STOP Making BORING Marketing Right Now 🚫 Jay's SCOOP | Ep. 515

0:00Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Do This, Not That podcast. And I wanted to break down some content formats that are crushing it right now for business, for consumer, for nonprofit, and it costs no money. and the reason it's really on my mind is I was just in this meeting and the client was talking about how much money they were spending trying to create these new templates and these new pieces of content and they were even hiring like video people.

0:43I'm like what an epic waste of money. First of all you're going to create this garbage. Nobody's going to care. It's going to look so like stiff. It's going to look like AI made it quite frankly and it's going to get no engagement. So I want to share some data that we have on stuff that's actually crushing it right now that I don't care what if you're in a boring industry, I'm in a regulated industry. I can't do that garbage. I'm a consumer marketer. You could do this. Anything. I'm a nonprofit. You could do it. It doesn't matter. Okay. So first of all, in general, the thing you need to have seared into your brain is you need to un-AI your marketing.

1:18Everybody now can go to any AI tool, make any ridiculous thing, make it look really slick, and it is wallpaper. It's not even wallpaper. It's more boring than wallpaper. What we want to engage with now is humanity stuff. That's all that we care about is humanity stuff. So let's get into, for example, what crushes it. The number one content format that we all have now known for the last year, and this is a no-brainer, then I'll get into some better ones, is BTS, behind the scenes. Behind the scenes content is everything. If you are a manufacturer, you take your phone and say, let me show you how we're making this stuff.

1:59You are a consumer brand making sneakers. Let me show you about how we're doing the sneakers. You're a boring B2B SaaS company. Let me take you over where the developers are and how they're developing the code for blah, blah, blah. And you walk there with the phone and you show everybody how you do it. Okay. Or Hey, you want to see a peek into our lunchroom, walk over here. Let me show you behind the scenes, what we do for lunch, that content, BTS video content, for example, on LinkedIn specifically, BTS content has a 200 % higher engagement rate than any other form of content on LinkedIn, BTS.

2:32Now you can take that same video, whether you're a consumer marketer, business marketer, it doesn't matter. Okay. You can take that same video and you could stick it in your email newsletters. How do you stick video in your email newsletters? Well, all you do is this. You're not really sticking a video in there. You're taking a screen grab, all right, of the first image of the video. And then you're putting a giant play button on top of that image, a red play button. Okay. And then you're putting that image in your newsletter, you know, behind the scenes of whatever. And then when they click on it, then they're going to go to the page that actually has the video and they click again and they play it.

3:06When you, this is wild, wild data from my research group, world data research. Okay. But emails that show the play button for video content versus those that don't, the ones that show the play button in your emails have a 34 % higher average click-through rate. All you're doing is giving people the opportunity to actually click on the thing. Now, what are other formats that right now are doing phenomenal? I know how this ridiculous sounds, but record, hallway walk and talks. Walk and talks, it doesn't have to just be in a hallway, are doing amazing. On Instagram, they're crushing it. On LinkedIn, they're crushing it.

3:44On Facebook, they're crushing it. Because you're moving with the person, it's pointed at your face, and you're giving commentary. Believe it or not, walking selfie videos have a 49 % higher completion rate on LinkedIn and a 57 % higher completion rate on Instagram. The walk and talks are doing so, so good. Now, some other formats that I don't have the stats on, but we've been testing them and they've been working great for us that I think are worth trying is the desk drive-by. Again, it's all about lo-fi content. This is not something AI would ever make. Okay. You literally take that camera, you point at yourself, say, okay, we're going to walk over to Sarah's desk and we're going to see what she's working on today.

4:25And you go right over there, just, you know, I'm actually working on this new feature for our app. It's going to be so cool. It comes out in a week or, Hey, I'm working actually on setting up the new webinar we're doing on Friday, and this is the speaker, it's another way to get your information out there that it takes three seconds and it couldn't do better. Another one that we love doing is basically the one take mistake videos. How often are you making a video and you don't get it right the first time? That's like me every time. All right. I do my podcast in one shot. I do. I hit record and I'm like, let's roll, dude.

5:00And that's it. I'm not sitting here with a script. I have a couple of stats that I know I want to mention. Other than that, it's whatever nonsense is in my brain and I talk. And if I make a mistake, so be it. And that's what allows it to feel a little more human. So if you take the one take mistake videos and you could label them that, they crush it. That's why we all love bloopers, right? We love watching bloopers. The last one is walking to the gate at the airport. It's similar to the walk and talk, but for whatever reason, the airport is phenomenal content. And mostly the reason is you're talking about whatever you want to talk about.

5:33Your new consumer launch, your nonprofit thing. You want people to donate your business to business thing. But then there's so much nonsense that goes on in the airport. So for example, you'll go there, right? And you're like, I'm here two hours before my flight and there's already a lineup at my gate. What are these people lining up for? Or I'm here, I'm trying to get on the people mover, but people won't walk on the people mover. They think it's a ride. What's wrong with them? Or it's eight o 'clock in the morning and this dude is just three drinks deep already at the bar. What is he doing? There's so much additional commentary that you could put in that makes it so much more human.

6:08And that is what we want to do. We want to add humanity to every single thing that we're doing. This is the content that's crushing it. Not this boring, generic, garbage, template, nonsense, garbage, nonsense. Is that a full sentence? Probably three sentences. I have no idea. So, all right, let's get into the ridiculous portion of this, of this podcast. So right now I have like no work life balance, like a zero burger, uh, which is bad. I'm not happy about this. I need to work on this. And the reason being is this is not a commercial, but I'm being honest. So next week is a fantastic. That's my giant free virtual conference.

6:45You can go register for it. Fantastic.com. It's two days. We've got like 14 ,000 people registered. It's all about events and webinars, in-person events, all the stuff, but I have no work-life balance because this thing is such a cluster to put together. You know, it's not even the speaker sessions. Those are great. Okay, fine. People are speaking great. So we do these ridiculous sessions. So for example, on my schedule today, on my calendar of calls that I have to have today is we have a call with this woman. Her name is Taylor 2, T-O-O. She's a Taylor Swift impersonator. And so like at the event, we're doing this thing where Taylor too is going to bring a bunch of people on stage and she's going to teach the entire, everyone that's attending how to do the fate of Ophelia dance.

7:29And we're doing a dry run with Taylor too of how the fate of Ophelia dance is going to go. And I'm like, what, what is going on? How is this what we are like? And my team is like, I don't know if it should be like this or if everyone should be like this. Should we be in outfits? Should we get friendship bracelets? I'm like, I don't know. And then the call that I have after that, just so you want to know the nonsense that I deal with is. So we're doing a session with the mouth guard game. I don't know if you know the mouth guard game. It's that thing where you put this giant mouth guard in your mouth, right?

8:01It's like a kid's game. And then it's impossible to understand what the person is saying. So we have a real deal panel of industry experts and they're all going to have these giant mouth guards in their mouth. And then we're going to be asking them questions. And then everyone has to try to actually guess what it is that they're saying okay and it's going to be a disaster and then so they're like jay we need to all put in our mouth today so i try to get this thing and shove it in my mouth and i'm sitting there i'm here at work trying to shove this thing in my mouth i'm like i need a new job i don't know what i do for a living this is very very weird and then the third meeting that i have today is we have a cannonball guy that's going to be out of fantastic he's gonna be shot out of a cannon live and so we were talking as a team i said you know instead of him just being shot out of a cannon live it would be so cool if he had to hit land on something and then maybe like everyone gets a prize or or maybe make a donation if he lands on on the target so we're trying so we have a call with this dude to see if he's willing to have us put some sort of really cool big target thing and i also want to fill it with paint i would be cool if he landed like paint or something and and and and if he lands on the target then cool things happen now you might be thinking oh you have so much more of a fun job than i do i have to sit here and talk about something super boring and you know yes fun agree but also it's like i have stress about a dude flying out of a cannonball machine thing that's a weird thing to have stress about it.

9:33It just is. It's not normal. Anyway, this episode wasn't normal, but you're awesome. I hope I see you at a fantastic. If you don't register, you stink. It's next week. Later. Wait, I have two huge things to share with you. First, I have a book coming out. Stupider people have done it. It's coming out the first week of June and all net author proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. This book might be terrible, but who cares? When you buy this thing on Amazon or anywhere else, you are going to be helping to kick cancer's butt. Let's do that together. The second thing is you can go to jschwedelson.com.

10:16On the upper right-hand corner, there's this thing that says partner. My agency wants to help you. If you're a business marketer, consumer marketer, it doesn't make a difference. I want to help you drive net new sales, registrations growth change the design all the stuff that you are doing hit me up there also if you want to do brand collabs i want to know about your brand i want to help you amplify that message go to jschwedelson.com click on partner let's do stuff together and the last thing is leave this show a review if it wasn't the absolute worst podcast you've ever heard and you're awesome for being here later