⚠️Economic Uncertainty =💸Marketing Opportunity (If You Do This) Jay’s SCOOP | Ep.322

0:08Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwetelson. Let's do this, not that.

0:40we are back for do this not that podcast presented by marigold and today we're going to be ripping through some very specific tactics that are working literally right now as relates to the uncertainty in the economy i do not care about politics or any of that uh and it doesn't matter what any of us think about tariffs or no tariffs or whatever, there is no doubt, there is no question. And now there's data behind it. And this is all new in the last few weeks about how uncertain consumers and business decision makers feel about the economy. And now we are seeing very specific marketing tactics that if you do, you are seeing seriously increased engagement.

1:33next few months for sure. You can not just do business as usual in your marketing because things have shifted. Our mindset has shifted. So first, I want to give you some of the stats that have just come out about our mindset shift. And then I have some very specific marketing tactics, whether you're marketing to business decision makers or consumers that you really want to think about doing that are working really, really well. So first off, there was some new data that came out this week from Wunderkin that I thought was super interesting. They did a giant survey and they asked people, are they even aware of the tariffs and the uncertainty in the economy?

2:11And over 91 % said they were. Well, that's good because if you're not aware of it, I don't know what planet you're living on. So, okay, that's obvious. Now, it also found that only 6 % of people, business professionals or consumers say they aren't concerned about the uncertainty and the tariffs. So now we know everybody's concerned about it. And that's what matters. It's seeping into our minds. Now, here's a few other wild stats before we get to the tactics. 46 % of business decision makers and consumers say they would remain loyal during these uncertain times, but they are motivated by the best pricing available.

2:49What does that actually mean? It means that more than half of consumers, more than half of business decision makers say they're not going to remain loyal, that what they are looking for is not the brand or the more tech platform or the service they've been using forever, but more than half of people out there saying they're motivated by the best price that they can find. Price is now outranking loyalty. That was not the case a year ago. So we need to adapt really quickly and we need to communicate really effectively. and you can actually outpace leaders in your industry, people that you've been trying to beat forever.

3:30You now, if you communicate properly, you can win because loyalty is kind of out the window. All right, so what are some of the tactics that we should be doing? I'm gonna tell you one that you're not gonna do, but this is the moment it shines, and that's pop-ups. What? Why do we care about pop-ups in this moment? Because of this stat. 43 % of business decision makers and consumers right now in the last 30 days said they are willing to opt into email or text communications in exchange for better pricing. Why does that matter? You're saying just 43%. Normally, and this is really related to pop-ups, normally that number is at 24%.

4:12It has jumped to 43 % of people are willing to opt in. So why do pop-ups matter? because when they go to your site, your B2B site, your business site, or your consumer site, your direct-to-consumer site, and you have a pop-up that jumps up and says, hey, you want to get the special discount code? You want to get that special pricing? You want to get a discount on that SaaS product? And you can do this on your pricing page. You don't need to do it on the homepage if you don't want to. But pop-ups right now, if you are promoting a pricing related discount by giving the information, you're going to see a massive spike of people actually filling that out.

4:48So I'm on the pop-up train right now specifically. Now, simple things in your email subject lines. We saw data from the last two weeks. These subject line phrases at the start of your subject line are increasing email open rates over 15%. And it's all really about pricing and uncertainty. So the phrases are things like this, price transparency. This is at the start of your subject line, no surprises. So you put no surprises, colon, then whatever. Budget protection, rate freeze, price stability. Basically what's going on here is if you're not including the uncertainty as the lead voice in your marketing, you're not going to get, and I don't want to say the benefit, but you're not going to get the benefit of the increased engagement that's going on.

5:36The other thing that we're seeing that's new is in the call to action buttons in our emails and also on our social posts, but in our email specifically. These are the rectangular buttons in the emails that you're sending out. Call to action buttons right now. This is data from the last two weeks that are of the tone of lock it in. That's CTA language, call to action button language that's about locking it in. On the business side, we're seeing increased click-through rates by 15%. On the consumer side, over 20 % in the last two weeks. Basically, people are nervous. Consumers are nervous that prices are going up.

6:16Business decision makers are nervous that prices are going to go up. So when you have call to actions, and literally the words you want to put on your call to action button, you don't want to write boring, stupid things that say like, learn more or start now? No. What you want to be saying now is lock in your Q2 rate. Secure this pricing before May 15th. You write that entire thing on the call to action because you want to get into the mindset of what people are nervous about. The other things that are working really, really, really well right now are polls about uncertainty, doing polls on Instagram, doing polls on LinkedIn from your company pages, from your brand account, from whatever.

6:56Polls about uncertainty are seeing a 200 % higher engagement rate right now in social media in the last 30 days than standard polls. So you could do a poll like this about budget behavior. You could do a poll, for example, that says, is your team spending more or less or the same this quarter? Or what's the first thing you'd cut if budgets shrink? And then you have options. If you do polls about uncertainty, you're seeing massive engagement. When they do engage, you could then reach out to them and say, hey, by the way, I know you're concerned about this. We have an offer that does blah, blah, blah.

7:27And then the last one, and then I want to give you some examples of actual real campaigns or companies are doing is creating a financial FAQ that you can have your sales team send out, your BDR send out, right? And you could have a financial FAQ, one page PDF, you know, how to justify software spend to finance. So they have that and they can send that out to people or five things procurement will ask you and how to answer. You want to arm your salespeople with the stuff that they need to close the deals. And I'm not making this up. This is out there right now. Let me give you examples of real campaigns from major brands that have been going on in the last two weeks that are doing this exact thing.

8:08Nestle, okay? Nestle rolled out a massive campaign all over social, all over everywhere called Stock Up and Save, okay? In their emails. And it's all about their potential price increases. stock up and save. Nike on TikTok, on all of our social, on their website, they rolled out a campaign, shop now before prices rise. They're hitting it head on. These are the biggest brands on the planet. How about Caterpillar? Their campaign that they just rolled out, literally just rolled out, building through uncertainty. And they're promoting this on LinkedIn, in their newsletters, in webinars. It's all about them making sure that you are ready for the uncertainty.

8:50How about J.B. Hunt, the big logistics company? They just rolled out their campaign, Tariff Smart Logistics Solutions. This is not just random stuff going on. They know that if they talk about it, they're going to get more market share right now. So uncertainty is here. It's going to be here for a while. And we need to factor it into what we're doing, whether you're marketing to consumers, business decision makers, whatever it is. All right. Let's get into since you didn't ask. For those of you who never listened to this podcast, we make a hard turn here. And we talk about nonsense at the end of this podcast.

9:26So I have another episode I do during the week called Ask Us Anything. And we get in all these questions. And so my team said, so today when you record on your, since you didn't ask, we have a boatload of these dating advice questions that we've gotten submitted. People send in dating advice questions. They want my opinion, which is ridiculous because I know nothing about dating. I've been married for a zillion years and I'm clueless to begin with, but we get so many of them in. So I got a roundup here of questions that we've gotten in and I'm going to give you rapid fire answers to dating advice questions that were submitted by all of you.

10:02and I appreciate you submitting them. Okay, so here we go. Dating advice roundup. Jay, and by the way, I don't know what I'm talking about. Do the opposite of whatever I say because I'm clueless. Okay, Jay, first question. Is it bad to double text if you are genuinely interested? You know, I'm the worst person to give advice on this because I have teenage kids, 17 and 18. And they'll tell me about like what's going on with their social life, whatever. And they're like, oh, I snapped the person. They didn't open it or something or they didn't write back and whatever. I go, well, why don't you send another whatever?

10:38And they're like, what's wrong with you? You can't do that. If you send another whatever, then you are an absolute clown, loser, nerd. Nobody would do that. So if I didn't have that information from my teenage kids, I would be like, who cares? Double text, triple text, quadruple text. What are we doing? Find out what's going on. I couldn't handle it. It's ridiculous. So that's definitely double text. All right, Jay, is it rude to ask what someone's actual height is before the first date? Yeah, I think that's rude. I think that's actually rude, right? I mean, are we really that shallow? If you go out and you're taller, let's say you're a woman and you're taller than the dude, but the dude's awesome and great dude, you're going to bail?

11:24Well, guess what? If you're going to bail, that guy's lucky because you're a loser. All right? So, yeah, I think it's super rude to ask their height. All right. I don't know. That's my opinion. Next one. Jay, his ex is his roommate. Is that really bad? Yeah, I think that's really bad. I think that's really bad. First of all, every time you go over there, you're hanging out with his ex-girlfriend. What is that? What actually is that? Hi, let's watch a movie and order pizza. Oh, you want to join us? That's not awkward. uh and also like i don't know you're gonna he's gonna come home from a date with you and talk to his ex about you i don't care if they say they're just friends i don't believe it that's that's just a problem waiting to happen so yeah that ain't good at all all right last one jay is situationship just a trendy way of saying this guy is wasting my time i actually have no aware of like the difference between situationship and dating and talking.

12:36This is ridiculous what's going on. I mean, it's just straight up ridiculous. I think the biggest change in terms of dating from now, from when I was younger, in my opinion, is like the length of time that you are in like this situationship mode and then you become boyfriend, girlfriend. It seems like there's a much longer gap. It used to be like, oh, I like you. You like me. We went out on three dates. You're my boyfriend. You're my girlfriend, whatever. Now it seems like you float in this situationship thing for like months or some garbage. Then you have to go official on social media, whatever the hell that means.

13:10And then you declare, okay, we're together. Like what? There's like seven more steps. I don't get it. I don't know anything. I don't know what I'm talking about ever about anything. Anyway, who cares? What am I talking about right now? I don't know. I appreciate you being here. I appreciate you listening to this. If you leave it a review, then we'll be in a situation ship, which would be really cool. I'd be really happy about that. I think. I don't know. Who knows? All right. Later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers.

13:48And hook us up with a five-star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time. Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100 % free, visit guru events.com. So you can hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John, Martha Stewart, and me guru events.com. Check it out.