Ask Us ANYTHING: 5 Easy December Marketing Tests for B2B and Consumer! (and Non-Profit) | Ep. 450

0:00Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Ask Us Anything from the Do This, Not That podcast. This is our super short episode. We're all week long. We get in questions. We get in work questions. We get in super ridiculous questions. We try to tackle one of each. So if you want to submit a question, you would be very cool. Just go to jschwedelson.com. Button that says podcast. another one says ask us anything and that's how we do this uh wild show so let's let's jump into it let's do the work question first we got a question in from jerry from stamford connecticut i've been to stamford very cold right now what i don't think anybody realized about stamford is that that is where the headquarters are for the wwe the wrestling company whatever and uh it's just weird because it's like this quiet town and that's where they're headquartered And little known fact, I went to WrestleMania too.

1:02That's right. I saw King Kong Bundy wrestle. It was awesome. I saw Rowdy Rowdy Piper. I can go deep on wrestling, but let's not do that. Jerry, what is your question? Jay, we are meeting internally to see if there are any last minute marketing tactics or things that we could do before year end to drive engagement before everyone checks out on 2025. Any super easy things to try? All right, cool. Cool. So love this because there are all these little things that we all sleep on and maybe now we have a little bit of time to try to do little stuff that actually could have an impact. So we gathered up some tactics here and there's some stats to support all this stuff.

1:40And we got stats from Boast.io and World Data Research and Wild Fig Marketing and Porch Group. And so that's where all this is coming from. So let's jump into some of these easy tactics. So first off, and this sounds ridiculous, but this is how you win in marketing, whether you're a business marketer or consumer marketer, this is how you win. The first one is the office team holiday photo or video. I don't care how big or small your brand is. I don't care how boring or cool your brand is. We all love to see the humanity of the brands that we are working with, that we might want to work with, that we're buying from, that we're giving our money to.

2:17We want to see the people. All right. And from December 1st through December 22nd, social engagement on posts that are holiday team of photos or videos. Basically, you take everyone and say, hey, take a picture, wear your stupid hat, are 400 % higher than standard posts. And then all you got to do is everybody that likes and comments on this nonsense, okay, then you just connect with them. You send them a DM, say, hey, happy holidays. What are you doing for the holidays? You got big plans? Who cares? And this is how you build a rapport with somebody. So you're like, oh, I'm not doing that. Cool.

2:51Don't get any business. It's too easy. It's not off brand. You're just boring. Sorry. Anyway, what are some other things? Everybody sleeps on their email signature. Your company or yourself, if you're a solopreneur, your email signature is very valuable real estate. And if you have your whole company actually change over their email signature or you do it for yourself, you have no idea. It's not even about the volume of emails that you send out. It's the fact that when you do send an email, they're going to very important people that you're doing business with or you want to do business with. So that email signature, you know, the thing below, you know, your name or whatever is very valuable.

3:25But what you want to do during this time of year is you want to tweak your email signature to have it be something holiday focused. You know, I hope you have a great holiday season. Get ready for next year and throw in a thank you so much for whatever. And here's a great piece of content that maybe you didn't see. Put something in the signature right now, because in the month of December, if your signature is holiday focused and thank you focused, it actually increases click-through rates by over 40%. You could even just put in there the best of 2025 with a link to the content from your past year.

4:01It is gold and people sleep on that. Another one that people are sleeping on is BTS. All we care about is behind the scenes. We're all voyeurs. I don't care what anybody says. We just want to see, oh, what's going on in their home? What's going on in their office? What are they eating for lunch? What is going on? I need to know what everybody's doing. So if you put together a little video of behind the scenes day of preparing for your holiday party or your secret Santa or whatever other nonsense you do, and you make a little short clip behind the scenes within your company, Again, you could be a mega consumer brand, a boring B2B brand.

4:38We just want to see what's going on. What did the person bring for the thing where you're like, you have to bring food. By the way, I'm the worst human being ever. Like when we do these potluck things, all right, everybody bring in a dish, everyone bring in a dish. We're all going to eat whatever. Okay. And then everyone brings in their dishes. I'm horrible. Cause I think everyone's gross. And I'm like, I don't want to eat that. I've seen that dude when he gets coffee and he's gnarly and I'm not eating the casserole that he made because he's gross. Okay. So I'll just like pretend and I'll put stuff on a plate and I'll then mush it around, but I'm not eating anything from anybody because everyone's disgusting.

5:16Judge me. Don't care anyway, but this is crushing it. You do behind the scenes stuff about your, your getting ready for the holiday party. Amazing. Now the one that's absolute gold, okay, is asking for testimonials in the month of December. Okay. Testimonials. whether you're a business brand, consumer brand, nonprofit, I don't care. You ask for testimonials. You could do it one of two ways. You make a little short form. You say, hey, we've had a great year. We love that you love our product. It would mean the world to us if you could just leave a comment here that we could use a testimonial to let us know what you think about our service, our product, whatever, okay?

5:54And have them go to a little short form. They put in the testimonial and that's that. Or you could even say, hey, reply to this email and give us the testimonial that we can use. People in the month of December are very open to doing this because they're in like a good spirit. So we actually see when you do a testimonial outreach request, you get a 500 % increase in testimonial submissions in the month of December as compared to any other month. And literally, you could have one great testimonial and you could ride that and grow your entire business. You could put it everywhere. You could put it on your landing pages, your homepage, everywhere.

6:26So think about being intentional in the month of December and ask for that testimonial. This is the time. All right. Oh, last tactic before we get to the ridiculous question, run a poll. We love polls this time of year, run it on LinkedIn, run it anywhere. Okay. And what you want to do is have your poll be related to the end of year and next year. When you run polls related to the end of year and next year in the month of December, 250 % higher average engagement. And the poll could be something like, what word best describes your year? What achievement are you most proud of in 2025? Well, who cares?

7:02What's your number one goal for 2026? Get people going. Tap into the mindset of where we're all at. All right. Wow. I just talk fast. Okay. What are we doing now? We have the ridiculous question. We got a question from Remy from Portland. All right, Remy, what do you got? Jay, I need some new holiday movies to try. Everyone knows the must watches over the holidays like Elf, Home Alone, Die Hard, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and Gremlins. But what are others that you think most people haven't seen? Well, first of all, your list is very weird and good in some ways. Die Hard is a holiday movie, so great job by you.

7:42Christmas Vacation, my favorite, amazing. Gremlins, I don't know why that's on your list. That's super weird. Freaks me out. And I want nothing to do with any horror movies. And that is a horror movie. Yes, it scares me. Okay. But Rami, back to your question. Which are ones that are not on your list that people sleep on? I would say the first one would be The Holiday. Great movie with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet and Jude Law and Jack Black. Great movie. If you haven't seen The Holiday, two thumbs up there. Clearly, every list should have Love Actually. Love Actually is a great movie. I'm a big Keira Knightley fan.

8:15I don't even know why I just said that. I've never said that before in my life, but I do like Here at Nightly. This is a great movie. So yeah, I like that very, very much. Love Actually. What else? Oh, I'll tell you ones that are also kind of a little bit more Thanksgiving-y that I think people don't realize. The Big Chill, a little bit of a downer movie. But if you've never seen The Big Chill, that's kind of like all these friends get together. There was a tragedy, and I believe it's over Thanksgiving. I think it is. Anyway, that's good. But the best Thanksgiving movie really is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

8:44If you've never seen this movie, Steve Martin and John Candy. John Candy's the funniest dude of all time. A must watch. Absolute must watch. Whatever. And you're not going to believe this. I'm going to tell you right now, my number one favorite holiday movie. This is massive news. This is going to break the internet. What is my favorite holiday movie? This is it. The Family Man. Yup. With Nicolas Cage and T. Leone. It is my favorite holiday movie. I watch it every year. I don't know why it's my favorite holiday movie. And you're like, I've never seen it. Well, that's because you're a loser. Okay.

9:17This is your homework. You want to watch The Family Man. Why is it so great? I don't know. I think maybe it's because I'm in the stage where you got their whole work thing going on and you have to get your priorities right. It's not only about work. I don't know. I like Nicolas Cage. He's a little bit of a weirdo, but I like him. And this podcast is weird. So maybe that's why I like it. Who knows? Anyway, I appreciate you being here. Your holiday gift to me. This is like the testimonial thing, right? Here it is. I'm asking for you to follow the show and leave it a review. If you've never done that, that would mean the world to me.

9:48And I have a newsletter, by the way. If you want to get on the newsletter, go to jschwedelson.com. You can subscribe to it there. What else? I don't know. Watch these movies. Be cool later. You did it. You made it to the end. But wait, the party is not over. Listen, I want to keep hanging out. Subscribe to this podcast. And if it wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, give it a five-star review. Why not? But you know what? I want to do even more with you. Go to gurumediahub.com and we can partner there. You could find out about all of our free events, all of our stuff. And if you're epically bored, go to jschwedelson.com and we could stay connected.

10:25You could find my newsletter and everything else I got going on. Thanks for being here and hope you subscribe.