Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors Neil Patel and Eric Sue. All right, guys, before we start, we got a special message from our sponsor. If you want to rank higher on Google, you gotta look at your page speed time. The faster website loads, the better off you are with Google's Core Vital update. That makes it super super important to optimize your site for low time. And one easy way to do it is use the host that Eric and I use, dream Hosts. So just go to dream host or Google it, find it, check it out, and it's a great way to improve your low time. Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Sue, and today we're coming to you remotely talk about seven simple ways to do due diligence on a website. But first and foremost, Neil, what is due diligence and why do people need to do due diligence on a website? Due diligence is just a fancy word of saying, hey, you're gonna look through a website and check everything out. That could either be when you're looking at a website or a company to invest in, looking at a website to acquire, or even looking at a website to see if you can grow it. Cool. Yeah, so great. Leave it to Neil to have it very concise. So I'll go with number one. So number one, the tool I would use is actually Neil's tool Uber suggests, and I would use it to track a variety of things, and I'm not going to take all them, so Neil can have some love for his own tool. But what I would look at is taking a look at the number of organic keywords that the site is ranking for that way will have a good sense of how they are doing from an SEO perspective. Obviously there's other metrics you can take a look at, but I like looking at organic keywords because it shows I can see well, actually that in traffic value too, if I can look at both of them. Traffic value would kind of explain how much I would be paying Google if I'm paying for that traffic each month, and then also the potential kind of the whole pie for what they rank for I get a good sense of wordy s doAnd from su perspective, and getting that idea of strength basically will help me evaluate how much I should be paying, at least for one portion. The next thing I would do, if you're really trying to figure out, Hey, is this a good website, how does it compete with others? Check out a tool called similar web. Now most people use similar web to just see the traffic and is it declining is it growing? Because similar web doesn't just look at SEO traffic. They look at everything, even clickstream data. And what's beautiful about the tool, and this is my favorite part of this is what I really want you to look at when you're doing the diligence on a site, is they break down the countries in the regions a site is getting traffic from. This is important because not all traffic is equal. Now I'm from India, you know, I love India Indian ethnicity, but traffic from the United States tends to produce better revenue and more. In other words, you can generate more money from United States traffic than you can from India in general. Right, not always a case, but in most cases it is, And things like similar well will show you the breakdown. And the reason that's important is the last thing you want to do is focus too much time and energy on the wrong type of traffic. Even if it's the right keyword, it doesn't necessarily mean that that audience is going to convert. And it could just be people from that country don't have the budget, don't have the revenue, they don't have credit cards or whatever it may be. Yeah, number three. So there's tools that we can go through, and I think we're going to continue to go through tools in this one. But I think it's really important to make sure that based on the business that you're trying to buy, whether it's e commerce or maybe it's a services business, that you have a checklist when you're doing d D or due diligence, and maybe to keep it simple here, to keep it actionable, you're asking for specific reports, right, you want maybe the last trailing twelve months, with the last couple of years of reports on how they're doing from a revenue standpoint, if it's going up or down, because those are important things. That's just a starting point, right There's also a million other reports that you can ask for. But even if you just google due diligence checklists. You're going to find a lot to go through and you know a lot of this is floating around the web, so that's going to help you instead of you having to create something from scratch. Yeah. The next thing that you want to do is ask them what changes have they've tested out and done over the last twelve twenty four months that have helped grow in the business and which ones didn't work out. Then you want to fact check them, and you can fact check them through tools like a wayback machine to see if they made those changes. This will give you idea of what people like, what they don't like, and growth potential. The last thing you want to do is acquire a site in which there's not much upside potential. If someone's doing all these things and it's not moving the needle and you have better ideas, great, if you don't, then the upside is limited. Yeah. I was going to do that one. So the next one is what is this number five? Yeah? Number five. There are tools out there like Spyfu and ad beat which will show you how they're trending in terms of how much they're spending on ads, and I think you can do this through Uber suggest too, Right, Neil, correct, you can. Yeah, So basically use one of these tools. It's not going to be completely accurate in terms of how much they're spending dollar for dollar, but you can see over time they're how much they're spending in terms of or you're looking for the spending trends, right, if they stop spending on marketing at a certain period of time, that's where you can go in and ask questions and you can see if you're asking them and if what they're saying isn't aligning with what the trend shows, you can at least, you know, bring it up and say, hey, based on what I'm seeing over here, the spending stops, so you know what really happened. Because you know you're looking for a story, you're doing due diligence, right. You want the stories to align and that's going to help you lead to a better decision. Yeah. The next thing I would do is talk to their customers. Whether it's e commerce, whether it's service based, they have some sort of customers. Talking to them will give you an understanding of what other changes they can make to maximize the revenue. A lot of people don't have up cells, they don't have down cells. They don't have a funnel, they don't have cross sells. Adding these things can make you more money. But if you don't know what those things are, then you can just add random upsells and expect to make more money. You got to talk to people, and by talking to people before you acquire a business, at least you'll know what the potential upside is. Because if you talk to twenty thirty people and they all give you a similar thing that they love as an upsellar down cell, and you figure out, all right, here's another product that I can add that'll help boost your margins. But if they all tell you scattered responses and you don't have some consistency in what they're looking for, it becomes hard to create an upsellar downs or cross sell that works for that ideal audience. All right. Number seven, last one not lace going to talk to them and asking them truly what are they looking for and what do they what do they want? Ultimately, so they might tell you in the beginning, oh, you know, I want one hundred thousand dollars for this thing, I think you find out what they're really looking for is maybe they just want like a stable job for a little bit, or maybe they just want maybe they want to go to nice vacation. Maybe if they want to go to nice vacation, you end up paying, you know, five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars for vacation. So I'm going really extreme here, right, So I think really getting to the heart of it, because oftentimes it isn't just the number. That's one important piece of it. But if you can find out emotionally what's important to them, you can maybe get crafty and get creative with how you structure a deal, and then you can save yourself a lot of money potentially. So that was number seven. But Neil, do you want to add anything. No, that's it when it comes to any site, you know, And this is my last piece of advice. SS isn't really any tips on doing diligence or simple ways to do diligence. But my last piece of advice for you guys is, if you're not one hundred and ten percent sure, don't go forward. There's enough opportunities out there. Be really really picky and careful with the type of sites you choose, and make sure they have years two three years ideally at minimum of history before you purch them because the last thing you want is something to just blow up in your face. And when a business or online site has three plus years of consistency, there's a higher chance that when you buy it, you can at least maintain it all. Right, So that is it for today. But guys, you can still register for our live event, Marketing School Live, that's happening on June twenty ninth. It's going to be an amazing event with amazing people. Also, please help us rate, review and subscribe to this podcast. I am going to read another review. It really helps us grow. You'll get a call out here too. So this is from James Bond three or James Bond third, So it says, binge listen five stars, great content. I listen at one point five x speed to get the information faster. I'll binge listen sometimes for hours out of time. I think my record is fifty episodes in one day. That is nuts. Keep it up. I'll finish listening to all the episodes at some point. That's kind of crazy, James Bond because I talk fast already, and Neil kind of talks fast too, so you're basically listening on three x. So thank you so much for that, James, and see the rest of you tomorrow. This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed up. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on the Marketing School

Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors Neil Patel and Eric Sue. All right, guys, before we start, we got a special message from our sponsor. If you want to rank higher on Google, you gotta look at your page speed time. The faster website loads, the better off you are with Google's Core Vital update. That makes it super super important to optimize your site for low time. And one easy way to do it is use the host that Eric and I use, dream Hosts. So just go to dream host or Google it, find it, check it out, and it's a great way to improve your low time. Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Sue, and today we're coming to you remotely talk about seven simple ways to do due diligence on a website. But first and foremost, Neil, what is due diligence and why do people need to do due diligence on a website? Due diligence is just a fancy word of saying, hey, you're gonna look through a website and check everything out. That could either be when you're looking at a website or a company to invest in, looking at a website to acquire, or even looking at a website to see if you can grow it. Cool. Yeah, so great. Leave it to Neil to have it very concise. So I'll go with number one. So number one, the tool I would use is actually Neil's tool Uber suggests, and I would use it to track a variety of things, and I'm not going to take all them, so Neil can have some love for his own tool. But what I would look at is taking a look at the number of organic keywords that the site is ranking for that way will have a good sense of how they are doing from an SEO perspective. Obviously there's other metrics you can take a look at, but I like looking at organic keywords because it shows I can see well, actually that in traffic value too, if I can look at both of them. Traffic value would kind of explain how much I would be paying Google if I'm paying for that traffic each month, and then also the potential kind of the whole pie for what they rank for I get a good sense of wordy s doAnd from su perspective, and getting that idea of strength basically will help me evaluate how much I should be paying, at least for one portion. The next thing I would do, if you're really trying to figure out, Hey, is this a good website, how does it compete with others? Check out a tool called similar web. Now most people use similar web to just see the traffic and is it declining is it growing? Because similar web doesn't just look at SEO traffic. They look at everything, even clickstream data. And what's beautiful about the tool, and this is my favorite part of this is what I really want you to look at when you're doing the diligence on a site, is they break down the countries in the regions a site is getting traffic from. This is important because not all traffic is equal. Now I'm from India, you know, I love India Indian ethnicity, but traffic from the United States tends to produce better revenue and more. In other words, you can generate more money from United States traffic than you can from India in general. Right, not always a case, but in most cases it is, And things like similar well will show you the breakdown. And the reason that's important is the last thing you want to do is focus too much time and energy on the wrong type of traffic. Even if it's the right keyword, it doesn't necessarily mean that that audience is going to convert. And it could just be people from that country don't have the budget, don't have the revenue, they don't have credit cards or whatever it may be. Yeah, number three. So there's tools that we can go through, and I think we're going to continue to go through tools in this one. But I think it's really important to make sure that based on the business that you're trying to buy, whether it's e commerce or maybe it's a services business, that you have a checklist when you're doing d D or due diligence, and maybe to keep it simple here, to keep it actionable, you're asking for specific reports, right, you want maybe the last trailing twelve months, with the last couple of years of reports on how they're doing from a revenue standpoint, if it's going up or down, because those are important things. That's just a starting point, right There's also a million other reports that you can ask for. But even if you just google due diligence checklists. You're going to find a lot to go through and you know a lot of this is floating around the web, so that's going to help you instead of you having to create something from scratch. Yeah. The next thing that you want to do is ask them what changes have they've tested out and done over the last twelve twenty four months that have helped grow in the business and which ones didn't work out. Then you want to fact check them, and you can fact check them through tools like a wayback machine to see if they made those changes. This will give you idea of what people like, what they don't like, and growth potential. The last thing you want to do is acquire a site in which there's not much upside potential. If someone's doing all these things and it's not moving the needle and you have better ideas, great, if you don't, then the upside is limited. Yeah. I was going to do that one. So the next one is what is this number five? Yeah? Number five. There are tools out there like Spyfu and ad beat which will show you how they're trending in terms of how much they're spending on ads, and I think you can do this through Uber suggest too, Right, Neil, correct, you can. Yeah, So basically use one of these tools. It's not going to be completely accurate in terms of how much they're spending dollar for dollar, but you can see over time they're how much they're spending in terms of or you're looking for the spending trends, right, if they stop spending on marketing at a certain period of time, that's where you can go in and ask questions and you can see if you're asking them and if what they're saying isn't aligning with what the trend shows, you can at least, you know, bring it up and say, hey, based on what I'm seeing over here, the spending stops, so you know what really happened. Because you know you're looking for a story, you're doing due diligence, right. You want the stories to align and that's going to help you lead to a better decision. Yeah. The next thing I would do is talk to their customers. Whether it's e commerce, whether it's service based, they have some sort of customers. Talking to them will give you an understanding of what other changes they can make to maximize the revenue. A lot of people don't have up cells, they don't have down cells. They don't have a funnel, they don't have cross sells. Adding these things can make you more money. But if you don't know what those things are, then you can just add random upsells and expect to make more money. You got to talk to people, and by talking to people before you acquire a business, at least you'll know what the potential upside is. Because if you talk to twenty thirty people and they all give you a similar thing that they love as an upsellar down cell, and you figure out, all right, here's another product that I can add that'll help boost your margins. But if they all tell you scattered responses and you don't have some consistency in what they're looking for, it becomes hard to create an upsellar downs or cross sell that works for that ideal audience. All right. Number seven, last one not lace going to talk to them and asking them truly what are they looking for and what do they what do they want? Ultimately, so they might tell you in the beginning, oh, you know, I want one hundred thousand dollars for this thing, I think you find out what they're really looking for is maybe they just want like a stable job for a little bit, or maybe they just want maybe they want to go to nice vacation. Maybe if they want to go to nice vacation, you end up paying, you know, five thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars for vacation. So I'm going really extreme here, right, So I think really getting to the heart of it, because oftentimes it isn't just the number. That's one important piece of it. But if you can find out emotionally what's important to them, you can maybe get crafty and get creative with how you structure a deal, and then you can save yourself a lot of money potentially. So that was number seven. But Neil, do you want to add anything. No, that's it when it comes to any site, you know, And this is my last piece of advice. SS isn't really any tips on doing diligence or simple ways to do diligence. But my last piece of advice for you guys is, if you're not one hundred and ten percent sure, don't go forward. There's enough opportunities out there. Be really really picky and careful with the type of sites you choose, and make sure they have years two three years ideally at minimum of history before you purch them because the last thing you want is something to just blow up in your face. And when a business or online site has three plus years of consistency, there's a higher chance that when you buy it, you can at least maintain it all. Right, So that is it for today. But guys, you can still register for our live event, Marketing School Live, that's happening on June twenty ninth. It's going to be an amazing event with amazing people. Also, please help us rate, review and subscribe to this podcast. I am going to read another review. It really helps us grow. You'll get a call out here too. So this is from James Bond three or James Bond third, So it says, binge listen five stars, great content. I listen at one point five x speed to get the information faster. I'll binge listen sometimes for hours out of time. I think my record is fifty episodes in one day. That is nuts. Keep it up. I'll finish listening to all the episodes at some point. That's kind of crazy, James Bond because I talk fast already, and Neil kind of talks fast too, so you're basically listening on three x. So thank you so much for that, James, and see the rest of you tomorrow. This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed up. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on the Marketing School