Welcome to the Friday edition of Leveling Up, your weekly summary of the latest content by Neil Patel and Eric Siu on how to improve your business.

This week you’ll discover:

• 7 Must-Have Marketing Tools for Q2 2023

• Why You'll 10x Your Marketing with a Newsletter

• The Differences Between Mediocre and Standout Marketers

• Plus more!

🎓 7 Must-Have Marketing Tools for Q2 2023: Boost Your Online Success Now

1. Character.ai

Character.ai allows you to create your own assistant.

It's like having a virtual version of yourself or someone else who knows your mannerisms and behaviors.

You can use this tool to practice a language with an assistant or even upload text from your video or audio content to create AI-powered characters.

2. Scalenut

Scalenut is a game-changer for content creation.

This tool automates the process of generating a keyword plan and content strategy for your niche.

No more creating content page by page.

With this tool, you can efficiently create articles and other materials for your entire niche.

3. Google Bard

Google's Bard is a powerful competitor to ChatGPT.

It offers features like lambda mistakes and provides quick access to relevant information.

While it's still not updated in real-time, it is an improved AI model worth exploring for your marketing needs.

4. Seventh Sense

If you do any form of email marketing, personalization is crucial.

Seventh Sense is a tool that helps you personalize your messaging and optimize the timing of your email campaigns.

It analyzes data to provide insights on how to improve open rates and click-through rates, ultimately maximizing your revenue.

5. Stability AI

Stability AI introduces a text automation tool with a feature called Stable Animation SDK.

This allows developers to generate animations from text, images, or video combined with text.

Even if you're not an artist, you can now create visually appealing animations at scale.

6. Midjourney

Midjourney enables you to create images on anything you can imagine.

Whether it's a lion in a spacesuit with planets in the background or any other creative idea, you can bring it to life without the need for artistic skills.

Just be mindful of copyright laws and plagiarism.

7. Beehiiv

Building an email list is still crucial.

Beehiiv offers features that allow you to bid on CPC or CPA in other people's newsletters. With promotion and referral features, you can effectively grow your email list and maintain high engagement rates.

(It’s how we’re sending this newsletter!)

🎓 Why You'll 10x Your Marketing with a Newsletter

In this episode, Neil and Eric talk about why newsletters are making a comeback and why you should care.

Here’s the deal:

Email marketing doesn’t work the same anymore.

And the main reason for that is personalization.

When you just send a list size, a large list size, generic email, it doesn't work the same as it used to.

But the beautiful thing is with tools like ChatGPT now you can crank out customized content for each of your segments.

As a result:

Open rates and click-through rates are increasing.

To hear their full thoughts, check out the podcast episode here.

🎓 The Differences Between Mediocre and Standout Marketers

If you want to be an excellent marketer:

First, define what a mediocre one looks like first.

Then, work backward.

Here are two key differences:

1. Producing generic results with ChatGPT

This is the first thing Neil is seeing a ton of mediocre marketers doing these days because he’s involved in the interviewing process.

He’s asked people technical questions to see how good they are, even if they're a leader.

And it's funny you can tell a lot of the answers that people are giving are from Google Bard and ChatGPT.

To be an excellent marketer, learn how to produce customized results with AI tools.

2. Constantly chasing new trends

Also known as “ABC marketers.”

These are marketers that take whatever article they read or whatever podcasts they listen to, and they treat it as gospel.

“Oh, people are talking about ChatGPT right now. We need to copy that ASAP.”

The key point here is that mediocre marketers are very reactive. To be an excellent marketer, focus on the long-term.

For more differences, listen to the Marketing School episode here.

🧠 Mindset Shift: Vice and Buzzfeed’s Bad Luck Is Your Learning Moment

Do you know why Vice and Buzzfeed are going bankrupt right now?

Well, it's because they’re media companies.

Building a media company is great…

… as long as you don’t monetize like one.

BuzzFeed and Vice monetized by just putting ads on their platform, and ads are one of the worst ways to monetize.

If you're a media company, you need to figure out a better way to monetize.

You need a product. You need a service.

You need something BIGGER than just ad revenue.

Do that, and you’ll succeed.

Until next week,

The Leveling Up Team

P.S.

Here are more ways we can help your business grow:

• Listen to our Marketing School podcast for daily marketing tips

• Subscribe to the Leveling Up YouTube channel

• Read the Single Grain blog for actionable marketing playbooks