In short
Podcast Summary: Marketing School - Digital Marketing and Online Marketing Tips
Episode Overview
- Title: Business Trends We Are Seeing For 2023
- Episode Number: #2494
- Hosts: Neil Patel and Eric Siu
- Description: This episode discusses the emerging business trends for 2023, focusing on defensive strategies businesses are employing in response to economic volatility, including budget cuts, the rise of AI, and the increasing reliance on podcasting as a marketing tool.
Key Themes and Discussions
Economic Context
- Interest Rate Hikes:
- Businesses are reacting to anticipated interest rate hikes, leading to a more cautious approach.
- The Federal Reserve is expected to continue raising rates by 0.25%, adding pressure on businesses.
Hiring Trends
- Defensive Stance:
- Companies are adopting a defensive posture, resulting in layoffs in the tech industry.
- Some sectors, however, continue to hire despite the overall trend towards layoffs, indicating a mixed employment landscape.
Advertising Landscape
- Declining Growth:
- Advertising spend is not growing as robustly as before, with major advertising firms like WPP and Omnicom facing stock price challenges.
- GroupM notes that the growth rate of advertising has slowed, prompting companies to re-evaluate their forecasts and strategies.
Adoption of AI
- Efficiency Gains:
- Businesses are increasingly integrating AI to streamline operations, automate processes, and reduce costs.
- Examples include significant reductions in content creation costs, with some companies transitioning from costly content agencies to affordable AI tools.
The Rise of Podcasting
- Emerging Marketing Channel:
- Many businesses are embracing podcasting as a new marketing channel.
- The podcasting landscape is relatively underdeveloped compared to blogging, providing opportunities for businesses to engage audiences in a unique way.
Practical Implications for Businesses
- Cost-Effective Initiatives:
- Starting a podcast involves minimal investment, often just a few hundred dollars for equipment.
- Companies are leveraging platforms like Magellan AI for podcast analytics to optimize their advertising strategies.
Key Takeaways
- Current Business Climate:
- Companies are cutting back on spending and taking a defensive approach due to economic uncertainties.
- AI's Role in Marketing:
- The integration of AI is creating efficiencies and cost savings across multiple business functions.
- Podcasting as a Marketing Strategy:
- The relative scarcity of podcasts compared to blogs presents a unique opportunity for businesses to differentiate themselves and connect with audiences.
Conclusion The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to subscribe and engage with the content, emphasizing the importance of staying informed about emerging trends in digital marketing.
Additional Information
- Links Mentioned:
- [Marketing School Website](https://www.marketingschool.io)
- [YouTube Channel](https://youtu.be/e83KxKsIBBE)
- Social Media Handles:
- Twitter: [@neilpatel](https://twitter.com/neilpatel), [@ericosiu](https://twitter.com/ericosiu)
Feedback Request Listeners are encouraged to provide feedback on topics they would like to hear about in future episodes.
Closing Note The hosts express gratitude for their audience and encourage ratings and reviews to support the podcast's growth.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00All right. So we're going to talk about business trends for 2023. What you got, Neil? And by the way, if you're watching on YouTube, you should subscribe on YouTube because we're back on freaking video after three or four years. What are you talking about? We've been doing videos all the time. Live. I mean, live. We're live in LA. But not live for them. We're live for now. So the big trend that I'm seeing is businesses are cutting back on everything. The Fed announced that they're going to do two more rate hikes or looks like they'll do two more rate hikes till the end of 2023. I don't know if you saw CNBC publisher article on how a lot of publicly traded CFOs email the Fed saying, stop the rate hikes.
0:43That's not going to happen. It looks like there's going to be two more raises. Most likely, they're going to be 2.25 % increase in rate hikes. So it's looking like 0.5 % more. And yeah, they're trying to cut back on inflation. and I think that's going to send this economy in a tougher spot and we're going to continually feel the pain and I think businesses are going to continually cut back. Yeah, well, here's what I'll say. I mean, what's the interest rate at now? 5.5? 5 to 5.25, I believe. Okay, yeah. So we're going to, I mean, they've said it, they need to see, so Chairman Powell, who is kind of the leader of the Fed, he's basically said that they need to see some softening in the labor markets and here's the thing i don't know about you neil like even though a lot of people are taking a defensive stance right now on their business there are a lot of people that are hiring too so there are in tech at least and that's the majority of my network i'm seeing majority of businesses lay off not hire in tech at least i don't know if you saw the the unemployment numbers recently, but there has been a slight softening.
1:54So we're going to see more of that. So all that to say is like, this will affect, I think WPP released or GroupM released numbers recently. GroupM is one of the, they're part of WPP, I believe. It's a large advertising holding company. They say that advertising is, even though it's like growing slightly, it still isn't quite, it's like chugging along. It isn't growing like it was before. It's not growing. I believe WPP, Omnicom, Dentsu, we've already seen quite a bit in their stock price. But they're going to miss numbers drastically this year. They're going to have to re-forecast, re-adjust. It's going to be a painful market.
2:32The question is, how are people, that's like overall macro trend, how are people preparing? So we've talked about how people are taking a defensive posture right now. That's one piece of it. But people are also preparing by using a lot of AI, which is also another trend right now. That's deflationary, by the way. AI is deflationary. Yeah, they're thinking about, what can we use in AI to automate everything to save money? And that goes along with cutting staff, being more efficient, increasing profitability as well. So I don't know. I think if you talked about this on the podcast, but what I'm seeing with AI, so one of my friends mentioned that he was paying a content agency$15 ,000 a month or whatever it was.
3:10and he cut the agency and now he's only paying an AI tool$50 a month. Now I think he's over exaggerating a little bit, but the story, the premise is there, right? Even if you need some labor to help out, maybe it cuts it down to$5 ,000, including using some of the tools, but that's still a massive savings. And same, I'm sure you're seeing this too, but internally for us, when we compare our AI enhanced articles, so we're taking from this podcast or other podcasts, we're enhancing it with AI. So it's mostly written by AI, but it's enhanced by human beings and there's links and stuff added in. It's outperforming the human writers where it takes the human writers.
3:45It might take them like five times longer and it might cost three to four times more. We've decreased our cost significantly. So we're going to see a lot more of that, not even just with content creation, which is kind of par for the course of marketing. We're going to see it across the board. Like even my controller right now is trying to figure out how, cause he's like, Oh man, I'm going to be put out of business or I'm going to be out of a job if I don't figure this stuff out. And that's the way you got to look at this stuff. Yeah. But for me, those are the big two trends that I'm seeing in which in marketing, people are cutting back on spend and people are using AI to figure out how to be more efficient.
4:16The other big thing that I'm seeing this year is companies are really bullish on podcasting. And it's because it's a channel that a lot of businesses don't have yet. If you look at the number of podcasts that are out there, it's under 10 million podcasts globally, but yet the number of blogs out there or a billion plus. There's a lot of businesses with blogs. There's not a lot of businesses with podcasts. A lot of businesses don't know what podcasting will do for them from a revenue standpoint. Some may use it for advertising standpoint, but nonetheless, it fits in with the omni-channel approach in which you want to be on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and Google and Bing and the list goes on and on.
4:56But a lot of businesses this year, we're seeing ad podcasting into the mix. And it's not costing them much because what they're doing is they're just buying microphones from Amazon, spending a few hundred dollars for their setup and just recording and then popping it out there. Most of them aren't even spending a ton of money on editing, which a lot of people are okay with. Have you seen Magellan AI? I have not. So we're going to talk about this in an upcoming episode shortly, but it's a podcast analytics product. And it showed for this podcast, my friend gave me access yesterday. It shows all of the advertisers that have ran ads on our podcast before and each month.
5:33And then also it'll give a sense for what other podcasts are related. It's a really good tool and I'll talk about it later. But my point of bringing Magellan up in the first place is to your point, there is a huge spike and podcast advertising spending is continuing to go up, especially in business services, especially in software technology, and even for cars as well. And so we're going to see that continue to increase. And by the way, that's why we're grateful to have DreamHost as a sponsor, Microsoft as a sponsor, and Shopify as a sponsor. So that's it for today. Yeah, that's it. Make sure you rate, review this podcast.
6:06Five stars. Appreciate you guys listening. Five stars only. Goodbye.