Pod Insights Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips The Right Way to Speak at Conferences About this episode In this episode, Eric and Neil reveal the right way to speak at conferences for lasting impact. They share actionable tips on crafting talks that resonate, connecting with attendees beyond the stage, and why building relationships matters more than just delivering a speech. Plus, they discuss how top SEO influencers approach community, and unpack their enterprise content strategies, showing that listening to customers drives real results. TIMESTAMPS (00:00) The right way to speak at conferences (04:00) Why post-talk networking is crucial for impact (08:00) Lessons from top SEO influencers and YouTube strategy (14:00) Building a data-driven content team (18:00) Navigating slow lead periods in agency life 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗡𝗘𝗟 Welcome to Marketing School, one of the top business podcasts with over 61 million downloads. Each episode delivers actionable marketing tips and strategies from two entrepreneurs who truly practice what they preach. The show is hosted by Eric Siu, founder of Leveling Up and Single Grain, and Neil Patel, co-founder of Neil Patel Digital and recognized by Forbes as a Top 10 Marketer. LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HOSTS Eric Siu – Leveling Up: https://www.youtube.com/@LevelingUpOfficial Neil Patel: https://www.youtube.com/@neilpatel FREE RESOURCES Growth Newsletter: https://levelingup.beehiiv.com/subscribe Ubersuggest: https://www.ubersuggest.com/ Answer The Public: https://www.answerthepublic.com/
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot Starter Plan brings all of those details together, so it's easier to track what's happening with every deal and what to do next. It pulls information from calls and emails. Then it gets to work, logging and summarizing them. Right after your call ends, HubSpot pulls next steps from your call notes and drafts suggested follow-ups. And it stays up to date for you, so you can build demand, win more deals, and spend less time on repetitive work. Your records, insights, and next steps are ready for you to act on. And you don't have to miss a beat searching for any of it. Try the Starter Plan for $10 a month. Learn more at hubspot.com. By the way, you have this one over here on the right way to speak at conferences. So you just spoke in Sydney this week and in...
0:41 Speaker 01 Dallas.
0:41 Speaker 00 Dallas, okay. I drove down to San Diego to support Tim Solo's event. So let's talk about this, the right way to speak at conferences.
0:50 Speaker 01 When I look at most people who speak at conferences, they just speak and they walk away. And when they speak, they focus on their message that they want to get across. The first thing you need to think about is when you're speaking is, yes, you may have a message, but how can your message help the people in the audience resonate with them? And more importantly, how can they take action on them or change the way they're doing marketing or business or whatever you're speaking on, right? Coaching or health, it doesn't matter. It needs to impact them in some way. Not that, oh, this was just an amazing speech, I can relate to it, but like, this is what I'm gonna do now. Like, you want to empower them where they actually want to make change. That's the first thing.
1:33 Speaker 01 The second thing is people just walk away and they don't think about how the attendees, whether it's a free event or paid event, they may have spent money, but they're spending their time and they could be doing something else, but they chose to watch you speak. As a speaker, you should have appreciation of that, and you should go above and beyond to help them out when they come up to you after and they want their questions answered.
2:02 Speaker 01 So like, if someone emails me after, I will try, assuming I actually see it. If I see it, I will respond and I will answer their questions. Sometimes I do miss it because I don't know where they're emailing or it goes into spam, or maybe I just miss it because I get so many emails. But I do try to genuinely respond to everyone, and I do try to... Answer people's questions right then and there. So I remember one of the events I was at, I'm not gonna name names, but one of the events I was at, they tried to escort me and they said, oh, we'll try to push, you know, get you to your room. And, you know, people started asking me questions and they're like, Neil has to go. He only has a few, a few quick seconds and he has to go. And I'm like, no, it's okay. I'll answer their questions.
2:45 Speaker 01 Don't get me wrong. I could have just been in my room, watched some Netflix or more likely I would have done work than watching Netflix. No, you're more likely you would have done both at the same time. Yeah, cuz I always have, I usually have CNBC on the background while I'm working. The problem with Netflix is, is I had to watch the show like 10 times. Love is Blind, great show. Is it good? Great show. See, those kind of shows you have to actually pay attention to. Yeah. So it's gonna be hard for me to watch that.
3:14 Speaker 01 We can debate that at lunch. Okay, so you probably don't need to pay attention to it, but if you wanna really get all the drama that's happening, you have to pay attention. So it's just like, I believe that you should go to everyone or you should be available for majority of the people. It's hard with everyone depending on the event size and answer their questions. It's the right thing to do. You know, I don't care who you are. You could be worth billions of dollars. If someone's taking their time to listen to you, you should try to help them out. Yeah, so here's the funny thing with, so for the A-Trust event, cuz it's San Diego, right? And it was raining on Tuesday. I'll say, okay, I'm gonna speak and then I'm gonna peel out the coat, right? But I was like, no, but I still, I still left 90 minutes afterwards just to stop and speak to people, right?
3:57 Speaker 01 Cuz that's actually where the, the alpha is, the people that you talk to afterwards, you're actually building a relationship and you never know where these people are gonna end up later, right? Some of these people that came, it's like, oh, I was watching your stuff, our stuff in the very beginning, since they're like 19 years old or whatever. And like, look at where they are in their career, right? And so I think for me, like, one of the biggest dopamine hits I get from it is seeing people grow. And I enjoy helping people. I think you enjoy helping people too. And so the right way isn't to just, you know, appear and then disappear and act like you have, you're too important for the crowd. Cuz you're there to, you're there to deliver value, right? And that's part of the value delivering piece. So this is funny because we have a, we have a mutual friend that likes to go into events and then he speaks and then he just leaves immediately. And we had someone else speak about it. We have a mutual friend? Yeah, I'll tell you, I'll tell you who it is at lunch. Where do they live?
4:42 Speaker 01 You know, he, they live in Beverly Hills. In Beverly Hills?
4:47 Speaker 00 Yeah, don't worry, I'll tell you after.
4:49 Speaker 01 I can't think of who they are.
4:51 Speaker 00 Don't worry, I'll tell you after.
4:52 Speaker 01 I know him though.
4:53 Speaker 00 Oh, you know him very well? Yeah. But yeah.
4:56 Speaker 01 Okay, okay, tell me later.
4:57 Speaker 00 I'll tell you after, yeah.
4:58 Speaker 01 I'm like blanking on a name. I know most entrepreneurs who live here in Beverly Hills.
5:02 Speaker 00 Don't worry, I'll tell you after.
5:03 Speaker 01 Are they in marketing and SEO?
5:04 Speaker 00 Yeah.
5:05 Speaker 01 Okay, I know who you're talking about. There's not a ton of us here in Beverly Hills. But I don't know if they actually live in proper Beverly Hills. I could be wrong.
5:15 Speaker 00 I'll tell you after. But anyway, my point is, it's like, we've been speaking for quite a while. You've traveled, we said we're gonna speak less this year, you just rounded back up again.
5:24 Speaker 01 Economy's bad, I don't have a choice.
5:26 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah. But anyway, that's that. You highlighted another one here, I think you...
5:30 Speaker 01 Well, before we switch topics, you were at an SEO event. Who are the rock stars who are well-known in SEO these days? Because I haven't been to SEO event and I can't even remember the last time I went to one.
5:41 Speaker 00 I think, so in my mind, I think Kevin Indig's still great. So Kevin Indig, remember, he worked at Shopify for a little bit. I think, to me, he's like an SEO influencer.
5:50 Speaker 01 Tim is?
5:50 Speaker 00 Uh, Tim Solo, definitely.
5:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:53 Speaker 00 And then, I'm trying to think who else stands. Aleda Solis stands out to me. Eli Schwartz stands out to me, even though he doesn't speak at a lot of these things. I think that guy that runs Graphite, that SEO agency, he kind of stands out to me too. I think his name's Ethan. I like the data that he shares.
6:09 Speaker 01 I should check him out, I haven't seen his stuff.
6:10 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:11 Speaker 01 Sam, who creates the Atrus videos, he's probably well-known.
6:15 Speaker 00 So I hung out with him. You want to know what's funny? So he's around our age, right? And he does the YouTube channel. I don't know if I should be saying this before, we were just talking about how much we hate making YouTube videos.
6:23 Speaker 01 We all do, dude. But we have to do it. It's like part of like life.
6:27 Speaker 00 It's part of search everywhere. Like, if you want to get found, like, this is what you gotta do now. So, yeah.
6:31 Speaker 01 And YouTube drives, I think Tim once said, 10% plus of their revenue or somewhere around there.
6:36 Speaker 00 YouTube's huge for them. They crush it with YouTube, yeah. Like, they, this is the difference between our YouTube channels versus theirs, right? I think yours is pretty good. I think mine's is like poo poo right now. But I look at theirs, they spend a lot of time on the ideation, which is what Mr. Beast does, and then on the packaging. I think most people in the SEO world, they spend too much, "Oh yeah, I'm gonna make a YouTube strategy for you. Let's focus on the tagging, let's do keyword research." You're just thinking about it like an SEO. You gotta think about it natively.
7:04 Speaker 01 So, we spend a lot of time thinking about the packaging, the editing, all that, and we have for a while.
7:10 Speaker 00 We's not you, right?
7:11 Speaker 01 The what?
7:11 Speaker 00 We's not you, right?
7:13 Speaker 01 Uh, I'm saying we as an NP digital for my own channel.
7:17 Speaker 00 Oh, got it. Yeah. So for your channel, but okay, go on, go on.
7:20 Speaker 01 We spend a ton of time thinking about ideation, packaging, um, what will resonate. The problem is, is, and this is why I would say Ahrefs gets more success from their channel than I do from mine. It's, they focus on selling software from their channel. You agree with this, right? But if you look at it, they're not blatantly just, uh, shilling their, their software, even though it's good software.
7:45 Speaker 00 Yeah.
7:45 Speaker 01 They're more so trying to educate first.
7:47 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
7:48 Speaker 01 Because of their price point, YouTube works really well for someone like them. Because we're focusing on enterprise and ideally trying to get multimillion dollar contracts. YouTube is great for being top of mind, but it is not as big of a revenue driver as some, someone may think. So if you look at our channel, we track what topics from blogs, from content that actually create leads and eventually revenue. We also look at the type of stuff that our enterprise clients are paying us for and their big pain points. We try to create content around that. A lot of that stuff doesn't generate the most amount of views.
8:27 Speaker 01 If I talk about what is going to happen in SEO in 2026, that'll get five, 10 times more views than some of my pieces of content that are really specific on, let's say, like ChatGPT. ChatGPT marketing has been beaten to death. I'm assuming you agree with this statement, right?
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9:20 Speaker 01 It doesn't generate as many views, but we'll get questions from our potential customers or our enterprise customers, the ones we work with. They're asking us questions on like, how is ChatGPT going to be sustainable and what are they going to do? Right? Like they're asking these questions because like, oh, we saw a report that they're losing money. Or, um, you know, they're talking about, oh, YouTube's changing. What does that mean for me? So we'll talk about YouTube changes. But when you think about like, and I had a video on that and only got, uh, 73,000 views, which is good, but the YouTube update that changes everything. And yes, it's on YouTube, so it's doing better there.
9:59 Speaker 01 But that type of content isn't going to be applicable as much to someone searching on YouTube being like, what's a YouTube SEO strategy or a hack or how can I get more traffic or sales? Right? Um, and you know, like I had another video that did only 21,000 views. Ads are going to take over AI search. And I end up breaking down chat, YouTube, Google, perplexity. Most people don't care about that stuff, but our customers are talking to us more about ads in these platforms and not all of them have ads than actually the organic side. Cause if you look at most of these enterprise companies, they spend majority of the money on paid ads. So we tend to create content that appeals to enterprises and it's really hard
10:43 Speaker 01 to generate a direct ROI from YouTube and social channels. Uh, because of long sales cycle and how it's so multi-touch. So what I'm hearing is you are looking at maybe the blog content or whatever, ever, whatever content that converts well on your website, maybe. And then you're taking that and then that, that serves as maybe a baseline ideation thing for your YouTube channel.
11:06 Speaker 01 Two things. So we look at what blog content they read to become a lead. And then we look at which of those leads actually converts into customers. Then we look at which of those customers are spending the most amount of money with us. Okay. Then we try to correlate back to, we don't look at just like one customer. We look at multiple data points from not just which ones are leads, but which ones are leads with how much of a budget. Cause that gives you an indicator of how much you're willing to spend. What's enterprise and what's non-enterprise? What content are they reading before they submit a RFP to us? Right? So we're looking at those indicators to see the type of content that's generating the most amount of revenue per contract.
11:49 Speaker 01 The second thing we look at is when we're talking to those ideal customers. We, you know, I do use Gong still. Yeah. Okay, so Gong records your sales conversations, assuming you're disclosing, you're allowed to, all that kind of stuff. You're not breaking any privacy rules, right? Ideally, you should be listening more than you're talking on the entry or opening calls. And Gong will tell you if your salespeople are talking too much versus listening. And Eric hit upon this a little bit earlier on, or maybe it was before we started recording. If you don't listen to people and you don't understand what issues they have, you're not going to know how to pitch. And you're not going to know the rest of the sales process is going to be screwed up. Your first call should be a lot of listening.
12:31 Speaker 01 So we try to listen to the main pain points that customers have. And again, we do this for ideal customers. And based on those two variables, that is how we go and figure out what type of content to go and create on these social platforms. And a lot of them won't get views. Like, for example, I put out data on how long does it take to meet someone at a conference before they close into a customer?
12:58 Speaker 01 A lot of our enterprise customers have been curious about this because we've been spending more and in-person events from a marketing standpoint. And they wanted data on this, so it took us months to do this. But we gathered enough companies that had data and then we were able to do a study on it. But the point I'm getting at is I got very terrible views. We didn't care that it didn't get a hundred thousand, five hundred thousand views. It's for our ideal customer versus creating content on, here's a chat GPT hack that'll get you mentioned in 24 hours. Like, that's cool. I bet you a lot of SMBs would love to watch that. And there's actually some hacks that we can go over.
13:42 Speaker 01 But dude, when we talk to enterprise companies, they don't care about any of those hacks. They're just like, here's a channel. It drives X percent of revenue. Here's all my other channels. People are saying this one, ChatGPT or perplex you or AI LLMs, they're going to be huge. How do we get more market share? You tell them about a hack? No one gives a crap about it.
14:02 Speaker 00 It won't process for them.
14:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, it won't process. They're just like, okay, we do a billion dollars a year. This one channel drives 10 million. The rest drive 990 million dollars. How do we go from 10 million to driving additional 90 million a year? So instead of a billion a year in revenue, we do a billion 90 million.
14:20 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
14:21 Speaker 01 Right? That's the kind of stuff they want to know about.
14:24 Speaker 00 Yep.
14:24 Speaker 01 And they know they're not going to get there with hacks.
14:26 Speaker 00 And how is this team structured that helps you? It's definitely not you finding all this. So who's, who's doing? You have a data analyst, you have a, you have a visualization person. How is this structured?
14:37 Speaker 01 So, uh, we have a data analytics team at NP Digital.
14:41 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
14:42 Speaker 01 It's automatically set up and it gets spit out into not Excel, it's a Google Sheet. So everything's in Salesforce, it's, uh, popped in there, but we actually use Google Sheets to look at and, and it changes every single week. I look at it more so on a monthly basis. But it changes every single week where it breaks on the type of content that's been creating the most amount of closes. And it updates on a weekly basis and it's co-horted out. Cause the last thing you want to do is you data from 2023 and be like, wow, this drove a lot back then. We'll know what's driving revenue today. So that automatically tells our team what content is appealing and it ends up showing you revenue being closed and average, uh,
15:24 Speaker 01 uh, marketing budget based on the content type for the leads that are coming in. So that gives us IDs, uh, ideas. And then Nick Rochon from our enterprise team, cause he deals with all the sales reps.
15:37 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:37 Speaker 01 You know, and he talks to everyone on a global basis. He'll end up telling me, cause I talked to him multiple times a week, uh, the hot topics. So I take both those two, I send them to, uh, internal team solo. Technically, I don't send them to anyone, solo just gets it. And then solo starts parsing out, here are the main topics that people want us to discuss about. And on a monthly basis, there'll be around 10 topics. Then four of them get chosen and the content gets scripted out. Then I go into a studio and then I just go and record.
16:15 Speaker 00 Yep.
16:15 Speaker 01 And then the team goes and edits. I watched the video once after it's edited. I'll leave my comments in. I think it's frame.io is what we use.
16:24 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
16:25 Speaker 01 I'm pretty sure it's frame. It's an Adobe product.
16:28 Speaker 01 And then it gets published. I don't check to see if they actually make the edits. I already know they're gonna make the edits. So that's how the video side is done. For the data side, uh, it's a combination of Solo and Kyle. Kyle works on, manages the software products and so the public uber suggests all the data feeds that we're getting in and collecting from third parties that we pay for. Solo deals with the studies, the surveys, the vendors, the contractors that we're paying to help us out on that. So between both of those two, we end up getting the data, gets pushed out from Kyle gets out usually from engineers. Solo gets it from the vendors we're paying to help us execute on it. And then, believe it or not, once we have the data, Solo himself goes and does the graphs.
17:14 Speaker 00 This is what happens when you have a lot of competent people that you're, it's like, it just, it flows, everything clicks.
17:21 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
17:21 Speaker 00 Yeah.
17:21 Speaker 01 And then Solo and I like will have the data and he'll send it to us. And sometimes we don't use it because the research didn't come up with anything that's cool or interesting. It's just like, this is crappy data. I'm not talking about the quality of the data, just like crappy data.
17:39 Speaker 00 It's uninteresting.
17:40 Speaker 01 It's not interesting.
17:41 Speaker 00 Yeah.
17:42 Speaker 01 So then some of those pieces get thrown away. And when I say some of those pieces, it used to be a lot at the beginning. I would probably say close to like 60%. We've gotten much better at picking, uh, picking topics that are interesting because we actually asked our data team. A, what are clients talking to you about when it comes to data and analytics? But B, what data do we have that is interesting? And I would say at this point, uh, it's less than 20% that gets thrown away, but I know it's more than 15%.
18:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, that's a lot better than before.
18:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, and our goal is to get it down to under 10%. I don't ever think it'll be at 0% because if it's at 0%, you're not pushing the envelope and trying enough new things.
18:24 Speaker 00 Yep. Dude, speaking of which, um, you and I kind of texted earlier this week, or maybe last week or so, and I've been looking at other agencies. Um, some are, you know, some are, you know, PE-backed, uh, platforms and all that, and they're saying that leads are slowing down. Have you seen anything in your, just talking to other people?
18:43 Speaker 01 I have, and I asked my team, and, uh, I think I pinged, uh, Salo or Kyle. I can ask, uh, Salo right now. He should get back to me pretty quick. Uh, for what, what timeframe do you want to know?
18:55 Speaker 00 We're just talking Q3, Q4. So apparently these agencies are experiencing like a Q4 slowdown in leads.
19:03 Speaker 01 And I think I mentioned you on this, Q4 is our busiest time of the year.
19:07 Speaker 00 Yeah, which is strange to me that I'm hearing this in other areas, so.
19:11 Speaker 01 For you, has it been slowing down?
19:12 Speaker 00 For us, yeah, I would say it's, it's slowed down a little bit too. Whereas like, uh, last month, it was really strong. So, yeah.
19:19 Speaker 01 I know from a new contract standpoint, August was a hot month for us, and September was a really hot month for us.
19:26 Speaker 00 Yeah, August and September were good for us.
19:28 Speaker 01 And you're saying October, you're seeing a slowdown?
19:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
19:32 Speaker 01 Uh, let's see. Salo, notifications are silent. Let's see if I can FaceTime audio him right now.
19:40 Speaker 01 Let's see if he answers.
19:43 Speaker 00 While Neil pulls this up, this is, this is real time. When you need something, this is what I do in Slack. I just hit the huddle button, just like Neil's just hitting the FaceTime button when he needs something. That's what you gotta do. That's how you move things along. Because guys, every single week is 2% of the year. And when people try to delay.
20:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, let me ask Kyle.
20:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, see? And by the way, this is another thing. When you don't get what you need in an organization, you go to someone that, and not say, Salo's amazing, by the way, but sometimes you have multiple people you can go to. You want to create redundancies. That's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.
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