Neil Patel's Online Marketing Campaign for Under $100 - Sorry, Not Happening

Recently, esteemed Internet marketer Neil Patel published 'How to Start an Online Marketing Campaign for Under $100'.

Sorry, but for under $100 you are not going to achieve much for your online marketing campaign in 2016. I respect Patel, but I'm not going to deceive myself that this is anything more than a click-bait headline. Not a problem in itself of course, but for any newbie out there thinking it's anything more than that, sorry to burst your bubble.

A large part of any online start-up, or any business for that matter that is attempting to grow its business, is organising an online marketing campaign. But it is simply not feasible to start an online marketing campaign for under $100. I'm focusing on start-ups because logically they are more likely to face budget constraints which means they are more likely to try and run their business on the lean and attempt to kick start their own online marketing campaign for less than $100, as the title suggests.

Saying that start-ups can accomplish so much for less than $100 is lulling entrepreneurs into a false sense of security and masks the reality of how ruthless and expensive the online marketing game can really be.

Below are a few of Patel's statements in his article and my own opinion of them. Feel free to share what you think.

1. 'Once you gather revenue, you can re-invest the money to gain speed with your digital marketing efforts'

Whilst this phrase rings true, for start-ups, gathering revenue is not such an easy process.

Most start-ups need to be noticed and grow their user base to a few hundred users first before they start gathering revenue.

How do you become noticed and grow your initial user base? Ironically for many it is by starting an online marketing campaign.

So you need to start an online marketing campaign to gather revenue to then re-invest to gain speed in your online marketing campaign. It sounds a little counterintuitive and also sounds like it is going to cost money.

I would love to see a start-ups that has accomplished this over a small period of time for less than $100.

It is not feasible in this day in age, where even well established social marketing campaigners are paying hundreds of thousands to scrap to keep their neck out in front of the competition.

2. 'Besides investing 80% of your time in promotion, the 80/20 principle also encourages spending your time on creating the right kind of content.'

Again, I am not challenging the validity of this statement, more the usefulness it has for start-ups wanting to create any sort of online campaign for under $100.

Firstly, if you spend 20% of your time on content creation as a start-up you will struggle to make gains into creating the type of social media audience you are after. Quite simply, you have to post engaging content consistently, to be noticed.

Secondly, spending 80% of your time on promotion is great. But how do you promote? These days to promote anything at all cost money. Even if you choose to promote your content via email, if you do not have a well-established mailing list it will cost you money in online marketing to create this.

Once again, I would love to see a start-up that has used less than $100 for promotion and only a 20% utilization rate for content creation, and has made significant gains in its online marketing campaign. If you've managed that, could you please share how you did it?


3. 'Besides being cost-effective, influencer marketing is also the fastest growing customer acquisition channel (surpassing email and organic search)'

Influencer marketing is certainly a buzz phrase for 2016, but everyone is catching on. It is becoming more difficult to influence the influencers as a start-up because they are also catching on to the phenomenon.

Social media influencers are now being constantly approached and courted by online businesses and individuals trying to get their products, services or websites recognized. The game has definitely become harder.

You now have to build trust and respect with a social influencer over a period of time to become valuable enough to them that they will share your content.

Unfortunately for a start-up a long period of time equates to money. And more than $100.

4. 'While browsing through so many data points and metrics about your target audience, you may forget that marketing is about building relationships with real people.'

Again with this point I am not arguing its validity, instead its usefulness to start-ups. When you are a start-up it can be a grind to attract your first 1000 customers. It is no doubt extremely important to build relationships with real people.

However, for start-ups this this is not enough. When you don't initially have the volume of people/users required to drive revenue, a few conversations here and there is not going to make a difference.

Volume is needed to bring to life the value of word of mouth.

A few conversations over a week on your content creation will not cut the mustard. It takes money to attract the initial customers to build your relationships - more than $100.

The techniques that Neil Patel advocates are sound if you have a reasonable budget. However, to say that these will cost you under $100 looks more to us like a click-bait headline that is misleading those at the start of their online marketing journey. Even the most steadfast Internet marketer would struggle to argue that any online campaign could be executed successfully for such a small budget.


How did you kick start your first online marketing campaign and how would you advise start-ups with budget constraints to focus their online marketing attention? What do you think an appropriate budget is to kick start an online marketing campaign?