Namely Facebook advertising, and they got Instagram as well. That's why they are kind of the darling of a lot of these, especially Silicon Valley investors. A lot of people in Silicon Valley are wearing Allbirds, that's how they're popular.
So, a lot of these companies are growing off of paid ads. Paid ads definitely, in terms of scalability, in terms of predictability, you can build a machine that way. But, if you layered in content marketing as well and let the content machine start to build over time, over the next couple of years you're going to build this monster. The way I like to look at it is, if you guys have seen Power Rangers or Voltron before, you have the little Zords by themselves, the robots, but when you combine them all together, it makes something much stronger and you're able to dominate even harder.

Eric Siu: Yeah.

Neil Patel: So, whatever you decide to do with your marketing, if you want to figure out what has the highest ROI for you, run some tests and some experiments. You can start off with paid ads, you can try it off with social media marketing. You don't have to pick one. Pick a handful of them, and whatever has the best legs, push forward with that first and then later on you can expand into multiple channels.
If you're not sure what channels you should start off with when it comes to marketing, look at your competitors. You can type in their URL into SEMrush or BuzzSumo, and you can see what they're doing. This should give you light on what's working or what's not.

Eric Siu: Yeah. Final thing I'll say is, also think about this. Just 'cause Neil and I are both saying paid ads right now and then also content marketing, [inaudible 00:04:19] think about you might be in a completely different industry that Neil and I have never heard of.
So, think about where your audience is hanging out. This is kind of marketing 101. Where are they hanging out? Are they hanging out on Facebook groups? Are they hanging out on forums? Are they much older where they don't check these things online, where you need to hit them with direct mail or phone calls? Like, you've got to figure that out for yourself. It's not up to Neil and I to figure it out.
So, think about that. Go back to marketing 101. If you need more marketing 101, read The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. I believe that's by Dan Kennedy. That will help you a lot.
So, before we go, go to singlegrain.com/giveaway and you'll get marketing goodies. So, see you tomorrow.

Outro: 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, and 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.