Neil Patel claims his course is a full service marketing agency in a box, designed to take your small business to the next level through scaling traffic and growing revenue without spending a dime on extra marketing. Does it sound too good to be true or is Agency Unlocked, the 5 week course you should buy right away?
Over the course of 5 weeks you get one easy, proven tactic you can implement each day. Only taking a few minutes, each one is proven to deliver results with minimal time and effort on your part. The sales page makes a lot of bold claims such as:
How to double your traffic, double your conversions and doubling your revenue while cutting ad spend by 50%.
Who is Neil Patel?
Neil is a British born entrepreneur that started out by creating his own job board called Advice Monkey that aimed to rival the likes of Monster Jobs. After marketing the site, he found many companies were ripping him off and doing nothing in return for a hefty monthly fee.
He started to learn digital marketing himself and became pretty good at it. His consulting career started with Elpac Electronics and here he built up his sales experience. Combining the two he started his first internet marketing company. Going on to work with many clients before investing a million bucks and losing the lot in a failed web hosting venture.
He's since gone on to launch many companies, including Hellobar, Crazy Egg and his personal blog which is now one of the most popular SEO, marketing and entrepreneurship blogs on the internet with millions of visitors every week. He's also working on a billion dollar company (he hopes one day) called KISSMetrics.
He's a familiar face on Youtube with a huge channel and over a 500k subscribers. He posts atleast twice per week on various topics around WordPress, SEO, Google, Monetization, Instagram and Entrepreneurship. Basically any trending topic or way to make money and he's on it.
Despite having a clean fortune in the bank he claims to have started Agency Unlocked to help other people succeed, rather than to line his own pockets with more cash.
Agency Unlocked Review
You get access to 6 weeks of training which cover:
- Traffic Generation
- Conversions
- Content
- Social Media
- Paid Advertising.
- Teardown Week.
In addition to the getting started content, you are buying access to an established Facebook group where you can communicate with other members who bought the course. Additionally you get access to live training sessions every 6 weeks and twice per week Q&A sessions with one of Neil Patel's coaches.
Week 1: Traffic Generation
The first week of the course looks at seven ways you can double your traffic without writing a single new blog post or spending more money on ads.
- Day 1 - Increasing your conversion rates
- Day 2 - Collecting and sending out emails
- Day 3 - Freeing up personnel to save money
- Day 4 - Using review sites and influencers
- Day 5 - A/B testing title tags and headliones
- Day 6 - Refreshing old posts to get traffic
- Day 7 - Capitlizing on free advertising opportunities.
Week 2: Conversions
This week you'll learn how you could potentially double your customer base without actually increasing your traffic you already have.
- Day 1 - Using CTA's in your content
- Day 2 - Using AI to increase sales opportunities
- Day 3 - Using push notification drip sequences
- Day 4 - Remarketing campaigns Neil's way
- Day 5 - Spying on your visitors.
Week 3: Content
By spending 30 minutes per day editing existing content, Neil recons you can double your traffic to your website.
- Day 1 - Adding new keywords to existing content
- Day 2 - Increasing your Google rankings
- Day 3 - Land and Expand
- Day 4 - Creating Micro Sites Cheaply
- Day 5 - Buying and Selling Sites.
Not sure how most of these videos can increase your traffic. Selling a website surely won't and adding keywords could take a long time. I'd strongly advise against stuffing keywords too.
Week 4: Social Media
You'll learn how you can discover thousands of extra visitors per month without wasting a lot of time.
Week 5: Paid Advertising
You'll learn how you can double the conversions from the same amount of ads while cutting your spending in half.
Week 6: Teardown Week
This final week goes through all the content you've learnt across the last five weeks of this pretty short course.
If I'm honest, most of the content in the previous 5 weeks are available in a similar format on his Youtube channel which happens to be free content.
Bonus 1: Live Training
Every six weeks, Neil himself or one of his team will host a live online session where they deep dive into marketing tactics.
It's not clear if Neil will actually be attending these, he's a busy man. You will learn how you can apply these new ideas and trends to your business.
The confusing thing is they claim it will increase your revenue by 5-10 times. How could they possibly guarantee this? Bottom line, they can't.
Bonus 2: Facebook Group
There is a community group for those that purchased Agency Unlocked and you get access to this exclusive Facebook group.
Currently there is 520 members in the group with 160 joining in the last 30 days alone. There is an average of 364 posts posted in the last 30 days.
The surprising thing is the group was actually created 2 years ago. Did he rebrand an existing group so those 520 members look much higher than the actual number of active users? Who knows.
Addon 3: Live Q&A Sessions
Twice per week you get the chance to join a live stream and ask your questions directly to the Agency Unlocked team. It's important to note that you're not actually asking questions to Neil.
As you saw earlier, he's focused on his other businesses so you probably won't actually see his face on the live stream.
You get to see what questions other people are asking and how they might be able to help you in your business too.
+ The Million Dollar Workshop
Once a month, Neil claims he will choose one paying member at random and dissect their business in full, giving them a breakdown on what their doing well and where they are likely going wrong.
He also claims he'll walk you through the entire process on what's needed.
It's likely Neil will have thousands of members, given how popular he is, so why is he only prepared to help one person at random each month? Seems like a bit of a lottery if I'm honest.
It's also not clear if those results are shared with other members and if they were would someone else be able to then copy that person's new found success?
How Much Does It Cost?
The course costs $1,495 however Neil Patel recons you could make back your investment within 3 weeks and be profitable by next month.
It's a bold claim and it backed up by his money back guarantee, offering a full refund if you don't get an extra 10,000 visitors per month in the next 90 days.
The course is a yearly subscription so it will cost you $1,495.
Don't forget to cancel if you decide the course is no longer working for you in 6 months time or you could have an upset next year when the automatic renewal kicks in.
Verdict On Agency Unlocked
Neil Patel is a master sales man and it shows. One look at the sales page for this course and you can see all these rash bold claims about doubling traffic, increasing conversions and reducing ad costs.. if you buy his course for $1,495. How can anyone make these claims?
The standout claim for me was this, "Over the next month, you’re going to discover how you can keep on doubling your traffic again and again." Say your website gets 1,000 visitors per month in a relatively small market such as Fiji. That's simply not possible!
After watching the short videos every day for 5 weeks, you get access to 1 video per day but you can watch multiple videos if you wish, it's clear that it's just a slight improvement on his free Youtube videos that he posts every few days to make money from Youtube Ads.
One would assume that the real benefit to this course is the live training every 6 weeks and the weekly question and answer sessions but the real clincher is that Neil Patel doesn't even attend them all. He's tied his name to a course, created some short videos and then doesn't actually take the live training.
For me, that's a raw deal.
The other disappointing aspect is the $1,495 renewal fee 12 months after you've joined. It's not obvious how to cancel this and I imagine a lot of people will forget to cancel. It's also not clear if the course is updated yearly or if you're just paying to continue joining the live training.
Neil Patel is a smart guy, I'm not sure why he needs to launch a course given his millionaire status and if he wants extra cash surely he could have spent longer creating more content and do the live training himself?
If I was looking for a course to generate more traffic, sales and cash flow, I wouldn't buy Agency Unlocked.
#1 Best Alternative Course
The best affiliate marketing course is called Savage Affiliates and includes 100+ videos on the entire A-to-Z process of affiliate marketing
You get access to an extensive number of videos where you'll learn how to start a passive income business online.
Also get access to videos such as starting a website, making money with paid ads, free traffic as well as 5 different affiliate business models.
You'll also get access to Franklin Hatchett, a self made affiliate marketing expert who practices what he preaches.
Plus the best part is a community of like minded people. Currently there's over 2,000+ other students that bought the course.
Last Updated on October 14, 2019 by Rhys Dale
Rhys is the owner and chief editor at Im Rhys and is living in Chisinau, Moldova. With over 15 years experience in eCommerce and Affiliate Marketing he has started many successful 6 and 7 figure businesses. After successes with USA and China dropshipping, he expanded into building 70+ micro affiliate websites in 30 different niches that generate money on autopilot. He now helps his wife to run her social media agency as well as travelling the world at every opportunity.
This is an excellent review!
I had the chance to look at the course actually… i agree totally with this review.
The value I find in this 5 week course though, lies in the fact that it provides a clear roadmap with straight to the point instructions.
Step by step, you can implement what is taught. I think a lot of times, especially now that more people
learn digital marketing, people acquire lots of knowledge but find it challenging to implement it strategically.
I totally agree- a lot of the “advice” out there (some even in paid courses) is just filled with buzzwords that leave most of us thinking “ok, that all sounds great but how in the world do I apply that to my situation?”….
Thanks for adding ur mini review about how his course provides actual steps, thats unique!
Sorry I forgot to say… $1,495 renewal fee every 12 months is insane in my opinion.