Neil Patel is one of the most recognized names in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. As the co-founder of NP Digital, Crazy Egg, and Kissmetrics, he has helped businesses worldwide scale through data-driven strategies, SEO, and cutting-edge marketing techniques.
In this conversation, Neil shares his unfiltered thoughts on what truly drives business success, the role of AI in marketing, and why human creativity matters now more than ever.
Why he loves marketing so much:
“I honestly don’t know. I tried a lot of different types of businesses over the years but for some reason I’m addicted to marketing. I don’t know why but I just love watching things like sales go up, or traffic go up, or conversions go up, and whether I’m helping a small mom-and-pop or a large enterprise, watching those numbers is just an adrenaline rush for me.”
A.I. content vs human content:
“If you want to talk about text-based content, we ran an experiment with 744 articles on 68 websites. Half of them were run by A.I. and half were human ran. The human ran content after, I believe it was like five or six months, got 5.44x more traffic than the A.I. one. And this just shows that people prefer human-written content.”
Is marketing more creative or analytical:
“It’s a mixture of both. You really do need both. It’s not one or the other. … You can’t build a big business without spending money on creativity and branding. For example, Nike, Tesla, and Coca Cola. It’s done tremendously well for a lot of brands out there. … But on the flip side, if you’re not looking at the data you can waste a lot of money. So, when you do a combination of both that’s where you really see the good growth.”
How do you know which platform to focus your marketing on:
“This is really simple. Think of it like spaghetti. … Throw it against the wall. The channels and the tactics and the strategies that are working the best are the ones that are sticking. Double down on those. Because especially at the beginning when you’re strapped with resources and time and money, you can’t do everything. So, do the ones that are already getting traction, and then once you nail them and scale them and they’re doing better, then go after the other ones.”
What’s the best way to hire an SEO agency:
“The ideal way you should be hiring an agency, whether it’s for SEO or paid ads or anything else is you go look for an agency that’s produced results within your exact industry. Not once, not twice, but many times. Not only can they show you the case studies, but they can point to referrals. So that way you know that they’re good in your space and producing results for it.”
What’s the common denominator for people who successfully market their brands:
“Experimentation. Even if you’re in the same space (as a competitor) there are a lot of variables. The real way to succeed is you continue to try and experiment and try new things, because that’s how you uncover new channels and methods and strategies that actually work and produce results.”