Marketing Intensity vs Strategy – What’s More Important?

0:00Welcome to Marketing School, the only podcast that provides daily top-level marketing tips and strategies from entrepreneurs that practice what they preach and live what they teach. Let's start leveling up your marketing knowledge with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Hsu.

0:20All right, so we're going to talk about the difference between marketing intensity versus strategy and which one is more important. So I'll set the stage for this one and then we can kind of go back and forth. So strategy at the end of the day, people talk about strategy. What's the difference between strategy versus tactics? So high level, at least from my opinion, is strategy is the thinking piece and then the tactics. That's the actual doing piece, right? You need the tactics tied into the strategy and you kind of need both to move something forward to ultimately get to your end goal. So that's the strategy piece.

0:48But what ends up happening is oftentimes people talk about marketing strategy, what strategy would be using, a brand strategy, this and that. And we spend all this time thinking, thinking, thinking. But the reality is I'm arguing that what might actually matter more because I was reading a paper the other day is that the intensity matters, especially when you're starting a marketing campaign up or you're starting a business up. what matters more is your intensity and how quickly you're pushing, how quickly you're iterating. And so my argument is going to be intensity and we can elaborate on that.

1:15Go ahead, Neil. Yeah. So think of it as what are the concepts that you need to work on with your marketing and how hard and fast can you execute on them? I would actually say strategy is really important, but not endless amounts of strategy. So a lot of companies focus on what are the 10, five, whatever number of best strategies that we should work on. Instead of working on what's the best 10 or five strategies, what's the best one or two strategies that works really, really well that for your competitors or other people within your space, and how can you just be super intense on that strategy and go all in?

1:50I think if you go all in on one or two strategies, you're better off focusing your efforts on finding tons and tons of different approaches or strategies. And that's what we see at our company when we're doing consulting at NP Digital. Most of the companies that we're working with, they have these 10, 20, 30 strategies that they want to work on and they lack focus. And if you lack focus and you're not going in hard on the strategies that you know should work, you're not going to get the results because then you're just spread too thin. And I remember I used to tell Eric this really early on. Eric, he still does.

2:26He has a ton of books behind him. Reading is great. You should read as much as possible. I spend probably two, three hours a day at least reading. But I remember at one point, and Eric has changed quite a bit, and he's evolved so much as an entrepreneur in a great way. He used to continually try to read books, learn new concepts. I don't know if you remember, Eric, just a few years ago, you would always try to find the latest and the greatest. These days, he's more about being operationally efficient and how can you just execute on what needs to be done instead of worrying about 10 different things or finding five new ideas on how to grow.

3:00He focuses on the fundamentals and executing on them. Yeah, and by the way, so those of you that can see on YouTube, the books behind me, it's funny because Neil and I have debated on the merits of a coach, but that's a separate thing. But I was talking to my coach and he's like, he's trying to make a point on like how I have so many books behind me and how I've read both of them. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I read like 5 % of the books behind me because the way I look at the library behind me is it's a reference point. So if I need something, for example, there is a book over there called The Fabric of Reality or something like that, that I want to read later because I was listening to like a Naval Ravikant podcast.

3:31I was like, oh, I want to listen to that to kind of broaden my view on kind of philosophy and science and all that. And so I might read that later, but I'm only going to pull things that I need and maybe pull a section from it. It's almost like these are all like blog posts in there from like the best writers out there. So that's one way of looking at it. Now I digress, but coming back to the intensity and strategy thing first. So you might be saying, okay, well, you know, I'm not getting enough SEO traffic right now. And so, you know, the question is, okay, so like, are you producing enough blog posts right now?

4:00Are you reaching out to enough people to build links? Or you might be saying, hey, you know, I want to be healthier. Well, what does your diet look like? And how often are you going to the gym? And how often are you lifting weights, right? And so what matters ultimately, is the intensity that you're putting into it. Like, if you want to, you know, gain more muscle, then go lift more weights, go do more reps, right? If you want to gain more traffic, for the most part, it's content and links, right? And so, oh, we aren't reaching enough prospects right now. We're not getting enough leads. Okay. So what are you doing to creatively get in front of people?

4:27What are you doing to increase your response rate? How many iterations are you going through? It's not just, oh, here's our strategy and it didn't work. It's like, how intense were you with that strategy? How intense were you with the iterations on the tactics? And that's what's ultimately going to drive results, right? It's not just, oh, like, oh, we came up with this beautiful strategy and here's 10 different strategies with 10 different consultants from all these different, you know, not going to get you very far. It's like you actually have to do the work. Yeah. Look, focus on execution strategies and porn pick one or two of the right ones and focus majority of your time on execution strategy shouldn't even take up 10 % of your time.

5:04Yep. Look, I think even at this stage, you know, Neil's been in business, I think 21 years, right? Neil? Yeah. 21 years. All I know is you've been in business 14 years longer than I have. So it's been a long time. So point being is that even at this stage, you know, Neil's got a family. He's got two kids. The intensity hasn't really ratcheted down. It's a different kind of intensity from Neil, but it's still there, right? Same deal for me. I still work like how I worked at a startup. We had four-day work weeks. I work seven days a week, right? I'm not saying that's for everyone, but if there's a certain result that you're trying to hit, then you probably need to ratchet up the intensity.

5:36And maybe later in your life, you can ratchet it down and put it up in somewhere else. But that's for another podcast. So that's it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. Be honest with the ratings and reviews and hit us on YouTube as well. Subscribe to us there and we'll see you later. We appreciate you joining us for this session of Marketing School. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit marketingschool.io for more resources based on today's topic, as well as access to more episodes that will help you find true marketing success. That's marketingschool.io.

6:10Until next time, class dismissed.

6:20We'll see you next time.