6 Marketing Trends You Need To Be Aware of This Year

Brandon Welch 0:00
Human beings are starving for authenticity. Yes, and everybody who’s using this whole digital world to either create content or create some sort of a customer experience, you’re missing out on the thing that we’re actually physiologically, neurologically, psychologically, spiritually wired to do, which is to connect with human beings.

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I am joined by Caleb, unsolved mysteries. AG, it’s dark in here, the

Caleb Agee 0:35
vibes have changed. Nate, the

Brandon Welch 0:37
camera guy, is work day and night. We have a brand new set, brand new lighting, just like beaming sun right above me, and it’s amazing. We’re gonna, we’re gonna post a behind the scenes picture so you can see what the studios of Maven marketing are really like. It’s cool, it’s interesting.

Caleb Agee 0:51
And it is the new year. It is happy. New Year’s.

Brandon Welch 0:53
Happy New Year, New Year, New Year’s. It’s not. Hopefully New Year’s, right? You’ll have years, many years coming. Yeah, this is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions. You can eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business, and achieve the big dream. And today’s big dream question is all about six marketing trends you need to be aware of if you were marketing in 2024 but before we

Caleb Agee 1:15
go there, I just want to say we sent out a survey we did, and if you didn’t hear about the survey, we would like for you to fill it out. Pull over right

Brandon Welch 1:25
now, click it eight questions. Yes, we have big things in store for the podcast this year. We have so many cool things coming. Yes, we need your help to make it better. Tell us what you want to hear more of we get questions, great questions all the time. We’re always going to answer the questions, yes, but what other extra content do you want? Yeah, we’re blessed to work with some amazing people. We have some CEOs of 100 million dollar companies coming on. We have some leadership coaches. We have some special guests that have done remarkable things with scaling, buying and selling businesses, building teams from like five to, you know, 150 plus people. Yeah, and I know that stuff is good, but in between, should we lean into more digital marketing? Should we lean into more broadcast, more strategy, more ad writing, more lead generation and follow up stuff? So please click the link. It’s at the very top of any one of the platforms you’re listening on. Just say, click the survey.

Caleb Agee 2:16
We need your feedback by end of next week. Deal.

Brandon Welch 2:22
Stop taking, stop taking all feedback.

Caleb Agee 2:24
Yeah, next week. Okay, that’s, that’s as long as we take feedback there. There

Brandon Welch 2:27
is a special guest coming up. Everybody needs to know about who’s that? My one and only

Caleb Agee 2:33
not you. Caleb, it’s not me.

Brandon Welch 2:35
Valerie Welch is going to be coming on in the next couple of weeks and talking about how to build a business with by with maintaining a healthy home life, and that is something that wasn’t always obvious to us. But she is the backbone of everything I do, and she’s coming on. So

Caleb Agee 2:55
the big question is whether or not she knows she’s coming on. At this point, she’s coming on to validate me.

Brandon Welch 3:02
Okay, so stay tuned for episode with Valerie coming up on this episode, on this

Caleb Agee 3:09
episode of the Maven market. Go

Brandon Welch 3:11
to the ad. So we’re gonna talk about a new FCC ruling that’s gonna affect anybody who’s in lead generation. You’re gonna wanna hear this? We’re gonna talk about how AI is going to change things this year. Yeah, we’re gonna talk about Google’s changes with the way they’re showing search results. We’re gonna talk about election year, and what you need to know about that, using short form videos to get more engagement, more leads, and build your brand and data protection and privacy, and what that means for you if you are any sort of advertiser, if you have a website, you need to know about this, yeah? So that’s a little more of a technical episode, but there’s gonna be some things, some takeaways. They’re gonna set you up to win. They’re gonna set you up to be the competitor in your marketplace. Yeah? That comes out on top that people want to do business with before they choose any of the other competitors, that’s right, and you’re going to be the one who skips all of the junk that’s going on, that’s going to try to stop, yeah,

Caleb Agee 4:07
all this stuff we’re talking about that’s changing, that’s always moving. So number one, the new FCC ruling is Telephone Consumer Protection Act. It’s an extension of one that’s been there since it’s in the mid 90s, yeah, 1991

Brandon Welch 4:19
this went into act, and this was originally, this is the congressional act that said, Hey, you silly telemarketers and Robo callers, you can’t call 911, and you can’t bother our doctors and our public service offices and or our emergency lines. And since then, it’s kind of in the vehicle that the government goes, Hey, marketers, you’re being too aggressive, and we’re going to put some Yes, you know, stop. We’re going to put some friction on that. Yeah. 2003 they created what everybody knows is the Do Not Call list, yeah? Which made, just basically made it legal for if you said, I don’t want to be called by telemarketers. There’s national database, yeah. 2012 They tighten that up to say marketers can’t solicit people or call people if they haven’t approved. They haven’t somewhere in some, you know, loophole writing said, Yes, I’m agreed to, you know, people calling

Caleb Agee 5:13
and and a lot of times, what happened to you? If you’re like, I never signed up for anybody to call me. Yeah? Why

Brandon Welch 5:19
do people call? Why should have a cable provider? Yeah, sell your information. Yes,

Caleb Agee 5:23
you get that target credit card. How we use your information? Notice? Or there are so many different ways, and what they’re doing is you agree in the fine print, or you filled out a form and it says by checking this box, you agree for website and our affiliates to contact you. So if you

Brandon Welch 5:43
basically, unless you’re off the grid, living with a tin foil hat underneath the ground somewhere in North Dakota, you can be called up until this act, and the 2023 act, or the amendment to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, came out, December 3, December 13, it was approved, four to one ruling. Guys, this is going to change some big things, because effectively, what it does, it says, if you did not specifically get permission to call this consumer, they knew you your company name specifically was going to call them. Yes, you’re not allowed to do it anymore. So all this loophole, buying information, buying leads from third party services, is going to go away? Yep, it’s going to be highly scrutinized in the in the big lead aggregators. It’s a, it’s a, it’s got to be a billion dollar industry, sure, anybody who’s buying and selling information or targeting or saying, Hey, I know, because this person has this credit score and just bought this product, and you should call this person to sell them your insurance or whatever, that stuff’s going away. Yeah, if you are an advertiser on Angie’s List, or home advisor, or any sort of industry specific lead generation where they say, hey, we’ll send you leads of people looking for your info. That’s going

Caleb Agee 6:53
away, yeah? Unless realtors, realtors, you’ll you’ll see that Zillow and realtor.com unless you have specifically said I approve for Brandon and CO to call me, or Nate the camera guy to call me. And that’s, that’s the big change, that and affiliates not allowed anymore, the the extras, or a lot of times what happened on, on, like Angie or or home advisor, kind of places, uh, we have, we have a lot of friends in the home improvement, yes, business they you would go there, fill out your information as a consumer, say, I need a new roof. They would sell your information eight times for hundreds of dollars a piece, make, you know, three grand off of you. And then you’d have eight different roofing companies calling you all of a sudden. Now I have to explicitly say I’m okay with Brandon the roofer calling me. I’m okay with Nate the roofer calling me. Nate the camera guy. Nate the camera roofer. Yes, I don’t know how that works, but you have to explicitly say who you want or who you will allow to call you

Brandon Welch 7:56
Yes. So what this means for you also, by the way, it’s putting an end to spam texting Yes, with tied up in this kind of amendments, like companies you gotta, you gotta have what they call a topical, relevant, relevancy to calling that person. So you can’t just be like, Oh, well, I saw you with them all one time, and now I can call you. You have to be like, No, we saw you. You literally, specifically on our website said you’d like information? Yes, it’s a big deal. So the proposed rule addresses a number of areas, but notably, the rule would require textures and callers using certain regulated technologies to obtain prior express written consent. Express written consent. Yes, you can call me or text or text me, and we’re linking to the FCC. It’s a 72 page document that outlines all this, but the big highlights are, you can’t call people, you can’t buy leads from a third party that you didn’t get specific consent from, and you can’t

Caleb Agee 8:48
text people. Yep. So what does this mean? What it means for you is,

Brandon Welch 8:52
hopefully you’re already doing the right thing, but the right thing just got a little more scrutinized. Buying leads is gonna get tougher, and honestly, hopefully you weren’t relying on buying leads like this is really bad news for people who have not built a strong brand. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 9:04
you’re buying leads from somebody else, not even buying your own leads.

Brandon Welch 9:09
Yes, man, exactly what’s going to happen is for the Angie’s List, the home advisors to stay alive, or the legal, you know, websites where people go on and shop for an attorney or whatever, or shop for insurance or whatever for any of those to survive, these companies are going to have to say, Cool. Not just give us your information, but hey, would you approve of Caleb calling you? Would you approve a Brandon call? You insert your brand name has to be on that list. And

Caleb Agee 9:34
what consumers are going to do? What are they going to do? They’re going to check the ones that they like or know or trust they already

Brandon Welch 9:40
know about Yes, yep. And so if you were a no name company, you didn’t have a strong brand. If you have not been building awareness and a likeness to your company, a good feeling, a good bond with your community, you’re not going to win against the national companies, because they’re going to go, Oh, I’ve heard of that. Oh, I’ve heard of that. And my friend talked about that one. I’ll click that one, and they’re probably going to click three. Or four because they don’t want eight phone calls. Yeah? No, probably wanted to shop three people. Yeah, ideal price, and the national brands are going to win, or the strongest brands are going to win, unless you are the local person who’s been using this thing called tomorrow marketing from the Maven method, and you are winning over customers long before the sale. Yeah? So if they recognize you, they’ll they’ll still click you on these things. But the truth is, if they recognize, you know, you you don’t need these third parties to be involved. No, hopefully second thing, you’re gonna have to get really good at creating your own leads, because while so as this third party thing goes away, it’s gonna create a vacuum. There’s gonna be more people being aggressive and trying to generate their own leads versus buying them. Yep, I’m talking to my home improvement guys, yes, talking to my solar guys. Like, you’re gonna have to be really, really good at doing that yourself, because you can’t just outsource that and buy people’s information. No, by the way, that sucked to begin with. It

Caleb Agee 10:53
was never good because they didn’t know they were buying, yeah, some you know they were buying somebody to pass you along. It’s so much easier to make the sale. Your close rate will be higher. Your appointment set rate will be higher when you are the one they asked for yes in the beginning.

Brandon Welch 11:08
And I want to call Randy. I want to call Mike. I want to work with Joey, Josh Golly. I like that guy.

Caleb Agee 11:14
So this is good for the consumer, but it’s also, I think it will force businesses to to be authentic, to be what they what they need to be in this so

Brandon Welch 11:26
cool. And then hopefully you weren’t one of these third party lead generators. I’m sorry for you. Yeah, go into the branding business, would be my best advice. Okay,

Caleb Agee 11:36
two, AI, it’s it’s in the play. Al, it’s happening. Al, yeah, we’ll continue to change things. But people really are just craving authentic relationships. We’ve

Brandon Welch 11:51
seen this entire movement of automation. We’ve seen this entire movement of, Oh, you don’t have to hire a receptionist or you don’t have to hire an extra person. Let a robot do that for you. And you know what? Good for the developers, good for technology, good for the world, that we can do those things. But human beings are starving for authenticity. Yes, and everybody who’s using this whole digital world to either create content or create some sort of a customer experience, you’re missing out on the thing that we’re actually physiologically, neurologically, psychologically, spiritually wired to do, which is to connect with human beings. Yes, there is no replacement. There’s ever at a better time in history to write handwritten notes, to give personal phone calls, write your own emails, to send hand selected gifts, to be consultive and not not take out that connection experience. I’m not saying slow it down, by all means. Do it faster and do it better for the person. Yeah, but take away all the friction and take away all of the plastic around your experience, yeah, and you will be the one that just excels and becomes this, like highly reviewed, highly reputable, highly bonded company. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 13:15
I think when you can engage, there’s something about a tangible I even personally, I don’t like reading books, yes, on my phone or on a tablet or anything like that. I like the physical, the feeling. There’s something tangible about that. And I think if you can engage communicates on parchment, yeah, I’ll write and I’ll scroll and send it on if you can engage with people in a multi sensory way. So that’s why audio and visual works well. But then if you can tap into a third sense, where there’s a touch, yes, where there’s a smell, where, there we have, I don’t know if you if that’s even in the shot, we’ve got the candles, the Frank and Maven candle. And that is, that is it in frame. Nathan

Brandon Welch 13:55
can be MB homestead in Ozark, Missouri, yeah, as we go for those you don’t know, we do a pretty good in the swag department around here, we try, but we don’t just go to a website and say, and we’ll buy some pins. We’ll buy some mugs. No. Caleb can tell you, it took me what, nine months to pick our pin. Yeah, yeah. We gave up. He’s like, we

Caleb Agee 14:11
put, I think we had a client in the office while we were we were talking about the hoodies. I think Ryan was wearing one. Yeah, the episode a couple times ago, we were picking those hoodies. And I’m not kidding you, we got samples from like, seven different brands, different sizes, to feel the weight, softness, the feeling the outfits, how long it is, how’s the hood? What’s the string situation? Because we want it to be perfect. It’s

Brandon Welch 14:36
an experience. It’s an experience. Not just your logo on something. It’s not just, oh, I made my follow up faster because I put it through a robot. It’s like, no, get a dad gum human in there. Man, yes, I know humans are hard to find. I know they’re I know they’re more cantankerous than ever. They tend to want to be paid. Yeah, Nate the camera guys are expensive, but Dad gum, it

Caleb Agee 14:57
use look what they can do make it look what they. Beautiful, if you’re listening, it just, it just looks so good in here. It’s

Brandon Welch 15:04
rich. Oh yeah, smells of rich mahogany here. Okay,

Caleb Agee 15:08
what does this mean?

Brandon Welch 15:12
Be highly skeptical of anything that’s trying to replace the human experience. Yes, you do not want to use technology to replace the human. You want it to use, use it to enhance the human AI is not going away, and you know what? It’s gonna it’s gonna make the world better in a lot of ways. Yeah, but especially at the moment you’re communicating with that person, just

Caleb Agee 15:32
be skeptical. Yeah? And a rule we actually have here in the office is everybody needs to read what they’ve written out loud. Yeah? People walk by my office and they’re like, Did you say something like, No, I was just writing this email because I’m mumbling it. I’m saying it literally out loud

Brandon Welch 15:48
while he’s talking to himself while, uh, yeah, oh, he just old man. Agee, yeah.

Caleb Agee 15:53
I’m mumbling this email because if it doesn’t sound like me when it comes out of my mouth, if it doesn’t sound like Caleb, it’s not me. And so I want to make sure that these have an authentic feeling, and you should encourage all of your team members to do that the worst thing you could do. I’ve actually seen a client adopt this recently, where their emails all of a sudden sounded very prim and proper, and they were using $5 words where they previously didn’t, and it was very articulate, yes, but that person would not call themselves articulate in the first place, and it seemed fake. It didn’t seem real. And I want real when

Brandon Welch 16:28
you’re working with a real person the way they write their emails, even if they’re grammatically poor, that’s an extension of their personality. Yeah, I know some of my friends gonna write that way. I know some of them are not. And I look forward and it connects me to the My past real experience. And when I see this fake thing, I secretly know that’s not Chris, yes, that’s not Mike, yep, I’m going, Ah,

Caleb Agee 16:48
so yeah, there’s a balance there. You also have to present in professionalism and all of that, but you can still sound like a human. Yeah, personality is what we’re talking about. Yes, all right. Speaking of personality, Google number point number three, more personalized search on Google.

Brandon Welch 17:05
So in the past, Google has been kind of a game of, Ooh, can I get on page one? Yes, and it was, how high are you on page one? Universally, if Caleb and I searched for, you know, state planning attorney in the same town, we would probably see the same result. Not anymore, Google says, Nah, we’re gonna make the person search more personalized. Yeah, they’re gonna pay attention to what Caleb searches, the types of things he clicks on. Yeah, see more of a

Caleb Agee 17:29
I read blog articles, yes, or FAQ, type of pages and Brandon likes to read the pricing page, yes or or

Brandon Welch 17:38
Caleb is more apt to go with national brands with big, sophisticated content, and I’m more of a local guy that just looks for the chuck in a truck. Yeah? Like they’re, they’re using signals to determine what does Caleb want to see, what does Nate want to see, what does Brandon want to see? And our results may be different. Yeah,

Caleb Agee 17:52
I might consume more video content than you Yes, which they would then serve me more videos higher on the page.

Brandon Welch 17:58
And you guys may have seen this already, but they’re they’re now saying they’re giving the user the option to go click if you want to see more content like this. And it’s informing the types of things that perpetually, as you search into the future that they will start to show you. Yeah. So what does that mean for you guys? That means that you need to be start writing your content and start doing your website, and start writing your words with a very specific idea of the type of person you’re trying to attract, yeah? And it’s not just about this prim and proper check the box, though I did SEO. It’s like, what is my brand voice? Yeah. Am I writing in a short, you know, conversational style? Am I writing a first second, third person, or, sorry, first second or third person? And there may or may not be, like a super right or wrong answer, which is gonna drive some people nuts. It’s like, no, what do I need to do? But all this comes down to every part of your brand that’s stronger is going to indirectly affect search results, yeah, and it’s an opportunity, because if you are the company that is easier to read, that is giving answers in a more convenient form, because you are the one thinking and empathizing and going, Oh, what is the best thing for my most ideal customer in your writing, creating content in that way, and you’re not going, Oh, what are the nerds say? And, yeah, trying to, like, hack some system that’s going away. It’s always been going away. Google’s been trying to be make that go away since its inception. Yeah, it will always be about what’s better for the human. But now the tech is going, Oh, nature likes this content. And so if you’re a younger brand, probably write in a younger voice. You are talking to more sophisticated, skeptical baby boomers. Probably write in that type of a voice. By all means, though, use the principle of empathy. Yeah. And tactically, there is something I think you can do in your search engine content. Google’s showing a lot more of this. People also ask thing, and what they’re doing is they’re looking for very structured parts on your website, sort of an FAQ, like maxing out your FAQ answers. What does this cost? What are the other. Pricing options. What makes it cost more? What makes it cost less? Where is it made? What material is better? Why would I want this material? What climate? What climate does this thing apply to talking to my medical and legal people like writing very specific answers. Think about being the WebMD, like giving a super succinct answer as to if you’re having this problem, it could be one of these nine things, yeah, possible solutions, yes, yeah. And all this, this, this era of, like, ooh, fill out the form. We’re going to get with you on a consult. We’ll tell you all the information. Then that is out. Like, Google is going to reward companies that do not do that. Yeah, they’re going to reward the companies that the consumer goes, Okay, I get I get A, B, C, D, E and F, and I’ll probably still go with you. I’ll probably still show up and do the appointment, because I’ve determined enough to go. I’m not the expert here, but the more information you can give in a bite sized, enjoyable format, the better you’re going to do. Yep, that’s it. That it oh, you know what, and that that equates to also being the one they liked more before they even hit search.

Caleb Agee 21:08
There. It is, cool. Number four, it is an election year. Get out and vote. Yeah, get out and vote. Go vote, register if you haven’t already got some primaries and some Yes, some not primaries. Yeah, the general elections coming up.

Brandon Welch 21:24
Yeah. So few big points here. One, hopefully you’ve watched your episodes on getting the best deal on media in 2024 is election year, which just means there’s going to be more supply, or, sorry, less supply, more demand on inventory in a lot of markets. So I’m talking about TV, radio, prints, anything that a politician could come in and say, I’ll pay double the price and kick us little advertisers out. Yep, um, way you combat that,

Caleb Agee 21:47
even on, I would say, on digital and social platforms. So we’ll drive up the cost. It will, because there will be a demand on people’s eyes, right? We pay, we pay cost per 1000. That’s going to go up a little.

Brandon Welch 21:57
Last election, I watched the cost per impression, which is effectively the efficiency of the media. Yeah, gas mileage of your of the media. I watched it go probably double the cost for the same thing I was getting maybe a couple months before that. Yeah. So we were paying $20 CPM. It wasn’t uncommon to see 40s and 50s, yep. So what do you do about that? You buy early. You put in your buys right now, yeah, or, or hopefully two months ago. For TV, radio, there’s a limited amount of spots, and if you were the first one who said, Yep, I’ll take that spot, yeah, big bad politician comes out or and says, I’ll pay three times a spot, or five more politicians come in. If you’re at the first in, you’re the last one that gets kicked out, yeah. So if there was 20 spots and you were number three to buy, raise your hand. Say, I want it. And politician comes in, he’s going to kick number 20 out, number 19, number 18, number 17, number 16, and it has to go all the way down to you. And that protects you when you’re the one placing an annual buy. Yeah. So buy it early and buy it often. Have the courage to plan out the whole year, yep. Um, for the love of it, do not stop advertising. Politicians do not make people not buy things. They make them wait. Maybe yes, Caleb’s gonna talk about that in a second, but you want to be the voice that says, Guys, it’s all good. It’s a good life. Hallelujah, we live in America. We’ve got good things going on. Yeah, we’re the good news on the street, the news your politicians want to convince you The sky is falling. You can feel that for a minute, but guess what? We’re all going to wake up and go, huh? The sky didn’t fall. And if you were the voice there in their sleep and their unconscious and their anger and their frustration and their depression, you were the one going, Gosh, golly,

Caleb Agee 23:37
I’m a good company. I’m

Brandon Welch 23:40
doing good things, and I want you, when you’re ready to have me, yeah, you’re going to be the one that just skyrockets out of any slight depression or slight recession. Yes, and,

Caleb Agee 23:51
and yeah, because you placed your BI annually, everybody else, all of your competitors, who relate to the game or buy it quarterly or monthly, they’re getting they’re getting kicked every time they play, and so you get to be there, or they probably pulled theirs because they were scared of the election year, they didn’t want to deal with it or whatever. And you are winning doubly because they are not being seen, and you are all

Brandon Welch 24:16
of my smart friends are clients. Seriously, like, they know. They know better. By now they know. Oh yeah, we’re staying in the course, yeah. And guys, they’re growing where everybody else is kind of, like, flowing, right? Yep. All the ones that are just staying the course are going, Hey, my buddies are my butters are pulling out. What do you think of that? And like, feel

Caleb Agee 24:37
bad for your buddies, yeah, yeah, yeah. They won’t feel it next month, yes, but they will. They will after the after the time of that does that comes back around. The other thing I’m going to say about election years, we’ve seen three or four doing this marketing thing. And the thing that everybody does every single. Year Obama wait country goes to hail, yeah, basically everyone holds onto their wallet a little bit tighter. The population at large holds on their wallet because they assume the other guys. Doesn’t matter which one the other guys are, the other guys are gonna take over and screw everything up. And so everybody waits just a little bit, especially in that later, October, November, range, and everybody just kind of assumes, and then when the year wraps around, they start to let go of their wallets a little bit more, and they’re okay with especially in big purchases, we see a lot of that just slow down a little bit. It slumps just slightly as you come into it. But that does not mean that those sales won’t come. They just come at a different time. And I think that’s the thing that we have to pay attention to, is it’s not a seasonality thing. It’s more of like they’re just waiting. They’re waiting for just a little bit longer, and you then need to be in their lives during the waiting season, yep. And if you’re not, you’re gonna lose Yep. So no doubt, hang on. Don’t, don’t be afraid. If you sense that there’s

Brandon Welch 26:03
always spring is always coming. It’s coming around, and proverbial spring that is so maybe the real spring too. Yep, have staying power, yes, today, tomorrow. Here, when you need us. Sort of thing. Number

Caleb Agee 26:16
five, use short form videos. This goes back

Brandon Welch 26:21
to a little bit of our brand and authenticity. And while people are people are starving for convenience, but that never meant they wanted lack of human being, one of the fastest things you can do, because you have Hollywood production studio in your pocket, like, literally, like, what it took $10,000 with the cameras to do even five years ago. Probably your phone does it better. You can. You can be a video producer, and I’m not talking you got to be some slicked up person. You can go all the things that you would somebody who had to wait for to learn in your consult, yeah, all the things they would had to come to your store for, all the things they would have had to previously sit through a 45 minute presentation. You can give little bite sized chunks of that. And guess what? Every what? Every time you do that, they go, like that guy, like that guy. I trust them. Yes. And, wow, I had kind of been wondering that Yes. And thank you for not wasting half my day. Thank you for not pretending like I wanted to watch some 12 minute video. It’s like, No, I’m gonna demonstrate one little thing about my product that is like something like competitors don’t have the courage to tell you, because they want to gate keep it from you, yep,

Caleb Agee 27:26
he who gives gains

Brandon Welch 27:30
and short form video attention is harder than ever to hold, yeah, and harder than ever to get.

Caleb Agee 27:38
So yeah, and we’re looking at this practically that usually looks like a vertical video. It would show up on tick tock and stories, reels, shorts, all those. It’s called something different, every platform you use. But the reality is, it doesn’t, doesn’t completely matter. It just what, what we need you to be doing is making those short form videos giving bite size information. Wise owl found that 73% of consumers prefer to watch short form videos. When learning about a product or service, they don’t even want to read about as much as they everybody

Brandon Welch 28:12
knows. They can hit the rewind button. If it was a little too short, they can go watch it three times. Yep. Guess what? They still only spent three minutes instead of 30. Yep. With that, if you do longer form videos, title them, Chapter them out. We started doing that in our maybe Monday stuff, saying, you want to get straight to this topic, yeah? And I would say, use tight editing, yeah? And things like subtitles and words on the screen. There’s a there’s an app called Video leap that makes this really easy. I do a lot of cooking videos with my kids. Yeah, and I show how we do a two and a half hour cook in like 90 seconds. And people love it, yep. And so, yeah, short videos, edit them. And just for fun, we’re gonna do a quick short form video right now, and Nate is going to edit this, and you’re going to find an example on our YouTube shorts, on our Tiktok and our Facebook reels. And so here we go. If you want to win in marketing in 2024 what you got to do you got to be personal. People are tired of replacing the human experience. So if you’re using digital media, digital tools, AI to replace human experience, what you want to do is use it to enhance it. You want to be the brand that people think of first feel the best about you. Do not want to make people go on a long journey to find you. You want to give them short bits of information right up front. This is what the algorithms are rewarding. This is what human beings are rewarding, and a year of political and election noise and hype, this is what people are desperately starving for, be the authentic company, be the one they like, Be the one they trust, long before they have to go looking for you. Boom, right? I just ramble that needs going to cut out the garbage. He’s going to make that into like a little 18 second video, and it’s going to be on our shorts. You guys go check it out and pay attention to the editing style. And what

Caleb Agee 29:57
you need to know is that the algorithms are. Are favoring this because it’s the way people have preferred to consume their content. So that helps your organic content. For one instead of just doing a random post your brand, it helps your brand. I’m connecting with a human Hello. We just talked about that as well, because there’s somebody talking to me. But then also, instead of also on paid content. So when I’m doing social media advertising, we’ve seen such a big power in this, instead of kind of a stock B roll or or just kind of some standard graphic on your ad, an authentic vertical video inside of that will cause me to stop the scroll while I’m flipping through looking for pictures of puppies and grandkids. It stops you and says, and you’re like, Oh, this looks authentic. And it just happens to be a guy named Tyler showing me a window. Yes,

Brandon Welch 30:49
you know he’s doing a great job of this, by the way, yeah. And he’s getting really good cost per views, because he’s not stopped with all the fluff he’s not saying. Let me tell you about all my years of experience. Let me tell you about my granddaddy. Don’t care. Give me, there’s a time and a place for this, for your story, but you can enter in these quick, little rapid bursts. You know, imagine if you had 1015, 20 times more exposures to your client because they stopped and paid attention to you than any of your competitors. Yeah. Who are they going to choose you? And they already like even if they shop you against somebody else they’ve already believed and trusted in. You. Cool, cool. Last one. Data protection and privacy laws are going to continue getting more stringent, and kind of local businesses have kind of been able to skate past and just be like, ah, that’s the big you know that applies to big corporations. Here’s where it’s here’s where it’s affecting you guys. Um, things we were able to do even a year ago with targeting are disappearing. Yeah. So you know, going and targeting the 34 year old mom who has a golden retriever and likes yoga that’s kind of gone away. Google’s like, we can find some 34 year olds, and they’re probably moms, but yeah, the golden retriever and yoga stuff that’s too personal, yeah, at Facebook, right? So if you’ve relied on a heavy amount of targeting, that’s just tough right now, and it’s getting tougher, and it will continue to get tougher. Yeah, it’s also affecting Google tracking, conversion tracking. So you used to be able to tell exactly which ad, exactly which keyword, exactly which you know, maybe time of day somebody hit your website and Google’s going out. We’re going to hold on to that information. We’re going to blend it up. We’re going to give you a broad view of it, but we’re not giving you specific

Caleb Agee 32:31
for the sake of the privacy of the consumer. Government’s coming down. Yeah, politicians

Brandon Welch 32:35
are getting younger. They know how to use the internet now, so they’re going, Ah, that’s right. They

Caleb Agee 32:39
know too much about our consumers, our population. It started in the UK, probably four or five, six years ago. Actually don’t have the number on that. And then California adopted it first in the United States, but those privacy laws are continuing to roll out. And then the browsers and devices, Apple specifically, even chrome those. They are helping to block these cookies and tracking protocols that are happening across these websites. So

Brandon Welch 33:05
this whole allure of, ooh, I gotta target the right person, and that’s how I’m gonna spend my ad dollars, guys, honestly, that’s never been the best plan. No, there’s a there’s been a pocket where tech went faster than people’s reality and awareness of how creepy it was. And so people got away with that, and it seemed like magic for a while. It was honestly, in time that actually wasn’t going to work out anyway, um, because consumers still go with what they know. This is still a human world. We have. Our brains have yet to be replaced by computer chips. Yeah, and

Caleb Agee 33:36
be human, yeah. Be the one they like first. Yep. And trust first. Actually, when you target more, you usually pay more. Oh, yeah, that was always a thing that and that that’s been really, really big factor. And now, yeah, it’s, it’s exponential. I

Brandon Welch 33:52
have a campaign right now. We’re running for like, gosh, it’s like, 17 or 18 medical clinics across a region, and we run two, we ran two, like, studies or two ad campaigns side by side, and one of them was really, really targeted, and one of them was, like, really broad. It was just like, kind of all people, or maybe people within a really wide age range, yeah, and the one that is winning it delivering to more people, for way cheaper cost, way, way cheaper, like, a third of the cost is the one that’s not targeted, yeah, and it actually, even though it’s reaching some quote, unquote unqualified people, those people actually know the other people who are qualified, yes, and it’s producing A better lead volume result, yeah. So, yeah, and that’s just one that just popped in my head. But there’s a bunch a bunch of bunch of those going on, yeah. So, lean less on targeting. Lean more into winning the customer over before the sale. Broad media is going to help you a lot, even if you’re using digital media, shed some targeting options off of it. You. I hate to, I hate to pick on my friends here. But, um, there’s some people pushing like this OTT and streaming service and going, Oh, TV is now targeted. And, you know, we can reach people with, you know, two dogs, two kids and a 750 credit score and blah, blah, blah, yeah, don’t you want to spend your ads that way? And it’s like, what you’re not the part you’re not hearing, is that reaches. So, so, so, so, so, so few people compared to what you could do with the same money in a broad yes media, yeah, and I’m not, I’m not advocating for a specific media, but I’m saying the principle there is reach. A lot of people be interesting, be likable, be humorous, be real, be helpful, and, gosh dang it, you’re gonna get the result that we all want,

Caleb Agee 35:44
yep, yep, and yeah, so that that concludes the 6081,

Brandon Welch 35:52
more thing in that data privacy policies, yes, most of the advertisers that we deal with that’s never been like a thing, like a thing, like a really well written privacy policy. Yeah, we’re going to start bringing that to our clients and scrutinizing that a little more, because I think you’re going to see Google prefer websites that have a better privacy policy and a better

Caleb Agee 36:16
ethics to care for the consumer. Yeah, that’s

Brandon Welch 36:18
what Google’s all about, right? They’re all about it anyway. Yeah, they’re just getting smart about how to measure it and reward it.

Caleb Agee 36:23
So, yeah, cool.

Brandon Welch 36:26
In conclusion, be a big brand, and you get to skip past all this crap that everybody else is going to be dealing with. Yeah, you’re going to pop off the list. You’re going to be the one that looks the best, feels the best, feels the best off the search engine list or even in these directories if you’re still using them, these third party things. But if you’re well branded and people like you and trust you, they’re going to come to you before they go through all this other random role, yep, do the right thing with privacy. Spread the good news. Be the positive voice in your community. Be the one that doesn’t stop be the one that is the tortoise, not the hare, and there are going to be customers and goodness and abundance that comes to you because you’re putting on the world.

Caleb Agee 37:11
Yeah, yeah. And I think if you are okay with, if you’re able to be that helpful, empathetic voice, there’s just, there’s no, there’s no the Yeah, the result, the, you can’t do it because of the result. That’s the, that’s the wild thing about it. Yeah, it’s, if that’s your heart, you’ve lost already. It’s such a backwards thing. You have to care about the people, and they’ll care about you. Yeah?

Brandon Welch 37:36
Measuring the result, it’s not linear enough that you’re gonna go, oh, that’s a trend, and you’re going to drive yourself crazy. Yes, read chapter 12 of my book. Yes, there’s a page called for the accountants. Show it to your accountants and then go on. Yeah, but if you know what kind of like this podcast, there’s not a single time we’ve asked for a sale. There’s not a single time we’ve tried to do anything except for put good things in the world. I’m not looking for a feather in my cap, but I’m telling you, that is why this company exists. Yeah, we are here to help entrepreneurs confidently grow without wasting money on advertising. We’re here to help them realize their hopes and dreams and be good for their community and build awesome teams and build awesome families and have this awesome goodness in the world that I think only small businesses can create. And so we show up here. Yeah, we spend all the money, the resources, the we feed, na the camera guy, Chick fil A and all that stuff, just so we can do this for you. And on that note, please help us make it better. Our version of empathy is this silly eight question survey we have, but we want to serve you guys so well this year. Yeah, we want you to start your week with confidence, end it with a good feeling. Skip over the mistakes and the headaches that are going to slow you down. And we’ve just been doing this. It is our 10 year anniversary this month. Yeah, Frank and Maven is 10 years old, like, 20 days or something, yes

Caleb Agee 38:54
and yeah.

Brandon Welch 38:55
And that means I’ve been doing this, like, 1718, years now, and I just yeah, we’re giving you all the stuff that you can avoid so you can get to victory, and so we will be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing questions so you can eliminate waste and advertise and grow your business and achieve the big dream. Because marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great year. Have a great week. Have a great day. We’ll talk to you soon. See ya.