If it wasn’t for getting burned by a marketing company, Neil Patel would not have learned the ropes on his own.
As a result, he has become the renowned name he is today, widely recognized for his expertise in SEO, content marketing, and online business strategies.
Over the past two decades, the New York Times best selling author has helped countless businesses — from startups to Fortune 500s — achieve their marketing goals. His self-professed ‘super power’ is “being able to analyze a business, and figure out how to make it grow faster,” Patel, who splits his time between Toronto and Las Vegas, told DX Journal at Collision, the tech conference that recently brought over 40,000 attendees to Toronto.
“Most people come up to me and say, ‘we are not hitting our numbers. There is something wrong. Can you help us get more traffic?’ That, we get constantly every single day — especially if their projections are not going well, or they will miss their quarterly earnings.”
His talk at Collision looked at ways of helping businesses hit their targets through “a seamless, personalized customer experience across all channels.”
Titled “Digital Marketing: How to win the omnichannel race,” Patel’s session explored the latest trends and practical strategies for success across many channels — from social media, SEO, and paid ads. The ultimate aim is to utilize “actionable tips for creating a seamless customer experience that drives engagement, loyalty, and revenue.”
“We’re at a point in time and marketing where we don’t have a choice whether to use multiple channels,” he said at the talk, adding that anyone has the capability to excel.
“You do not have to be Kylie Jenner to do well at the omnichannel race.”
He likened omnichannel to an orchestra, where if one instrumentalist plays off-key, the entire song will be ruined. “They’re all in sync. And that’s the thing that most people get wrong about omnichannel. It’s not ‘multichannel’… where each has a message, and stands alone.”
Patel described omnichannel as where social media, paid ads, marketing materials, and email “all work together, and how you get better ROI.” He added that with an omnichannel strategy in place, there’s a 30% increase in lifetime customers.
Furthermore, he said, nine-tenths of consumers use multiple devices to complete a single task, such as researching a product or making a purchase. It pays, therefore, to have them all work with one another. Large corporations have “created a congruent experience, whether it’s their app, website, or in their store, they’re offering tons and tons of experiences on multiple channels, multiple devices, and they talk to each other,” he said. “It not only creates more sales, and fewer refunds.”
Patel, who has a half-million Instagram followers, and half-million Twitter followers, said that social media followers “aren’t your real audience… they just happen to follow you.” With his 1.4 million “active email subscribers,” he has a 30%+ open rate. His statistics show that for every dollar a company spends on email, they receive 36 back, on average. And it’s an 11 billion dollar revenue stream globally, he added.
Companies should be aware of the changing landscape of promotion and sales. Rather than the impromptu spend, the average time a consumer spends investigating a product now is 13 days — via online searches, social media, and recommendations from friends. According to his research, certain channels fare better than others in customer engagement. A company’s website, social media, and email overtake paid searches, display ads, and organic searches.
“We’ve gone from the spontaneous purchase, to intentional shopping,” said Patel. “We’ve gone from choosing the channel, to being the channel. We’ve gone from loyal to brands, to loyal to the experience.”
Digital success
Harnessing the power of digital platforms has essentially become a no-brainer. From reaching a wider audience to establishing brand identity and driving sales, digital marketing offers limitless opportunities that traditional marketing methods simply cannot match. The key is to know where the hot zones are, said Patel.
“More people talk about TikTok than Facebook, yet Facebook has more users and traffic,” he told DX Journal after his Collision session. “So, just because that’s what people talk about, doesn’t translate to usages. It doesn’t mean you should ignore TikTok, but you also shouldn’t ignore Facebook just because it’s not cool anymore.”
But in the next few years, the marketing landscape will evolve, driven by AI.
“People spend hundreds of billions of dollars [on] digital ads. Imagine having AI help you analyze your analytics, and feed you that data, so that you can make your decisions, and save on ad costs.”
Three strategies for company growth
Patel is all about digital marketing, but he has three main lines of advice for business owners looking for growth.
1. Stay focused
At the end of the day, don’t get distracted by other projects:
“Early on in my career, most of my businesses failed, because they never got enough attention. When they started to make money or take off I’d think, ‘Oh, let me take the money and go do something else.’ If I just doubled down on what I was doing and stayed focused, I would have grown the business.”
2. Total Adjustable Market
Second is what he calls TAM – Total Adjustable Market:
“It’s much easier to take point-one percentage of a trillion dollar market, than it is to take 50% of a million dollar market. It takes almost the same amount of work to go to a small market as it does to go after a big market. So, you might as well go after a big market that is marketable to more people, industries, businesses, because it is easier to make money. For example, I’m in marketing. Almost all businesses need marketing. It’s a big TAM.”
3. Hire proven success
Hire people who have achieved successes already — particularly at competitors:
“If you do something successful once, it could be luck. If you do it twice, you are probably good at it. If you do it twice you can probably do it again. We look for people who have done it for our competitors at least two times in the exact industry. Chances are they would be able to do it again for us,” he said.
“I want to see that you got continual promotions. Everyone you interview will tell you that you are amazing – but if their boss gives them multiple promotions, that’s usually a fact. If you’ve gotten that at multiple places, the chances are you are very good.”
As consumer behavior continues to shift towards online platforms — especially in the post-COVID world — it’s clear that businesses and entrepreneurs must embrace digital marketing strategies to stay competitive, build meaningful relationships with their target audience, and thrive in the digital age.
For Patel, his favorite part of it all is cracking the mystery, because online marketing “continually changes, with algorithms and platforms.”
“It’s a game of cat and mouse and I just love the game.”