Neil Patel’s “Advanced Marketing Program” course is one of the most popular marketing courses on offer online today. It also happens to be one of the best, which makes sense when you consider Neil Patel’s own reputation as one of the world’s top marketing experts.
When it comes to the quality of the lessons here, don’t take my word for it – there are tons of glowing Neil Patel reviews out there that testify to this! So, what does the course teach you? What are the key takeaways from the materials?
In this article, I’ll give you my thoughts on what I learned from this course and how it can help you grow your brand.
1. How Important It Is To Know Your Competitors
You’re only as good as what you’re up against. One of the things that Neil’s course stresses is knowing your competitors. You need to know what tactics they’re using, whom they’re targeting, what people say about them in reviews, what’s working for them, what isn’t – basically, everything.
Why is this important? It gives you a good blueprint for what’s effective in your industry right now. If a given marketing message or format is working for your rivals, chances are good that it’ll work for you too. Your competitors can give you a good outline to follow when constructing your own marketing strategy, or at least a solid starting point. Do what they’re doing, tweak it to your liking, and make it better.
However, that isn’t all. Knowing what you’re up against will help you gauge what you need to do to get to the top. It gives you a baseline measure of what your targets should be to outperform the rest. Did they attract a lot of social shares and SEO backlinks with an amazing pillar resource that’s 3000 words long? Yours needs to have better advice, a cleaner interface, be more visually engaging and be 5000 words long. Did they get 30 customers to leave them positive reviews? You’ll need to get 80 of them, with more detail and colorful authenticity. You can take some help from professionals on outreach solutions.
2. Your Brand Is Everything
One of the first things you learn in the course is how important brand recognition and trust are. Establishing an identity and a sense of authority for your brand is one of the first things you should work when starting a business.
If you can craft a unique core story for yourself, you’ll cement your brand in the hearts of your sales prospects. And if you can build social proof for your products and project a sense of authority in your space with testimonials, press mentions and customer reviews, you’ll face far fewer sales objections.
Identify what makes your brand special and why you stand out among the competition. Maybe you’re crowdfunded, maybe you prioritize customer experience over everything else. Whatever your angle is, make sure it’s front and center. As much as you’d like to believe your product is entirely original, it’s not. There are probably dozens of companies doing the same thing as you. The best way to stand out is through your brand identity and unique value proposition – not your product.
3. What Metrics You Should Track
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of marketing metrics you have at your disposal. Instead of trying to understand each one and track as much as you can, it’s simpler (and smarter) to focus on just a few key performance indicators (KPIs).
Here are three of them :
Traffic Source
This metric helps you understand where your traffic is coming from. This is important, as you’d ideally want your traffic to come from a variety of sources. Relying on just one source, such as searches on Google, can be risky and unsustainable in the long run.
Value Per Visit
Value per visit can be a difficult metric to measure, but it isn’t impossible. The easiest way to go about it is by dividing the number of visits by the total value generated, either in terms of direct revenues or micro conversions that are measurably likely to eventually lead to a sale. This will help you understand how much value each click is worth, especially if you can segment the data and correlate it to referring channels or tactics.
Cost Per Conversion
This is an important metric to keep tabs on to ensure you remain profitable. Always compare your value per visit + conversion rate with how much it cost you to get those conversions in the first place.
Remember, you could have great conversion rates and click value, but if you’re putting far more in that you’re getting out, you’ll never succeed.
4. Paid Media Can Take You To The Next Level
Whether you like it or not, paid media is here to stay. Almost every company employs some form of paid media these days for one simple reason: it works. It’s affordable if you know what you’re doing, and you can target specific demographics to increase its efficacy.
Source: https://www.slideshare.net/wearesocialsg/digital-in-2018-q3-global-digital-statshot
However, before proceeding to use paid media, it’s important to identify what platform you’re choosing and formulate your ads based on that. Not all ads work in all contexts. Certain types of media work better on certain platforms than others. For example, you can’t run text-heavy ads on a platform like Snapchat. It’s obviously better to use video instead.
Another important thing to keep track of is the user demographics on each platform. Social media platforms don’t have uniform communities. Keep track of who engages with your content on each platform and identify the parameters that they have in common. You can then customize your content and ad targeting settings on each platform to suit their preferences.
Wrapping Up
I found the “Advanced Marketing Program” from Neil Patel to be an amazingly valuable course that gave me the tools needed to take my own marketing strategy to new heights. Not everyone will have the same impression, and that’s fine. But the above four key takeaways are definitely important for all businesses to keep in mind when launching or perfecting their marketing programs.
