Part of Kathy Caprino’s series “Leading Entrepreneurial Success Today”

Entrepreneurs and owners of businesses of all sizes know that driving more traffic, sales and leads is paramount. However, many continue to struggle with how best to do it, and are constantly changing to build a recognizable brand, maximize exposure, and increase awareness of the products and services they offer. Identifies best practices for

To learn more about the latest trends in digital marketing, I recently spoke with Digital Marketing Executive Neil Patel. Patel is his CMO at NP Digital. NP Digital is a marketing agency serving startups, small businesses, and publicly traded companies to help them increase traffic, sales, and leads.a new york times Best-selling author Patel has been named one of the top influencers on the web. wall street journal. Entrepreneur Magazine shares that it has produced one of the 100 brightest companies.

Patel has also been recognized by President Obama as one of the Top 100 Entrepreneurs Under 30 and by the United Nations as one of the Top 100 Entrepreneurs Under 35.

Here’s what Patel shares:

Cathy Caprino: Neil, what is the state of digital marketing today compared to, say, five years ago? What do small businesses need to understand about these changes and how they impact their success?

Neil Patel: The big difference is that five years ago we were able to grow our business through one channel. Whether it’s SEO, paid advertising, or email marketing, one channel can make a difference. Companies these days raise millions, if not billions, of dollars. And most of their money is spent on marketing and sales, eventually saturating all good marketing channels. You have to adopt an approach and leverage them all.

Caprino: How have your clients successfully reached new customers in new and impactful ways?

Patel: Most of our clients reach people through basic digital marketing channels such as SEO, paid advertising, social media, and even content marketing. Marketing is not complicated. It’s about being willing to take part in the monotonous work.

For example, SEO requires fixing your on-page code so Google can crawl it. Social media requires constant creation of content that people share and like. Paid advertising requires continuous testing of messages and images. Content marketing involves creating content that people want to read and share.

Caprino: When creating content, what do you think makes good content better than bad content?

Patel: Google is one of the most popular sites in the world, and their algorithms tend to favor content-rich sites over less content-rich sites. So if you want some of that traffic, you have to create great content. Search Google for the topic you want your site to rank for. Whatever page appears on top, ideally your content should stand out from the rest.

1. Easy to understand. When people read it, they not only understand what they read, but they can act on the information.
2. Short and to the point. People don’t want to read fluff.
3. New and unique. No one wants to read regurgitated content.
4. Contains visual elements. Pictures speak a thousand words. Use images, video, or audio to illustrate your overall message.

Caprino: Why is it so much harder than it used to be to stand out from the competition?

Patel: It’s getting harder and harder to make a moat these days. Whatever you do is unique and eventually someone will be able to imitate it. And with solutions like Amazon Web Services (AWS), the window of time for someone to copy you is even shorter these days.The best way to stand out is to build your brand. Nike makes shoes similar to Adidas and Reebok, but many people prefer Nike because of the brand.

Caprino: Ok but what should businesses do In particular To “build a brand” that attracts and engages loyal customers. In other words, where should entrepreneurs and businesses start making the necessary marketing and branding changes?

Neil Patel: Building a brand starts with delivering great products and services. No matter how much marketing you do, you can’t build a good brand if you can’t provide good products and services. After soliciting and receiving customer feedback, you must continually adapt to improve your products and services. This helps in brand building.

On top of that, you have to do your marketing on an ongoing basis. Brand building works best when people see and interact with your brand seven times. Achieving this requires the use of multiple marketing channels such as email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, advertising, content marketing, and even channels like text messages and push notifications.

Caprino: In order to make an impact and reach a growing community of service and product hungry customers and clients, should small businesses do anything different from a marketing perspective?

Patel: The strategies deployed for small businesses and large enterprises are very similar. The big difference is that big companies are spending more because they want a bigger market. On top of that, larger companies typically have more geographic reach, so their marketing is global. Regardless of the size of your business, you should keep trying new approaches to reach people. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for every business. Testing and experimenting is the best way to understand what works for your business.

Caprino: What are the 3 most important things most people don’t understand about SEO today?

Patel: Share these:

Search engines love brand ranking – Brands have trust, people like to click on them, and they are less likely to create fake news.

User Experience Wins – If you want to rank high, you have to figure out how to give your users what they want as quickly as possible.

Must be consistent – With SEO, you can’t just do a little bit and expect it to work in the long run. You have to leverage all the main elements of SEO, both on-page and off-page, and do it over a long period of time.

Caprino: Companies are said to achieve “Domain authority” is important. What is Domain Authority? How does a small business get domain authority and why is it important, and what should a business do if they are continually pitched by people wanting to put links and articles on their site? ?

Patel: First of all, ignore people who ask if you can post guest or paid articles on your site. I don’t want to violate Google’s guidelines which make it clear that you can’t buy or sell links.

Second, build high domain authority by having a great site with great content and great products and services. The better your site and services are, the more people will link to it, and the higher your domain authority will be over time.

From using images, to being more detailed, to providing step-by-step instructions, think about what you need to show to provide a better experience.

Caprino: What about advertising campaigns for our business? What are the most successful advertising campaigns? And if you don’t want to advertise but want a strong funnel for new clients, what’s the best approach?

Patel: The best campaigns tend to be unique campaigns that resonate with your ideal customer. Something original that makes them want to pay attention. Most people ignore your ads, so you need to make them stand out. If you don’t want to run ads, you’ll have to create a ton of great content, so without content it’s hard to get organic social him traffic or his SEO traffic. That organic traffic will help you generate more visitors and ultimately lead in the funnel.

Caprino: In my own small business, Over the years, I have worked with many marketing agencies who claim to have great success through advertising. They give credible information that they are good at advertising, but campaigns have failed (often miserably). How can small business owners scrutinize and select a powerful advertising agency or contractor to use to ensure they really understand what they are doing .

Patel: The best way to scrutinize an agency is to look at past case studies. Have they worked with competitors? Have they worked with anyone else in your field or in a similar field?

If they’re doing well for others, there’s a good chance they’ll do well for you too. Case studies alone are not enough.

Finally, whether you hire an agency or not, what most people don’t realize is that advertising is only half the battle. For them to work well, your website must be optimized for conversions. Take a look at your competitor’s site. What copy are your competitors using and how are they optimizing your site for leads and sales? This will give you a great idea of ​​what you need to do.

Caprino: Any final word for companies looking to build bigger and use marketing as a tool?

Patel: Be patient. Don’t expect amazing results overnight.

For more information, visit NP Digital to hear him discuss this topic in depth.

Cathy Caprino Career and leadership coach, author, speaker, and podcast host helping professionals build a rewarding career of influence.