NEW! Tariff Marketing Tips for B2B and Consumer! + Dating Advice 😬 | Ep. 389

0:01Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. Each episode is packed with quick tips. They're super short, and at the end, we have some fun. Let's jump into it, and thanks for being here. We 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 questions. We get in word questions. We get in super ridiculous questions, and we try to tackle one of each. And if you want to submit a question, you would actually be the coolest human ever. Just go to jschwedelson.com. There's a button that says podcast.

0:36Another one that says, ask us anything. And that's where we get the questions for this thing. So we need them. Thank you. All right. Before we get to the super ridiculous question, here's the work question coming in from Sloan from Boston, Massachusetts. Love Boston. Somebody sent me something, a buddy of mine that lives in Boston. He sent this to me the other day because I was making fun of him about his accent, which probably means I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for even talking about this, but whatever. so he sent me there's an official boston accent dictionary did you know this it's amazing and so he sent to me and i just could not stop laughing because everything in it is awesome like you know have like park the car in there instead of park the car which i love but then other ones which i now want to say all the time so instead of calling dunkin donuts dunkin donuts they call it, they call it donkeys.

1:28I don't know why that makes me laugh. And then for the TV remote, I asked my buddy if he actually says this, he says, yes, he does call the TV remote this. They call it a clicker, like a clicker, a clicker. So, uh, and then the last one is instead of basement, they call it a cellar, which in Florida, it's super annoying. You know, we have no basements in Florida, which really, really stinks. I had a basement. I lived in New York. I love my basement. Oh, I wish I had a basement, but anyway, we, I don't have a cellar. We don't have a basement. We don't have any of it. All right. Sorry. I'm totally off topic.

1:59Sloan, what is your question? Jay, my team says we should move on from pushing discounts in our promos because the tariff concerns are mostly in the rear view. Is that the case? All right. Well, so whether you're a business to business marketer, nonprofit marketer, direct to consumer marketer, I don't care who you are. The tariff stuff in the news, while it's still heavy in the news, and by the way, not political. I could care less about politics, meaningless. I will never talk about it, whatever. But in terms of the tariffs, the tariff discussion has gotten a little bit simmered down, right? There's all this talk about a deal with this country, that country, we're working out here, there, wherever.

2:40That actually doesn't matter because there's like a six-month lag, right? Meaning that the tariffs are already baked in to causing issues for people that are looking to buy consumer products this holiday season. Or if you are selling business services or business products, it is already going to be a problem through the end of the year. I mean, look at certain categories. When you go to do your holiday shopping, I promise you this holiday, when you go to buy a toy, it's either going to be more expensive or it's not going to be available because it takes a while for these toy manufacturers to get their stuff through the shipping and logistics and all that stuff.

3:21So it doesn't matter what the news says, it's going to impact people, right? And on the business side, it's the same thing. It's because our mindsets are like, oh, there's a budget shift here. We're going to spend less here. Look at events, for example, business-to-business events. In general, if you put on an in-person event, about 20 % of the people that go to your event are from Europe or overseas. And we have been seeing it already with events already happening for the second half of the year, that event registration from anywhere outside of the US for a US-based event is like in the garbage can.

3:56So I'm going to tell you exactly what you should be doing that's working really, really well right now, a very specific thing. But if you think that the tariff thing and the uncertainty in people's minds, whether they're business or consumer people, is over, you are completely and totally wrong. But there is one tactic that is crushing in the last 90 days, and this is from World Data Research. Super specific, pretty wild. And it's this idea of cost per use framing. You know, like when you see something and it says something like, you know, this is the same price as one Uber ride or something like that.

4:33When marketing messages are framed in this relative value framing, or you might call it cost comparison anchoring, or everyday equivalence marketing. This form of marketing right now is surging. And I'm going to give you examples of exactly how you do it, whether you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer. this idea of value per marketing is surging right now. Why is it working so well? Because this is allowing whoever you're marketing to, a business professional or consumer, to find the budget in their mind instantly. And that's what we have to help them do. So this idea of, for example, emails that frame products and services and their offer in a cost per use framework see a 22 % higher average email open rate on the consumer side and a 19 % increase on the business to business side, okay, when you are pushing this first in your subject line and then your headline.

5:35So what would that sound like? You know, what is this idea of cost per use framing? So imagine you saw a subject line like this, you know, one Uber ride equals this outfit fit forever. Or same price as two movie tickets worn way more than two hours. Or cost less than your iced matcha. You know, putting this stuff in the subject line, all of a sudden you're like, oh yeah, my iced matcha is this much money. I can get this for this much money. It's the exact same thing. On the business side, it works so well too. So you could do things like same cost as boosting one bad LinkedIn post, but actually works.

6:11Same price as your monthly stock photo subscription. you spent more on pens with your logo if you get an email that says you've spent more on pens with your logo and then you open it up and it's this really cool sas product that can improve your martex actually yeah that's true and when you flip that switch and the person says that's true that is when you start winning so this idea of value per use if you've never tested first of all super fun get your brand to stand out a little bit and it's working incredibly well right now and just to add on to that, if you think the tariff stuff is over, we did a whole big study.

6:48We looked at for the month of June specifically, we did A-B tests with all these different email promotions. And we had, for example, in the subject line, the headline, if we mentioned tariff or if we don't. So it would be whatever your offer was, not mentioning the tariff, and then actually putting in that subject line or the headline, prices might rise, get in before the tariffs do, whatever, mentioning the word tariffs. And in the month of June, all the way through to the end of the month of June, we saw a 19 % increase when the subject line actually mentioned tariffs versus when they don't.

7:19So that doesn't mean it's going to work for your industry, your business or whatever, but if you've never tested this or you haven't been testing it, you should be testing it right now because it's still a big deal. All right. Before we get to the ridiculous question, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold and they have a platform called Emma and an email sending platform. It rocks. It's awesome. And just for listeners of this podcast, special, amazing offer. You can get the first three months 50 % off. First three months, 50 % off. All you have to do is go to jschwedelson.com slash Emma, and you can access this amazing platform.

7:57Your platform stinks. Give Emma a try. jschwedelson.com slash EMMA. All right. Let's get into the ridiculous questions. All right. for some reason, and this is so strange to me, we get in all these dating advice questions. I know nothing about dating. I've been married for over 20 years. My wife's the greatest human being I know. Okay. I'm very happy. And I don't, I've not dated anybody. I don't know anything about it, but we get these questions in and I'm going to answer them. You should probably do the opposite of whatever I say, because I don't know what I'm talking about, but we get in a bunch of them.

8:31So my team grabbed a whole bunch for me to rip through and give quick advice. my advice stinks, but here we go. I have not read these. Here we go. One after another. Jay, when a person says we should hang out sometime, but never picks a date, should I take the hint or follow up? Oh my God. Take the hint. That person's a loser. That's a lie. They're just nervous. They want to get out of the conversation. If they don't pick a date, they're not into you. Okay. And it's, it's annoying. Who wants to hang out with something that's annoying anyway. That person's a loser. Move on. All right, next one.

9:04Jay, is it a red flag if someone follows their ex on Instagram? First off, let's talk about that. Again, my advice is terrible, but you might follow exes on Instagram. You might never remember that you follow exes on Instagram. So I think it's totally fine. What is not fine, in my opinion, you cannot be hearting, liking, or commenting at all on exes, uh, things on Instagram. And if you go on your significant others, Instagram and the little circle, the story at the top, uh, or the series of stories at the top is the person's like exes, meaning that they're always looking at their stories. No bueno.

9:42I don't think that's good. So as long as they're not really interacting, I think you're fine. Wow. My advice is ridiculous. All right. More. Jay, How many cancel last minute dates before I assume they're not just interested? Oh, one. You get one try. If somebody cancels you last, oh my God, I got my pet just threw up. I can't handle it, whatever. You get one. If they do it twice, no chance, done. And if they do cancel, they must immediately reschedule or they are a loser. And by the way, my kids have taught me you could call somebody a loser or you could say they're loser. If you call somebody, hey, you're a loser, that's bad.

10:20If you say that person's loser, it's like 10 times worse. Little side note there. Okay. Last one. Jay, do they really need quote unquote space or do they just need me to stop asking where they were last night? Oh, all right. First off, if you are dating somebody and you're worried about where they were last night, like Like maybe they're doing something sketchy. Maybe they hang out with a different person. And you're like, oh no, what are they doing? Then you're not having a very good dialogue with whoever you're in a relationship with. This is not a healthy situation. And if the person is being not cool and being like weird and fuzzy about where they were last night, that's actually 10 times worse.

11:01Get out of that relationship. The person's a liar, a clown, a loser, a nerd, a dweeb, a dork. I don't know what else, but bet. You know what else is a dork? Me, I'm a dork. I don't know what I'm talking about. Listen, you're awesome. please go to jschwellson.com, submit the questions, and register for Guru Conference. We're going to run out of free spots. It is the world's largest free virtual email marketing event. Nicole Kidman is going to be there. Lance Bass is going to be there. Amy Porterfield, Anne Hanley. Who else? Donald Miller. It's going to be great. GuruConference.com. It is free. Get your spot before they run out.

11:34Later. 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 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 guruevents.com. So you can hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John, Martha Stewart, and me. Guruevents.com. Check it out.