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Back in the 1960s, the TV program was called The Twilight Zone. It was an anthology series that explored fantasy, science fiction, horror, and psychological thriller elements.
In today's complicated new marketing and media world, it can feel like we are living in a Twilight Zone.
Marketing is about getting people to become aware and engaged and building trust. If you work in a vacuum, then your messages are delivered more organically to the recipient. But when you try to use a delivery platform like a social media or search platform, your message has additives of other content surrounding it and the timing as to how and when it's delivered.
We are in the part of the business year that is like another Twilight Zone. It's the two months between Halloween and New Year's Day.
If you are in the consumer market, you are primed for people to be in a good mood and spend a lot of money on themselves and gifts for others. If you are in the business-to-business market, you are trying to finish the year strong while the people you sell to are winding down.
No one can predict what 2025 will be like for business. AI will continue to grow in power and popularity, but how will your clients and audience use and adapt to it? -
If you watch broadcast TV, I am sure you are happy the election is over and all we have to watch now are pharmaceutical and Christmas commercials.
One of the interesting things I heard in post-election analysis was that a billion dollars was spent on TV ads. At the same time, the most decisive information was distributed via free-to-access websites and apps. This was described as paywall and non-paywall media. I never really thought about that but it makes sense.
It becomes a matter of trust. Voters trusted without needing journalistic and regulatory confirmation that the information was accurate or even true. That works for elections, but you cannot take trust that lightly in business.
Like a human body, trust is a complex system with some essential parts, needs, and truths. It has a brain, digestive system, lungs, and a heart.
The body is a system, and the brain, the stomach, the lungs, and the heart all need each other for the body to function and survive.
Trust in business is the same thing. It takes thinking, seeing, and feeling to ensure your business relationships are built on respect and trust. They need to be fed with consistent quality information, thought leadership, and a dash of advice. You must constantly breathe new life into relationships while expelling the negative. It also takes heart to feel and empathize with how a relationship is mutually beneficial and not merely transactional. -
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AI has been part of our culture for a long time. Think about the movies that have predicted where we are now.
Although this is Hollywood and entertainment, we have realized most of this already:
2001 = Self-Driving Vehicles
Matrix = VR Games and Headsets
Her = ChatGPT, Siri, Alexa, and more impressive versions coming soon
The biggest thing holding AI back or impeding it's progress is it knowing who it's talking to. Personalization will need to go way beyond what information is available on the Internet. What it will need (and what you want to do with your marketing) is called Hyper-Personalization.
The problem with data is that it constantly changes. A real-life example is trying to do something very old-school: sending US Mail to customers. Chances are, you have a database or CRM where the records are old.
In no way, shape, or form am I saying that digital marketing (social and email) wastes time and money? I can tell you that human-to-human interaction will increase interactions with your digital presence.
Humans are complex, fickle, and emotionally charged beings. It takes just being there as another human being to build that trust again and again, as needed. -
I have a problem. “Hi… my name is Brian… and I am addicted to tabs.”
I normally have four Chrome browser windows open with 20 to 30 tabs open in each—that's over 100 tabs.
As you age, things slow down (I can't run or jog as fast), and I believe your brain gets full. My memory is still sharp, but I have to admit that there are many more ideas, facts, and concepts that I had to remember before the lightning-fast, internet-based information overtook reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
AI is an excellent tool for quick research or jogging your memory.
AI is an excellent tool for defining ideas and concepts and exploring new ways to build or clarify supporting content.
AI is an excellent tool to bounce your content off of, like a writing partner who gets you. But it's ultimately up to you to make it sound and feel like you wrote it.
My main point is “You be You!” You have to define your voice, style, and process. No matter what you write, AI can be a great tool, but it does not replace the need to integrate your style and personality. Remember, AI uses other people's content to help you make points, but your thought leadership is an active tool that AI has not mastered… YET! -
I recently came up with a Billion-Dollar Idea. I am sharing it with you, so please don't share it with anyone else. It's going to make me rich, and I would not want anyone to copy or steal it.
I created an app that will stop delivering snail mail, emails, texts, radio, and TV commercials once you have voted in an election. The only problem I have not been able to work out is that it does not work if your spouse or partner has not voted yet.
Political marketing is about how a candidate or a party will affect you, your family, and your life. Business marketing is about getting attention and then getting people to make a choice (buy or vote for) and take action (buy or vote). What I mean by vote is to choose to interact with or at least not block or unfollow.
Automation and AI in marketing help collect, analyze, and utilize data faster, better, and maybe cheaper. This is the allure, but it lacks the emotion necessary to develop a relationship. That takes people.
Sometimes, your most powerful tool is pen and paper or a note-taker app. Capturing that information and transferring it to your CRM or ERP will give you data that will become useful for AI or even a word cloud app to gauge the pulse of business today. -
Back in the day (circa 2013), I spent a lot of time networking. I attended up to 20 events per month. It has slowed down since, but I have always found some value in networking.
That all changed in 2020.
The pandemic shut down in-person events and everything went virtual via Zoom. While it decimated some groups, others thrived due to the ability to network with others not within driving distance.
In 2022, in-person events were coming back, but people were reevaluating the time and costs of local networking.
I have always said, “Relationships are the currency of business.” I also tend to view business relationships as a way to help my clients and contacts make more money. By focusing on business and not just sales, you create relationships that were not built around the transfer of cash but the cooperative transfer of wisdom, insight, and quality connections. -
It's incredible how fast things change. Do you remember that slogan? “You've Come A Long Way, Baby.”
That phrase was used in an advertising campaign for Virginia Slims, a brand of cigarettes marketed specifically to women. The slogan was introduced in 1968, and cigarette ads were banned in 1971. It lasted only three years but was so successful that it's still remembered and used today in cultural references.
In the first four years of the 2020s, technology has not changed much except that it has become cheaper, faster, and more powerful. But when it comes to marketing, the game has completely changed.
Today, I want to discuss the three things we must pay the most attention to and how you can increase your ability to break through the marketing morass and noise.
Some of you may remember the Toys R Us ad “I Don't Want to Grow Up,” which touted play and toys. I still have that feeling today. I love toys. AI is a toy that helped me come up with this post. Computers are fun because they help us do so many things: become organized, be better communicators and more analytical thinkers.
I believe that thinking of marketing as play with data, computers, and tools can help us focus on the fun and not the function. And be careful not to choke on your marketing efforts. -
I confess that I try to simplify things down to binary choices: good and evil, easy and hard, the boogeyman and Superman. But I think that in our ever-polarized world, there is becoming a blurred line between truth and opinion.
When it comes to marketing, I tend to think of Google and Search as the boogeyman and content marketing as Superman. Yet, like energy, they are a symbiotic and correlated existence that exists and has to function to help businesses market to their audiences and prospects.
I believe you have to think like a superhero like Superman to overcome the erosion in website traffic. I know companies are hoping to find a superhero to help them overcome the challenges of getting their content in front of the new and right set of eyes to help them maintain and grow their business. I believe that you have to be either the actual superhero or at least the sidekick like Batman's Robin.
I believe that superheroes are not just fictional characters like Batman or Superman. I know that they are more like you and me. We are heroes if we learn and grow from our experiences and use them to help others better their lives. -
A question often asked is whether it was easier to reach your buying audience in the past or today. My answer is both. Less choice meant you had less to learn but took a more significant risk. With more choices, you have more to learn and often have to use more marketing platforms to reach the same audience, but you run the risk that multiple could fail simultaneously.
The one thing that has never changed is the audience. What you were selling in the past and what you are selling today may have changed, but people are still people. People may have changed where and what they are paying attention to, but little has changed in what attracts and motivates them to act regarding ads and messages.
It may seem that AI is making email and websites less relevant, but due to the evolving landscape in search and answers of AI, I am here to tell you that I find them more important than ever before.
I wish I had a crystal ball to help predict what next new technology will help make your business more successful, but alas I don't.
As I hinted early on, the one thing that does not change is people. They may change what tools they use or how they consume content, but they are still people. They have needs, biases, and emotions that can be directed and affected by what and how you communicate to them. -
There is a debate about whether and when AI content will be as good or better than human-generated content.
I believe that it will always be a mix of both.
Two Truths
The two lists above (the binary choices and 3 options) were generated by AI. I rearranged and edited them to my liking so they fit better with the concepts I am trying to get across today. Although there are people in marketing who will use AI to generate content and post that as humans, I believe that both are needed, necessary, and can co-exist in marketing to help create awareness, educate, and generate sales.
Artificial Intelligence compiles content that was primarily generated by humans, so it is both computer and human content.
You can use AI to rewrite your human-generated content and use your personality and experience to enhance and add your signature to it.
You can use AI to generate ideas and concepts that you can use within your personally written content.
If someone is an expert in websites or social media, they will argue that they are more important. Then, people who work in the AI world will say that AI is faster and more cost-efficient than the human version of content creation. -
One of my all-time favorite jokes is about babies...
"How many babies does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"
"None - they neither have the cognitive or motor skills to perform such a task!"
You could imagine a baby holding a lightbulb and trying to insert it into a lamp or socket. But if you wanted to see it, you could log into an AI image generator to create one.
AI opens some interesting conundrums about the use of images. Who owns the copyright? What if you use a well-known person? Can you be sued?
Images are assets. These assets can be bought and sold. What once was a free image that you picked up from free image sites like Pixabay or Pexels can be sold to a paid-for library. Those libraries can use tools like Google Lens or a metadata search to find that specific image.
At this point, I feel safe creating images with Firefly because I have a paid account with Adobe for their creative suite and their Stock Images (two different accounts). I would not be as confident using anything I am not paying for. Even if you win the battle, you are spending your time trying to ward off what I consider an attack. -
If you manage your own or other business websites, I imagine you are using Google Analytics or another data manager to explore the traffic to your website.
Generally, you measure how much traffic you get, how long people stay, and which pages or posts get the most traffic. Another key indicator is where the traffic is coming from. This includes organic search (Google searches), direct (typing or clicking a URL), referral (link from another website), organic social (multiple social media sites), and something called unassigned (catch-all for all others).
I have seen customers and clients who pay attention to numbers that have little to no connection to reality. What I mean is, how can you tell when a human is really getting to your website and spending quality time?
Google considers engagement as someone spending at least ten seconds on a page or post. Considering that is what most people need to read a headline, look at a picture, and decide if this is for them, that's a pretty low bar.
Most content is posted once, and then forgotten. That assumes that it was only right for the audience who was following your business at the time it was posted.
What you have is an asset. That asset can be reposted to social media more often than once. It could be posted 10-15 times and seen by a different set of eyes each time.
That's what happens when I repost my Baconisms. I post the same 30+ image sayings every month. I see random comments and likes each month that I have not seen before.
“Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”
– Charles M. Schulz
In this episode, we will explore how to increase views on your content by the right audience... at the RIGHT times!
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Want To See How To Market BETTER? - Click Here -
I could easily take my old blogs and ask AI to rewrite them to reflect today's business environment better. That would certainly be faster than my two-finger typing, re-working sections, and asking a VA to proof and post, but would it or could it be more successful or effective?
Most businesses will ebb and flow between profit and deficit, and you sometimes have to cut expenses to offset a deficit of profits.
When it comes to marketing, outcomes are profits and content creation and distribution are part of the expense. As long as those outcomes lead to financial profits, marketing goes from being an expense to an investment.
Businesses have a longer and more chartable P.A.T.H. to purchase. They go from Awareness to Engagement to Inquiry to Purchase. By chartable P.A.T.H., I mean there are data points you can track and measurably follow from send to sale. -
I was listening to a podcast interview with comedian Mike Birbiglia. I was not familiar with him, but I found his take on comedy interesting.
He believes that comedians have a one-on-one relationship with their audiences. Social media and podcasts can help to create a more intimate relationship with fans. Some influencers lose that connection because they become an outsized version of themselves. They get lost in the audience's abyss and lose the connection with individuals. They become unapproachable.
I find the same thing with marketing. We tend to lose sight of that one-on-one relationship and get lost in the abyss of the avatar.
A comedian is selling entertainment with jokes. You, on the other hand, are selling profits or solutions through hardware, software, and services.
As a sales and marketing organization, you need to craft a story around your products and services that will resonate with individual buyers.
Getting potential customers to know, like, and trust you is a journey. Each has a unique place in the Customer Journey. -
I want to do something a little different today. I want to share with you my why. If you can figure out your why, I believe you are halfway to success. Simon Sinek tells us to start with why. But I believe that why is not all-encompassing and as simple as finding one why on your way to the top.
I believe there are a series of whys. Why are you in or running a business? Why are you in the niche or market that you serve? Why do you offer the specific products or services you sell?
The other thing I have found is that, over time, your why can change and evolve as you change and evolve.
I believe that understanding the “why” questions and how others may perceive you is not only useful but critical in business. It can help you get a peek into how clients, prospects, and vendors may perceive you before you start to interact. Then, the rest is up to you to collect data from interactions. -
How do you define success? Success is not measured like temperature with a static scale or counting system. It is an abstract system that is different for every person and business.
With today's Attention Economy, you may think that likes and clicks are the most important metric. But I am here to tell you that profits are the main thing to measure in business. Profits come from sales.
In this Attention Economy, companies are trying different tools and techniques to stand out. You have two invaluable assets that others don't have: relationships with your current and past customers and their contact information. In other words, you already have their attention!
Creating USP messages and thought leadership content that is focused on those who already know you is faster, cheaper, and better than trying to snag the attention of people who don't already know, like, and trust you. -
AI is machine learning. It's great for repetitive tasks. It collects knowledge and synthesizes it into useful compilations. AI machine learning can be predictable.
“I” learning is what we do when we interact with people. It's as unpredictable as an amateur golf swing. Interacting with humans requires empathy, psychology, self-awareness, and patience. It is time-consuming and can have different results on different days.
Interacting with people is how we do business. People do business with people, and although AI can help, it cannot replace human-to-human interaction.
In the world of generating leads, social networks, and business in the post-pandemic economy, it's not just connections that matter. It's who you are connecting with and who they have in their networks that matter. It's your job to stay connected and keep you, your business, and your content and concepts top of mind with them. Active connections create relationships, businesses, and referrals. -
In business, we need to embrace systems to align people with processes. Companies spend time and money on systems to speed up or simplify processes. The one thing that stands in the way of business systems being effective is people.
You are working with a group of people with different life experiences, goals, and beliefs. As much as we try, we can't dig deep into each individual and try to align them based on their unique perspective, so we try to find a middle ground with the expectation of varying degrees of adaptation.
We then create documents and training to help the alignment process. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) help us to set expectations, give instructions, and align expectations. Then, just like a kindergarten recital, you have some who fidget, adlib, or move to the beat of their own drum.
With marketing, we often utilize systems and SOPs to reach our current, past, and prospective customers. We would all love it if one system (law, scripture, or proclamation) reached all three audiences because it would simplify and reduce time and expense.
Yet, when you define success as a sale, it's one person with a team of decision-makers that you ultimately must convince to buy from you rather than your competition. -
Businesses, especially ones that have well-established systems and methodologies, tend to ebb and flow. It's pretty common for a business to slow in the dog days of summer and pick up in the fall, but I hear frustrations from some and jubilation from others.
I was conversing with a client about how business has changed since COVID-19 (2021-2022). Before that time, you could meet people in person at networking events, conferences, and more. Marketing and connection emails were being sent and opened (albeit at a 20-30% open rate). Phone calls were being received and returned. In most ways, it was not easy, but it was feasible to create leads through standard means that have worked for years.
More recently, ads and content have flooded Google and social media. That worked well for a while, but Google Search is being replaced with AI and greater ad competition (and cost).
Organic marketing starts with gathering data about your current customer base and reaching them with thought leadership content that focuses on what is top of mind with them. Then, you can find out what topics or slants on solutions are available and focus on them briefly.
I can guarantee you one thing: Doing more of the same or spending more money on the problem will probably not create a solution. -
I had the opportunity to travel to the South Carolina Coast for my son's wedding. However, I dreaded the idea that renting a house or condo was the only way to stay on Edisto Island. I had visions of Florida or Myrtle Beach, where the coast has huge hotels and condos.
When it comes to marketing a B2b business online, it's more like Edisto than Myrtle Beach. Edisto is trying to reach a niche audience that is harder to find and communicate with. Yet, it can only serve a limited number of customers. They would love more sales, but scaling takes time and resources.
When it comes to using LinkedIn to grow sales, many thoughts, techniques, and tools are being pushed, sold, and pontificated on. The problem is that LinkedIn users are not on the platform to be sold. They are there to build networks, learn new things, and, frankly, find opportunities (like jobs). - Vis mere
