What’s Working in Marketing (And What’s Not) | Bathroom Break #99

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.

0:41This is Jay Schwetelson from Do This, Not That. I'm here with the marketing millennial, Daniel Murray. And Daniel, I've watched a series of horrendous movies lately. I watched Greenland 2. That was possibly the worst movie I ever saw. I'm on the hunt for new movies to watch. I feel like maybe what is your, give me like some of your all-time favorite movies. It doesn't have to be recent that you think I got to jump into that maybe I haven't seen because I'm really old and you're not old. You would have seen every movie. You watch so much shit. All-time favorite is like Inception. Really? That's an all-time favorite?

1:18It's like top 10. I don't even understand it. Yeah. It's just like such a great movie for me. I don't know why. what else? I thought you were going to say Rudy because you're like a football guy. I love Harry Potter I mean that's out of your generation like when they were like kids you were like in partying college like so right I'm Gandalf is that his name? That's Lord of the Rings but okay

1:49I have no idea what's going on you said you're Gandalf and that's one of the rings Dumbledore Dumbledore. Dumbledore, dude. Dumbledore. Yeah, that's me. Oh, well, today we're going to talk about what's working, what's not working. What's not working was the start of this podcast. That's for damn sure. But let's get into what's working, what's not working. I'm going to go first. So for the last, I don't know, six months or so, I go, six months ago, I go, I'm going to go all in on YouTube. YouTube is the future. All right. And I've pumped out, I don't know, 300 videos on YouTube. and what I found is, number one, I'm getting more views, okay?

2:28I'm getting some good views now on my shorts, whatever, but because I'm probably a horrible marketer, we're getting no meaningful conversions from anything we're doing on YouTube. Maybe we get subscribers, whatever. Maybe we get way top of funnel, but we are getting no meaningful outcomes from YouTube. So I'm failing miserably at YouTube. I know YouTube is everything. think it's the future of life, whatever. But anybody out there that's not crushing YouTube, I'm on your team. I need to do better. So Daniel, I'll get to what's working in a second, but what do you got that maybe is not working so great for you?

3:03I just think it's really hard to win if you won meaningful impact on one-off influencer deals. I think, and I also think the word influencer is so stretched. Now, I think that the definition of influencer is so stretched because there are people who are just on LinkedIn who have followers. There are people who have like networks and events like you have in a newsletter event, social. So I consider that a bucket different than someone who's just on social. I consider that like investing in Jay's guru network versus investing in a one-off play with Jay. Because you want people to, you're more world building and other people are more influence building.

3:53And those are two different plays that people could do in marketing. And I think when you're buying, I still see this in B2B all the time. And people come to a lot. I see a lot of brands. They come to creators I know and say, I just want to buy one post. I'm trying to do a launch. I'm just trying to do this. I'm trying to buy one post. And they think that's what B2B like influencer marketing is. And that is an influencer marketing. So I think separating the market into Jay, Jay is more of a network type creator. and then there are influencers that just live on, like say LinkedIn or X, and how you're investing in a guru network versus a one-off is way different.

4:38And I think you have to reframe what influencer marketing is for B2B. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I'd actually, not that I'm so cool that I'm like, you know, flooding deals, whatever, but I won't do one-off deals anymore. I do year-long deals. I'll do six-month deals. I'll do a whole integrated package. I think if you are going to put your toe in the water for some sort of influencer, and by the way, they crush, influencer deals crush, you need to make it more of a strategy. You know, three posts, two newsletter insertions. If you're going to do a one-off, you're literally burning money. You're throwing it in the toilet.

5:08I'll tell you something that's going to work for you right now if you're a marketer out there and you're sleeping on it, which is March Madness. You may not care about basketball. You don't need to care about basketball at all. Whenever anything's going on on the planet, that's a big deal. If you lean into it, whether you are a business marketer, a nonprofit, a consumer marketer, it does well. So March Madness, actually starting from basically now until the end of March, in your content, if you actually say things like March Madness, or Final Four, or Slam Dunk, and you bring that into your content, your boring B2B content, your consumer content, we see that lifting email open rates, click-through rates, social media engagement, leaning into March Madness, leaning into what's going on, actually will give you a boost in anything that you're doing.

5:56I think that, I mean, we talk about this on this podcast a lot and I think relevancy is key to any marketing. We talk about when something's happening that a lot of people, especially in office care about because office brackets are a thing, lean into it. I will also say, I know, I know we we've harped on this a little bit, but I think I really do believe that you building your own AI mind of customer data, of your brand voice, of all the things you've written and put it in one place to start repurposing things and doing stuff with that. I think you need to start doing that now in marketing because it is working.

6:42I I see people pumping out content that you could not tell is AI-ridden, but they do obviously edit and have a human eye. I do think now the human API is a new thing. AI has to be connected to humans instead of you connected to it. I think if you don't have the human API of having that human eye on double-checking everything, but start building that customer mind in your AI now, feed reviews, feed Reddit posts, feed negative, positive, the good, the bad, all into one place that AI understands your business. I think if you don't start that now, people are going to beat you up and have a better AI mind than you do, and they'll win.

7:29I'm truly double-dawning on that right now. I totally agree. We built that internally, and that has helped us out massively. effectively i'll tell you one other test that we've been doing recently that's been working in our email marketing super random i know this episode is kind of little we're just saying lots of different random things but some things work some things don't so we want to kind of put it out there so one of the things we've been testing actually in subject lines is actually testimonial subject lines we're literally we're just taking a testimonial right uh whatever it is you know doubled our roi in weeks or transform my business overnight uh said the ceo and we're taking just the testimonial.

8:06We're actually putting quotes in the subject line with the testimonial. There's nothing else in the subject line but the testimonial. We're doing that for offer emails, and it is doing incredibly well at a conversion level. Forget about open rates and click-through rates. We're actually seeing it actually convert on the back end really, really well. So if you've never tested, whether you're a business marketer or a consumer marketer, testimonial subject lines, I would think about doing that. I would add one more. I think one thing that I thought was a little cheesy, and I think you've done it before, but I thought everybody's done it before, but adding all caps as your subject line, like every letter is a cap.

8:48I've tested it out between just lowercase for all caps, and all caps really is working right now for me. If I do an all caps subject line, it is boosting my subject line way harder than it is if I do all lower cases. I don't know what it is. People just want to be screamed at, I guess. But that is working. So quotes or try things like that. Add one word that's just capitalized or add the whole capitalized and see if that works for you. Maybe your whole database. Maybe it's like a dominatrix thing. It's like your whole database is filled with people that just want to be yelled at and told what to do.

9:26and, I don't know, put on like a leather outfit and we do weird stuff. I don't know. That is not what the path I'm going down in, but Jay's mind is going crazy places. So wait a minute. I need to know if I can name another character in Harry Potter. You got Harry. Oh, wow. You're going strong with Harry. I can't think of, oh, what was the game they used to play? They played, it's like pickleball, but you fly in a broom. Quidditch. Oh, wait. Hey, everybody, you got to congratulate Jay. He had a pickleball lesson. Pickleball lesson. His first one. I'm trying to go play with him sometime, but he said, give me a month.

10:08My racket? I bought a racket on Amazon for$9.99. I showed up to the dude who had the lesson. He's like, what is that? I got it on Amazon. He's like, that's embarrassing. I go, whatever, dude. I didn't know if I was going to like the sport. I didn't want to commit more than$10. Oh my God. So you decided to act, do something that will make you horrible at the sport from day one. So yeah, that's me. Once again, another amazing episode of the bathroom rig. Listen, follow our show, leave us reviews, leave on do this, not that leave on the market millennials. You are awesome. And keep it real. Daniel, come on, man.

10:51I 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 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 in the land podcast but also tune into this series it'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 marketing tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear.

11:27Peace out. Later.