In 2018, I promised you I would release a better version of Ubersuggest for free, and I did that.
But there was one big issue: Ubersuggest only worked on a keyword level. When you put in a keyword, you get a list of more keyword ideas and content ideas.
The traffic analyzer is broken down into 3 main sections: overview, top pages, and keywords.
The overview looks like this:
The first section breaks some basic stats and a graph of the domain’s search traffic.
As you can see from the screenshot above, you’ll see how many keywords a domain ranks for, the total estimated search traffic from that region, the number of paid keywords a site is bidding on, and how much they are spending on Google Ads.
In addition to that, you’ll see a traffic graph that shows estimated search traffic a site receives over time.
And of course, a domain level overview won’t be complete without data such as backlinks, referring domains, the number of .edu and .gov links, and how much the organic traffic is worth if you had to pay for it.
Now, before you head over to Ubersuggest and type in a domain, there is one thing you need to keep in mind… Ubersuggest treats subdomains as a separate site. So if you enter in store.nike.com you will get different results than if you typed in nike.com. By typing in nike.com, you would NOT see any of the data from their store unless you typed in store.nike.com.
We did this on purpose as it allows you to analyze sites more thoroughly.
Also, within the traffic analyzer, you’ll see bar graphs that contain the overall positioning of the keywords you rank for over time.
The chart above shows how many keywords a domain ranks for that are in the top 3 positions in Google, the top 10 positions, the top 50 positions, and the top 100 positions.
You already know no one clicks beyond page one, but over time you’ll want to see your site climbing the ranks. Hence, we track how many keywords are ranking in the first 100 positions.
Now let’s get into my favorite feature of the traffic analyzer.
Top SEO Pages
The second part of the traffic analyzer is a list of the most popular pages for a given domain.
For each page, you are given the title, URL, the number of visits a page receives from Google on a monthly basis, and the number of times the URL has been shared on the social web.
My favorite part about the top SEO pages report is when you click on “view all” you’ll see a list of keywords a page ranks for.
This one report will not only list out each keyword a webpage ranks for, but the position, estimated visits, cost per click data if you paid for that keyword, and how difficult it would be to rank for it.
What I love about this report is that I can put in a competing URL and see what’s working really well for my competition and then copy them. Or even better, create a more in-depth page than my competition.
Plus, if you have clients who are global, you can click on the flag at the top and see the top pages for any domain in all of the major countries.
For example, here are my most popular pages in Brazil.
Top Keywords
The last section in the new Ubersuggest is top keywords.
Whether you put in your own domain or competitors, you’ll be able to see all of the organic keywords and paid keywords a site is going after.
When you click on the “paid” button you’ll see the list of paid keywords as well.
And just like the keyword research reports within Ubersuggest, you’ll have data on URLs, paid difficulty and SEO difficulty.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoy the new version of Ubersuggest. I know there are still some bugs in which the reports don’t load as fast as you want (Top SEO Pages can take up to 20 seconds to load) and you may have to clear your cache to see the new features, but hopefully, you enjoy the updates.
There are also some issues with duplicate keywords and misspellings. The engineering team is continually looking to fix this.
We do know there are many issues with duplicate keywords and misspellings in our Japan database, but we are working on fixing this as soon as possible.
So overall, I know it’s not perfect, but what do you think so far?
And if you haven’t tried it, head over to Ubersuggest and type in a domain.
PS: If you find any bugs, please email carlos@neilpatel.com
When I started my journey as an entrepreneur, I made a huge mistake. And sadly, it took me years to figure out what I was doing wrong.
The issue with this mistake is that it isn’t obvious. Not just entrepreneurs, but people, in general, make it for the majority of their lives.
Can you guess what that mistake is?
I was a people pleaser. I kept saying “yes.” Especially when it came to business.
The moment I stopped saying yes, things started to change. I started to make more money, my customers were happier, people stopped trying to walk all over me, and my team members were happier with me.
I know what you are thinking… this sounds crazy, right?By telling people what they don’t want to hear everything miraculously gets better?
Sounds too good to be true…
Well, here’s how it works.
Why do you say “yes?”
Well, the reason you say yes is probably the same reason I also said yes.
You want to please people.
And if you keep saying yes, believe it or not, it won’t make them happy. In fact, it will make them more upset.
Of course, there is a time and place to say yes to people, but not always. Sometimes people ask for things that are unrealistic.
A lot of the time it is asking for a drastic discount on your product or service… a discount that will make you lose money.
Or sometimes a boss may ask you to complete a task within a very tight deadline that you know isn’t possible.
Now think about it this way: when you say yes just to please people it will make things worse.
For example, when it comes to reducing the price or your service so much that you’ll lose money, it won’t motivate you to help out your client. And even more important, you won’t be able to spend the time and energy your client will need because you’re losing money.
This means that not only will you regret your decision, but they will be upset with you because of the poor performance.
Same goes with your boss. If he or she asks you to meet a tight deadline that isn’t possible, and you agree to it and miss the deadline, they are going to be upset with you.
In other words, saying yes when you shouldn’t might make people happy with you temporarily, but in the long run, they are going to be disappointed and, in many cases, angry with you.
So, what should you say instead of yes?
No!
It really is that simple. All you have to do is say no.
Of course, you’ll have to explain why, but it’s a very powerful word that won’t make people upset with you as long as you use it right.
For example, with my ad agency, Neil Patel Digital, people ask for discounts all of the time.
Can you guess what my sales team says?
No!
But they say it nicely and usually tell potential customers….
We can’t go down in price. We charge this much because we know what it takes to provide results, and if we went down in price, we won’t be able to provide you with the service you are expecting.
I know it may make you feel a bit uncomfortable to be this direct but you need to. It will do wonders for you and your business.
Even when your boss asks you to complete a task that isn’t realistic, you should say something like…
I want to help you get the task done, and I don’t mind working extra hours, but it won’t be feasible for me to meet your deadline. The reason being is because of X, Y, and Z. If it is more important to complete this task than the current tasks I am working on, I can always push them back if you are open to it. Or if we can reduce the scope of the project, I may be able to get it done within Y timeframe.
When it comes to your boss, you’ll want to be creative.
Instead of just saying “no” you’ll want to come up with possible solutions. Your boss may not like any of the solutions but being proactive and thinking outside of the box at least shows your boss that you are trying to do what’s best for the company.
Now let me forewarn you when it comes to saying no to your boss…
If you are truly right, there is no issue with saying no. But if you are lazy and a slow worker and other people can get the task done within the time they are proposing, then things aren’t going to work out for you.
In other words, don’t just use the word no because you are lazy and don’t want to do extra work. Use it when it really makes sense.
How does this help with sales?
Have you ever heard the saying… “play hard to get.”
To give you an example of this, I was once in a meeting in New York where someone offered me a job.
It didn’t make sense for me to take the job as I have a business that I love. So I said no.
Their response was…
Well, you don’t even know what I am going to offer you… so just hear me out.
They then made me an offer of a million-dollar salary.
I kindly responded with, I appreciate the offer, but I am still going to decline.
And you know what they said next?
They offered me $2,000,000.
I said no, but I offered to help find them someone for free who might be a good fit.
Long story short, they weren’t happy with my response and they offered me all the way up to a $4,500,000 annual base salary plus bonuses.
And of course, I still said no.
You’re probably not going to have the same experience as me (at least not yet if you are starting out), but when you start saying no you’ll have similar experiences.
People will more likely work with you and pay your price if you hold your ground.
See, here’s the big issue with saying yes in sales when people are asking for more or want to pay less:
The moment you say yes, the first thing that goes through their mind is “what else can I get?” And they’ll keep asking more and it won’t stop.
Then you’ll find yourself with a deal that doesn’t make sense for you.
So, do yourself a favor and start saying no, especially when it comes to sales.
Why should you tell your customers no?
Similar to sales, once people join as a customer it’s a slippery slope to keep telling them yes.
The moment your clients sees you move an inch, they’ll take a mile.
So, when they start asking for you to do things out the scope, you should say no. Even when they are small things as it will lead to bigger asks in the future.
Now, I am not saying that you shouldn’t keep your clients happy. You should provide the product or service they paid for. And every once in a while, if you want to go above and beyond for them… you should. But it should be you making that decision and not them asking for you to make it.
Just for a moment, think about what I just said…
If you want to go above and beyond for your customer or client when they aren’t expecting, that’s fine and it will make you look good. But if your customer is asking for you to go above and beyond, it will set a bad precedent.
Why it’s ok to tell your co-workers no
Out of all of them, this is the trickiest one because you don’t want to create a bad work environment and have people hate you.
But if people are having you do stuff that isn’t the best for the business and it doesn’t logically make sense, there is nothing wrong with saying no.
I will warn you though, just saying “no” and providing no explanation or alternative solutions will cause problems for you.
As long as your explanations are reasonable and logical you’ll be fine. Also, the reasons need to be best for the business as well. In addition, you’ll need to provide alternative solutions… this is the key as it shows you are a team player and proactive.
You’ll want to make sure that you are thinking things through before you give your response.
People will respect your decision if it makes sense… maybe not right then and there, but in the long run, they will.
On the flip side, if you keep telling your co-workers no when they are right, or your boss no because you are lazy, you’ll probably get fired. Especially if you don’t give them alternative solutions.
So, you’ll need to be careful with this.
Conclusion
Stop saying yes to everything. All it will do is make your life miserable.
I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s true.
Over the next week, I want you to try something…
When someone asks you for something that is unreasonable, just say no. You should provide an explanation and potentially even provide an alternative solution.
Yes, this sounds crazy, but it works. Just like anything else, it takes practice and you’ll get better at it over time.
Search traffic remains one of the major sources of traffic and conversions to any website. Keep your organic search visibility in mind when working on your most important “money pages” (i.e. those that drive direct sales).
In this article I’ll go you through both basic and advanced keyword research tactics for your product pages that will also positively impact conversions.
Keyword research lies at the heart of any marketing campaign, whether it’s a local or an international business. And despite what many business owners may think, keywords are not for search engine optimization only.
Keyword research helps a marketer:
Analyze your competition and learn from it (what is it they are doing that seems to work for them?)
Identify market gaps (what is missing and where does my opportunity lie?)
Understand your customer better (what is it they are searching for and how can I help them?)
Think about keyword research this way:
Behind each search query there’s a human being with an actual problem. Whether your (product) page is able to solve that problem well defines how successful your business is.
In order for keyword research to be able to provide the required amount of insight, you need to:
Group those keywords by relevancy (Providing a solution to each group)
Group those keywords by search intent (What is it your customer is going to do when searching?)
Let’s see these two in action!
Step 1. Identify and Group Your Keywords by Relevancy
The first step of keyword research is running your core term through tools like Spyfu, Majestic, Ahrefs or Wordstream and downloading hundreds of phrases your target customer is typing when searching for solutions, answers and/or products in your niche.
How to make sense of those enormous lists? There’s no way you can create as many landing pages to match all those search queries.
The solution is: Keyword clustering
Identify groups of keywords by relevancy and optimize your product page for the group of keywords instead of each individual one.
Serpstat’s clustering feature is a great way to make sense of huge keyword lists. It breaks your lists into meaningful groups based on how they are related:
How can this research help both rankings and sales?
Grouping your keywords helps you maintain focus: Instead of trying to target each individual query, it allows you to create landing pages that can get ranked for a variety of keywords within one group and capture all those potential leads.
On the other hand, keyword clustering gives you a better understanding of your niche, types of queries and questions your target audience tends to ask online. This provides you with more structured and organized ideas on how to serve them better.
Step 2: Group Your Keywords by Search Intent
Search intent analysis is the most important aspect of keyword research. It defines all your further actions when it comes to content creation and search engine optimization.
Search intent reflects the most probable kind of action a user is likely to take when searching. In other words, it helps you identify what your target customer intends to do when searching.
There are three main types of search intent: Do – Know – Go
Do: Commercial search intent, also known as “transactional” search intent (your target customer intends to buy)
Know: Informational search intent (your target customer is exploring the topic)
Go: Navigational search intent (your target customer is searching for you or your competitor)
Now, with our step above in mind, instead of assigning intent to each individual query, we try to identify search intent behind our keyword groups, which is much more doable:
So what’s next?
Match Your Landing Page Content to Search Intent
Now that we know what people are searching, create and implement your keyword optimization plan:
Search Intent Type
Landing page type
Sales funnel
DO
Use these keywords on your product pages (especially in the title and in the subheadings (H1, H2)
Use your primary call-to-action / sales funnel
KNOW
Create articles, guides and tutorials (Linking to product pages from within context as one of the solutions)
Use your lead generation funnel to tie these searchers to your brand
Use your primary call-to-action / sales funnel: Get creative here!***
How can this research help both rankings and sales?
Search intent helps you understand your customer better and consequently serve them better. There’s no point in trying to sell right away to someone who has no intention to buy: This will result in page bounces (sending poor signals to Google and losing your leads).
Matching your page content to the search intent results in higher conversions and better page engagement (which is also an important search ranking signal)
The first two steps may have taken you a couple of days of work. On the bright side, this research will last you for a year or so (before you’ll have to re-address your search positions or introduce a new product)
Now that you know which keyword group refers to each product page, and which action is intended (“buy”, “research” or “research, then buy”), it time that you start creating content.
Google generates these search snippets based on what it is they have found to be serving the user best. We can reverse-engineer Google’s editorial decision and build the product page that matches both Google’s and users’ expectations best.
That is exactly what TextOptimzer is doing: It grabs your query, searches Google and using semantic analysis extracts related terms and categories for you to build the best product page around:
[Text Optimizer urges to create a better copy by suggesting what Google and its users expect to see on that page]
You can use it before you create your page as well as for your existing content (in which case it will compare your content to Google’s SERPs and suggest areas of improvement).
How can this research help both rankings and sales?
Like with search intent, this is another level of matching users’ expectations better, this time using Google search result page analysis.
The idea is, Google has already found that these terms tend to do a better job satisfying their users, so our task is to add them with in the copy to engage those people better, once they land on our page clicking through the search result.
Step 4: Ask and Answer Questions
Niche question research gives you even more insight into your target audience struggles and your own content opportunities. With Google’s “People Also Ask” boxes this research is easier than ever.
Notice those “People Also Ask” boxes all over search results offering users a list of related questions on the topic they have just typed:
Whenever you are working on your product page copy, take note of those “People Also Ask” results and think how they can be utilized.
It makes perfect sense to address popular questions on the landing page. This will accomplish several goals:
Improve the page organic rankings (more optimized content generally helps rankings)
Get it featured more (Most of those questions trigger “Featured Snippet” results when typed into Google’s search bar)
Improve conversions+user engagement by giving your target customers good answers to their questions (and showing how your product can help)
Featured Snippet Tool helps you research People Also Ask opportunities for any page: It checks your domain’s and/or URL’s important search queries and generates “People Also Ask” results for all of them:
How can this research help both rankings and sales?
Questions are highly engaging: Asking a question triggers an “instinctive elaboration” reflex in human beings prompting them to stop and look for an answer. And higher engagement results in more time spent on a web page, more time to consider your offer and a higher likelihood of the conversion.
Putting it All Together: Creating a Search Optimized Product Page
So to make it easier for you, here are your basic steps:
Identify keywords people may be typing into a search box when looking for products and/or solutions you offer (using tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Spyfu)
Group those keywords by meaning using Serpstat clustering
Identify search intent behind each group to map out which group should applied to which landing page
Build content implementing the chosen group of keywords as well as related and neighboring terms using TextOptimizer
Digital marketing is going to change drastically in 2019. And sadly, you aren’t going to like a lot of the changes.
And no, I don’t mean change from a competition standpoint. You already know that each year marketing gets more expensive and more competitive. That’s just a given.
Just look at the graph above: that’s Google’s annual revenue. As you can see, during the last recession, Google made more and more money. They didn’t even have a down year.
One of the big reasons we are seeing digital marketing change so much is because of the adoption of new technologies. But also because the web is getting saturated… there are 1,805,260,010 websites on the web.
That means there is 1 website for every 4 people in this world. That’s crazy!
So, let’s dive into it… here’s how digital marketing is going to change this year.
Drastic Change #1: SEO won’t look the same
I’m starting with this one because I know you are going to hate this. SEO is moving to voice search.
I know you don’t like this because every time I blog about voice search, no one really reads the article. It’s one of those topics that SEOs just wish didn’t exist.
Why?
Well, being on page 1 doesn’t matter when it comes to voice search. Either Google pulls from your website or they don’t.
And secondly, conversions from voice search will be lower because people won’t be going to your website. Google will just be giving them the answer. At least, until we can figure out how to solve this as marketers.
But instead of looking at voice search as a bad thing, just think of it this way, no one cares to read articles about it, which means most SEOs won’t be prepared for it.
This is your chance to get ahead of your competition and gobble up that traffic before the market shifts into using voice.
Here are some articles that will teach you how to maximize your voice search traffic:
Although it sounds like a lot, it isn’t. In 2017 there were 13 updates and in 2016 there were 11. In other words, Google has been averaging 12 updates per year if you combined the confirmed updates with the “unconfirmed” ones.
But let’s look at the older updates…
On July 17, 2015, Google released Panda 4.2. I know you may have hated the Panda update, but it wasn’t too bad. All Google did doing was get rid of spammy sites with low-quality content.
They didn’t want to rank sites that had thousands of 300-word blog posts with duplicate content.
Could you blame them for that?
And what about the change Google made on September 27, 2016, the Penguin 4.0 update?
If you built spammy links, they no longer would just penalize you, in most cases, they would devalue those links instead.
That means if you did something shady like buy a ton of backlinks and get caught, those links would just be de-valued instead of causing your whole site to get banned.
Now if you look at the latest algorithm updates, they are getting more complex and harder to beat. And it’s because technology is evolving so fast.
Google no longer has to just look at metrics like content and backlink count to figure out if a site ranks well. They can look at user metrics, such as:
Are users spending more time on your site than the other ranked sites on Google?
Are people bouncing off your site and heading back to the Google listing page?
Are your brand queries increasing over time? Or do people not see you as a brand?
Do people find your site more appealing… in other words, is your click-through-rate higher?
If you want to beat Google, you have to shift your mindset. It’s not about understanding Google, it’s about understanding users.
Google has one goal: to rank sites that users love the most at the top. That causes people to come back, keep using Google, and increase their overall revenue.
If you can put yourself in your users’ shoes, you’ll be better suited to do that.
The first step in doing this is to realize that when someone performs a search for any keyword, they aren’t just “performing a search,” they are looking for a solution to their problem.
By understanding the intent of their search, you’ll be more likely and able to solve their problems. You can use tools like Ubersuggest to help you with it as it will show you long tail phrases (problems people are trying to solve for).
Once you do that, you’ll be able to create the best experience, the best product, or even service that people deserve.
This is how you make your site continually rank well in the long run even as they make their algorithm more complex.
Drastic Change #3: You can’t build a company off of 1 channel
You familiar with Dropbox?
Of course, you are, it’s a multi-billion-dollar company… and you probably have it installed on your computer.
When they first came out, they tried to acquire users through Google AdWords. Can you guess how much it cost them to acquire a customer?
It ranged between $200 and $300.
Do you know how much Dropbox costs?
$60 a year.
The math doesn’t work out. Why would you spend $200 to acquire a user who only pays $60?
Even when someone pays you $60, it’s not all profit. Because of that, Dropbox had to grow using growth hacking.
Dropbox gives you more free space the more users you invite. That’s a great example of growth hacking. And it’s how they grew into a multi-billion-dollar company.
Nowadays, if you created a similar invite flow within your company, it won’t work that well. You can no longer build a company using one channel like how Dropbox grew.
And do you remember how Facebook grew?
When you signed up, they would tap into your email address book and send out an email to every single one of your contacts inviting them to use Facebook, even if you didn’t want them to.
That one channel helped Facebook grow into the multi-hundred-billion-dollar company that we know today.
Nowadays, if you get an email saying your friend is inviting you to join a new site or social network, you’ll probably just ignore it.
Again, you no longer can build a big business leveraging only one marketing channel.
So, what does that mean for you?
First of all, popular marketing channels that are profitable get saturated fast and you are going to have a lot of competitors.
Due to that, you have to leverage all channels. From content marketing and paid ads to social media marketing and SEO to email marketing… you have to leverage all channels out there.
It’s your only option to doing well in the long run.
One channel won’t make your business anymore. But if you combine them all, you can still grow your business.
And hey, if something happens to one channel like an algorithm change, at least your business won’t go down too much because you are diversified.
No matter how much you love one form of marketing, never rely on it. Adopt an omnichannel approach.
Drastic Change #4: Blogging won’t work too well
I got into this a little bit at the top… the web is saturated. There are just way too many sites.
Sure, most of those 1.8 billion sites aren’t being updated and a lot are dormant.
When I started my first blog in 2005, there weren’t as many people online creating sites or producing content. There also weren’t as many people using Google.
Nevertheless, Google loved content. Everyone was saying how content is king because if you produce high-quality articles Google would rank them due to one simple fact… they lacked content in their index.
But as time went by, Google no longer had a shortage of content. I would even go as far to say that there is too much content for them to choose from.
For that reason, they can be pickier if they want to rank your website or not. It’s not just about backlinks or optimizing your on-page code, it’s about providing what’s best for the end user.
That means Google is going to rank fresh content that isn’t regurgitated.
If you want to take the route of just writing dozens of articles each way and trying to rank for everything under the sun, you can. It’s still possible, but it will take more time and it will be harder as there is more competition.
More so, the way content marketing is changing in 2019, and we saw a little of this in 2018, is that you need to update your content.
No longer can your strategy be to write a lot of content. You are going to have to plan on updating your content on a regular basis.
For example, I have one person who works for me full time going through my old blog posts to update them. Also, I now only have time to write once piece of content each week. There is no way I can go through my blog and update over a thousand blog posts.
You’re going to have to do the same if you want to maintain your search traffic. If you are established and have an old blog, spend half your time updating your old content. If you are a new blog, you don’t really need to spend more than 5% of your time updating your old content.
Drastic Change #5: You’ll need to focus on new search engines and new content types
We can all agree that text-based content is saturated.
If you don’t agree with me, just scroll back up to Drastic Change #4 😉
We all know it takes forever to rank on Google. If you aren’t willing to give it a year, you shouldn’t spend much time doing traditional SEO.
What if I told you there was another form of SEO in which you can see results very, very fast?
So fast, that within 30 days (or even a few days!) you can rank at the top. And, better yet, those rankings mean you will get traffic.
Just look at my search traffic from this different kind of search engine:
Can you guess that what search engine this is?
YouTube!
I generate 198,380 views every month from YouTube search. And those people watch my content for an average of 559,237 minutes a month.
I’m generating over 388 days of watch time each month just from YouTube search. That’s crazy!
YouTube isn’t nearly as competitive as Google. Nor is optimizing for the iTunes store if you have a podcast.
Don’t just focus your efforts on Google.
Focus your efforts on less-saturated forms of content like video and audio while optimizing for less common search engines like YouTube and iTunes.
If you don’t have a big marketing budget no worries. These channels aren’t as expensive or competitive yet. You also don’t need a studio to film or record. You can just bust out your iPhone and start recording yourself.
Believe it or not, a lot of people prefer that over studio quality content as it is more authentic.
Drastic Change #6: Budgets will start shifting into conversion rate optimization
At the beginning of this post, I broke down Google’s yearly revenue.
As you can see it has continually increased even during recessionary periods.
Sure, some of it has to do with more people coming online. But also, the cost per click is rising.
Same with Facebook Ads. I literally know hundreds of affiliates who used to make over a million dollars a year in income because Facebook Ads were so affordable.
But in June/July 2017, Facebook crossed a point where they had more advertisers than inventory… at least in the United States.
Over time, that trend continued into other countries, which mean Facebook Ad costs drastically increased.
Just look at the graph below. As you can see, companies spend the majority of their budget on Google AdWords and Facebook Ads.
Now let’s look at what channel produces the highest ROI. Can you guess what it is?
SEO, right?
Although the chart shows SEO produces the biggest ROI, in reality, it is the second runner up.
What’s hard to see because it is classified as “other” in the chart and it is grouped with other marketing channels, is conversion rate optimization. And that channel produced the biggest ROI by far. It beat SEO by leaps and bounds.
It was just hard to see that because not enough companies spend money on conversion rate optimization. And when they do, it is a very small portion of their budget.
In 2019, start running A/B tests. Whether you use Crazy Egg or any other solution out there, don’t forget to include it in your marketing arsenal.
Drastic Change #7: Marketers will learn what funnels are
You may have heard of marketing funnels or sales funnels, but I bet you aren’t using them.
And no, a funnel isn’t something as simple an email sequence.
Because ads are getting more expensive, you’ll find yourself doing things like running more A/B tests (as I mentioned above), but it will only help so much.
As your competition also starts running A/B tests, you’ll find that ad prices will go up again.
So, what should you do?
You are going to have to upsell and downsell your visitors. I learned this tactic from Ryan Deiss years ago and he was spot on.
The best way to generate revenue isn’t to get more customers, it’s to get more money out of your existing customers.
Sure, your customer base is only going to spend so much. But if you offer upsells and downsells you can see increases in revenue from 10% to 30%. And some cases you’ll even double your revenue.
The key points with upselling and downselling are as follows:
Offer at least 2 or 3 upsells (or downsells).
If people don’t take the offer, considering offering the same offer again with monthly installments.
The best offers are speed and automation. In other words, if you can help people get results faster or in an automated way, they are much more likely to take it. People are lazy and impatient, hence speed and automation always win when it comes to upsells.
At this point you are probably wondering how to do all of this upselling or downselling, right?
You have to build a marketing funnel. The good news is, you don’t have to hire a developer, you can use solutions like Click Funnels and Samcart.
They are easy to use, and you can get started in minutes.
Conclusion
Expect 2019 to be a crazy year. What worked once, won’t work in 2019.
Technology is more sophisticated and with things like machine learning and artificial intelligence knocking at the door, we are going to be on a crazy rollercoaster.
Don’t be afraid, though!
If you take the concepts above and start working on them now, you are going to be in for a much smoother ride with fewer downs and more ups.
Someone who is a marketer… maybe even an entrepreneur.
As you may already know, I’ve co-founded a handful of companies. I’ve received a handful of awards from people like President Obama and the United Nations. And I am a New York Times bestselling author. The list keeps going on and on.
In other words, most people see me as successful.
But what if I told you that behind that success is a bunch of failures?
Sure, overall, I’m up, and my successes have more than made up for my failures. But just like everyone else, I have failed many times.
And many of the failures were so big that they cost me a lot of money
In other words, I’ve screwed up a lot. But what helped me do so well was that I was able to learn from my mistakes and avoided making the same ones over and over again.
Today, I thought I would do something a bit different. I want to share with you the biggest marketing mistakes I have made. Hopefully, you will learn from them and avoid making the same mistakes as me.
Here we go…
Mistake #1: Spending $400,000 on Facebook fan page likes
I used to have the philosophy with social networks that the best thing you could do was build up your following.
If you have more followers, then whenever you have a message that you want to put out there then, hopefully, thousands of people will see it.
But you know what’s common with all social networks… not just the ones Facebook owns?
They all have a pattern or restricting your reach. And by doing that, it leaves you no choice but to spend money on ads.
But me, being a smart aleck, I thought I would outsmart Facebook by continually growing my fan page. That way after I built up a good user base, I wouldn’t have to spend money on ads.
Boy was I silly.
I am not saying you shouldn’t spend money on ads, but with any social network, you should avoid spending money to build up a community. Just think of it this way…
Why would you spend money to build up a community when you can’t control if they will see your message?
This is one of the biggest and silliest marketing mistakes I have ever made. History has proven that social networks continually change their algorithms and restrict your reach, yet I still blew money trying to build up a community.
The two big lessons I want you to take away from this first mistake are:
Have a direct ROI – If you are going to spend any money on ads, make sure it is cash flow positive. Trying to get an indirect ROI on your ad dollars is silly unless you are willing to experiment and potentially lose a lot of money.
Be cautious, not slow – Every major marketing channel has algorithms. Start off small and as long as the numbers work out, scale up as fast as possible.
Mistake #2: Picking too small of a niche
In business, we call it total addressable market (TAM)… you want to go after a big TAM.
It’s really hard to own 100% of a market no matter how small or big it is. It’s much easier to own 1% of a market. So you should go after a huge market so your 1% is worth something meaningful.
In marketing, everyone talks about how you need to pick a niche. But here is what people don’t tell you… it takes almost the same amount of effort to market a business in a small niche as it does to market a business in a much bigger market.
So, why not go after a big market as it will help you make more money?
With one of my earlier startups, Crazy Egg, we created a heatmap solution that helps show you where people clicked on your site.
Eventually, we added mouse tracking, A/B testing, and a handful of other features.
But we should have done that years before. If we had done it sooner, the company would have easily been double the size, just like how Optimizely generates over 100 million a year in revenue.
What’s crazy is that there isn’t much more work to expand our marketing to include keywords like A/B testing from an organic or even paid perspective. It also isn’t hard for us to write blog posts on these new areas.
Sadly, this mistake is one I’ve made one too many times. I kid you not, my net worth would have an extra 0 at the end if I just chose big enough markets from day 1.
Now there are a few ways to figure out if the market you are going after is large enough:
Google Trends – type in the space you want to go after. Look for verticals that are bigger than “digital marketing” as a rule of thumb.
CrunchBase – look to see if there are any venture funded competitors. If someone has raised over 10 million dollars, the chances are it is a big enough market.
Publicly traded companies – if you have any competitors that are public, look at their market cap. The bigger the number, the better. Keep in mind that most publicly traded companies offer multiple products and services, so this number is usually inflated.
Mistake #3: Not all search traffic is the same
NeilPatel.com isn’t my first blog. Technically it’s my third.
And because it was the last marketing blog I created I was able to do things a bit differently because I was able to learn from my previous blogging experiences (I had more money).
The way I grew NeilPatel.com was simple… type in a competitor URL into SEMrush, see what their top pages where, and then write better versions of it.
Once I did that, I would then go to tools like Ubersuggest, find popular keywords that I wasn’t going after, and then create content focusing on all of those terms.
That strategy has helped me get over 3 million monthly visitors of which 1.8 million of them are unique.
But what’s wrong with that strategy?
Well, first of all, not all traffic is equal. But that wasn’t my mistake because I was smart enough to look for keywords that had a high cost per click, as that is a leading indicator that the keyword is more valuable.
The big mistake I made was not focusing on regions. When doing keyword research and competitive analysis using tools like SEMrush I focused on creating content that would generate traffic from the right keywords… but I never looked at regions.
I am Indian, and I love India. But traffic from India doesn’t generate me anywhere near the amount of revenue as traffic from the United States.
Now here are my traffic stats per region:
As you can see, the United States is my most popular region, but it is not the majority. Over time it has gotten better as now when I do keyword research, I focus all of my effort on the United States.
Even when I find popular articles written by my competitors, I plug them into Ahrefs, and I look at the traffic stats per region before deciding on whether or not I want to create something similar.
Mistake #4: Traffic doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t convert
I raised over 17 million dollars and we were off to a fast start. We even had some Fortune 500 companies who were interested in potentially acquiring us early on.
When we started, our traffic was up and to the right.
And then came a competitor, Mixpanel, who copied a lot of our features and didn’t know marketing as well as me. Just look at their traffic stats:
Considering that we had almost 3 times more traffic than them, how much do you think KISSmetrics was worth during our peak?
Let me give you a hint… Mixpanel’s last valuation that they announced was $865 million!
So, what do you think? Maybe we were worth double them… or at least the same valuation.
Nope. Guess again.
We weren’t even worth 10% of their value.
That’s when I realized that the real formula to marketing isn’t just who is getting the most eyeballs, it’s about focusing on monetization.
Don’t just focus your efforts on traffic acquisition, focus on conversion optimization. It’s the area I didn’t spend enough time on early on.
And here are the channels producing the biggest ROI.
Do you see what’s wrong?
SEO produces a higher ROI than paid advertising for most businesses, yet very little budget gets allocated to it.
And what you don’t see in the chart, as it is classified in “other,” is conversion optimization produced the biggest return, yet very few companies spend money on it.
Mistake #5: Not monetizing early enough
Speaking of monetization, I also make this mistake too often.
I love giving everything away for free and then when it comes time to monetize, my numbers don’t look as good as they should.
It’s not that I don’t know how to monetize. It’s more so that I’ve trained my users to expect everything for free.
The moment you switch things up, the numbers never look as great.
I learned this lesson from Ramit Sethi. When I launched my first ebook course on Quick Sprout, I couldn’t generate more than $30,000 a month. Don’t get me wrong, that’s good money, but not when you are generating over 200,000 unique visitors a month.
On the flip side, I monetized NeilPatel.com much earlier than Quick Sprout and, of course, I got better at marketing and entrepreneurship at the same time.
But when I released an ebook/training course (I no longer sell it), I was able to generate $650,000 a month from just 450,000 visitors during my peak.
As the course got older, my monthly revenue dropped but it stayed around $381,722.
The point I am trying to make is don’t wait too long before you monetize.
There is nothing wrong with charging for a product or a service. But if you wait too long before you start charging, people will have this notion that it will be free forever and they won’t be as likely to convert in the future no matter how good you are at marketing.
Mistake #6: Taking people for granted
I have a skill set that I have always been good at. Can you guess what it is?
It’s making websites popular. 😉
Just because I know how to make a website popular (and I can even convert those visitors into customers) doesn’t mean I am going to be successful.
I’ve always tried to run my companies lean in which I never wanted to have more than 50 employees.
Over the years, I’ve more than surpassed that number and I have hundreds of people working for me. But I should have done that much sooner.
Without people, you won’t grow that fast no matter how much of a scalable business you have.
You need great operators and managers if you want to see fast growth.
For example, my business partner, Mike Kamo, doesn’t know marketing as well as me. I have more experience as an entrepreneur and I’m more book smart.
Yet every time he takes my traffic and monetizes it, he generates more revenue from the same traffic than I do. And again, I know more about marketing and business than him.
But because he is great at hiring and building up people, he is able to generate more revenue from the same amount of traffic.
For example, he hired Nick Roshon as our VP Sales, who is amazing. In December, which is one of the worst months for us due to holidays, Nick’s team closed $1,585,093 million in revenue.
Not too shabby for a 30-day period!
And even Nick knows, without his team, he wouldn’t have had a good December. It’s all about the people and you shouldn’t ever forget that.
If you want to grow fast you need to hire people. Hire people who are process oriented and know operations well. Don’t be afraid of headcount… remember teams build great businesses, not individuals.
Just look at Elon Musk, he’s one of the most brilliant people of our times, but without his team, Tesla and SpaceX wouldn’t be as big as they are today.
Mistake #7: Control your own destiny
As an SEO, I have ranked for some of the most competitive terms on the Internet. And I am not just talking page 1… I’m talking the number the #1 spot on page 1.
Some of the terms I have ranked for over the years are online gambling, online poker, web hosting, credit cards, and auto insurance to name just a few.
Those are super competitive terms!
All of the sites that ranked for those terms generated me a nice amount of money from ads and lead generation.
But do you know what? It didn’t last forever.
Eventually, those sites stopped ranking for one reason or another and my income went down to 0.
Sure, some of the ranking drops I deserved because I used black hat techniques to get there, but over time I learned to only use white hat tactics and to think long term. I still lost revenue, however, due to circumstances out of my control.
With some of those sites, I was pulling in over $100,000 a month in affiliate income.
And sadly, I’ve had similar issues with Facebook Ads and even Google AdWords.
I was making a killing and for no reason I got my ads pulled because Facebook thought they were politically related when they had nothing to do with politics.
In other words, sometimes things go wrong even when you do all of the right things. And there is little you can do about it.
This has taught me to have an omnichannel approach to marketing. Sure, you know me as an SEO, but I do a lot more than SEO.
Just look at NeilPatel.com, I have text-based content, video content, a podcast, and even free tools.
I never rely on 1 traffic channel anymore.
Even the people I surround myself with are skilled at other marketing channels than just SEO. My head of paid, Chris, is amazing at Facebook Ads and Google AdWords. Funny enough, he is an ex-Facebook employee.
The point I am making is you are going to have ups and downs with your marketing. But if you want your business to be a bit steadier, diversify your marketing. Don’t just stick to one channel. Heck, I even recommend doing things like releasing free tools so you aren’t reliant on any channels.
And now my free tool generates 213,967 unique visitors a month.
Conclusion
Just like I did, you are going to make mistakes. All entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, make mistakes.
This is fine. Don’t worry about it.
But what separates the great entrepreneurs from the mediocre ones is that they learn from their mistakes and avoid making the same ones over and over again.
You have a list of some of my big marketing mistakes above. Learn from them and avoid making the same ones as me.
Have you made any big marketing or entrepreneurial mistakes?
