Speaker 1: 0:22

Hey everyone, welcome back to Marketing Qualified. I'm Mike Griffin and I'm Chris Newton. Chris, how do you do on this lovely Friday beach afternoon? It looks like.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Oh yeah, of course we're playing around with the Zoom avatars right now. I'm a dog on a beach apparently, so yeah. Dog on a beach Doing well, doing well.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Slack handle idea dog on a beach. Dog on a beach Mentioned you for everything. Did you ever change your Slack handle any job you've had internally, or have you always been like C Newton?

Speaker 2: 1:08

I don't think I've ever changed it. Actually, now that I think about it um, I didn't even know that you could is that it's probably like one of the things that some companies let you do it?

Speaker 1: 1:12

and some don't. Yeah, I'm sorry the dog thing is killing me right now because it just looks like I'm in some kind of like. I don't know. It's about a show that my son would watch. It's just really bizarre. Yeah, you can totally do it.

Speaker 1: 1:23

You can change your slack handle. Like, for example, in the HubSpot days, for some time I was 10 points for Gryffindor, just a fun, cute little play on last name. So I thought that was interesting. You know who had, I think, the best slack handle ever was Leo Leo Rubiano that guy. Ever was Leo Rio, leo Rubiano, that guy. So he, his slack handle I think about this like almost every week was Goldilocks was wrong. That's what his slack handle was. Stupid duck. I just think about like that feels right, but I can't pinpoint why. Why was Goldilocks wrong? Was it the b and e? Going into the bear's house? Was the ultimate decision that goldilocks made incorrect? Like I need some follow-up, I need some clarity. I'm actually heading to the twin cities next week for his wedding, so maybe I'll, maybe I'll ask him in person like hey, the fuck are you talking about? Which is like I need to know. Do you have any theories on why goldilocks may have been wrong?

Speaker 2: 2:30

um, I mean we should have him on the podcast at some point just to, to kind of, you know, explain it to the, the audience of three people yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 2:40

First question no, warm Explain yourself, goldilocks. We do have some things that I know we want to cover today. Goldilocks aside, one of the, so just a loose outline for our head of today Definitely got to get some stuff off our chest in terms of just like recent things that we've seen. There's some like app observations I'll call them that we want to discuss. There's something that you are aware of that I have no notion of what it could be or how you might describe it this Notebook LM. Very curious to hear what that is all about. We want to get something off our chest about things that spam you, like apps that hit you with like daily annoying marketing notifications. Talk about what that looks like and I'm sorry, the face is just so funny to me it's gonna break me every time. Uh again, people on the audio format. You just have to trust me. Chris is on a beach and he looks like some like strange wii emoji or whatever you would call it for, like the Nintendo Wii walking around right now.

Speaker 2: 3:50

And that was a fucking.

Speaker 1: 3:50

What is this raccoon? Raccoon, for Christ's sake. This one reminds me. Did you ever play the panda character on SSX? Tricky, remember that. Like N64 snowboarding game.

Speaker 2: 4:05

Oh no, I don't think I've ever played that. Was there a raccoon?

Speaker 1: 4:07

on it or something. And in fact it was a panda, and you know how I feel about pandas, but the general color palette of raccoon reminds me of the panda. And then, if this wasn't fun enough, I have a little game for you that I'd like to play at the end, the title of which will remain a secret until we get there. So that's where we're heading For the first one apps that let you change the app icon Tell me more about what you've seen.

Speaker 2: 4:38

Yeah, so I didn't even know this was a thing. I noticed it. I want to say, a couple months ago I was on the Starbucks app, you know, ordering a coffee or whatever in the morning, and they have this setting where you can actually like choose what icon on your iPhone you can choose to open it. And I had never seen that before. Like, usually, like it is just like the icon is whatever it is, and yeah, I thought it was kind of cool that you could actually like choose that. And yeah, I thought it was kind of cool that you could actually choose that, just because there's some apps that I use all the time on a daily basis and there's others that I install once and then never even open.

Speaker 1: 5:18

Sure, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, first of all, I guess can you describe the options I guess that you saw in Starbucks, like were they all like on brand in terms of colors, or were there some really like out there, kind of things that you could pick for the app icon?

Speaker 2: 5:36

Yeah. So I mean, they, I'd say there's probably like you know, six, seven options or whatever. I also think it's one of those things where you can like unlock more, I guess, like like Starbucks has a reward program, like if you're one of their like you know super, you know profitable customers or something they probably give you different icons or whatever. So I kind of thought of it as like a like a gamification kind of thing. You know, it's like giving something to people that like that kind of stuff, like you know.

Speaker 2: 6:03

It's like giving, yeah, something to people that that like that kind of stuff, like you know, with like video games people love, like the cosmetic items and like all the stuff that you can get on there. So I feel like it's a way that just a standard like app developer can offer something new to additional people for to reward, like loyalty or whatever. But to answer your question on the icon, so like there's the standard icon, which is that like mermaid or whatever. Um, yeah, icon, like just their normal logo. Then they have a a logo for like a hot drink and a cold drink and they it's like different colors, like it's all very on brand for starbucks, but they have a different one. Uh, they have one for sustainability which is like a coffee cup in front of a leaf. So I guess some people might like that.

Speaker 2: 6:45

I have one for winter 25. I'm not sure what that is. Maybe I ordered a lot of coffees in winter 25 or something, but yeah it's. It's just kind of cool that, like you know, you can. You can customize it inside of the app and then whenever you want to open the app, it uses whatever I icon you choose. I didn't even know that that was a.

Speaker 1: 7:03

Thing that's pretty sweet. Like I only recently learned, you can change like the entire background and like color scheme if you will, of like your iphone, right, so all the apps could be like the same color or the background like that. That was new information to me until fairly recently when my wife showed me so did you know that you could do that?

Speaker 2: 7:21

um, no, it sounds like something like uh, it sounds like something like uh, it sounds like an accessibility option, like if you're colorblind, you can make everything blue, or something oh, that's really interesting that you have a way more like thoughtful reaction to that functionality than than I do I.

Speaker 1: 7:39

I thought it was because, like, maybe it's just like my adhd, just like permeating through. But it's like, if you are looking at all these apps that are the exact same color, like a black and gray scale, for example, then maybe you're a little bit less enticed to go and click on that orange and pink, whatever Instagram icon or whatever like app is. It's like you're trying to like I don't know like stimulate you less might be maybe that is an accessibility thing. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 8:09

I like the way you put it better yeah, I mean, it is like that's kind of where my mind went, like the marketing side of my brain with like the customizable icons. Like you know, I'm sure that they measure like the number of times that somebody opens an app and obviously, like, if it's an app like Starbucks, where you, you know, the primary purpose of the app is to order coffee ahead of time or whatever, they want you opening that app as much as possible, so like to make it easy and it's like user friendly to open To begin with, it seems like kind of like an interesting marketing play. If that makes, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 8:45

It does. Yeah, yeah, you know who leans heavy into this. That I have more like exposure to is duolingo, right? So duolingo when they're trying to like drive an upgrade. So there's the free version you can get, obviously, ads. Have you used duolingo before I get this spiel?

Speaker 2: 8:59

um, not really. No, I, I know of it, but I haven't really used it that much not really.

Speaker 1: 9:06

No, I, I know of it, but I haven't really used it that much. Got it okay. So like their, their mascot, if you will. Is this green owl right? We actually never really talked about it.

Speaker 1: 9:11

We should at a certain point about how, like this owl has, like jesus christ, the owl has, uh, like died a bunch of times, or maybe once, not a bunch of times come back and like their whole thing is like duos appearance as an app is very attention grabbing.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Like sometimes he has like x's in his eyes and he's dead. Sometimes he's like an old owl, sometimes it's just like something outrageous going on and like to your point about like wanting to open it up, like that's the whole thing and for like a business model like duolingo, where it's based on like app usage and like carrot, on sticking people to unlock certain levels of like acumen for the language that they're learning. I feel like that's kind of effective and also so like I am on the free version, very often am I given an ad natively in Duolingo to upgrade to like super or family plan and I've done the free trial of that a couple of times and every time I do, the first thing that happens is the Duolingo app icon changes and so now, instead of like the normal green, it's like the super duo colors which are more. Duolingo is like a pretty, like bright green, right.

Speaker 1: 10:19

Then it turns into this like blue and white, with like a little bit of the original green, and so like I don don't know, there's something to this. Apparently people care enough about it where marketers across very different types of industries are like rolling this out as a play. I guess that surprises me when I think about like people caring about it. Does that feel right to you, or are you similarly shocked? No, I, I mean, I think it makes sense.

Speaker 2: 10:42

I mean, just having the ability to you, or are you similarly shocked? No, I mean, I think it makes sense. I mean just having the ability to customize things. There's only so much you can do once the core functionality of an app is built. Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker 2: 10:58

I kind of spaced out a little bit towards the end of what you were saying because you said the word carrot and my mind immediately went to this new weather app that I've been using. Have you heard of the app carrot? No, well, I have no idea what this is. So it's, it's basically a weather app, but it actually, like, makes weather fun and, uh, I don't know, you know how, how you know exciting weather is like you know, most weather apps are the same. Weathercom is fucking terrible. It's honestly probably my least favorite app ever.

Speaker 2: 11:29

With Carrot, you can actually give you probably won't be able to see this. I've got the app pulled up here you can give basically Carrot a personality. There's a little slider where you can drag it back and forth to like determine how nice you want the app to be to you, so, like, if you drag it all the way to the left, it says professional personality. Carrot will disable the banter and other fun features. I had it right in the middle where it was a snarky personality, where carrot will deliver sarcastic weather reports, mostly free of violence.

Speaker 2: 12:05

Mostly free of violence and then, mostly free and then if you drag it all the way to the right, it says overkill personalities. Carrot will sometimes make creative use of profanity. In our forecast, carrot may or may not kill you.

Speaker 1: 12:18

Wow, okay, so that's extreme levels of violence. This is crazy. For a moment, you can be forgiven for thinking that instead of describing the settings within carrot, it could be the different flavors of chris newton you might get on a day-to-day basis at the job, just like extreme levels of profanity, high propensity for violence.

Speaker 2: 12:37

A moderate amount or like fully professional depends on the workday yeah, exactly yeah, just toggle the slider left or right to see which version you want. Oh man, choose wisely.

Speaker 2: 12:48

Yeah, I mean I just thought it was cool, taking a thing like something as basic as the weather and kind of making it fun and just the kind of thing where you want to open. So I keep thinking about different apps and stuff. What makes people open an app? You might open several apps a day. You have Starbucksbucks or duncan in the morning and then you have you know slack. You're opening all the time and you know you're probably checking the weather a couple times a day. If you're like me, you're probably checking the stock market several types a day, like there's. There's different apps that you know you use routinely. But I think that the way that some some apps like carrot, you know stand out a little bit more is by just infusing it with a little bit more of that like customization and just like making it a little bit different from, like the cookie cutter, other stuff that already exists out there definitely whatever it takes to differentiate, right, gotta do what you gotta do, kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 13:41

It's like I was. I was thinking to myself maybe I should down this carrot thing.

Speaker 1: 13:44

It sounds very much up my alley and then, I remember that my son likes to see the weather is what he says, and he doesn't mean like have me boost him up and show him outside the window. He means the app on my phone, because he gets very excited when there's a thunderstorm and you know how like the lightning will come down in the app and like strike it as a whole thing. He loves that. It's almost like it's disappointing for him when it's just normal rain without a storm. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll check swing until he's a little bit older. Heaven forbid he opens up on accident. Heaven forbid. Yeah, speaking of opening things up, let's open up this notebook. I'm assuming I don't know if that even plays aM like edumacate me on what this thing is.

Speaker 2: 14:31

Yeah, so I first heard about this last year. I think it's been around for, you know, just over a year now but essentially what it is is it's an AI power tool powered by Google that lets you kind of like take different sources of information and basically like summarize it, like like how you would summarize in a notebook, like if you're in class, or something like you know, taking notes in a notebook.

Speaker 2: 14:53

It's a way to gather information from different sources and then kind of like summarize it. So, um, I, the reason I bring it up on the podcast is they actually have a really cool feature that you should actually test out afterwards with like anything like even you know, you could even put in your like your, your company's website url and it'll generate a deep dive conversation between two podcast hosts. So it's actually pretty cool in that, like it sounds exactly like real people, like it's it's it is kind of hard to identify, you know, to figure out that it's actually ai giving the podcast interview, um, unlike naomi, which you caught on to pretty quickly a couple episodes ago. But um, yeah, I mean I, I just think that it's. It's kind of a testament for podcasts and how podcasts are so great at, you know, disseminating information. Like I'm constantly listening to podcasts when I'm driving and it's actually my preferred you know way to like learn something new, cause like I can do it kind of like passively in the background and like I listened to like a lot of like finance podcasts and, um, you know other types of stuff like that and it's just such a great way to learn and the fact that, like Google, built this tool where it's like one of the core features is taking sources of information and then generating a realistic sounding podcast out of AI from those sources of information, is pretty interesting.

Speaker 2: 16:14

So actually, what I'm going to do right now is, before each call, mike and I put together like a list of topics and, you know, like a pretty rough agenda of what we want to talk about during the episode. So I'm actually going to provide Notebook LM the notes from today's episode and I'm going to generate a podcast based on the notes from today's episode and then we're going to put it into this podcast. You know, just maybe even just certain snippets or whatever, to kind of see what they come up with from our own notes for this episode. To kind of see what they come up with from our own notes for for this episode. So kind of a fun, a fun little activity.

Speaker 2: 16:49

And you know, who knows they'll probably do even better than we do. And then there's a real risk here Marketing qualified will just become. You know, whatever we want to name those two AI hosts there's. There's one female sounding host and one male sounding host and it's, like I said, like it actually does a really good job. I'll actually share the recording with you directly after this, after we get off here. But yeah, definitely throw your website in there. It is pretty cool to see how they talk about things.

Speaker 1: 17:18

So let me just run this back to you. Right, it is essentially a way to gather information sources across a bunch of different like websites, for example. Presumably, you could upload like documents if you wanted to and something like that.

Speaker 2: 17:32

Yeah, you can do documents, you can do websites, you can do like YouTube videos, you can do just, you know, just normal like pasted text. You can do like Google slideshows and you know PowerPoints and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 17:46

Okay, and so you give it all these inputs and then is the output always like AI podcast hosts like having a conversation, or are there like other things that you could choose to do with it?

Speaker 2: 17:59

Yeah, I mean there's other outputs it can like generate like written content, like a summary of the various sources, and you can add different notes and stuff like that. But the main thing I use it for is the podcast output they call it a deep dive conversation between two hosts Interesting.

Speaker 2: 18:17

You can also give it prompts too. So if you want the host to host to focus on, like certain parts of this, the source material, or if there's some kind of insight that you're trying to get at, you can, you know, provide different prompts for them to? Um, to steer the conversation towards a certain direction?

Speaker 1: 18:35

oh cool were you and I talking about this on air at one point, about how some ads that I'm seeing being run are like exactly what you're describing, like completely made up podcasts. Like this company does not have a podcast right, but they stood up creating AI a conversation and the nature of the conversation like oh, this product is so great because it's like inserts the USPs of the product.

Speaker 2: 19:03

Do we talk about this? I don't I, but I've definitely been seeing those more and more too. It's possible that it's even just created from this or some kind of idea like this yeah, I wonder if this is seriously the launchpad for it.

Speaker 1: 19:16

That's very cool. I don't have anything bad to say about it, maybe a little bit of mixed feelings about the authenticity of it. That's our big thing is being authentic. But if the talking points are valid and just communicated, I don't know. I can go back and forth on it, but that's pretty sweet.

Speaker 2: 19:32

And so you're going to do what now with our material briefing doc that we put together with the, the different agenda items, so, like you know what we need to talk through, like the ongoing notes, the intro um, the different items, that that we we talk through, like the um, so on, so forth, and then, right at the bottom, this is kind of like an ongoing thing where we have different ideas for different um, I guess like segment ideas for lack of a better term like things that we want to talk through future, future episode ideas, different types of games, and you know like what, what was that? That one that we did to to like kind of like two truths and a lie, but it was something else. Yeah, I forget what we called that, but I know you're talking about. Yeah, like, like stuff, like that. So I I just fed all of that information to it and we'll see what it comes up with nice, nice.

Speaker 1: 20:26

Okay, I like it like I was. Two takes in the fake.

Speaker 2: 20:29

Yeah, working title yeah that's that's it, yeah, which we should do again sometime. That was, that was good that was fun.

Speaker 1: 20:35

I also haven't heard it on like the source podcast that I took it from in a long time, so it may be in like public domain territory oh, yeah, yeah, we can totally make that our own for sure.

Speaker 1: 20:43

Nice, nice, nice. I like it. Cool. Uh, something that I don't like I know that you don't like it's when these apps maybe some of the ones that allow you to customize the icon, like we were talking about earlier spam you with daily, sometimes more frequent, annoying notifications, usually marketing, like a nurture kind of touchpoint in capacity, and you can't like, at least not easily customize the type of notifications that you're going to receive. Is there any particular app you would like to call out on this? Would you like to take a broad strokes opportunity to air some grievances here? The floor is yours.

Speaker 2: 21:29

I mean, I don't want to call out any specific apps. Well, there's actually one that I would want to call out, but I'm not going to Fair fair. But yeah, it's just annoying that, like you know, some apps, like they, let you customize your notifications. Now I'm actually drawing a complete blank of why this made sense. Similar to marketing emails, I consider notifications to have one of two purposes. One is an actual notification where it's like oh, your account balance in your bank or whatever.

Speaker 2: 22:02

I'll use a banking app as an example, not a specific bank in mind, but let's say you have a banking app and you want to know if your account balance goes in the negative or something, or if you have a large transaction over $500, you want to be alerted so you can make sure it's not fraud or that your wife's not going crazy at Target or something like that. So those are, I always consider like transactional, like similar to transactional email, like it's something that you actually want to receive because it's relevant to your security or relevant to the main reason that you use the app. And then the second would be more marketing focused, so like oh, we have a deal If you're a banking app, if you invest $1,000, you'll get a $25 bonus or whatever in the next week or whatever. It's not relevant to what I need. It's more of like a marketing type of thing. So what drives me crazy is when you can't toggle between the different reasons why you would want notifications inside of the app, because you can always disable notifications, like on iphone.

Speaker 2: 23:06

So, like, for example, you go into the settings you can just turn off notifications completely for that app. But sometimes there are notifications that you want, like I said, like the, like the account balance stuff, for example. You would want to receive those. But if you turn them off completely from iphone, like the iphone settings, then you don't get them anymore, so you could be potentially missing stuff that you want to get.

Speaker 1: 23:25

Right.

Speaker 2: 23:27

So I think that some apps let you determine what types of notifications you want to get, but I've just been driven crazy lately by some that either they don't let you turn off marketing notifications or they don't let you turn off certain types of notifications, where it doesn't let you easily segment between stuff that you do want to receive and what you don't want to receive, and a lot of companies are guilty for this. For emails, too, it's like I've had some companies where I've opted out of like emails, so to speak, because I don't want to get their fucking daily marketing spam. But that also opts you out of transactional, which that shouldn't be a thing Like if you're going to get like a transactional email like you should be getting those regardless. But I don't know what are your thoughts on that, as I guess as notifications as like another mechanism as well as like email and like text messages for like getting information put in front of you.

Speaker 1: 24:16

It's such a really it's truly like an interesting thing. The email subscription type analogy that you made, I really liked because that actually made it like clear for me. I don't like the all opt out or nothing Right, because, to your point, there are some very helpful notifications that maybe, like I should be receiving. And again like the the example of the banking app really resonated.

Speaker 1: 24:38

I think that that's a good use case. I think that's a good use case. I think that if this is going to happen, that there should be some more. I don't even know if you know what I'm going to say it I don't want to do the fucking work here. Okay, I don't think it should be up to me to tell you guys what I want to receive and when. Right, why don't you use all this information that you have about me that I know you're fucking selling anyway, to actually make this contextually relevant to me?

Speaker 1: 25:05

Tangible example going back to the financial app, the realm that you were talking about, right, so Capital One, then banking with them, using them as a credit card since, like whatever, more than 10 years, holy shit, yeah, anyway. So they sent me this notification recently. It didn't push app message, anyway. So they sent me this notification recently. It didn't push app message. It says something along the lines of like earn up to $5,000 when you deposit, when you open a savings account, right within the next couple of days. And, being in FinTech now I understand there's always an asterisk, right, there's like a minimum amount you got to hit. There's always a whatever.

Speaker 1: 25:50

But what I didn't like was how deceptive it was. Like that is the best case scenario. You can earn up to that 5k deposit if you hit a minimum amount, if you hold on to that the minimum deposit amount in savings for forever. And, by the way, in order to get five thousand dollars back, you had to transfer a hundred thousand dollars into the account. It's like you guys, you did a full fucking background check, cavity search on me right before you approved my card. You know damn well that I can't put that much money into the savings account. Make this contextually relevant like. Don't waste my time. My attention span like it's not great. Use the information that you have about me to uh like send a relevant, uh, a relevant like notification.

Speaker 2: 26:32

That's, that's my take yeah, I mean, I agree with that like so many times, like I'll get like a notification or even an email or whatever, where it's like to use the banking example it's like, oh, open up a savings account and you know gets, get a bonus, or whatever. It's like I already have a fucking savings account, how many savings accounts do I need? It's like you know you might want one or two max. You know I don't know a use case for having more than two savings account, unless you're trying to hide, like money from your wife or something.

Speaker 3: 27:03

Yeah, it's not that I don't know anything about that but,

Speaker 1: 27:06

no, no, god, no, god, no, uh, I, yeah, man, I, I, because, like that's also available, right, like you can see, on credit reports, right, they're going to do at least a soft, not a hard, credit check before they like reach out to you.

Speaker 1: 27:22

Like you are aware of the accounts that I have open and like the reality of me, like beginning another one or not, should be pretty apparent, based on, again, information that I know you have about me. Let me give you a on the flip side of this, like what I think could be like a helpful notification, and this would be, in part, right, based on some assumptions made. Like I've been cookied, if I'm on a website and I've accepted, like opt-in right, or I've downloaded an app and I've, you know, ticked off the yes, I consent to having, like my information within this app, like good to go. I think that kind of like the abandoned cart play is actually super prevalent here. So, like going to this wedding I was telling you you about I need a new suit, okay, so I've been looking across a bunch of different sites and for the sake of this conversation, let's imagine I was in app looking at these suits, didn't make a purchase.

Speaker 1: 28:13

I would actually appreciate a notification that's like hey, still looking for a suit? Right, we have our Memorial Day sale coming up. Take another look at some of the stuff that you had seen. That I would appreciate. It's relevant, it's contextualized, there's a sale involved, right? That's a good combination of things, in my opinion. Speaking of good combination of things, I have a very. I think it's fun. I'm biased. I have a very. I think it's fun, I'm biased. I have a fun game I'd like to play with you. It's a combination of things, okay. So let me set the table.

Speaker 1: 28:50

The name of the game is Hack or Whack, hack or Whack, hack or Whack. That's right. Now, I know what you're thinking. It's not about your golf game. I know you've been playing a lot more recently. Worry not, we know that's a hack, okay, right. So we're going to do basically marketing takes or tactics that I have either been pitched or observed or read about like somewhere, and I want you to tell me if you think the tactic that I'm describing is a growth marketing hack or is it just whack, like it's stupid. It's not going to pan out. It doesn't make sense. It's not like actually applicable right. It's just coming from some bald headed influencer that we've called out and isn't actually possible to apply in real life. Are you clear on the objective of the game?

Speaker 2: 29:46

Yes, I believe I can do this. Okay, I believe in you what happens. If I'm wrong, is there going to be a score at the end?

Speaker 1: 29:55

Well, what happens if Hurricane comes in the background of the beach that you're at and you just get swept away? So the stakes are high. Okay, Decent amount to get through here. So, number one hack or whack. We've talked about, I think, this, this play not recording, but founder posts this thought leadership thing on LinkedIn. Maybe it's organic, maybe it's paid. They're promoting some type of guide and it's like comment to get the guide. So you comment on the LinkedIn post as the instructions detail to get the guide. The founder reaches out to you with a link, but the link isn't actually to the guide that you requested via comment. The link is to a landing page that still requires you to fill out a form in order to obtain the guide.

Speaker 2: 30:46

Hack- or whack. I'm going to have to go whack on this one. I've actually been seeing these pop more and more up and everyone I've talked to who has done it, they haven't received what they've commented and you're basically just feeding the algorithm and helping that person's reach on whatever post you're being asked to comment on. I think it's fucking stupid and it's one of the reasons that I hate LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 31:11

We can't go with that. Okay, so there's our LinkedIn bash quota. We've checked the box for it today. That's good.

Speaker 2: 31:16

I know I've got to hit the quota on every single episode. Speaking of apps and iPhone and iphone and everything I actually linkedin is one of the ones that I fucking hated with the notifications. I actually completely deleted that 100 off my phone and I've never been happier. I don't have it on my phone anymore. I still have my account. I might log in like once a week or two just to like go through like recruiter messages and like delete them and them and that kind of stuff you sound like Naomi.

Speaker 2: 31:49

Me and Naomi are on the same page. You get to a point in your marketing career where you're like I fucking hate LinkedIn. Strongly recommend deleting the app. You won't miss it at all.

Speaker 1: 32:00

Side off. Next one, next one Building up SEO authority off-site by trying to secure backlinks from EDUs known SEO juggernauts, edus. So trying to get like the use case here might be reaching out to your founders what do you call it? Like college right and just be like, oh, do a feature profile and link back to the site of the company. Right now, try to get some SEO juice from that Hack or whack.

Speaker 2: 32:34

I'm going to go hack on this one. It does seem like a good idea. I mean, google doesn't give, like, more domain authority to like edu versus com or other ones. It doesn't really care about the domain extension. It is kind of an interesting idea. That being said, I'm not sure what the time and effort versus the reward is. I mean, I would assume that most it depends on the college, but I mean, a lot of colleges probably have pretty good domain authority and also, like, there's that intangible benefit of you know people stumbling across the article organically and then finding your website through there.

Speaker 4: 33:08

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 33:10

Okay, yeah, I don't know how many colleges that actually want to do that like it would be more about, uh, less about a company play and more of like a personal branding type of play, if I'm, if I'm guessing. But yeah, um, yeah, okay, I mean, if you're getting the link either way, then and also like what happens. Like if they do an article on your ceo, for example, then the ce CEO fucks off to go to another company. Do you lose that link? Does it change with the CEO's company? There is some things there, some considerations.

Speaker 1: 33:39

For sure, okay, hack in general, though. Okay, incentivize demos. You've seen this. Hey, chris, take a 30-minute demo with me and I'll send you a $100 Amazon gift card.

Speaker 2: 33:52

I mean I've seen this both sides of it.

Speaker 2: 33:55

I mean I'm going to go hack just because it does make sense, like if your customer acquisition costs are, like you know, tens of thousands of dollars and you're able to get a demo for $100.

Speaker 2: 34:04

When you're paying, like you know, google, $500 for a demo from from like google ads and paid search and stuff, it can be a good way to kind of get in front of people. But I've also had people, not to mention any names but salty dan has taken demos just to get the gift card and then he has no intention of buying, he just wants the gift card. Yeah, yep, so you have that risk as well. But I mean again, it's like you know, if you're looking at all the metrics, like if you know that risk as well. But I mean again, it's like if you're looking at all the metrics, if you know that one out of ten of these demos is going to convert to an opportunity, then you're paying a thousand dollars for an opportunity. So it might make sense for that. You might have higher or lower conversion rates depending on just the overall quality of people that you're getting right makes sense.

Speaker 1: 34:48

Okay, competitor ads. I guess specifically what I meant by this one is like getting Right Makes sense. Okay, competitor ads. I guess specifically what I meant by this one is like Google search ads.

Speaker 2: 34:55

It's a hack. I love competitive ads. Do you have any other context that you want to share or just can I just go hack on this one? You can just go hack, nice, I'll just go hack. I've seen these work like similar to Anchorman 90% of the time. They work every time nice, nice, nice, nice.

Speaker 1: 35:13

Good reference. Uh, okay, meme account sponsorships. A little bit of context here. Uh, when you're trying to get in front of like your icp and you know that there's a particular like meme account on instagram, tiktok, whatever it is that your icp is like engaging with and you're trying to sponsor, you're trying to do basically like an influencer campaign with these meme accounts to try to drive awareness of your own brand. If not links back to your site, hack or whack.

Speaker 2: 35:39

I'm going to go whack, okay Whack, I don't know. I just maybe I'm dating myself because I'm older, but I just think it seems kind of stupid, honestly.

Speaker 1: 35:50

Okay, fair.

Speaker 2: 35:51

Bear. Hey, you need to explain your thoughts on that one.

Speaker 1: 35:54

I think it totally depends right On like what the actual agenda. This is one of those things where it's like you really got to explain to the higher ups. Is it a long-term investment it's like brand building or do we think we're actually going to get some like qualified pipeline out of this? As long as you're clear on the expectations, it's something that may make sense to you. You just have to strike the right balance of letting the meme account stay true to its own voice and wedging yours into it as well. Last one here, because we're almost out of time. Very briefly, april Fool's Day posts hack or whack.

Speaker 2: 36:27

From a branding perspective, I think that they could be a hack, like it's a good way to kind of get your brand out there and, you know, have fun with it and show them that you don't take yourself too seriously. I know that a lot of companies, like, I think, google, used to always do one. I don't know if they do anymore, but yeah, I mean it's a good branding play.

Speaker 1: 36:49

I mean I wouldn't really expect to get a ton of lead gen from it. But what are your thoughts, sir? Yeah, I think it depends. If it's done well, if it's true to your brand, then sure. But some of the things that I saw this year were just super cringy and we don't have time to talk about them. But that is the deal. Wac is our time management as well. We are fresh out of the free Zoom, so more to come on this. Thank you for playing. You didn't win it all. They didn't lose either. Listeners appreciate you riding with us. We will talk to you again real soon. Have a great rest of the day.

Speaker 2: 37:18

Thanks, man, Thanks all. Have a good one.

Speaker 1: 37:22

You too bud See ya Bye.

Speaker 4: 37:24

Welcome to the Deep Dive Great to be here. This time we're diving into something a little different. It's the pre-recording agenda and notes from a marketing-qualified podcast episode.

Speaker 3: 37:35

Yeah, sent in by a listener, so we get a peek behind the scenes.

Speaker 4: 37:38

Exactly. Our mission is to sift through their planning, see what insights we can find about, you know, creating content marketing trends. What makes something like this actually work for you?

Speaker 3: 37:54

the learner Right. It's not just what they cover, but how they're thinking about it, how they plan to build an audience, the challenges they see coming up in marketing. It's quite revealing.

Speaker 4: 38:00

Okay, so let's maybe start with their ambition.

Speaker 3: 38:02

In their ongoing notes, they mentioned some pretty sobering stats about podcasts quitting oh yeah, like 1.8 million, just bail before starting 90%, don't get past episode three.

Speaker 4: 38:15

And then another huge drop after 20 episodes. Their goal is basically to be one of the few survivors.

Speaker 3: 38:21

That tells you a lot right there. It underscores that for you, the learner, just starting something isn't well. It isn't the hard part, relatively speaking. Sustainable content needs that deep understanding of the audience. Plus, you know consistent value. The fact they're calling out these failure rates means they're taking that challenge seriously.

Speaker 4: 38:38

Absolutely, and to deliver that value you need a plan right. Their agenda mentions a task for their host, chris finding better ways to organize topics.

Speaker 3: 38:48

Which connects directly to your experience as a learner. Structure flow it's not just nice, it's essential if you want people to stay engaged and actually retain information.

Speaker 4: 39:00

And they list a bunch of segment ideas too. Hints at how they're trying to keep the content fresh and maybe tackle things creatively.

Speaker 3: 39:07

The deliberate thought around structure is interesting. It's not just about having good info but presenting it well, digestibly, makes sense and maybe tackle things creatively. The deliberate thought around structure is interesting. It's not just about having good info but presenting it well, digestibly, makes sense. And the variety in those segment ideas you know, from critical takes to maybe lighter stuff, shows they're thinking about different ways to connect.

Speaker 4: 39:21

Okay, now here's one agenda item that seems a bit out of the blue. Did you know some apps? Let you change the app icon.

Speaker 3: 39:28

Ah, yeah, a little random.

Speaker 4: 39:30

But it kind of catches your eye, doesn't? It Suggests they're willing to explore maybe the smaller, quirkier bits of the digital world.

Speaker 3: 39:37

That's a good point. Sometimes the most engaging stuff is unexpected. It sparks that little. Oh, I didn't know. That feeling Shows curiosity.

Speaker 4: 39:47

They also have Notebook LM discussion listed. Notebook LM for anyone who doesn't know, it's an AI tool for working with your own notes and sources. Right Putting that on a marketing podcast. It suggests they're looking at how AI isn't just changing strategies, but also the tools we use every day for thinking and working.

Speaker 3: 40:02

Totally. It really signals how AI is weaving itself into our professional lives. For marketers, tools like that could be huge for analyzing data, spotting trends, even brainstorming.

Speaker 4: 40:13

Raises the question of how these tools will reshape how we work. Yeah, definitely. Then, on a probably more relatable note for everyone, a planned rant about annoying marketing notifications, the spammy ones you can't control properly.

Speaker 3: 40:28

Oh yes, the all or nothing notification settings. We've all felt that frustration. It speaks to that common digital pain point, that tension between, you know, a marketer wanting to communicate and the user just wanting less noise.

Speaker 4: 40:42

It's a big question for anyone creating anything really. How do you reach people effectively without just alienating them? Ok, then they get into a section on marketing trends and industry insights for 2025. The categories are pretty much the big topics you'd expect.

Speaker 3: 40:57

Yeah, like what's working in marketing right now, how AI is changing marketing forever.

Speaker 4: 41:01

The future of SEO, the impact of Apple and Google's privacy changes these are the major shifts. If you follow marketing, you need to know about these. These are absolutely the key areas AI, seo evolution, privacy changes these are the major shifts If you follow marketing you need to know about these.

Speaker 3: 41:10

These are absolutely the key areas AI, seo, evolution, privacy updates. It shows how dynamic the field is and for you, the learner, understanding these trends is valuable, even outside marketing, because these principles often apply more broadly.

Speaker 4: 41:24

True Moving into the more practical stuff growth and lead generation Topics like generating more leads with content marketing paid versus organic email marketing strategies that actually work in 2025.

Speaker 3: 41:36

The fundamentals really Building an audience, growing a business, covering both organic content and paid strategies, plus email. It suggests a pretty well-rounded approach.

Speaker 4: 41:46

And, building on that, a big focus on data-driven marketing and AI.

Speaker 3: 41:50

Makes sense.

Speaker 4: 41:51

Stuff like improving ROI with AI, why first-party data is the new goldmine and the whole debate around AI-generated content versus human content.

Speaker 3: 42:00

Yeah, that shift towards data is undeniable. Leveraging AI, understanding the crucial role of first-party data now with privacy changes. Yeah, it's about moving past guesswork, making decisions based on actual evidence right now.

Speaker 4: 42:13

This next segment idea sounds potentially fun marketing narcs, where they plan to call out bad marketing tactics. They give an example. The comment on my post thing ah, yes, that can be annoying. I think a lot of people can relate it taps into that desire for authenticity.

Speaker 3: 42:28

Maybe more critical look at marketing. Highlighting what not to do is a good way to learn Makes you think more critically about the messages you see.

Speaker 4: 42:35

And then they shift gears a bit. Considering a more philosophical question is AI making us dumber?

Speaker 3: 42:41

Ooh interesting, that goes beyond just marketing applications.

Speaker 4: 42:44

Right into the broader societal impact. How does AI affect how we think?

Speaker 3: 42:48

That's a really important question to ask. It shows they're thinking beyond just the practical uses and considering the potential downsides or tradeoffs of relying so much on AI.

Speaker 4: 42:59

Definitely food for thought. Then maybe to lighten things up, they have a games segment idea Marketing trivia, timed challenges.

Speaker 3: 43:08

That could work. Gamification right right. Making learning more interactive, more memorable, caters to different styles yeah, keeps it engaging.

Speaker 4: 43:16

Another segment idea they floated is attribution, attribution. Huh good name and the example they give is just perfect, if a bit painful. What is the roi of the linkedin ad we ran promoting somebody else's conference? Oh wow, yeah. Anyone who's tried to measure complex marketing efforts will feel. What is the ROI of the LinkedIn?

Speaker 3: 43:30

ad we ran promoting somebody else's conference. Oh wow yeah. Anyone who's tried to measure complex marketing efforts will feel that one.

Speaker 4: 43:34

It just captures the absurdity sometimes, doesn't it? The challenge of accurate attribution.

Speaker 3: 43:38

Perfectly. It's a humorous way to tackle a very real, very persistent problem in marketing.

Speaker 4: 43:44

They've also got a segment called New Marketing Rules. Sounds like it's inspired by Bill Maher.

Speaker 3: 43:49

Okay.

Speaker 4: 43:49

Example New rule If sales gets to throw marketing under the bus, marketing gets to throw sales under the bus.

Speaker 3: 43:54

Ah, okay, yeah, some relatable industry commentary there.

Speaker 4: 44:01

Yeah, touches on that classic sales versus marketing tension, exactly Injecting a bit of humor about those internal dynamics. Nice, looking further out their future episode topic ideas. They list things like the death of third party cookies, zero party data huge shifts happening there, privacy, landscape changing fast yeah, and also an article on AI in recruiting shows they're keeping tabs on major developments across different areas demonstrates that commitment to staying current, addressing the big changes and seeing how AI pops up in recruiting too.

Speaker 3: 44:32

It touches so many parts of business now.

Speaker 4: 44:34

Some of the game ideas are pretty fleshed out too, like three headlines one hoax or fact, fiction and fantasy.

Speaker 3: 44:39

Feels like they could be really engaging, blending entertainment with critical thinking.

Speaker 4: 44:44

Yeah, making it active for the listener, not just passive listening.

Speaker 3: 44:47

Which is great, Makes the learning stickier more fun.

Speaker 4: 44:50

And one last recurring segment idea this day in marketing history.

Speaker 3: 44:55

Oh, that could be cool. A bit of historical context.

Speaker 4: 44:58

Yeah, Add some depth perspective, maybe some surprising facts about how things have evolved.

Speaker 3: 45:02

Always valuable to understand the past, even in a fast-moving field like marketing.

Speaker 4: 45:07

Lessons learned, you know in a fast-moving field like marketing, lessons learned, you know. So, wrapping up this deep dive into the marketing qualified notes, it's it's pretty clear that even these behind-the-scenes planning documents offer real insights absolutely.

Speaker 3: 45:19

You see the thought process, the trends.

Speaker 4: 45:21

They're tracking the effort involved it highlights the dedication needed to create valuable content consistently, especially when, as they noted, so many podcasts don't last.

Speaker 3: 45:31

It really does.

Speaker 4: 45:32

And that brings us to our final thought. For you, the learner, thinking about that high failure rate we mentioned at the start, what do you believe are the truly essential ingredients for a podcast or really any content project you might be thinking about, to not just survive but actually thrive today?

Speaker 3: 45:49

Yeah, in this incredibly crowded information landscape.

Speaker 4: 45:52

Reflect on the different strategies and topics we pulled from the marketing qualified agenda. What really strikes you as crucial for that long-term success and genuine connection with an audience? Something to definitely think about.