“SEO is a race, not a sprint” – Neil Patel
If you know well about the terms, ‘PPC’, ‘Inbound marketing’ or ‘SEO’, there are high chances that you are familiar with the man who has gained immense popularity with his entrepreneurial and digital marketing skills, Neil Patel, 31, is a famous digital marketing entrepreneur. Neil is the founder of a successful online marketing company, NP Digital. Not only this, but Neil has also founded Crazy Egg, and Hello Bar. He has previously founded and sold various other impeccable companies like Quicksprout. Neil was born in London, UK, and has over a decade of experience and has gained success and popularity in the world of digital marketing. The question that often arises is what made him become a multi-millionaire? Read below to know about his companies and his journey towards success:
STARTING WITH DIGITAL MARKETING
While many people start their businesses with enthusiasm and excitement, only a few stick around when they face huge setbacks. Most people would go back to their 9 to 6 job after a business failure but what do you think would happen when your business fails and you are stuck with a debt of over $1 Million at the age of just 21? Imagine if just reading this gives you chills, Neil went through this situation and won at it, he stayed true to his entrepreneurial roots and never looked back!
Neil launched two startups called KissMetrics and CrazyEgg which have been growing at a very good pace and Neil went up from making six figures doing SEO consulting and providing other marketing services for Fortune 500 companies during high school to building multi-million dollar startups. Neil has experience of more than 10 years now, he started by building a website that failed and did not get much traffic. Like most of the teens, he thought that his website would be a hit and he would make millions but rather, it flopped even though he hired some marketing professionals to assist him but got ripped off instead. Neil then believed in his own research about online marketing and ideas, he learned it himself and gradually got really good at it!
“I had to learn internet marketing myself and eventually got pretty good at it and ranked my own site on search engines like Google. I thought I was going to make a ton of money because I had a ton of traffic. However, the truth is, if you don’t know how to monetize your site, it doesn’t matter how many visitors you have, you’re not going to make any money.” – NEIL PATEL
He was not able to monetize and as a result, failed terribly but he realized that he was quite good at getting high traffic on sites and was able to find people who required his services and were interested. He knew that his skill was powerful as companies were interested and from then, Neil has never looked back. Like most leaders and successful people, Neil didn’t achieve this success overnight and it wasn’t a smooth journey, which we can say for sure. Neil grew up in a middle-class family but from the very beginning, he surrounded himself around knowledgeable people with positive energy which gave him a positive and strong mentality to be a great leader.
NEIL’S ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY
Neil is the Co-Founder of companies like NP Digital, Hello Bar, Crazy Egg & KissMetrics and has helped Fortune 500 companies like HP, Amazon, Viacom, GM, and NBC to reach a high revenue growth. Neil had started obtaining entrepreneurial skills from his home as he was surrounded by professionals. His maternal uncles at that time were owners of multiple businesses that rubbed off on his mom, convincing her to start her home daycare business. Neil started to build his career at the ‘John F. Kennedy High School’ during his beginning year, where his older cousin earned by selling burned CDs. Neil started to follow in the footsteps of his cousin but he did not sell pirated media to stay on the safe side. He started to notice the low return on investment and then he switched to a more profitable venture of selling black boxes and capitalized on it by purchasing black cable boxes from eBay with the aim of making more money. Neil later got into reselling automotive parts due to legal concerns, for which, he obtained a resellers permit from the State Board of Equalization.
Neil was hired for his first actual job at Knott’s Berry Farm when he was 15, his job involved cleaning restrooms, throwing out the trash, cleaning up vomit, and picking up trash. As opposed to what most people think, Neil absolutely loved this job because of the reason that he could make some extra cents every hour than some other jobs at the same place. Neil started a sales job at Quality Systems after about three months in his previous job, his work in this company was to sell Kirby Vacuums costing about $1600. When he realized that the work won’t help him get rich, he made up his mind to explore other opportunities, for which, his sister introduced him to his boss, an Oracle Consultant. Neil studied the business model and plan of Monster.com which helped him launch Advice Monkey, his own job board, which was yet again an unsuccessful attempt, but he got to know the vast potential of Internet Marketing. Thus, to avail the advantages of this field, he joined Cypress junior college to find out about Digital Marketing, where he got his first lead. Then, he initiated a business venture together with her sister’s boyfriend, her present husband, and created the Crazy Egg that created an enormous buzz. Neil was aiming to sell it but he failed with which he commenced working on it and acquired a good reputation in the market. Today, he owns several software and internet marketing firms, including the popular KISSmetrics, and has invested in multiple businesses. After earning a huge revenue and fame, Neil is looking forward to helping non-profit organizations with his skills, to help them grow and make the world a better place.
ABOUT HIS COMPANIES
One of his leading companies is NP Digital. He co-founded this company with Mike Kamo in 2017. It is a marketing agency specializing in performance marketing. The company offers top-level services like:
- Search Engine Optimization: It includes audience analysis, competitive analysis, content analysis, link building, and content promotion, social media marketing and mutual review of current site, etc.
- Content Marketing: It includes content cluster creation, digital PR, content promotion, influencer marketing, and existing content audit and optimization.
- Data Analytics and Insights: It includes data strategy, data analog, data modeling, machine learning, and advanced analysis, data architecture, testing, and optimization.
- Social Media Marketing: Based on the client’s business objectives, the company provides ongoing paid social campaigns, targeting, messaging, creative, and copy recommendations across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, and YouTube.
- Programmatic Advertising: It includes planning, activation, optimization, and analysis of programmatic campaigns end to end.
- Paid Search Marketing: It includes planning and testing of media strategies to adapt to client’s business needs and, most importantly, the client’s customers.
Another company, KISSmetrics was born after Neil and his partner had to find venture funding for CrazyEgg. Investors wanted something bigger – a much bigger vision with real scale potential. KISSmetrics hit the spot and they were ready to secure $4 million in funding.
Today Neil spends most of his time on KISSmetrics and also building his profile online, together with his blog QuickSprout at the middle of his personal branding campaign.
Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics provide advanced business analytics and website traffic analysis services in two alternative ways. He founded KISSmetrics with Hiten Shah. In 2008, with the help of his team, Patel developed a replacement robust analytics solution that the majority of companies were checking out. With these two companies, he has been assisting several fortune 5oo companies including AOL, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, and Viacom, helping them track the precise source of their visitors and make money from the web.
At the age of only 21, Neil became a top 100 blogger by Technorati and was called one among the highest influencers on online by the Wall Street Journal. Neil started his company from a humble beginning of his own realization. KISSmetrics may be a web and mobile analytics platform that permits users to trace, analyze and optimize their digital marketing performance.
To conclude, Neil has grown to be the best example of a digital marketing pro, his work has inspired many young digital marketers to start their own ventures and to explore. Also known as the SEO guru, Neil’s sheer determination and hard work have changed the entrepreneurial game!
