The Marketing Advice You Should Ignore Immediately | Bathroom Break #89

0:07Welcome to a new special series called The Bathroom Break. That extra 10 minutes, you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both. But I don't recommend both, but that's your choice. This collab is going to be super fun. We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwetelson, from the Do This Not That podcast and subjectline.com. each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out. We are back for the bathroom break.

0:41I am Jay Schwedelson from Do This, Not That. And I'm here with the guy himself, Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials. And here we are. It is a new year. Daniel, we're only like a few days in here. Have you broken your resolutions? Are you are you holding strong where are you at well i think i took i took your advice from a previous podcast and i ate a lot over the holidays so like net zero i am like down um weight because i gained like 10 pounds on the holiday so i i'm currently crushing my resolution of that so i'm proud of myself for that what about you what are you are you crushing yours um i i am trying to crush it so So my wife thinks I'm always very stressed.

1:29So she made me start taking my blood pressure every morning. I'm taking a picture of it. She's such a doctor. I've been doing that. And thankfully, it's not been terrible. I was taking it in the middle of the day. I didn't know that your blood pressure is really, you're supposed to take it the first thing in the morning. Because in the middle of the day, it's like 4 billion over 4 billion. And it looks like you're in trouble. I didn't know that. I go to the doctor all the time and they like, if I, sometimes it's perfect. And sometimes they say you need to go on blood pressure medication. Oh, I've been on blood pressure medication for 25 years.

2:03Oh my God. I've been so bad. Okay. Well, that's a fun fact for everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Don't do whatever I'm doing. But speaking of don't doing stuff, this time of year is very unique. Everybody becomes Nostradamus this time of year. Everybody gives advice. They have outlooks. They tell you what's going to happen. and everyone's full of it. Nobody knows what's going on. And the thing that annoys me the most is everyone's giving advice. And the majority of marketing advice that's given out there, not just about the new year rolling out, but in general, is epic toilet paper garbage trash. So I want to rip through with you, Daniel, some marketing advice overall that you think is an epic piece of garbage.

2:46I think the one I'm thinking about, because I love social, and I think people do this is I hear this all the time that you need to be on every social platform without thinking about where your audience is and I honestly believe that it's better to be A plus on one platform than C's on 10 platform and I think if you don't focus on being dominant on one platform because once you're dominant on one platform it's easy to recreate the winners on that platform or another platform. But this theory that you need to be on every platform posting every day is not maybe have some sort of presence just to look, looks like you're alive as a business, but posting every day and being every platform, being great on every platform is not something you need to do.

3:36And I think it's horrible advice. It is horrible advice. And I think you're better off not being on a platform than being on a platform with barely any exposure. Cause then you look like you're like, you don't even know what you're doing, which is a negative signal. The advice that I think I cannot stand, I don't even know if it's really advice, is you'll, everybody has probably number one problem in marketing. You'll be in a market, you'll be in a meeting with your higher ups, whatever. And someone come up with an idea, a marketing idea. And they're like, somebody like, well, I don't like that.

4:03Or I wouldn't open that. Or I wouldn't click on that. And then everyone piles on. Yeah, I wouldn't either. I wouldn't, interact with that. We shouldn't do it. And the problem is you are not your audience. And if you don't have a testing culture and you're not testing first, as opposed to whatever your opinion is, you are in a bad marketing environment because this idea of I don't like it, dictating what you're doing is absolutely the worst thing in the world of marketing. I'll piggyback off that and say that a lot of people, which is bad marketing advice is create this great piece of content and not even think about the distribution of that content so they just like just create something great and post it and see what happens and just because you've created something that you think is great like air quotes a lot of things that you think is great aren't great to your audience um doesn't mean so stop waiting to create this perfect piece of content this perfect piece of and just post above average things that you think your audience might like and let it rip i think that's a horrible advice because and also when you're posting a piece of content think about the distribution plan because that's honestly in this day and age with all the slop out there with ai and stuff like that distribution is going to be way more important than creating because everybody can create now like how you distribute it and how how it gets on the platform and how the formatting matters way more than like, um, making this A plus piece of content.

5:38You know, along those lines, especially this time of year, the thing that I'm, I stink at, and I'm telling you right now is a waste of time. It's great if you have one, but content calendars, everyone sits back and they go, okay, this is our content calendar for the year. And then you put it in like stone. You're like, we have to follow this thing and don't feel bad if you don't have a content calendar. It's more than fine. And the reason I said that is sometimes you have to move at the speed of culture. Okay, that is how you win. You wake up in the morning, there's something going on, you can participate in that.

6:10And whether you're a boring B2B brand, a nonprofit consumer, it doesn't matter. But oh no, it's not on our content calendar this week, so we can't do it. The social posts, the emails that perform the best for my clients and for my organization are usually the ones that we didn't have a plan for. It's like when I'm somewhere on a trip and I'm cold, I go to the Gap and I buy a hoodie. That hoodie winds up being my favorite piece of clothing that I own for the next 20 years. I don't know why that always happens, but it's not the thing that you plan for that's gonna always work. On another note, I think, because we're in AI revolution and it's 2026, is I don't believe that when people say AI are gonna replace marketers.

6:50I think it's going to replace lazy execution. I think it's going to replace tasks that suck, but it's going to amplify people with taste, people with strategy, people who understand marketing. So stop listening to everybody that says it's going to replace marketers and replace marketers. It's actually going to help you as a marketer and think of it as a tool. I hate this narrative that it's just going to get rid of people, especially right now. maybe far down the line. But in this moment, AI is not replacing marketers. I could not agree with you more. AI is not taking people's jobs. Let me just tell you, I think it's the most annoying thing.

7:29First of all, everything you read, it says the career you have to go into is becoming a plumber, become an electrician, which is wonderful. Those are great jobs, trade jobs, whatever. But the amount of times people are saying it, there's going to be 4 billion plumbers. There's going to be more plumbers than toilets with how often people are saying everyone should go get a trade job. It's out of control. And here's the reality of it, okay? The only jobs AI will take is if your job, and where did I hear this? I have no idea. Your job is a task. If your job is a singular task, yeah, you might be screwed.

8:01But that's not the job of a real marketer. You're not doing a task. So if you're not doing a task, get good at AI and lean into it and stop being a tool and think it's taking your job. Why do I get so worked up? I'm out of control. I probably have high blood pressure right now. That's not good. No, you're probably going to 6 Celsius. Let's be honest. That's what's really happening right now. All right. So wait, before we wrap up, since it is the start of the year, I know you're on your tennis kick. Now you're trying to lose weight from this giant number that you're at. And I'm not calling you big.

8:37What is the other health tactic that you are doing as this new year rolls out? yeah one i need to start walking more um baby just like makes me not so i'm just like forcing myself to just take the baby out more so that's i feel like walking's the best option and one thing me and ari suck at is like cooking at home so we're trying to at least like cook at home yeah it's so hard to cook at home when you two of the people have jobs but it's oh please tonight's Salmon night. I'm cooking salmon as soon as I get home. What's wrong with you? No, you're on salmon night. It's the best night of the week.

9:17There we go. And then I get hungry an hour later and nauseous simultaneously. You need your omega-3s for your heart, though. Yeah, there you go. I need to do something. Well, another amazing episode. Listen, go follow the Marky Millennials, the greatest podcast in the universe. The one that's terrible is mine. Do this, not that. And we'll see you at the next one.

9:40Daniel come on man I gotta get back to work get out of there all right while he's still in there this is Jay check out my podcast do this not that for marketers each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try oh here's Daniel he's finally out back from my bathroom break this is Daniel go follow the Mark and Millet podcast but also tune into this series it's once a week the bathroom break We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out and it could be anything from email, subject line to any marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it.

10:14Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.