Why Short + Sweet Content Wins in Q1 | Bathroom Break #90

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.

0:42I'm here with Daniel Murray, the marketing millennial. I'm Jay Schwedelson from Do This, Not That. And Daniel, I got a question. You know, you are in babyland, right? You got your first kid. That's awesome. And I was just on flights with recently with kids all around me. What is your take? Are you someone that's going to be flying with your newborn or are you waiting till they're like 12? I am going to go on my first flight this month and I'm extremely nervous for it because you have to pack 10 eggs to go out of the house for a baby, now like 10 more eggs to go on a flight. But I saw a parent do this thing where they make little goodie bags for the people around them and say, sorry, this is my kid's first flight.

1:28So I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that with earplugs. So I'm going to give it to everybody around me with little goodie bags with little chocolates and stuff. So I'm going to make 10 goodie bags. Are you? Yeah. Oh, that's actually amazing. And I'm glad you're aware of how annoying it is. I mean, not to be whatever, but when I get on a plane and there is either a baby behind me or near me, I'm pissed. Is that bad? Does that make me a horrible person? No, that's why I'm self-aware that I'm extremely nervous. That's why I'm also self-aware that that parent who has a screwy baby is probably like, oh my goodness, can I get off this flight right now?

2:10By the way, I'm going to give you one tip. This just happened in my flight. I was sitting, baby and mom's seat next to me. The baby went to the bathroom. Okay? How did I know that? Because it became very obvious to me in what I was smelling. All right? Yeah. And the mom waited way too long to deal with this situation. So I'm just telling you, deal with that. Oh, thank you. Thanks for the advice. I definitely want to just like, I need all the tips in the world. Like, I'll deal with a booby diaper right when it comes. Well, it is the bathroom break. All right, let's get into it. We've wasted a lot of time just now.

2:52Listen, this time of year, end of January, start of February, there is something that you should be doing with your marketing, whether you're a business, consumer, or nonprofit, that is incredibly important, helps you in conversions. And if you don't do it, you're screwed. And what that is, is nobody right now has time for anything, whether they realize it or not. They feel pressed for time. I'll give you the first example I'm talking about, and there's a million different ways you incorporate this into your marketing. Let's say you use webinars, okay, to drive demand or pipeline or whatever. You cannot just go with, oh, our webinars are normally 45 minutes.

3:27They're normally 60 minutes. Let's do that. Nobody on earth, whether they realize or not, wants to sign up for a webinar that's 45 minutes, 60 minutes. It's too much time. So what we actually see is webinars that are at 30 minutes do incredibly well. And if you really want to do something that's going to stand out, Do a 22-minute webinar. Why is 22 minutes gold if you've never tried it? Number one, it stands out. It's like, what? A 22-minute webinar? But the other thing is people put a 30-minute block on their calendar, and it actually gives them eight minutes to themselves. So this time of year, these shorter windows, a little bit of creativity with time does really, really well.

4:04So Daniel, how else do you think about that? Well, I think if you're going to this, go into a B2B example, and you have a calendar booking system on your website or you have a calendar booking system, stop, reduce those times. And also I think what I was going to say, what you said, is sometimes when you're doing outreach or in your copy, say, hey, this is a nine-minute kickoff call or a 12-minute demo and put that on their calendar because specifics always stand out in marketing and 30 just seems like I'm going to waste more time. But if you say a specific number, it triggers something, they're actually serious that they're going to do 12 minutes.

4:52When you say like 30 or 15, it just feels like a cop-out. But if you say 22, 12, it feels like you're actually seriously going to take their time seriously. So do it for your demo requests on your website. I do it for booking a demo on, on, on forms. That's another place to add, add this. Yeah. And you know, on the consumer side as well, it's the same thing. Again, nobody's walking around saying, I don't want to commit to this much time, but it's how they feel inside. That's how I feel. I feel overwhelmed because I was lazy over the holidays. So with your consumer marketing, if you do things like, you know, you promote things as the 60 second morning reset, the one minute skin routine, right?

5:32The 90 second desk reset where it's like, okay, I can invest 90 seconds into this thing. And then in your overall copy, whatever you're marking, B2B, B2C, whatever, believe it or not, as cheesy as it sounds, this period of time, this end of January, beginning of February, TLDR, those letters. And I think most of us know what they mean. Too long, didn't read, right a lot of us now know that we see that tldr after that we're going to get the instant what is this about you want to use tldr in your subject line the start of your subject line on your landing page right in the headline above the fold in your social media post tldr this time of year will increase your conversions your engagement big time there's another thing that i would do too and this is like not something you put on your website and stuff but we've talked about it in the past but I'm going to bring it up especially because it's great for this time is adding read time to your pre-headers or your subject lines for your when you're sending emails so say three minute read time 12 minute read time or if you have that a functionality on your website where you can put on any of your pieces of content this is only a two minute read this is a three minute read or when you're pitching a piece of content to someone say like in in your email you say oh this is a download, it's only a two minute read.

6:53Make sure you optimize for those things during this time because those are important. Just even saying that I've tested a lot increases your open rates and makes people who feel that this is going to be a long email know how much time they're going to invest in this email because they can even save it for later because they know how much time they're going to invest in that piece of content. Yeah, that's a trick I learned from you and Ari and it works so well. Everybody out there, if you haven't tested adding that two-min read to stuff, I am telling you, that is the most useful thing that we said and I didn't say it, of course.

7:28All right, before we wrap up here, Daniel, I want to know something with your baby and all. Your baby starts crying a lot, all right? Are you like really good at getting your baby to calm down or are you like you hand off the baby to R and be like, okay, this ain't my jam. I stink at this. Like how good are you at calm? Like when you're on that plane, are you going to be able to calm the situation down it's the opposite Ari hands it up hands them off to me um wow um we have anybody who ever has a baby there's an app called huckleberry and you're you've had a baby way too long ago because you didn't have apps when you had a baby but um it basically tells you like when he last ate and when he last when he's like sweet spot to like fall asleep so usually when he's crying i based on the app i know like he's either hungry tired or he needs to like if any of he's not one of those he probably needs to like poop so like those those are the three things i look at him all the time so i just diagnose that the cry means like one of those three things and it usually is one of those things i either feed him put him to a nap or go look at it change his diaper so it's a pretty good app if anybody wants it that's my tip of the day get huckleberry if you're a new parent can i use that for myself because i feel like for myself, I either want to take a nap, take a poop.

8:47I know. I wish you had sweet spots for us. I need, I need sweet spots, but yeah, it's, it's a great app. Look at that. We're not sponsored by them. But listen, considering the fact this is the bathroom break, we just crushed it talking about the bathroom a lot. So this is probably our best episode we've ever done or the worst. That's it. All right. We'll see you at the next one. Go follow Daniel later. Daniel 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 just give us a shout on linkedin and tell us what you want to hear peace out later