STOP Being Positive! ➕ F1 Movie Review🏎️! Ask Us ANYTHING❓ | Ep. 377

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 short episode where all week long we get in questions, all sorts of wild questions, work ones, ridiculous ones, and we try to answer one of each. And if you want to submit one, just go to jschwedelson.com. There's a button that says podcast. another one that says ask us anything and uh yeah we appreciate it all so let's jump into it we're gonna do the word question first we got a question from lindsey from cincinnati uh cincinnati what do i got you know what cincinnati skyline chili does everybody know about skyline chili so it's kind of gross but it's also kind of great so i don't know if you know this but i'm about to talk about ridiculousness.

0:59Cincinnati has its own chili style. It's like sweet. That's like their chili there. It's not like, you know, in Texas where it's like spicy or whatever. And there's this like kind of fast food chili restaurant called Skyline Chili. There was one down here. I think it just closed and you get like the sweet chili, but you get on top of like spaghetti with cheese and it's both equal parts gross and awesome. But that's not your question. What's your question, Lindsay. Jay, everywhere I turn, people are saying we need to be more positive in our marketing. You know, highlight the benefits, be upbeat, use words like grow, win, achieve.

1:35My boss is literally so positive that it bothers me. Am I just a horrible person or is there any marketing performance stuff that supports me feeling like the positivity in all marketing is wallpaper? Well, first off, I feel that if you have a boss that's like so positive, it's annoying, than it actually is annoying. But it's a great topic because there's a lot of data that actually supports not being positive. I know how bad that sounds. But if your marketing sounds like a motivational poster in your HR's office, people are going to scroll past that. That is just the way it is. Everybody thinks, oh yeah, be positive, be all warm and fuzzy.

2:15But that's actually not what we react to and what we respond to. So there's a bunch of different stats and examples I want to give you about the power of not being positive, right? You're not going to hear this on a lot of podcasts. I was like, be positive. No, screw that. So first off, let's talk about headlines. Headlines in your social posts or in your display ads, and this is data from Outbrain, and they share that negative words like worst, don't, and never actually generate a 63 % increase in click-throughs versus positive ones when used in your headline on social posts or display ads. So examples of that would be on the business side, the seven worst budget mistakes marketers still make, right?

2:56That's negative. That's not positive. As compared to seven ways to build a better marketing budget. I mean, all day long, I would click on the seven worst budget mistakes. I want to avoid the mistakes. On the consumer side, it would be things like the positive would be five healthy tips for your post-workout routine. That's epically boring. Five things you should never do after a workout. You want to avoid that. So interesting data on headlines from Outbrain. And there were some more headline data from Backlinko that actually said, if you talk to people telling that they're doing something wrong, it will actually double your click-through rate.

3:37So when you use the word mistake in your headlines, on your social posts, or on your display ads, it will double click-through rate. So instead of saying tips to optimize your CRM strategy. It would say mistakes killing your CRM strategy. Or on the consumer side, instead of saying how to brush your teeth better, it would say, are you brushing your teeth all wrong? So it's not just in your headlines though. There's also stuff, and this kind of blew my mind, this one. This one was so wild to me. In email, we see the same thing. So let's talk about subject lines, for example. So this data is from subjectline.com and this is new data.

4:16So emojis. Oh no, he's going to talk about emojis. Emojis are stupid. I don't like using them. They're not on brand. I'm a business marketer. I'm a nonprofit. I can't use emojis. Wrong. Emojis work across the board. They're not overdone. Only less than 7 % of all promotional email have emojis in the subject line. They work incredibly well. Now, here's the negativity thing that you want to do. Believe it or not, and this is new data, negative emojis do better than positive emojis, which is pretty wild, right? So for example, when you have the, you know, the angry orange face, or you have the heart with the line down the middle, the broken heart, or you have that warning symbol, the triangle with the exclamation point in it, and use those emojis versus the happy ones, the party popper ones, the smiley face ones, things like that.

5:07The negative emojis as the first character in your subject line actually lift open rates over 17 % versus not having them at all. And that's higher than positive emojis. And it works for both business and consumer offers. So imagine, for example, you start your subject line with that warning triangle with that exclamation mark in it. and it said, you're losing leads fast, right? Or you have a sad face that says something like, still waiting to upgrade, question mark. Negative emojis out pull positive emojis. They stand out a little bit because people aren't using them as much. So that's kind of like a no-brainer.

5:48And then the last one is this idea of the nope subject line trick. And this is data from Experian. Negative subject lines have a 17 % higher average open rate than positive subject lines. So on the business side, instead of saying maximize ad ROI today in your subject line, you would say stop burning ad budget. Or instead of saying check out our summer specials, it would be don't miss the deal everyone's talking about, right? Flipping the script and not being positive in your headlines, on your social posts, in in your subject lines, in your body copy, people react more to negativity and fear-based stuff than they do all the positive stuff.

6:29It just is the way it is. So these are great, easy tests. All right, let's get into the ridiculous question. We have a totally ridiculous question that came in from Daryl from Sacramento. Daryl, what do you got? Jay, you never talk about movies. You only talk about TV shows that you're watching. Do you even go to the movie theaters and have you seen any good ones lately? Well, Daryl, the answer to that is yes. I love going to the movies all the time. I just saw F1. Now, let me tell you something. F1, that's the movie about the car racing. It stars Brad Pitt. I know Brad Pitt's got a lot of stuff, possibly not the greatest dude.

7:10Let's put that off to the side for one second. The guy is like a movie star. I mean, this movie was amazing. My wife loved it too. I'm talking about like incredible. I knew nothing about F1. I know nothing about racing cars zero. I am telling you, this is an absolutely great movie. Now, of course, when I go to the movies, I get bothered by everything because people are weird. So what do I mean by that? So when we went to go to the movies, the CF1, uh, and we were in like, you know, regular seats or whatever, not like some sort of special fancy seats or whatever. And these people next to us, they brought blankets.

7:49They brought their own blankets. I'm like, dude, are you moving in? Like what, who does it? Hey, let's go to the movies. Make sure to bring your blanket. Is that like a thing? Why are people doing that? That's really strange. I don't understand. And then on the other side of me, this guy took off his shoes, which is just disgusting. It's like, what? You're not home. You're not at home. Why are you taking off your shoes? You're disgusting. And the other thing me and my wife always battle on is the movie trailers. So now before every movie, like 20 minutes, there's movie trailers. Okay. And she's always like, oh, the movie starts at two 45.

8:27Let's show up there at three. I love trailers. She thinks they're terrible. I love them. So now I'm like, I'll, I want to go to the movies, but we have to go and see the trailers. and she'll put up with me, she's like, fine. And I'm the most annoying person on earth because what happens is there's like, I don't know, 10 trailers, whatever it is. And after each trailer, I will movie preview, you know, I turned to go, what do you think? Would you go to that one? And nine times out of 10, she goes, that movie looks horrible. But it is ridiculous. After each trailer, I have to ask her. The thing that I understand is, are 95 % of movies coming out horror movies?

9:01Because why is every trailer a horror movie? And by the way, they're horrible horror movies. I won't see a horror movie, but these look horrible. They're scary. The trailers themselves are scary. But it seems like every movie coming out is a horror movie according to the previews. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. Anyway, so yeah, we covered a lot today. I appreciate you. And go to jschwedelson.com. And if you go there and you go to the page that says partner, maybe you want me on your podcast or maybe we can partner in some way. I don't know. We can work together. We can hang out. So go check out jschwedelson.com.

9:35I appreciate you being here and don't bring a blanket to the movie theater. 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 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.