The Truth About Templates | Bathroom Break #67 🚽

0:01Welcome 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.

0:36I'm here with Daniel Murray from the Marketing of Millennials. And I'm Jay Schwettlson from Do This, Not That. We're going to be talking about templates today. If they're good, bad, social media, email, you name it. But before we do that, along those lines, Daniel, when you find a shirt that you like, like, oh, I just bought this new shirt from Lululemon. Do you just get a bunch of the same shirt and then you rock that as if it's like a template in your marketing? Or you like to have a mixed bag in your closet? Mixed bag. I probably have like two or three of that shirt, but not like my closet.

1:15Different colors, different styles, different. It's not the same. Oh, I'm the exact opposite. If I find a shirt that I like and Allie is not, it's so annoying. I'll just get a bunch of even the same color, which makes no sense. I have three long-sleeved black aloe shirts. Oh, those are the best. Yeah, they're so comfortable. I'm wearing aloe right now. Yeah, it's the best. And then she's like, you can't wear that all the time. That's ridiculous. I'm like, but why? So you're down on templates as a human. Yes, I'm down on templates. They do make things easier, but there's reasons why not. All right, fair enough.

1:53All right, let's get into the episode here. templates uh every company business consumer whatever you're like oh we got to mix it up we need new templates let's go into our email sending platform let's go on canva let's go here there wherever and we get a template and then we start using the template um because why we think it looks nicer it looks so slick it's what it checks all the boxes for best practices daniel is this the way that we should be doing it should be should we using templates that are out there available to us? My quick answer is no, because everybody's doing that. In marketing, you don't want to do what everybody's doing.

2:31And I feel like templates 10 years ago were different than using templates 10 years ago is different than using it now because there's a lot of different ways to do it in a cheap way to get better templates. So I think if you want to blend in, And also, I think subconsciously as humans, we turn to now templates. So if you scroll your LinkedIn feed, your Instagram, if you see a Canva template, like scroll through, you kind of tune that out. The other thing I think it really limits for me is like personalization of your brand. Like your brand has some sort of voice, some sort of tone. And the template is template to like the most common denominator.

3:14And you don't want to be the most common nominate when you're sending out emails or doing social posts. I totally agree. And I think one of the biggest problems with templates in general, regardless of the media, social media, email, doesn't matter. Here's what happens. In your organization, you're like, oh, we need to freshen up our thing. And okay. And you get a template from wherever and you use it. And here's what happens. It does really well. Oh, our newsletter did so much better. Oh, we got so much more engagement on the social posts with this new template. The template is amazing. wrong.

3:45What happened was you did something new, right? You mixed it up. You did something that stood out for the first time. It's this idea of confirmation bias that you think because it worked that you should double down on. And then you roll with that for the next six months. And then you wind up in the gutter again with horrible performance. So it's not a matter of you pick the world's greatest template. That's why it did better. It did better because you mixed it up. And that's the key thing. You've got to mix it up. But I will add what I am anti is canned templates, like ones that the platform serves to you.

4:18Like, I think if you can own like an email style with flexibility, like, but if you can own a template that are your brand colors, like your, like how you do it, like with newsletters, I feel like you have to show up consistently to look the same. because you have to, but I will never for a newsletter pull out the newsletter template in Pardot, for example. I would not go, I would make my own custom newsletter template that fits my brand, fits my vibe, fits what I'm trying to do with this newsletter. And if it does, if I want to do something different, I'll build a new section in that newsletter.

4:57Like I could change up the template and make it different, but I'm talking about like using canned templates that everybody's using when they're not developing your own template. Yeah. And it's also not just actual templates. It's copying what everybody does. So for example, if I said to you in your mind right now, maybe you're walking, maybe you're driving, maybe whatever, I want you to imagine what a email promotion for a webinar looks like. Doesn't matter the company or the topic. What it probably looks like in your head is two circles of people's faces that nobody knows who they really are except for their moms.

5:34Okay. Some boring headline and like a blue background. And that is what every webinar promo looks like, whether it's on social media or email, whatever. And that's not a template. That's a format that everyone just copies. And that's what you want to get away from. Also, you want to stop the scroll on social media, in email, whatever it is. And if you're just copying everybody else's playbook, it is a recipe to nowheresville. Yeah, I'll add on that. I mean, having a template on social media, for example, like right now we're in an age where like non polished things work. So like, for example, Jay does this really well with your emails and you can do this as any brand is like do a non tech, a text based email instead of a template email.

6:18Like you don't have to have all your promotions. Emails don't need to be a certain email template. You could do a promotions email that looks like it came from the founder. It looks like it came from the head of the marketing. It looks like it came from someone in the company. It doesn't have to be template. Same as social, like things that are a template style are not going to work as well as like someone talking to a camera or something, someone like that. Templates is just a way to get started for a lot of people. So if you're doing nothing, it's better than doing nothing, but do more if you're trying to stand out and be different.

6:51All right. Super random question. Before we wrap up, this is the most bizarre thing. So me and Daniel actually recording in front of each other live right now. And Daniel's wearing glasses. What is your take on the AI glasses, like the meta glasses? Do you want to get a pair of glasses that you could ask random questions to? Or is that not something you ever want to do? It's interesting. I think what I want to eventually do is like, I feel like the, what would be cool is like glasses that if someone's speaking another language like translates in front of you or like analyzes your environment you know like the spy movies where it's like oh this is it like you can analyze like iron man yeah so i think that but i think there's a it's a couple years away to that but i wear contacts and glasses so if i can get mine better in any way i'm down to do that i think it'd be cool you just walk around like hey hey what's uh the weather gonna be in two hours i don't know so uh you should you should rock those glasses.

7:48All right. I don't know what we talked about as usual, but templates suck, but this podcast doesn't. So leave Daniel a review at the Marketing Millennials or leave me a review at Do This Not That. We'll check you at the next one later. Daniel, come on, man. I got to 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 I 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 Millie podcast, but also tune into this series.

8:24It's once a week, the bathroom break. We talk about marking tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email, subject line, to any marking tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out. Later.