Ep. 185 - EASY Ways to WIN AWARDS! (they really matter!) 🎃 I was a TOILET for Halloween 😨 Ask Us ANYTHING

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 ask us anything from do this not that podcast presented by marigold this is our short episode where all week long we get into work questions and we get in ridiculous questions we try to tackle one of each and if you want to submit a question it's real easy you go to jay swettleson dot com you hook podcast and then there's another button that says ask us anything and you could I mean, if you saw what we got in here, it is wild, weird, and awesome. Let's get into the work question first. We got a question from Owen from Bridgeport, Connecticut. You know what? Connecticut, I just saw, do you know that Beetlejuice, the movie Beetlejuice takes place in Connecticut?

1:21Am I going to see that movie? I don't know. Is it scary? I can't do scary movies. I feel like maybe it's not scary, but if it is, there's no way I'm seeing it. But I don't know. I like Michael Keaton, so maybe. Anyway, well, Owen, what's your question? Jay, I find certain things try hard or cringy. Can you tell me if these things actually work? Like when brands promote that they won an award or have it splashed all over a landing page or when brands showcase logos of well-known clients or partners that they have, can't they just share details on how cool their product or service is? uh no they can't just do that because if you're not comfortable being cringy or try hard as you put it then you shouldn't be in marketing this stuff crushes it so let me give you some stats about why you need to be using client logos and awards i'm going to tell you some secret hacks actually winning awards because it can change your business so first of all landing pages that have client logos on them, according to Apexure, if you have a landing page, I can take somebody to your offer page, business, consumer, whatever, and there's client logos splashed all over it of people that your company works with.

2:37Conversion rates go up by over 40%. Why? Because whoever gets that page is like, wait a minute, so other companies use them too? Ooh, there's some well-known companies that use them. Great. I'm not the only doofus that's considering using this company. Of course, that's what you want to be doing. That is ridiculous. And if you don't do that, you should do it immediately. It costs you nothing. Grab a couple of the logos, stick them on there, call it a day. It's easy, social proof. The other one that's even better is awards. Awards are the best. They are awesome. Now, according to Finances Online, 68 % of B2B business decision makers are more likely to request a demo after seeing industry accolades on a landing page or on a signup page.

3:25And it doesn't really matter what the award is. I know people say, well, there are these awards that are very important. It doesn't matter. You just need to win any awards because nobody knows how many people are submitting. Nobody's ever heard of these awards. You're not winning an Oscar. Relax. They just want to know that they are validated in the decision that they're making about buying the thing from you, subscribing to the thing from you. So here are some hacks. on how to win awards. First off, target inaugural awards, awards that is their first year having the award. Because I am telling you, you don't realize it, but all these people that run awards, I used to have an awards business.

4:03So I can tell you firsthand, when you launch an award, people don't submit a lot. Okay, they just don't. So you're desperate for submissions. So target new awards because they don't get submissions. Now, the other thing you want to do is target niche categories. You don't want to go in and say, try to win the business of the year award. You're not going to win that. They're going to get a lot of submissions. You go for a niche category, whatever it is, the one that you think has the fewer submissions, because then when you win, you just stick the logo of the award and you get the benefit of people saying, oh yeah, this company's cool.

4:35I'm going to buy the product or service. It doesn't matter how big the award is. And also self-nominate yourself. People feel like that's like cringy. I can't do that. what's wrong with you? Self-nominate yourself. The majority of awards allow you to self-nominate, self-nominate yourself everywhere. Also leverage local awards. Start with local industry-specific awards because it's still the same thing of putting the logo on your site and nobody's submitting for these local awards, for these industry stuff. It builds credibility. It's easy. The other thing I thought was super interesting, Startup Nation came out with this data that says you want to focus on awards that have a January deadline because January deadline awards have the fewest submission of any other period of the year.

5:19And they stated because so many people on vacations. So you can win awards. Most awards, believe it or not, do barely get enough submissions to actually pick winners from. And then you stick them on your site. You stick them on the footer of your emails. You stick them in your email signature and you get more business. What are you doing? What's wrong with you? Come on. All right. Before we get into the ridiculous question, and of course it's going to be ridiculous, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Marigold is my email sending platform. I use them.

5:51I send over 6 billion business and consumer emails a year. They're incredible. That's meetmarigold.com, but they have a new piece of content. It's a free guide and you have got to check this thing out. It is the five steps for selecting the right email marketing platform. This thing is gold. If you want it, all you got to do is go to jschwedelson.com slash Marigold. That's jschwedelson.com slash Marigold. And you can download the free guide, Five Steps for Selecting the Right Email Marketing Platform. You got to check it out. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question. All right, we got a question in from Brenda from Brooklyn, New York.

6:31Jay, do you dress up for Halloween? Yes, I do. By the way, I just saw that this came out, and this is true. You could find it on Chipotle's Instagram page and whatever. Chipotle and Spirit Halloween, the Halloween store, they have done a collab, and they came out with Halloween costumes based on Chipotle stuff. So there is – you could be the Chipotle napkin. You could be a Chipotle burrito. You could be the Chipotle fork. I mean you could be a Chipotle water cup. This is not a joke. You can go to Spirit Halloween and you could buy these random Chipotle costumes and they are hilarious. I would say the all-time worst Halloween – and this is true.

7:11I dressed up like this. I'm not kidding. The worst thing I ever dressed up for – not that you asked – for Halloween was one year I dressed up as a toilet. It was amazing. I have to find the picture. I dressed up as a toilet and because I'm the disgusting doofus, what I did was I thought this would be so funny and it was amazing. I made meatballs this is true and I made meatballs and this toilet was like this big elephant it looked like the big toilet part was coming out where my stomach was I was it was like a whole white porcelain it looked like it was white porcelain but it wasn't it was foam and I took the meatballs that I made and I put them in the toilet parts and I walked around my neighborhood and then every once in a while I'd walk by somebody I'd pick up a meatball out of the toilet part and I'd bite into it.

7:55And it was like, I am so proud that I did this. It, my wife was like, she wanted not to walk anywhere near me. And I don't blame her. It was so embarrassing. I loved every second of it. So yes, I will report back on what I'm going to wear this year. I have no idea. It's still very early for that, but everybody should dress up because why not? Who cares? It's fun. Um, listen, leave this thing review, go win an award, register for free, virtual email conference, guru conference.com. Why are you not registered? That's not cool. All right. Check it out. Guru conference.com. Thanks later. You did it.

8:29You 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 and 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.