What’s Up THIS WEEK: New Engagement Trend for B2B and Consumer That’s Working! | Ep. 459

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 what's up this week from the Do This Not That podcast. This is our short episode where we break down what's going on in business and marketing and life, and then we still have our other episodes later in the week. So let's jump into it. What is going on with marketing stuff? So one of the biggest, I would say, trends in marketing right now is something called pre-season marketing.

0:39You know, all of us as marketers, we're always using urgency to drive everything. Two days left, today's your last chance, whether it's for a webinar registration or a sale, whatever other nonsense you're doing. But pre-season marketing is really, really growing and basically really bleeds out of the holidays. So at the holidays, what pre-season marketing means is people start selling Christmas decorations in the summer, earlier and earlier every year, that people are promoting their offers, whatever they are, business offers, consumer offers, donation offers for nonprofits, just way earlier than they ever have.

1:14And so we're seeing it now from some major marketers. And there's something that I'll give you a tactic that you can do that I think can radically change the performance of all of your marketing. But in general, this stat kind of blew my mind for world data research, okay? Early access marketing across both business and consumer categories is up 35 % year over year. Early access marketing, meaning marketing tactics that are focused on early access. As an example of that, Salesforce has their big annual conference called Dreamforce every year. So in the past, in 2025, their event is in September, October every year.

1:51All right. In 2025, they really started pushing Dreamforce in April and May. For 2026, they've already started early signups. Okay. We're in February. They already launched this. Coca-Cola, another great example. Just last week, okay, they rolled out their first phase of their World Cup promotions. It doesn't start until June. They already rolled it out. Okay. Everything is happening earlier and earlier and earlier. So I'll give you some secret sauce stuff that you could think about for your own marketing. Let's talk about webinars. Really hard to get people to sign up for webinars these days.

2:33Okay. If you just, if you lean into webinar promotions with the concept of first two, first two, and I'll give you examples of exactly what it means, but first two as your tactic to drive webinar registrations is actually increasing registrations by over 20%. What does that mean? So when you go out and you market your webinar, you get out there early. And what you say is, the first 100 people to register get on-demand access. And you're like, wait a minute though, I wanna give everybody on-demand access. And you can. So let's say on average I'm making this up that you normally only get about 50 people to register for your webinar.

3:13You double that number. And then in your subject lines, in your promotions, you tell everybody the first hundred people to register will get on-demand access. What you are doing is you're creating this FOMO, fear of missing out, around getting that on-demand access, and people register early because they want to be in the first two. The first to register get on-demand access. Now, you want to make it available for everybody. That's why you double the number. So if your number is normally 50 and you say the first hundred, nobody knows how many people register for your webinar. Who knows how many people register for your webinar?

3:46You just double your normal number and this way you get a lot of early registrations. Now you could do this in so many different ways. Okay. You don't need to just do it as relates to your webinar. All right. Let's say you are putting on an event. You can use the concept of control. What do I mean by that? If you go out with your promotions, you say early registrants choose the session order. Early registrants get to vote on potential speakers. Early registrants get access to the agenda draft first, right? You're giving people control if they register in the next two days, in the next three days, by tomorrow.

4:25Using control to drive early action works so, so well. And you could also do it, obviously, on the consumer side. Early access locks in pricing. on the nonprofit side. Early supporters get listed as a founding supporter. If you're not using preseason marketing, you're really not leaning into the mindset, especially here in Q1 coming out of the holiday time, that is working so incredibly well. All right. Forget about that tactic. What else is going on out there? Well, one of the other coolest things I saw that just came out this week is from Reddit. Reddit is doing, if you're not trying to test marketing, I don't care what category you're in.

5:03And you're not looking at Reddit. We're doing this a lot in our agency. Reddit has so many cool new ad units, paid ad units, that you can test for like 50 bucks. It's nothing. They just rolled out a brand new ad unit this week called Reminder Ads. It's a super cool ad unit. You can just Google it, you know, Reddit Reminder Ads. And basically, if you have an event that you're promoting, if you have a sale that you're promoting, whatever it is, it's this special ad unit that while you're on Reddit, you click a little button saying, remind me. And then instantly you actually will get a reminder. You'll get a notification of whatever it is that you need to be reminded about.

5:41And then the advertiser actually gets the lead. So Reddit is just rolling out more and more cool ad units. Other things going on this week. Well, this kind of stinks. So Pizza Hut announced that they're closing 250 of their locations. I don't mean to be rude about Pizza Hut, but I haven't been to a Pizza Hut in, I don't know, I'm going to say 20 years. I don't know. I have no problem with pizza chains. I like Domino's. Domino's thin crust rocks. If you don't like Domino's thin crust, you don't know what you're talking about. I think Papa John's is extremely overrated. It doesn't taste like pizza.

6:22I'm just saying. It tastes weird. It's not bad. It just doesn't taste like pizza to me. And I haven't tried a pizza thing in a long time. Kind of feel like it might be gross. Am I wrong in saying that? I don't know. Never going to get them as a sponsor. Facts. All right. What's going on in pop culture that's totally irrelevant? So I know the big movie that's coming out is Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights. Am I saying that right? Yeah. It's like a remake or whatever. and it's this whole love story movie whatever and it's got margot robbie and it's got jacob uh lordy i always say his name l lordy l lordy whatever his name is he's the dude from salt burn and frankenstein and i keep seeing the previews everywhere for weathering heights and my only issue with it is that this takes place i don't know like the victorian era like, I don't know, 1700s or something like that.

7:16Why is everybody hot? Why is everybody good looking? Why does everybody look like they just got done doing like, you know, soul cycle or some sort of fitness class? Like they just finished their going to their Pilates studio. Was everybody hot in the 1700s? It's just like, can they have some people walking around that look like garbage that like look like they probably haven't showered in a month and they're kind of gross? because I feel like that probably was the real vibe. There's no way everybody looked like Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, whatever the hell his name is. I don't know, what am I talking about?

7:48Who even knows? The thing I'm most hyped for this week that's coming out on Friday is a new show on HBO called Neighbors, okay? This is a reality show. I like all reality shows. This one's great though. The premise is it is all about bizarre and dramatic, like feuds between neighbors that like spiral out of control. This seems fantastic to me. First off, I've lived in my home that I'm in right now for 17 years. Okay. I can tell you right now, I do not know my neighbor's names. I have like two across the street and then one on either side of me. I know one person in two of the houses and I don't know the names of either person in two of the other houses.

8:3917 years I've lived in my house. What does that mean? I think it means I'm a weirdo. How is that possible? I mean, I walk outside, I do the old wave. Hello, how are you? But I don't actually, I try very hard not to talk to my neighbors other than hello, how are you? Because I really don't care and I don't want to know what's going on with them. And I make up stories in my head of weird stuff that I think is going on in their homes. And if they do listen to this, Well, awkward. I don't know what else to say. Super awkward, but there's no chance. So I'm excited about the show, Neighbors. That was coming out Friday.

9:16What is going on? Anyway, listen, you would be amazing. We go to jschwedelson.com. I want to work with you. My team does consulting and marketing and all sorts of nonsense. Go to jschwedelson.com. Drop me a note there. Let's hang out. Let's do stuff. You're awesome. See you at the next one. Wait, the party is not over. Go to jayschwedelson.com because I want to do stuff with you. I want to partner with you. When you click on the button partner with Jay, you let me know what you got going on. Work with my agency, work with me directly, get access to all of my free resources at jayschwedelson.com.

9:54And I got a book coming out this April. It's called Stupider People Have Done It. And all of the net proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Go on Amazon, buy stupider people have done it. That way you can help kick cancer's butt with me. And if this podcast wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, it might've been, leave it a review, follow the show. You are awesome. Go out there and crush it.