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 got to 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 I'm Milt, and today we're going to talk about what you should do if you are not hitting numbers. So I'll share an anecdote back in my days where I was leading marketing at a online education startup called Treehouse. This is when I was I don't know, twenty six years old. I had no idea what was going on and I was only one one minute, one month into the job, and what happened was our revenues were flat for the last two years and we were not hitting numbers. Were flat, flat, flat, Okay, we only had a couple months of cash left in the bank and one month into my job where we were kind of in trouble, when I was promoted into my role, the CEO pulled me aside and said, hey, we're gonna have to let you go if you don't hit numbers this month. Totally like I was like, oh, what do I do? You know, I don't even know what to do. But what I did was this, At the time, I knew that we had to pause all of our AdSpend. I paused all of our AdSpend and then I audited what we were doing at the time. So don't feel like you need to jump into things quickly. Take a look at what you're doing, pause what you're doing, take a step back, and then start to analyze. Okay, and then from there, if you start to see some trends, you start to see some opportunities, go ahead and start betting. At the time, I paused everything, and I literally so some trends within our analytics around YouTube advertising, and I bet everything on YouTube advertising and it ended up working out and now they are a very healthy company. So that's just one example, and I'm just giving you a couple of tactics just for that case. But that's a framework you can use. The concept that I like looking at is if you're not hitting your numbers, that means whatever you're doing isn't working. You need to do drastic experiments. It could be the one that Eric just talked about. It could be a different one. It could be you try SEO. It could be you do paid ads. Could be you send your paid ads to a pre lander before you send them to your site. I don't know what it is, but it all comes down to experimentation. What's working, or what you think should be working isn't because if it was, you'd be hitting your numbers. Not saying you should turn off those things because some of them may be producing results, but instead you need to do crazy, drastic experiments. If you don't go all the way to the left or all the way to the right, you won't really figure out what your audience or potential customer base is sensitive to. And once you figure out what they're sensitive to and what really moves the needle. That's what you need to double down on because that'll help you hit your numbers. But it really comes down to experimentation. Everyone thinks that, oh, I can make this little tweak and I'll hit are my numbers? Where I can make this a B test? Or if I just lifted this by ten percent. When you're starting off, most of the basic stuff hasn't been done. It's not hard to hit your numbers. When you've been in business for years, it gets more difficult because all the basic things have already been done. That's why you need to go really to the extreme and try drastic changes. Yeah, and there's a couple of models that you can use, so I guess in some episodes we've shared the at least for us, and I think Neil's agency also does this as well. We run traction meetings, right, entrepreneurs Operating System. I recommend getting that book if you have a team, and then get your different teams. So we have our different teams running them right, Like you know, let's say paid advertising team or the content team too. Right, We're running these meetings and within those meetings, those are very structured to happen every single week in those meetings we use we have an experimentation section for the content team we called so ice. Right, you can use the ICE model, which is impact, confidence, and ease, and that way you're able to kind of score what you think your tests are, how they're going to perform. So you can score each section like let's say I Impact. I think this test is going to have a really high impact, So on a scale of one to ten, I'm going to give it a ten, and you score confidence. How confident are you that this test is going to succeed? Maybe a ten? And then the ease how easy is this to implement? Maybe that's a ten as well, And you score it and it's either a it ranges from as low as three to as high as thirty, And then you can make a little more informed decision on how you should prioritize all your different ideas, all your different tests, and then you're just methodically analyzing them seeing how you do overtime, because if you're not analyzing, you're not documenting how you're doing with your test. You're just kind of picking off the air and you're not sure where things are going, and then you're going to lose your shirt. Okay, you can use the ice model or you can google intercom Rice model that's a little more sophisticated. Once you get that out, once you get it going and you're figuring out how you can fix things, like if you're using the traction ice model, you'll end up learning that, hey, these are the things that we need to get done so that way we can grow when you're just tackling them one by one. But it's just a lot of hard work and experimentation. We ran the traction model for a very long time, and I remember in our sales meeting when we first started off, we weren't hitting the numbers. We would break down roadblocks, what's causing us from not hitting the numbers, crazy things that we need to test because everything that we thought would have worked didn't work, and eventually we got out of the slump. But it was just doing radically different things. To give you idea, the other day, I rolled out a webinar on my site neilptil dot com change up the lead flow from the sales reps. They all went crazy, at least two of them, the VP of sales and another guy named Nate who works with us. He's like, man, people have to register for a webinar before they become a lead. I'm like, yeah, they got to watch, you know, forty fifteen minutes before I'm going to even allow them to become a leader. And they're like, this is crazy. I wouldn't do them Like, well, you're not the ideal customer, you know. Fast forward a week started working. Still haven't seen enough results for us to know if this is going to beat out the old model. From the calls that they had, everyone showed up. They loved it. They were super engaged in like, oh, this could work. But if we didn't try something that crazy, Like just think about it. You have to sit down and watch your webinar for forty minutes before you're even allowed to become a lead. That's crazy talk. But it is working and it's doing something that's out of the norm. There you go, when people zig use zag in a different direction. So look, if you aren't hitting your numbers, just always come back to this one. Here's some wisdom. It's timeless. Hopefully it helps. By the way, we are looking to throw a live event with live streaming with recorded videos as well in Los Angeles. If you're able to help us hit one million dolloads over a thirty day period. Okay, so all we need you to do is go to Marketing School dot io slash stats that's with an S. You can see how we're performing over time, and then rate review, subscribe to this podcast, and once we hit that, we're going to throw the live event. We're aiming for Q one or Q two of twenty nineteen. We really need your help getting there. It's not some BS thing. Don't think like, oh oh, just wait, my vote's not going to count. Every single vote counts. We really appreciate it. I'm begging you again on video. If you guys do it, we'll love you forever and we'll see you tomorrow, and we love you either way. 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 of, 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 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 got to 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 I'm Milt, and today we're going to talk about what you should do if you are not hitting numbers. So I'll share an anecdote back in my days where I was leading marketing at a online education startup called Treehouse. This is when I was I don't know, twenty six years old. I had no idea what was going on and I was only one one minute, one month into the job, and what happened was our revenues were flat for the last two years and we were not hitting numbers. Were flat, flat, flat, Okay, we only had a couple months of cash left in the bank and one month into my job where we were kind of in trouble, when I was promoted into my role, the CEO pulled me aside and said, hey, we're gonna have to let you go if you don't hit numbers this month. Totally like I was like, oh, what do I do? You know, I don't even know what to do. But what I did was this, At the time, I knew that we had to pause all of our AdSpend. I paused all of our AdSpend and then I audited what we were doing at the time. So don't feel like you need to jump into things quickly. Take a look at what you're doing, pause what you're doing, take a step back, and then start to analyze. Okay, and then from there, if you start to see some trends, you start to see some opportunities, go ahead and start betting. At the time, I paused everything, and I literally so some trends within our analytics around YouTube advertising, and I bet everything on YouTube advertising and it ended up working out and now they are a very healthy company. So that's just one example, and I'm just giving you a couple of tactics just for that case. But that's a framework you can use. The concept that I like looking at is if you're not hitting your numbers, that means whatever you're doing isn't working. You need to do drastic experiments. It could be the one that Eric just talked about. It could be a different one. It could be you try SEO. It could be you do paid ads. Could be you send your paid ads to a pre lander before you send them to your site. I don't know what it is, but it all comes down to experimentation. What's working, or what you think should be working isn't because if it was, you'd be hitting your numbers. Not saying you should turn off those things because some of them may be producing results, but instead you need to do crazy, drastic experiments. If you don't go all the way to the left or all the way to the right, you won't really figure out what your audience or potential customer base is sensitive to. And once you figure out what they're sensitive to and what really moves the needle. That's what you need to double down on because that'll help you hit your numbers. But it really comes down to experimentation. Everyone thinks that, oh, I can make this little tweak and I'll hit are my numbers? Where I can make this a B test? Or if I just lifted this by ten percent. When you're starting off, most of the basic stuff hasn't been done. It's not hard to hit your numbers. When you've been in business for years, it gets more difficult because all the basic things have already been done. That's why you need to go really to the extreme and try drastic changes. Yeah, and there's a couple of models that you can use, so I guess in some episodes we've shared the at least for us, and I think Neil's agency also does this as well. We run traction meetings, right, entrepreneurs Operating System. I recommend getting that book if you have a team, and then get your different teams. So we have our different teams running them right, Like you know, let's say paid advertising team or the content team too. Right, We're running these meetings and within those meetings, those are very structured to happen every single week in those meetings we use we have an experimentation section for the content team we called so ice. Right, you can use the ICE model, which is impact, confidence, and ease, and that way you're able to kind of score what you think your tests are, how they're going to perform. So you can score each section like let's say I Impact. I think this test is going to have a really high impact, So on a scale of one to ten, I'm going to give it a ten, and you score confidence. How confident are you that this test is going to succeed? Maybe a ten? And then the ease how easy is this to implement? Maybe that's a ten as well, And you score it and it's either a it ranges from as low as three to as high as thirty, And then you can make a little more informed decision on how you should prioritize all your different ideas, all your different tests, and then you're just methodically analyzing them seeing how you do overtime, because if you're not analyzing, you're not documenting how you're doing with your test. You're just kind of picking off the air and you're not sure where things are going, and then you're going to lose your shirt. Okay, you can use the ice model or you can google intercom Rice model that's a little more sophisticated. Once you get that out, once you get it going and you're figuring out how you can fix things, like if you're using the traction ice model, you'll end up learning that, hey, these are the things that we need to get done so that way we can grow when you're just tackling them one by one. But it's just a lot of hard work and experimentation. We ran the traction model for a very long time, and I remember in our sales meeting when we first started off, we weren't hitting the numbers. We would break down roadblocks, what's causing us from not hitting the numbers, crazy things that we need to test because everything that we thought would have worked didn't work, and eventually we got out of the slump. But it was just doing radically different things. To give you idea, the other day, I rolled out a webinar on my site neilptil dot com change up the lead flow from the sales reps. They all went crazy, at least two of them, the VP of sales and another guy named Nate who works with us. He's like, man, people have to register for a webinar before they become a lead. I'm like, yeah, they got to watch, you know, forty fifteen minutes before I'm going to even allow them to become a leader. And they're like, this is crazy. I wouldn't do them Like, well, you're not the ideal customer, you know. Fast forward a week started working. Still haven't seen enough results for us to know if this is going to beat out the old model. From the calls that they had, everyone showed up. They loved it. They were super engaged in like, oh, this could work. But if we didn't try something that crazy, Like just think about it. You have to sit down and watch your webinar for forty minutes before you're even allowed to become a lead. That's crazy talk. But it is working and it's doing something that's out of the norm. There you go, when people zig use zag in a different direction. So look, if you aren't hitting your numbers, just always come back to this one. Here's some wisdom. It's timeless. Hopefully it helps. By the way, we are looking to throw a live event with live streaming with recorded videos as well in Los Angeles. If you're able to help us hit one million dolloads over a thirty day period. Okay, so all we need you to do is go to Marketing School dot io slash stats that's with an S. You can see how we're performing over time, and then rate review, subscribe to this podcast, and once we hit that, we're going to throw the live event. We're aiming for Q one or Q two of twenty nineteen. We really need your help getting there. It's not some BS thing. Don't think like, oh oh, just wait, my vote's not going to count. Every single vote counts. We really appreciate it. I'm begging you again on video. If you guys do it, we'll love you forever and we'll see you tomorrow, and we love you either way. 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 of, 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 Marketing School