Marketing BUDGETS Cut? Easy No Cost Wins! 😕 Dating Advice? Ask Us ANYTHING❓ | Ep. 304

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.

0:39we are back for ask us anything from the do this not that podcast presented by marigold this is our super short episode where all week long we get in work questions we get in super ridiculous questions we try to tackle one of each and if you want to submit a question you would absolutely rock you just go to jay swettleson.com button that says podcast another one says ask us anything and please submit your questions because that's how we do this crazy show so let's get into it let's do the work question first we got a question from jake from springdale utah i know exactly where that is because it is right next to zion national park and i took my family there not too long ago and we went i'll never forget this i don't know why this is on my mind but probably because you're from there um we went repelling and that's like when you go up these big uh formations these rock formations and you tie these ropes around you and then you go down like backwards and we had this guide and we went up like a hundred feet and I was freaking out.

1:36I'm not like scared of heights, whatever. I guess I'm just scared of like dying from falling off a cliff or whatever. Anyway. So my wife goes down pretty much no issue. My teenage kids each go down pretty much no issue. Now it's my turn. I got this rope wrapped around me and I'm like, this is horrendous. I am. This is the end. This is where it ends for me. And so, um, my teenage kids thought this was very funny and they thought, oh my God, our dad is freaking out, whatever. And so they filmed the whole thing. And as I'm going down, I'm pretty sure nobody has cursed this much in the span of whatever it was, 30 seconds.

2:12I probably cursed easily a hundred times and I could not have sounded like a bigger wimp. And we were supposed to spend the whole day rappelling with this guide. I immediately paid this man and said, your day is now over. Repelling has ended. This is the last time I will ever do this in my life. So yes, it's not a bucket list item, but I will never be doing that again. And I cursed a lot. Anyway, Jake, what is your question? Jay, our team just found out that our marketing budgets are basically cut to almost nothing. But of course, we still need to drive leads and engagement. Any magic you got that we can do to keep the marketing lights on?

2:55Well, I think a lot of people out there, consumer and business marketers are feeling this one because unfortunately budgets might be getting scaled back. You know, when there's uncertainty and I don't care about anybody's politics, it's meaningless to me, but there's uncertainty. There's no debating that there's uncertainty. When there's uncertainty, marketing budgets get contracted because everyone's like, oh no, we got to rein it in and see what's going to happen, which is not a good move, but that's a topic for another day. So what can you do if your marketing budgets are shrunk to almost zero?

3:24And I think there's a level of energy that the marketing team needs to bring to their entire organization when there's not a lot of dollars to go around, because you can do a lot of stuff if you get a little bit aggressive. First off, whether you're a business or consumer, let's talk about DMing people. You can be DMing people on LinkedIn. in. You could be dimming people on Instagram, anywhere that you want to DM. Now it's not just you DMing people, but you turn every employee in your company, every salesperson, every marketing person, every executive, every everybody into an engine for your company.

3:59You give them a little blurb of what they can say. Let's say you're promoting a webinar. You have, you give them a blurb and you say, I want you to DM a hundred of your contacts every day. This costs nothing. It takes less than 10 minutes. It is not hard. And the group will say, Hey, by the way, we have this awesome new webinar coming up. This so-and-so was speaking. I'd love for you to be there. Can I count on you? And you send them the link for registration. Or if it's a direct to consumer offer, you DM from the brand account page or from a personal page, you DM, Hey, we have this special 10 % offer for you.

4:29And you DM a hundred contacts a day. Does that sound meaningless? Yeah, it might sound meaningless to you, but it will be a game changer for you. It costs you nothing. And I don't care how big or small your brand is. You can do this. And if you have thousands of employees, turn them into your engine. Also your email signatures, get aggressive with your email signatures. You don't realize how many emails everybody on your team is sending out, but it's not just how many, because maybe you have a small team. It doesn't matter. You're emailing to the exact right people every single day, interacting back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

5:02And your email signatures within your emails, if you include a very strong CTA that is very timely, that really stands out, you will get a high click-through rate on that. Again, it costs you no money. Other things you could do for no money, get super active where your audience is. Maybe there are relevant Slack groups that you could be in or Discord or Facebook group communities or LinkedIn communities. Get on there, get your employees on there, get your team on there, start posting about your offers, your content, engaging. It takes a little bit of energy, but if you have no budget, you can overcome all this stuff.

5:41Do swaps. Reach out to non-competitive folks in your category. It could be an association. It could be a publisher in your category. It could be anything. Or somebody has a big following, say, hey, listen, I'll post about your stuff. You post about mine. Put this link in your newsletter. I'm going to put this link in my newsletter. I'm going to endorse your thing. You're going to endorse my thing. You be intentional that you say to yourself, okay, once a week, I'm going to lock in one of these relationships. And this can be a game changer. Again, no money is changing hands and you can do this.

6:12Up your posting on social media. If you're not posting daily, you better be posting daily on all platforms. Post twice a day if you're posting daily. Separate it out by three hours. And who cares if you don't get a lot of engagement? Any little piece of engagement matters. And when you do get engagement, when you do get a like from anybody, you DM that person. Okay. Say, Hey, by the way, I saw you interact with the post. I want to get you this discount. I want to get you information on this latest thing. Listen, you can do this. It's just a matter of how much energy you want to put behind it. You don't need marketing budget to change the game.

6:47Okay. The same thing as emails. If you're sending an email once a week, send out emails twice a week. Oh no. Maybe you'll get some unsubscribes. Who cares? They're not buying from you, but that additional send will get you more clicks. We'll get you more activity. And then when you get those clicks, you take those clicks and you DM them on social media or you DM them privately, another email message and say, Hey, can we connect? Can we talk when there is no budget? That's when you have to say, you know what? I'm going to get comfortable being uncomfortable. I'm going to ask my team to do more.

7:18I'm going to ask all the employees to do more. That is how you win. And the last one, which is absolutely the best tactic on earth is ask for referrals. Go to your clients that love you the most, the most loyal clients that you have, the people that really love your brand, okay, and say, hey, can I count on you to refer us? Maybe you give them a discount code if they refer you, or if it's a big client, you say, listen, it'll be huge. Is there anybody in your network that you think, you know, you could introduce me to because I'd love for them to, you know, learn about what we're doing? You will be shocked about how many people are willing to do that if you ask.

7:54You don't want to ask everybody. It's not a mass solicitation, but a handful of clients referring you can be a game changer. So it's not the time to be shy when marketing budgets are getting tight. All right. Before we get to the ridiculous question, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Now, Marigold is my email sending platform. I don't know who you use, but whoever you're using is the wrong platform because I'm using the best platform on earth. You're a business marketer, consumer marketer, small, medium, large. I am telling you, you want to check out meetmarigold.com.

8:27I send billions of emails. I've been using them forever. They are incredible. If you want to run a loyalty marketing program, retention programs, you want the absolute best AI tools, Marigold is it. Check them out at meetmarigold.com. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question. this is always so funny to me we get in lots of very odd questions but we get in a lot of questions people asking dating advice which is so strange because i don't know anything about dating like zero i've been married for 400 years i know nothing but here we get them all the time so apparently we group together three dating advice questions and i'm going to answer them and i would recommend taking the opposite advice whatever i give because i'm clueless and also i have not read these yet.

9:13So we're going to do this in real time. Here we go. Dating advice questions. Jay, I accidentally called my date by my ex's name mid-dinner and he won't let it go. What should I do? Well, if that person won't let it go, that person is a loser. I mean, first of all, that's funny. Okay. It's not like you're sitting there daydreaming about your ex or whatever. Who cares that it came out of your mouth. And if the person's making a big, anybody who makes a big deal about anything that's not important is a loser. And you should not date that person because it just shows they're going to make, if they make a big deal out of nothing, they're going to make a massive deal out of a big deal.

9:52And then you're going to break up anyway. So get rid of this person. They're a loser and probably go back with whoever your ex is because they're on your mind, apparently. Okay. The next question. These are unbelievable. I have no reason to be answering these, but who cares? Jay, my boyfriend loves talking about investing in crypto and it is so boring and I've tried to tell him, but he won't stop. Is this a big problem? I mean, if the person you're dating is really boring to you and you don't like what they're talking about and you've told them that you don't like what they're talking about and they're boring, then I would call that a big problem because I mean, it's boring.

10:28Why would you want to be involved with somebody that you find boring. I would say, give it one more shot. Say, listen, dude, you're boring me to tears. I don't care about crypto. I don't care about your investment portfolio. Let's talk about, you know, something important like reality TV. And so, yeah, if they're boring, boring is not going away. So move on. I'm telling everybody in this country to break up basically. All right. Last question. Jay, I really hate my potential future in-laws. Is that a deal breaker? Oh, Oh, wow. That is a loaded question. That's a tough one. I got very lucky. I hit like the in-law lottery when I got married.

11:06I did. The nicest people, greatest people on earth. And I was very aware of that before I got engaged. I'm like, I really like my potential in-laws. So now I have to flip the script. If I really didn't like them, would that have stopped me? It certainly would have been a check mark in the negative column. I think it also has to do with how close whoever it is that you're dating, that your significant other is, how close are they with their parents, right? If their parents are like a huge part of their life, you guys live really close to where they live. And the goal, the plan is that you're going to stay close to them and they're going to be a part of your life in a big way.

11:42Then it's a massive issue. If they like live three States away, you see them three times a year. You have to have Thanksgiving with them, but they're not really part of your everyday life, potentially long-term then it's a big nothing burger and who cares. So I think that's it. Um, but listen, if you love the person you're with, you stay with them, even if they have some baggage there with their, with their parents. Um, and hopefully that all works out. I don't know what I'm talking about. Listen, I appreciate you being here. Go to jayschwedelson.com. Not only can you put questions in there for this episode, but if you go to the page that says partner with Jay, we can partner on stuff.

12:17if I can come on your podcast, maybe you'll come on mine. We can work together. You could hire my agency. We could solve all of the world's issues. Probably not. But anyway, thanks for being here. Leave this thing a review and I'll catch you 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. And hook us up with a five-star of you 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 guruevents.com so you can hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John, Martha Stewart, and me.

13:02Guruevents.com. Check it out.