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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing, my friends? I hope you guys are having a great August and getting lots done while also probably shifting seasons. And we’ll be going into fall soon. I know a lot of people I’ve seen who’s kids are starting school again. My kids don’t go back to school until after labor day and they weren’t in school last year. We just did homeschooling with a little pod but this year they’re going back to school. I found an amazing school for them, and I’m super excited about it, but it’s definitely going to be a big adjustment, especially for my six year old, who loves to be at home all the time and building Legos. He’s a big home body and he’s going to be going to first grade. So that’s five days a week. He’s never gone to school five days a week before. 

It’s going to be a pretty big adjustment and we’ll be coming back from Colorado, hopefully to an almost done remodeled house. We’ll see, because with everything with remodels, it’s always more expensive and takes longer than you plan. I knew that going into it, I’m hoping it’s good enough for us to settle back into in the beginning of September. I’ve been posting kind of behind the scenes stuff on my Instagram stories with our remodel, but it’s a pretty big deal. We’re gutting pretty much the entire downstairs of our house and redoing it. I’m very excited to come back to it and it’s been a process to deal with. We found this main water line in the wall that we’re taking down, sthat’s 4,000 more dollars. “We have to dig into your foundation”, things like that, which is part of the process. 

In today’s episode, I want to talk about the future of marketing. I’ve talked about this in various ways. What does it mean for Facebook ads? What’s changing? I truly believe we have entered a new era of digital marketing where platforms are adjusting. Marketers, business owners are adjusting, what’s working content, all of that. It’s all having to be adjusted. There have been significant changes in the last, at least six months, maybe 12 months. I’ve been having this conversation a lot with my team. One thing I was saying yesterday is, it’s really interesting how most things go in cycles, right? They come back from the nineties right now, like things that were in fashion in the nineties are now in fashion again. History repeats itself. I was like, “is that true for marketing? Should we look at that?” You know, it was just a random idea. Of course tech is advancing and changing, but I actually think there’s some truth with that with marketing, because when I look at everything that’s happening right now, and I look at the changes to tracking and the more expensive ad costs and the over-saturation in the online space, the goldmine days of digital marketing are over. This is real, where you have to step up, you better stand out more and work harder to earn your customers. 

It’s weeding out the businesses who are not willing to do that. When you go back and you think about it, let’s think about marketing, you know, 10, 15 years ago, what was it like then? I didn’t have my agency then, so I’m not an expert, but what people counted on was things like newspapers, television commercials, calling people on the phone, going door to door, going into offices and giving presentations. The theme is that everything they had to do was based on building a connection with those potential customers. With the exception of TV commercials, they had to build a connection. TV commercials, the thing with that is you couldn’t track TV commercials. People are all up in arms right now with opting out of being tracked on Facebook ads. 

That was a luxury that we had to be able to track leads. To be able to track leads to an exact campaign, to an exact audience, to an exact ad, you know, that was something that didn’t exist before and it’s going away a little bit. I think there’s going to be solutions to fix it, but I’m building software and we’re already anticipating the solution. This Isn’t going to last forever. We’re going to have to come up with another solution in the future, because what’s going to happen is these techniques and Apple and the spearheading of this privacy movement, which all have other motives behind it. Apple is trying to build its own Ad platform. They’re going to keep outsmarting these ways that we’re trying to track people. 

If you just go back to 10, 15 years ago, businesses successfully marketed themselves without all of this without having tracking of a user’s every movement, and without having digital marketing. I’m not saying we needed to go back to that. I’m saying we need to look at the foundations of that marketing and bring some of that back because as things have gotten harder, more expensive, more saturated, we have to look at the foundation and what has always worked. That conversation I was having with a team member yesterday, which was just fascinating to me. Two things that I’ve come up with, that are kind of the future of marketing and where you need to put your resources and that is content and connection. That is truly the future of marketing that will never change, no matter what. In 10 years from now, it’ll still be true. 10 years ago, it was still true. 

That will be where you can get results. Let’s dive a little bit deeper in that. Content, this has shifted obviously from 10 years ago. With marketing, the successful campaigns that can engage at a lead, or your audience in a form of content that is engaging, that hooks them, that they want to pay more attention to that doesn’t feel like an ad in your face. The campaigns that can do that will and always will be successful. Right now I’m seeing a massive, massive shift to content. Okay. If you look at all the breadcrumbs, it makes sense, right? Look at Tik TOK. There are people on Tik TOK who are insanely impressive with the content that they can create. Instagram is shifting to creators. I saw an update that Pinterest was launching something. 

I can’t remember exactly what it was about the creators. LinkedIn bought out a content creator company to help their users create better content on their platform. Everything is pointing to the importance of content and being a creator. If you’re not the face of your brand, that’s still important. The reality is if you’re not somebody who wants to be on video or creating content with podcasts or blogs or videos, or all of the above, you have to figure out who in your company can and bring that in or how you’re going to do that because you will not survive without it. You have to have this. That means taking a look at your brand right now, and this is what we’re doing. We’re having these conversations behind the scenes because it helps my business. 

It helps all of our client’s business. That means looking at content, how do we have deeper level content? How do we go the extra mile? How do we have the most valuable content out there in our niche? How do we stand out from the crowd and all of the other content out there, how do we make an impact? Every piece of content should make an impact post on Instagram video, a podcast episode, everyone should make an impact. You need to be consistent, even more consistent and more frequent with your content than you ever have before. If you do that while you’re building a brand and a following, that’s going to stand out and that will help your marketing, that will help getting leads and sales and your growth of your audience. When you look at the goals of the platforms and you look at the types of material that people are consuming today, it is valuable, fun, innovative, short, because they have short attention spans content in the form of very short videos behind the scenes, like raw vulnerable content. 

If you look at any successful platform, influencers platform, you’ll see that the content where they either do something really innovative or creative, or they have a really vulnerable raw post, or they go really deep and share something that like most people aren’t willing to share, or they’re sharing an experience or a behind the scenes, or they’re giving their take on something, or they’re being polarizing. That’s the content that does the best. You can’t be surfaced. It will not work. You may as well not even make content if you’re going to be surface, you’ve got to go deeper. You’ve got to be willing to actually be a little bit vulnerable these days, that does the best. People want to see real people. They’re sick of the decade that has been here. People like, “oh, it’s so easy and online marketing, it’s just easy, like get your funnel and you build your business and all that.”

People don’t believe it anymore. If you’ve been trying to do that, it’s not going to work. People are more hesitant. This is my call to you, to let me share what we’re doing on our marketing team. I actually just recently hired a full time creative manager and they’re going to manage our copywriter and manage our social media manager and manage the design contract work that we have. Their job is to create ideas for our content reels or social media needs to be innovative. I mean, going outside of our space and I want to look at, “what is Nike doing? What is the NFL doing?” What are they doing? That’s creative because if they’re doing something that’s going to become a trend and how do we bring that into our space before everybody else does? 

We’re bringing a lot more creative manager, creative director roles, both for our clients and for ourselves, because this is so important. Whenever things are shifting, always watch what other companies are doing. If you look behind the scenes and you look at what I’m doing, it’s because there’s a reason for it. The need for creativity, the need for ideas, the need for Uplevel content has become so much more important this year. If you look at other companies, you’re going to see the same thing,the need for ideas, for reels, for upleveling, the frequency and the quality of content is absolutely critical. That means looking in your own business, your own process, your own resources, your own time, and making this a priority. I know it can be overwhelming, but this is something that you need to put time into. 

It has to be quality. Increase quantity because that’s important. But it also has to be that top level quality, because there’s just so much content out there and so much fighting for people’s attention that you have to stand out and you have to be the best. You have to stand out at least to your ideal customer. You’re not trying to stand out to everybody. Remember that? You’re trying to stand out to your ideal customer. You don’t want everybody to like your video or everybody to like your post. You want your ideal customer to love it, to feel like you get them to want more of what you’re putting out there. That’s the first piece of the future of marketing. 

The second piece is connection. This one’s kind of exciting. I think with the shifts around iOS updates, more expensive ad costs, you know, more cost to acquire, basically a customer what’s going to come from that is the importance of connection with your audience. 

Since I started my company, this has always been how I looked at marketing. There’s just a human behind the screen, consuming your content, watching your webinar, going into your website, and you need to remember that. That connection with them is going to be what sells your offer. This is now even more important. I think companies are going to have to get more creative and are going to have to work harder to build these connections than they used to have to do because of the level of competition and saturation. If it’s more expensive to acquire a lead, that just means you’re working harder, but you need to get more out of that lead. When we go to look at connections,  I think there’s going to be more direct conversations happening to close sales. 

That means in the DMS, in your chats, in text messages, I think you need to create opportunities that your potential customers and your audience can engage with you in one-on-one personal conversations, not necessarily with you directly as a CEO, but at least with your team. I think that has been very powerful for us and utilizing DMS or utilizing text messages. I want to look at more chat services. We’ve definitely used it on our sales page before, and it’s been awesome, but that is going to be critical. We need to move more and more to that as things like email or, just seeing an ad or even just listening to this podcast, you know? Yes, it’s great. But if you can have a connection and a conversation with me, I mean, I’ve even increased the amount that I do this on like a live webinar, or we’ve done some inside things for our PDQ subscribers where I’ve done like an open house and it’s very intimate and they can come in and ask me anything. 

 I’ve increased my accessibility to a streamlined way to build that connection with people. I think that’s the direction we’re heading. You need to incorporate that in your strategy. The other piece is that longer sales cycles, meaning more touch points are going to probably become more the norm. That really means looking at your ads where you might get a hundred leads this week and only a few become buyers, but you need to convert more of those leads. You also need to see the value of those leads. It’s not one and done after, you know, one week where you run ads and you get those leads and then okay, only to buy. Then it’s okay, that’s my sales conversion. No, now you have 98 people who haven’t bought from you that you need to create a meaningful experience and touch points for and convert more into sales. 

Looking at your experience that you’ve created the touch points that you have and just going through and analyzing every component of it. My next piece, this connection is that experiential marketing, which I’ve talked about before in a podcast. I actually just did a training on this inside of our ignite program too, because I think it’s so important. To analyze every step of your experience, both on the front end on your marketing side, but then on the back end, after they become customers, your experience that you’re creating for your audience, for your leads and for your customers is critical that it’s top notch. It’s always going to need improvement. That was one thing the student was like, “wow”, after you did that training, I just realized I have so much work. I said, “yeah, you need to focus on what is going to move the needle the most”, because you’re always going to have an opportunity to improve the experience for your audience. 

Even in the backend for your customers, you need to look at what is the most critical to move the needle of your business growth and success. If the sales cycle is longer, if we have to have more touch points before having a sale, we need to create an epic experience that brings consistently brings people back, makes it so they can’t forget about our company and really are even talking about the company and, and coming back to the content, coming back to everything you put out and becoming those raving fans. Working that in and not trying to have those just quick wins.Quick wins are great, and you’re going to have a small percentage of your leads who make a decision fast, who buy, they don’t need to see a lot. That’s their personalities, but it’s just getting less and less people take action that quickly, because there’s just more overall competition, overall hesitancy out there. 

Creating that amazing experience in what I taught in ignite, and in a deeper level training was to write out your entire customer journey. What is every touch point that somebody could have with your brand both before and after becoming a customer and then analyze like, “how is that experience?” Go through it as if you are that person and find room for improvement and then go improve that experience. I guarantee you that will make a massive impact on your results. 

The last thing with connection is just keeping in mind that the goal with everything you’re doing in your marketing right now is to build trust, to build trust with your brand. You have to think that most people today, have a wall up until you break that wall down. Whenever you put out content or you release a new funnel, or you do a webinar, or you have a sales page, you have to think like somebody looking at this is going to have a wall up and automatically be like,” this person can’t help me. This won’t work for me. There’s already other things out there. Why is this better?”  Like they’re already kind of asking those pessimists questions. if you can look at your marketing through that lens of if somebody views this video or views a sales page or this webinar, and they’re thinking those things, “how will I break that down to build trust?” Once you build that trust, as long as you don’t lose it, by doing something bad or putting out something of poor quality or being unethical or something, as long as you don’t lose that trust, it’s there forever. When the time is right, they will come buy from you. As long as you also continue to have opportunities and actions to push that audience, and those leads to buy from you. Your job right now in your marketing is to build extreme trust. 

You have to assume that nobody trusts you. They don’t know you, they don’t trust you. There’s just too much overwhelm and saturation and options out there. Honestly, crappy options and every niche that you’re fighting against to prove that you’re actually good. Everything you look through that lens has to be like,” is this going to convince somebody who doesn’t believe that I can help them or that my business is good or, and my offer can work and it’s valuable,” and you know, not like the other surface offers out there that do a lot of talk and not a lot of results. When you create your marketing, look at it through that lens. That’s the direction I see marketing going, for sure. Think it’s back to some of the basics and it’s going to be harder, but it’s going to force marketers to be more creative and business owners to be more creative, to work a little bit harder, and create more long lasting results. 

Ultimately, because this time of internet marketing being like a gold mine, it’s long gone. When I started,  you could easily get to $3 cost per lead. In some industries today, you still can, but it’s just not the same and it’s not going to go back. This is the new normal. Your option is to step up and be willing to do these things around content and connection, or to just not, and be like, “I don’t want to market my business. I don’t want to do this. It’s too hard.” That’s fine too, if that’s what you choose. We’re kind of at a crossroads, and it really is weeding out a large percentage of businesses, which to me, I’m, “Great, weed them out,” because in a year from now, things will be easier again. A lot of these companies will be gone or not working or turn off their advertising. 

Things will get cheaper again for the ones who stuck through it. I want all of you guys to stick through it, but this is going to test your grit. It is going to really test the foundations of your business. If it’s not there, it’s going to expose those gaps and it already is. I believe in all of you guys, that you can step up and do this. I know my audience is willing to do the work, and is willing to have the grit. I talk about it a lot, so I know you guys can do it. I want you guys to do it because I want you guys to be around and the years to come and to mold your business to these changes and not let them run you over. 

All right, everybody, I’ll talk to you next time.

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