One of the most wonderful things about Neil Patel’s take on marketing strategy is that he shares so much of it with the world. His “Marketing School” podcast, broadcast together with Eric Siu, shares daily marketing insights, tips, techniques, and relevant anecdotes to help everyone improve their marketing skills.
In addition to learning from the podcast’s content, you can also discover amazing marketing tactics by paying attention to the ways that Patel and Siu have grown their podcast’s audience. As of a year ago, which is the most recent time that its hosts shared these metrics, Marketing School was seeing over 750,000 downloads per month and was approaching 1 million monthly downloads.
But don’t go thinking that Neil Patel got these kinds of numbers overnight, just because he’s a well-known marketer. Patel and Siu worked hard to reach this audience, and they don’t try to hide their methods.
Let’s take a deep dive into the valuable marketing insights that you can learn by reviewing the impressive growth of Neil Patel’s Marketing School podcast.
1. Distribute as widely as possible
Siu makes an important point when he says that “Not all people are hanging out on iTunes all the time.”
That’s why Marketing School, with all its recommendations for SEO strategies, content marketing tools, and valuable Neil Patel reviews, can be found on SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube, Stitcher, Neil Patel’s own marketing blog, Eric Siu’s own marketing blog, a dedicated MarketingSchool.io podcast website, and iTunes, and more besides!
An excellent example of how the podcast broadcasts itself is through the MarketingSchool website. See that left panel that’s asking you if you want to subscribe to any of these channels?
You might worry that cross-posting like this could dilute the impact of your content or attract disapproval from the powers that be at Google who police duplicate content. But take note from Marketing School; more channels means more reach and more listeners.
Also, publishing to more channels means more opportunities for listeners to leave reviews and ratings, which in turn bring in more listeners (more about that below).
2. Ask for ratings and reviews
Even famous marketers like Neil Patel need good reviews to raise visibility and boost listeners. iTunes rankings in particular depend a lot on positive reviews and high star ratings, with podcasts that have more stars and positive reviews appearing higher up in searches.
Siu and Patel continually ask listeners to leave a rating and a review, because as Patel notes, if you don’t ask, you won’t get one.
As part of their drive to reach 1 million monthly downloads, the marketing duo have even offered a reward; everyone who reviews Marketing School gets a premier seat or access to a bonus section at the free live event that Patel and Siu are planning to host in Los Angeles.
It looks like the strategy is working; a quick glance at just one page for Marketing School shows dozens of Eric Siu and Neil Patel reviews, alongside ratings that average 4.9 stars.
3. Aim for quantity (as well as quality)
If you’re a Marketing School fan, you’ll notice that each episode is quite short, sometimes as little as 5 minutes long. Although Siu and Patel admit that this wasn’t a deliberate marketing strategy, they’ve learned from experience that it was a good decision.
It turns out that the more episodes you produce, the more listeners you score, so 10 episodes of 5-10 minutes each bring in more listeners than 2 half-hour-long episodes, even if that adds up to the same amount of content. Neil noted this in one of their recent episodes, commenting “The people who produce the most amount of episodes, get the most amount of listens.”
For that reason, Marketing School recommends adjusting your iTunes settings to display all episodes of your podcast. Patel and Siu discovered this when downloads jumped after they changed their iTunes settings to show 300 episodes instead of 100.
Neil says that quantity is more important than quality, but I think that it’s important to stick to high-quality standards as well — if your podcasts lack value, you won’t get very far.
4. Ask for referrals
Patel and Siu admit that Marketing School got off to a good start thanks to Patel’s email list. He was able to share the podcast with all of the several thousand people who receive his marketing newsletters, raising interest from the very beginning.
However, the pair still put in plenty of work asking people to refer the podcast on to their own email lists, using tactics which also work for people who can’t partner with a well-known industry leader like Patel.
For example, when Marketing School reviewed the Ahrefs tool, Siu and Patel got in touch with Ahrefs and asked if they’d share that episode to their email and social media contacts.
Siu mentions the value of interviewing marketing leaders with an established following, so that they’ll promote that episode to their fans, enabling you to leverage their audience. Patel even suggests paying people to run an email or Twitter blast for your podcast.
5. Two heads are better than one
Don’t overlook the fact that Patel and Siu are producing Marketing School together. Although Neil Patel is vastly better known than Eric Siu, Siu himself has a respectable following as a marketing influencer.
By producing content together, the pair can draw on both audiences, and share the podcast on both sets of email lists, social media feeds, websites, and guest blogs. Having two hosts allows them to bounce ideas off each other, refine titles and topics together, and draw on their combined experience for anecdotes and examples.
In the same vein, Patel emphasizes that the goal of 1 million monthly downloads isn’t just about ego, but about making the circle of digital marketers stronger by expanding it. “This is what most bloggers, podcasters, people who do video don’t ever discuss,” he has said, “the bigger your community, the more you learn.”
By drawing on the questions, reactions, and reviews of their listeners, Patel and Siu are able to produce content that is more relevant, which in turn draws in more marketers and aspiring marketers who are eager to hear their advice.
A marketing podcast is more than the sum of its parts
Neil Patel’s Marketing School podcast provides more marketing lessons than the many pieces of killer advice shared by the two hosts. It’s also an amazing practical demonstration of how to make a successful podcast.
By broadcasting widely, producing plenty of content, working hard to gather ratings, reviews, and referrals, and benefiting from two hosts, Patel and Siu have produced a blockbuster of a podcast.
It doesn’t end there; the podcast helps Neil Patel to raise his reputation as a marketer and bring in more clients for his NP Digital marketing agency. It’s also giving Eric Siu’s own brand a huge boost, because now he’s bracketed with Patel as an industry leader and able to piggyback off the latter’s popularity. In sum, Marketing School doesn’t just teach actionable marketing tidbits, but also shows how to market a podcast, and in turn how to use a podcast to market a brand.
