Even if you’re not in the marketing world, you probably heard of the name Neil Patel. Yes, he’s that famous. Aside from being a New York Times bestselling author and overall marketing guy, who is Neil Patel? Let’s get to know him better aside from being the following:
- A top influencer, according to The Wall Street Journal
- One of the top ten marketers according to Forbes
- The creator of one of the 100 most brilliant companies, according to Entrepreneur
- One of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30, according to President Obama
- One of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations
How Neil Patel Started
Before founding multimillion-dollar companies, Neil Patel began his marketing journey at the very young age of 16. In 2001, Neil started his first website called Advice Monkey, a job-board platform. He paid a few marketing firms to help him grow this. Unfortunately, he was conned.
Image Source: Neil Patel website
This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The situation forced Neil to learn marketing, and he learned it the hard way. He claimed that he was left with no choice but to be good at growing and marketing his website. Although it ranked surprisingly well on Google, he decided to close it, citing his reason as not having enough money to expand.
Born on April 24, 1985, Neil Patel was originally from London, England. That is until his family relocated to Orange County, California, USA when he was just two years old. Little is known about his personal life as he doesn’t share much. However, a few sources state that financial issues are the reason for the family’s cross-country move.
Neil was surrounded by entrepreneurs throughout his childhood, which was what probably urged him to be one. He credits his success to his mother’s tenacious nature and his father’s excellent work ethic. These characteristics are what made him and his sister live a modest, middle-class lifestyle.
After earning his BA, Marketing degree from California State University, Fullerton, he established his first venture, Crazy Egg. He spent the next six months pitching this new venture to capitalists but was unable to get the funding. Because of this, he started to learn how to make the business profitable, which again proved very enlightening.
By this time, Neil was already running an internet marketing agency, speaking at conferences in different locations while attending college full-time. Neil, along with his co-founders, entered many other ventures that weren’t as successful as Crazy Egg. From software applications to advertising podcasts, they tried them all and soon found their true calling. Enter Kissmetrics.
The rest, as they say, is history.
What Made Neil Patel Famous
Crazy Egg, Neil’s first successful endeavor, became a hit thanks to its analytics tools, Heat Map, Overlay, Scroll Map, and Confetti. These innovatively tracked a website’s operation and helped many businesses improve their conversion rates.
He then bought Hello Bar, a website devoted to helping brands reach their marketing and SEO goals. Next up was his purchase of another similar website, Kissmetrics, followed by his co-founding of the marketing agency NP Digital in 2017.
During this time, he acquired Ubersuggest, initially a keyword research tool. It grew to now include several other SEO and marketing uses such as SEO Analyzer, Backlink Checker, A/B Testing Calculator, and many more.
Neil Patel’s list of achievements does not stop there. He is also the co-founder of the podcast Marketing School. He co-founded it with well-known entrepreneur Eric Siu and is considered one of the most popular digital marketing podcasts ever.
As earlier mentioned, Neil is also a best-selling author. He co-wrote the book Hustle: The Power to Charge Your Life with Money, Meaning and Momentum. It is included in the bestseller lists of both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
How He Disrupted the Marketing World
A commendable trait of Neil Patel is his passion for marketing and teaching others how to do it. It may have stemmed from his first frustration over being ripped off by marketers in his Advice Monkey days. You can find his myriad of tutorials, blogs, how-to guides, and many other works scattered everywhere on the internet. Even his email newsletters are filled with marketing and SEO tips and tricks.
When you search for Neil Patel’s success stories, you’ll be bombarded with so many you’d be hard-pressed to know where to begin. There’s this story of TechCrunch increasing its traffic by 30% in just two months. Then there’s his blog article detailing how fintech Mint grew to 1.5 million users in a short span of two years.
You don’t even have to look far if you want to know how Neil disrupted the marketing world. His blog generates up to 4 million visitors each month, over half of them spending money on his paid ads. Marketing School isn’t doing bad itself, with over a million listens per month.
The list goes on and on. Neil’s YouTube channel has over 765,000 subscribers and has more than 31 million views. His Facebook fans are approximately 1 million, and he has about 399,000 followers on Twitter.
Today, Neil Patel has helped major companies with their revenue growth. This includes big named brands such as Amazon, Hewlett Packard, General Motors, NBC, and Viacom, to name a few. Improvement for Ubersuggest continues, as well as their blog on which they publish around 10 to 20 posts weekly.
Neil’s digital marketing agencies are scattered around the globe with over 400 employees. He keeps on helping businesses increase revenues through SEO and marketing strategies. To date, he has digital agencies in the US, India, Brazil, the UK, and Australia.
Neil Patel’s Brands
Below is a list of all the products, brands, and services that Neil Patel created:
- Crazy Egg
- Hello Bar
- Kissmetrics
- NP Digital
- Ubersuggest
- Marketing School
- Hustle
Neil Patel’s Net Worth
A self-made millionaire, Neil Patel’s net worth is estimated at $30 million. He has an approximate salary of around $100,000 per month. All these and more come from running his four multi-dollar million businesses. Neil also has investments in bonds, shares, and many others.
His wealth mostly comes from his online ventures, consultancy, blogs, and many more.
Fun Facts About Neil Patel
Let’s get to know this ubiquitous marketer with a few fun facts we gathered:
- Neil Patel was nicknamed “black box selling boy” in high school because he sold black boxes for CDs. He did this after his cousin started a business burning music on CDs.
- Neil’s first job at age 15 was at Knott’s Berry Farm, which only lasted for three months
- He tried his hand at door-to-door selling and found it hard to sell $1,600 Kirby vacuums to the average American, prompting him to quit
- While still in high school, Neil managed to take courses in a community college
- He considers his founding of Kissmetrics as a life-changing moment
- Neil is a massive fan of Facebook Messenger Chatbots because of its insane clickthrough rates
- He is a fastidious believer in content calendars
- He shares quotable quotes and other marketing tips on his Twitter
Lessons We Can Learn from Neil Patel
From marketing, blogging, to SEO, there are so many things we can learn from Neil Patel. Here are some of the best:
Content is King
While you may have heard this often enough to think that it has become already irrelevant, it still rings true. This is what Neil has to say about it:
“When it comes to building brand awareness for my company, the method that’s worked best has been content marketing. Although it involves a lot of work, and it takes six months to a year for it to be effective, it’s been proven to provide the biggest bang for the buck.”
He also adds that not all content is created equal. Some are destined to go viral while some will get lost in the archives. The lesson we can learn here is that not every content is king, only the valuable ones are.
Never Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
You can often see or hear Neil Patel encourage entrepreneurs to experiment with business tactics and strategies. If these fail, be always ready to start something new. If they do succeed, he says not to rest on your success.
He also iterates that once a business venture fails, move on to the next. Better yet, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. This means trying several ventures at a time to see what will work and what won’t. He was quoted as saying:
“Learn from your mistakes. The number one reason I see entrepreneurs failing isn’t because they make mistakes, but they keep on making the same ones over and over again. Learn from them and avoid making the same ones over again.”
Know Your Audience
Another cliche phrase, but as far as Neil Patel is concerned, it is vital. You have to listen to what your audience is saying and learn to communicate with them for your content to get digested. All the keyword research and SEO strategies you use will mean nothing if you can’t establish a connection with your readers.
“In today’s job market and entrepreneurial landscape, there is no room for being another face in the crowd. You have to separate yourself from the competition. You have to be more appealing to your target audience and you can achieve it by creating a recognizable personal brand.”
Follow what Neil does by simply replying to blog comments or finding out what your audience’s pain points are. Then, turn to your social media platforms to learn more about them or read their feedback. Whatever route you take, know that understanding your audience will help you create content that they will find useful and come back to often enough.
Image Source: Neil Patel Facebook Page
Final Thoughts
A prolific author, marketing guru, SEO wizard, Neil Patel is a success story that has its roots in hardship and perseverance. He was quoted as saying, “Don’t expect things to be handed to you or for doors to open up when you want them to. You have to be a go-getter and if you aren’t one, you better learn how to become one.” Wise words that we can all learn from.
