Marketing Happy Hour - Tools to Improve Your Brand's SEO Strategy | SEO Expert Nathaniel Miller

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

We're excited to introduce you to SEO Expert Nathaniel Miller. In this episode, Nathaniel walks us through his unique transition from large format printer technician to digital marketer, his unique approach to building digital campaigns, and how marketing professionals can step up their brand's SEO game across channels. About Nathaniel, in his own words: With over 9 years of passion-fueled experience in digital marketing and event management, I've honed my craft to deliver tangible results. From boosting lead-gen to orchestrating demand-gen activities, I've been the driving force behind SEM campaigns that have propelled customer growth by a staggering 250%. My journey has been marked by a relentless pursuit of excellence, consistently exceeding expectations and setting new benchmarks in the digital landscape. Currently, I proudly serve as the Director of Marketing for HarvestIQ, a SaaS powerhouse revolutionizing revenue tracking and insurance solutions for farmers and farm advisors. In this role, I've spearheaded innovative marketing initiatives, leveraging cutting-edge strategies to drive user engagement and accelerate business growth. My commitment to innovation and adaptability has enabled me to navigate diverse industries, from the tech-forward realms of Agtech and Fintech to the dynamic landscape of Insuretech. Connect with Nathaniel on LinkedIn Learn more about 3rds: 3rds.co ____ Say hi! DM us on Instagram and let us know which bonus episodes you're excited for - we can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our FREE MHH Insiders online community to connect with Millennial and Gen Z marketing professionals around the world!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Hi, Nathaniel. Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour. How are you today? I'm doing well. It's a little stormy today, so it's kind of gloomy, which I prefer. I like that. I wish I lived in a gloomier area. Oh my gosh. We don't get much gloom here in Florida, but sometimes in the afternoons in the summertime, it's rainy and gloomy and stuff. I feel like I get the best work done during those times. Well, before we dive in to the episode today, I do want to ask you, what is in your glass this afternoon?

Yes, so I'm actually trying something new today. I think it's La Colombe. I looked up how to pronounce it because I don't want to sound stupid. But usually, I'm a big sparkling water guy. That's kind of what I'm always like. I also have a key lime. It's one of my favorites. But I just tried last week Bubbly's Orange Crush.

And if you haven't tried it, definitely recommend it. It's honestly too good. It's too good. I currently just have a magic mind. I know we've talked about this mental performance shot before on this show. And if you've been listening for a while, you know that Cassie and I are both extremely busy people

and we both get our best work done in the morning so I've always been in search of a solution to keep that morning motivation going throughout the day and that's when Cassie really recommended this to me. Anyway I've been trying out a challenge for a few days so far where I'm drinking one magic mind shot a day for seven days in a row to measure the overall effects and And I have to say so far, so good. My mind actually feels a lot clearer when I sit down to power through work or for recordings like this one. And I definitely feel less stressed, which is probably those nootropics and adaptogens at work. If you want to try Magic Mind for yourself and join me in this challenge, we have a limited

offer that you can use now that gets you up to 48% off your first subscription or 20% off a one-time purchase with code happy hour 20 at checkout. You can claim that at magicmind.com forward slash happy hour 20. We have to know kind of about your career journey. You made a significant transition at one point into digital marketing. So tell us a little bit about that and how you got to where you are today. Yeah, so it was kind of random. So I was a technician for large format printers, which if you don't know what they are, it's, it's very niche, very niche industry. But a lot of people, you'll see stuff that's printed on them. But I traveled all the time, and I hated traveling. And so inadvertently, I got in touch with HP, where we were a reseller of their products, and they started asking for some stuff. And I started doing it and kind of fell in love with marketing. And I was like, okay, I think there's a path forward here. And so I just slowly started taking on more and more responsibilities. We started working on website design materials, which I'm not a designer by any means, but I'm a better designer than the sales team that was doing this stuff was. But yeah, it was a lot of learning. I didn't go to school for it.

So I just, a lot of YouTube videos, a lot of blog posts and a lot of LinkedIn. You know, you kind of shared a little bit, I believe, in your intake form with us that you used your experience as a sales technician to kind of gain experience in SEO. And then you also mentioned watching videos and doing things like that. What was your strategy there with competing against other printer companies? Like, how did you kind of first initially dive into SEO? Were there some different tactics that you gravitated towards specifically? I know SEO, especially on Google has changed more recently with content value and things like that. But I'm just curious, kind of going back, what are some of those principles that are still true today,

you believe? Yeah, so I had the unique experience that I was very much embedded in the product itself. So I knew the product, I knew how to fix the was very much embedded in the product itself. So I knew the product. I knew how to fix the product. I knew how to sell the product. And so I just took what we were talking about when I was, you know, if I was, you know, doing a demo. And I said, okay, like, what are we talking about? How do we use it?

And I just started implementing those things on our website. Just instead of using the product descriptions that came from, you know, HP, Canon, all of those, you know, because they're, they're, they're ones making it, but they don't, they're not always embedded in the product itself. So I would just, I think that was the biggest thing, like be a user, like use what you're selling, use what you're marketing, because that you're just going to know more. So if you're not a user, then you need to talk to the users because they're the ones that, again, they're going to use the different language, the different, you know, verbiage, the like how they're structuring what they're looking for. And all of that was kind of what we were gearing towards. And because I was on the service side, I tended to lean more on questions, like how does it work and kind of

built content around those types of questions that people were searching for. And then on top of that, I also, again, because I service the printers, I knew that there were certain keywords or certain aspects that a lot of the people searching for printers, they would use the SKU code, the SKU number, because that's what they're familiar with. And so I just put the SKU number everywhere on the images because that's what they're familiar with. And so I just put the SKU number everywhere, like on the images, because that's what they knew. Like it was HP, you know, Z6800 SKU number. I don't know the SKU numbers anymore, but I used to have them all memorized,

but then I would just throw the SKU number in and we just started like gaining traction really, really fast because we were getting people searching for the SKU numbers. That was like the big easy win, really. Yeah. And I think that kind of goes back to this general marketing concept of as a product developer or on the company side, a lot of times we assume the way a customer thinks about a product or searches for a product or whatever. So to your point, either becoming the consumer yourself and

learning about how a consumer sees the product or going to speak to consumers and figure out ways to market your brand, speak about your brand, et cetera, to make it discoverable. And I think also appealing to the consumer, right. To help them understand the value of what you're providing. So that's a really good insight just in general, I feel like for the space of marketing. Yeah. It's tough. You know, I think as marketers, and I think especially for people, cause like I I've worked in startups a lot. And so you're working with the people who had developed or came up with the idea and they're so like bought into this idea of what they think it is. And it's easy to kind of just fall into the trap of like, Oh yeah, like this is what you say it is. This is who easy to kind of just fall into the trap of like, oh yeah,

like this is what you say it is. This is who our target audience is. And, you know, sometimes you almost have to be like, Hey, let me do some research on my own. Let me talk to our customers, see if how you're selling it or talking about it, like in your circles is how our actual customers are using it. Because a lot of times you can almost be so like in like a, like a little circle of like, oh, you know, we're making the product and you're on this call with product team. And so you can kind of just get isolated and you need to step out and say, hey, let's close this off for a little bit and let's look at the other side of it. Yeah, definitely. Well, I want to go back to your

career for a second. And I'm just curious if you have any advice to other professionals looking to pivot into marketing specifically. We were just in New York recently, and I feel like we talked to so many people at this event that we hosted, that people are in a number of different industries and they want to get into marketing. And I think that can be kind of an overwhelming thought process to go through just because marketing is such a broad topic for one. And for two, it's very experience based. It's very knowledge based. There's a lot of different tools and systems and things in place that you can learn. So any advice for just taking that first step and getting into a new space that someone's never been in before? Yeah. So I would say I have a couple of tips. First tip is whatever industry you're in, double down with it. Like, you know, that industry now stay in it. Like don't, don't make the hop yet. So I was in large format. So I stayed in large format. I knew the product and I knew if I could just develop some type of, you know, case study on myself, like here's the value I bring, I could make it easier to

transition into a full-time role or into a new industry. And so double down, you know, I started offering again, free work. It was free. I was getting paid for my full-time role. And I was just like, let me help do these other things. And it slowly, you know, you kind of get the curse of you're doing a lot more work and you're not really being compensated for it, but you're being rewarded on the side of, you know, the knowledge, the experience, the data points that I've had. Like, you know, here's our current site traffic increases and just keep track of all of it. Whatever you're doing for free or even, you know, once you get to a point, you're not, you're no longer free. You can say, okay, now let's start getting a little bit of compensation.

Um, so I would be like first tip double down in your industry and then make the switch later on. Cause I went from large format to software and then, you know, that was like my big break. Software is great, but it's also very cutthroat. So you get what you, you know, the grass isn't always greener on all things. I think the second tip would be start something on your own because it's, it's, it's hard to test when you can make or break a company. You know, if you want to test this crazy idea, it's way easier to say, I have my own side hustle of something. And if I test it, it flops. Okay. I'm the only one that's really getting hurt by that. So I would say those, those are like the two biggest things that helped

and then find a source of knowledge, find a mentor. If at any level, like if you're wanting to be a safe digital marketing person, find a digital marketer, who's willing to impart knowledge. If you want to be, you know, a social media person, find somebody who's in that role that you want, talk to them, figure out what they're using, what, you know, what they're doing, how they're interacting with different marketers and kind of just follow suit. Yeah, such great advice. And we hear that all the time on the show, you know, do the work that you want to be doing, even if it's like at first, maybe not something that's making you a whole lot of money just so that you get that experience. And then you can bring that with you into your next role or whatever that may be. That's excellent advice. I know we want to

talk a little bit about building digital campaigns and you have an interesting approach. It's a threefold approach, audit, action, and analyze. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah. So I actually came up with this idea for a company offsite and I had to speak in front of the company, super intimidating. My first software job, I felt way like just underqualified to be in the room and then not let alone talking to them and presenting my ideas. But I just kind of, when I started thinking about all the times I set up a campaign, I just started like, okay, what am I doing? So I'm auditing what we're currently doing. So I step into a new role or step into, you know, we're starting a new campaign. Like, what are we currently doing on the marketing side? So, you know, if it's an ad, like that was kind

of what it started at was our digital ads. So I look at what keywords we're targeting, what our current spend is, what our return is, and kind of just following suit, kind of grabbing as much data as possible. And then you go from audit, you do actions. You're putting your, what you found into action. So some changes. So we're going to add some new keywords. We're going to, you know, maybe shift the target price we're looking for or throw in another ad to target later down the pipeline. And then you let it run and you analyze the results. So once you, you know, you've audited, you put the things in action, then you're basically

doing an audit again, but you're analyzing all of the changes. So then once that process is done, you kind of start again. Now we're looking at what's happened, what's currently here, and you're looking at the changes. So then once that process is done, you kind of start again. Now we're looking at what's happened, what's currently here, and you're looking at the changes that were made and then looking at what the new results are. And you just kind of keep doing this in a circle. And it's really never stops. So that's one thing about digital marketing is it never really stops, but you can kind of get to a point where like, okay, this is kind of running like a, like a well oiled machine. And then you just copy and then paste it to a new campaign or a new channel or whatever you're looking at doing. Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious if you can give us like a real life example of

this, like maybe one that you've done in the past that was really successful and kind of looking back at the process of that initial audit process and going through all the way to analyze and like what kind of results were received and like how you tested and learned beyond that. Do you have like an example? I know it's like off the top of your head right now, so I'm not sure if you'll be able to think of one, but I'm just curious. Yeah, no, I do actually. So one of my early jobs, we, you know, I stepped in and I was doing the ads. And so I was auditing our ad spend. And I noticed that we are primarily targeting mobile phones, like mobile devices on particular, in particular on like gaming websites, or mobile apps. Super high bounce rate, it was really low cost per click, which is I think why that was set. But there were zero customers that ever came from that touch point. And I was like, okay, let's see, why are we here? And there was a bunch of bidding strategies. And so I copied everything down because just in case what I did messed everything up, I could put it all back into place. Because sometimes you think you know you might change something that's going to be better,

but it's not always the case. Sometimes you have to go back and then start again. So basically what I did was just refresh the whole ad, that whole campaign, put it on pause and said, okay, I want to target, because of the industry, I want to target news, high-caliber sites. Our cost per click almost quadrupled, which was okay because I knew that was going to happen, but the quality was there. So that was the action. We retargeted different landing pages, and then I analyzed the results, and so we still found there was a super high bounce rate. So then I was like, okay, we got to do something else because something is still not working. And so then we found that the audience that was kind of listed in this group were no longer the right audience because they had been kind of in this cycle of being retargeted and then

back onto the site. And they kind of just this perpetual loop of not the right people. And so we basically had to, again, wipe that audience out. I saved it so we could still have it. And then I just uploaded a list using our website, you know, like last 30 days on specific pages. And then also like an actual contact list and then put that into action and then watch the results come in. And I'm trying to remember the exact change as far as like customers. I think it was like maybe a 20% or 25% uplift in like customers actually

coming from that particular ad could be off a little bit on the percentage, but that was, I would say something that really stuck out. That's where it's like, okay, this is a viable process, right? Write this down. I want to keep it. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you sharing that because I feel like a lot of times we can hear these strategies and then, you know, we don't have any real life examples that we can point to. And we're like, okay, well, how does, how can I make this apply to my brand? But, you know, walking through a little bit of like a real life example helps people listening, like understand, okay, I can do the same thing with my brand. Here's how I can do that. I want to hear too from you, what mistakes do companies

often make when building digital campaigns and how are those mistakes avoidable? Because I know a lot of people listen to the show and want to hear like perspective on how they can avoid making mistakes the best as possible. Gosh, there's probably, there's a lot. This could be like, I think a whole episode of just talking about mistakes that were made. But I think the biggest thing, especially on SEO, is just focusing on the wrong things. Like not, and you find this a lot, it's like these big SEO gurus say, this is 100% what you should do at every company. And that doesn't always, you know, that doesn't always mean that's the right thing. Because if you're in a very, very new vertical, there's not a lot of data points to really track on. So you shouldn't be doing a lot of competitive research.

You're not going to be doing any of that. And you may not even see any results early on because it's so new. So you just build content for your current customers and say, here's what, and then hope that down the pipeline that that starts to become something people are searching for. But there's also, there's so many tasks within SEO that are really kind of meaningless at the beginning if you don't have a solid foundation. And so you could be spending hours upon hours getting your site speed up. But if you have zero keywords, what's the point? You have a fast website now. Great. But you have no traffic getting there, um, to, you know, to really kind of show anything. And that's just on the SEO side. Then, you know, if you're on like the SEM side where your Google ads and Facebook ads, like you're competing against a lot of your big brands out there, if you're new, or if you're not new, you're still competing against big brands. You could be spending a ton of money on keywords that seem like they're relevant, but they're not actually high intent. So those are just a few things. Again, I could talk about

a lot of other mistakes that I've made personally or that I see companies making, but I think those are like the big things. We mentioned at the top of the episode a little bit that recently Google shifted SEO slightly and some of the things that they're focusing on. Do you have any tips? You know, we're recording this in July of 2024. So this could be different six months, a year, three years from now, of course. So if you're listening, keep that in mind. But is there anything now in 2024 that we should be focusing on a little bit heavily versus what we were maybe focusing on before when it does come to just content and

SEO in general? Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is just provide value. I mean, that's kind of been the thing for ages, but there's a lot of like low end things that people were doing, you know, content stuffing and keyword stuffing and all these things that when we're providing value, it's just muddying the waters, but provide value and actually make it like your content should be what it says it is. You know, don't have incorrect headlines just to get someone to click. And then, you know, your blog post is night and day different because, you know, Google's they've admitted it. Like there was a big leak.

What was that back in May of something? I don't remember what exactly the leak when it exactly happened, but they, you know, announced like all these big changes where they're rewriting things that they're not even telling you. And like all these other things that we thought were happening, but weren't or thought weren't happening, but were impacted that. But the thing that's been consistent for as long as I've been an SEO is just provide value. And I think that's going to be the same across the board. And I think even six years from now, that's going to be how Google is weighing against

everybody else. Provide value and honestly, be online early. If you are thinking about starting a company, go ahead and buy the domain, get stuff on there because the longer your site's active, the better you're going to do. And that's an unfortunate thing, but it just is. It's going to be hard to compete with a one-year-old brand versus a 15-year-old brand. And so the only way to really do that is to provide a ton of value up front. Yeah. Well, so with that too, we've worked with a lot of clients or even

for businesses in a corporate sense where leaders or teams across departments expect SEO to, quote, kick in immediately. Oh, I want to be on page one. I want to come up the search and search results first or whatever. And so any encouragement slash kind of pushback on that just for the long game of SEO? You know, it takes time to rank. It takes time to test and see what works. Any advice or just encouragement around that specifically of having patience when it comes to your SEO strategy? Yeah. I mean, it's tough, you know, especially if you are a company that doesn't have a huge budget. And so you're trying to double down on SEO because it's quote unquote free because you're not paying for your spot.

But I mean, it's going to take time no matter what, especially if it's a new keyword or a new website. I mean, you're looking at six months plus usually, unless you get really lucky and you're just meeting that perfect niche that nobody else is meeting, then you might start increasing crazy. But I think the biggest thing, again, kind of falls back to what I see people doing wrong is just focus on what matters. So instead of trying to rank for a new keyword, find the keywords you are ranking for, but maybe not in position one and start working on those pages, those content pages, or, you know, e-commerce pages, whatever they might be, and try to get those to, you know, page one or position one or position two, because those are going to be your easy wins. You're going to see sometimes even a couple of weeks of data points,

you know, pushing that up from, you know, spot 20 to 15 and then 15 to 10 and then kind of just keep going up. And so I think that's probably where I would feel like that's like anytime I come with the company, that's kind of where I focus first, because those are the easy wins and it kind of gets you motivated to, oh yeah, like, here we go, you know, now we're getting some traction and you can start working on the other things in the background, but you're not, you know, hedging your, you're kind of hedging your bets. You're not all in on one thing. So you're seeing movement early on as well as working on that long-term or long play. Yeah. Well, and then with keyword research and also just SEO in

general, there's a lot of tools out there. There's tools to check for keywords in your area. There's tools to check your site's SEO. I personally, one tool that I use all the time is Ahrefs for keyword research, but I'm curious, do you have any go-to tools for both keyword research, but also you want to run your site through something quickly just to see some areas of opportunity? What are you using for that right now? Yeah. So I'm a budget marketer. I'm a budget minded person in general. So like if there's a free or a cheaper version, I know it, or I've at least looked for it because I've worked in some really early stage companies that don't have a huge budget. And it's like, how do I, you know, leverage what I can to make the biggest impact.

And so I use Uber suggest it's by Neil Patel, whether you like him or hate him, I'm not going to, I'm not going to say anything about that, but his tool is significantly cheaper than anything else out there. I mean, you know, I think it's, I pay, I paid for the lifetime. So like you can pay one time for like, it was a $200 at the time and I don't pay anymore, but you know, you can still do like a $30 a month plan. And you can look at your SEO. You can see like what pages need help. You can do keyword research there. They have an AI tool to help you write content. They suggest things, Uber suggests. So they suggest content pieces around your current keywords. You can track your competitors. Like there's so many, it's so

robust, just that one tool. And it kind of replaces three or four tools that could be up upwards of like $1,200 a month for $30 a month. So if you don't, if you haven't heard of it, I definitely recommend that I actually use it in placement of Ahrefs. I do like Ahrefs and Ahrefs does like, if I had the budget for, I would definitely be using that. But for like, again, for like afs does, like if I had the budget for it, I would definitely be using that. But again, for like a budget person, like this tool is super easy. And they have a free plan. So I think you can do like five searches a day or something. Yeah.

And then I would also use Also Asked. This is by, it was created by a guy out of the UK, I believe. And so he's super SEO smart. I can't, I can never remember the guy's name. But he's like the guy that like released released or one of the guys that released like all of these leaks from, from Google. But his tool shows you kind of what, you know, if you type in a question, it'll be like that also ask section. Cause a lot of times what we're finding is that if you type in a, you know, a phrase, you know, you see spot one is gonna be taken.

But then before you even get to position two, there's this whole section of people also asked. And so his software shows you kind of what other people are asking and you can start building your content around those things. So you may not be in position one here, but you can be in position one

on one of those other pages, which is actually above position two. So those are the, I think those are the two big pieces of software that I use every day or every week. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, very cool. We will definitely link that in the show notes for all of our listeners wanting to explore those tools. But I want to hear from you. I'm very curious, Imagine somebody's out there and their brand has no SEO strategy at all yet. Where do they start? And what are the goals that they can be working towards as somebody who is totally new to SEO, hasn't done anything at all?

What do you suggest? So this is a tough one because there's a lot so I would say kind of you would want to like build out like a list like I'm a big paper person which I know I shouldn't be but like I write down every like so if I'm like working on a project I'd say like what's our purpose like what's the purpose of the company and then what you know what are we solving or what need are we you know providing again you know I'm thirsty if people are thirsty i'm gonna be a drink person so like like we're providing drinks and then kind of outline what you think your brand does and like the different keywords that you would search if you were the person and then again i would talk to your other employees figure out what they would think would search and kind of just basically run this giant like focus group almost where you're you're focusing on what they

think for the brand, for the company, for keywords. And so then you kind of build out your strategy. Like, here's what we think. Here's what our customers think. If we have, hopefully you have customers, if you've been doing this, but, and then say, okay, now I'm going to look at our current pages and start focusing in what's our, I would focus on like your big sellers. Like if you have a product that pushes a lot, start there.

Cause you're going to have, again, some easy wins. They're already getting some traffic or traction. People are buying it in store or buying it online or, you know, getting referred. Whatever way they're getting sold, they're being sold. So start there and just kind of start looking at the content that you have

and verify like, is it, you know, is your keyword, you know, density in your product page? Like, is that reflective of what, you know, your customers are saying? Because if it's not, then say, okay, we need to refocus on that page. And again, take notes of what you're changing because you might tank something and you need to be able to go back just in case. Because I've done that where you think you really think you're doing something right, but you're not. And so just, again, keep track of what you're changing, what URLs you're changing and what the average position is and what the current traffic is. Because those all all of those things you need to make sure you're not even six months down the line. You know, you may hit a drop. OK, what happened? Because it took six months for Google to reindex and start testing your page against other pages.

So yeah, I would just focus there because it's kind of, I wouldn't say meaningless, but if you have a product that is super low end, nobody's buying it, and you're not getting a ton of profit out of it, don't focus on that one because it's not a high earner. You can focus on that one later and maybe you can push it up to a high earner, but I would focus on your key products first. Absolutely. Well, Nathaniel, this has been super helpful. So thank you so much. We're definitely going to take some of these tips and implement them into the Marketing Happy Hour brand. So excited to do that. But we have to ask too, just as we close out here, one of our favorite questions, which is what do you know now that you wish you knew earlier on in your career?

Oh boy, so many things. So many things. I think the biggest thing is find a mentor. Like honestly, I know that's probably, I know I actually have heard multiple people say that on this show, but I do think that that was honestly like the big game changer because marketing is so like huge of like what, you know, there's so many sub titles and like avenues of approach and just knowing where you want to go and then understanding where you can even possibly go. Cause you know, you, if you're coming from the social media side, but you're like, I want to do ads. Like, how do you make that, that change that you don't always know, or you're coming from somebody who's a career transitioner. I had no idea what anything was.

And so I was just doing what people were telling me. I'm like, I don't even know what my title is because I'm not a marketer like at the beginning. So find somebody who can talk to you at where you are, where you want to be and how, and then like, let them direct you. Like, here's like the career path I see. And here's the career path I'm achieving. Cause I wouldn't have never have stepped into digital marketing. Had I not talked to somebody who was a digital marketer, I'm like, Oh, I like what you're doing. What is that title? Because I know, I know nothing. So I would just,

yeah. Find a mentor of, of some kind and then find somebody who's going to tell you the truth too. Cause you don't want someone who's just going to fluff you up. Cause who cares? Like I can fluff myself up. I want somebody to just be real. Like, am I doing something that matters? And then if it does great, but if it doesn't, then I need to know so I can change it. Yeah. Great advice. And I'm curious how you found that mentor, that person to talk to, uh, was it LinkedIn or was it, um, elsewhere just in your personal life?

So both it was LinkedIn, um, primarily, but I did like my first person I reached out to is actually somebody I met at HP because he was, I was like, he's at HP. Like, how do I get to, I want to work for HP. How do I get there? I'm like, man, like I met you. You don't know me from anybody. We chatted for a little bit at lunch. Like, how can I get there?

Would you be willing to chat? Hopped on a quick call, 10 minutes, took 10 minutes out of his time. That was nothing to him, but it was everything to me. Cause that's kind of where it, you know, it pushed me. But after that, it was all LinkedIn. Cause I'm like, it's the world, everyone's already there sharing free advice anyway. So it's nothing to say, Hey, you want to hop on a quick call? We can get coffee. I'll even pay for your coffee if you just chat with me for 30 minutes or 15 minutes. Who cares? Like 10 minutes, just some time and then build that relationship. And then they're willing to pour into your life quarterly or yearly.

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I think a lot of the feedback that we hear around mentorship is like, how do I even get started? And they think that it has to be some like big structured ordeal, but really it just starts with a conversation. And so I love that you mentioned that as well, but I want to let everybody know where we can find you and follow along with what you're up to now in your current role. And then I know you have a new venture

coming up that we want to hear a little bit about as well. So let us in on where we can find you online. Yeah. So I'm on LinkedIn exclusively on LinkedIn. Like that's if you want to find me on there every day, Monday through Friday, usually unless I'm sick or my kids are sick. But so I think it's Nathaniel-James-Miller. I try to make it easy, but it's probably a little too long. And yeah. And so my new venture is called Thirds. I met a guy online again. We started a company because I'm a huge advocate of marketing. I've been in marketing for a while and I love video because I had to use video for all of my jobs. I'm like, how do I get access to this? And I didn't even know what motion graphics was. I was looking

for animation because that's what I would have assumed it was called. And so we got to chatting and we started thirds to meet branding, motion graphics and graphic design for, again, mostly early stage startups, because that's I have a passion for that. And he just he just likes he just likes designing things. So he's just like, I'm just along for the ride. You tell me where we're going. We're going there. So, you know, we started that and we're working, a few different brands, but we are open to others. So if you're looking for motion graphics or animation or design or branding or shoot, if you want to just chat, we'll do it. Very, very cool. Excited to see where that all leads you. And one last thing I wanted to ask you, because I know you post a lot on LinkedIn and you mentioned you're there Monday through Friday, just chatting it up.

What are some of your marketing hot takes? I saw that you literally just posted one four hours ago. So curious to just hear your thoughts before we leave. Oh gosh. Yeah. And that one, honestly, I figured, you know, I thought people would go with that one. You know, influencer marketing, you know, it's a huge thing. People are using it, but I thought, you know, people would be like, yeah, this is great. But I got a couple of comments that are like, no, this is, you know, like,

this is a horrible hot take, but I'm like, this is, you know, I want authenticity. Like always, like that's, I'm an authentic person. So I had probably too many and I don't want to get your show canceled. So one little nugget, let's see. Okay. So I'll just do influencer marketing because that one's like right on top of my head. So, you know, I'm not on social media, so I don't really see this as much, but I'm on the marketing side. So we're looking for influencers and there's nothing I hate more than when you can tell someone was just paid to post about this product or post about your software or, you know, oh, like, especially like this, the big one is, you know,

Chick-fil-A canceled the chick that was posting on TikTok about the chicken sandwich. And then I think Popeye's was the one that jumped on and said, hey, you can post about our chicken sandwich. I'm like, that's a cool story for her. But as like a consumer, I'm not gonna trust her. She's being paid now to talk about Popeye's because she was canceled from Chick-fil-A.

Like, that's just, to me, that just, there's's not it's not authentic, which again, she's she's great. Like, you know, go follow her. I forget her name, but I just feel like as like a brand that's, you know, maybe they're just jumping on because, you know, she's really popular. But I just feel like Chick-fil-A really missed out because she was already talking about their product. Just pay her to start talking about it even more. And now it's a win-win because they already trust her. You have that brand authority now, but a lot of brands are doing the opposite. We're like, you've never heard of us here. We'll send you our product, talk about it. And you have to say something nice because you got it for free. So it's like, you're not going to say this is terrible.

Don't ever buy it. And so it's just, I don't know. It's, I just don't like how it's inauthentic. It is. I think that's where we go. We're going wrong. We're going down the wrong path. Totally. We talk about that a lot on the show. My nine to five is an influencer. And so I'm always looking for people's like insights into how they view influencer. And it's interesting. That is a hot take on the Chick-fil-A situation. And who even knows, I don't know if this happened because I wasn't following it too closely, but you never know. Maybe she, in an earlier video said, be it like Chick-fil-A is so much better than XYZ brand. And then XYZ brand reaching out to her and being like, Hey, actually talk about us. So yeah, you never know. It's a cool for a brand moment, but maybe there's some other avenues where you can really speak more authentically to

people who are already talking about and loving your products. So I totally agree with you there. Awesome. Well, we are so honored that you came on the show today. I know you've been following along with us and really encouraging us from the beginning. So we really appreciate you and wanted to make sure that we highlight your skills set. And our listeners I know can learn a lot from you just in terms of SEO and things like that. So thank you again for joining us today. This has been such a treat to have you. Yeah. Thanks for having me on the show. It's a little intimidating because I have been following for so long, but I really appreciate meeting you all in person. Well, virtual person. Yeah. Yeah. Good did great. Thank you so much, Nathaniel.

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