Impact of High CPMs on Advertising

Speaker 1 0:00

For the foreseeable future, meta is always going to be the best paid advertising platform, right Like? We have one client right now who that's all they're doing is just Meta, and it's like some days you crush it. And then yesterday, all of a sudden, their sales were literally cut in half. Today, guess what?

Speaker 2 0:15

It's back up.

Speaker 1 0:16

It's back up, but that's just like the name of the game. Nothing will change unless you do things different. Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast With me, as always, Mark Goldhart. Mark Goldhart, how are you?

Speaker 2 0:32

I'm great. How are you Wonderful? We just got back from a long trip.

Speaker 1 0:37

Yeah, we were just in Argentina.

Speaker 2 0:40

Argentina.

Speaker 1 0:41

Yeah, visiting the team.

Speaker 2 0:44

Visiting some of the teamiting some of the team. Some of the team Went to a game.

Speaker 1 0:48

Yeah, we went and saw Team Argentina play Bolivia in a World Cup qualifier.

Speaker 2 0:53

Yes, we did.

Speaker 1 0:53

That was incredible and it was one of the coolest experiences of my life.

Speaker 2 0:58

Very different from an American sporting event.

Speaker 1 1:03

Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:04

Being at like a national team game. They're playing Bolivia Messi, the greatest of all time scores a hat trick, yeah. It was a historic game.

Speaker 1 1:16

Yeah, like there couldn't have been a better outcome of a game that we went to.

Speaker 2 1:21

Yeah, no one was mad, everyone was just happy. Yeah, it was phenomenal uh election season.

Speaker 1 1:29

What are we? T minus 20 days, 23 days I don't know. No, I wouldn't say that it's probably like 18 days so guess what?

Speaker 2 1:39

your ads will start working again.

Speaker 1 1:41

Congratulations and then they won't. Ads will start working again Congratulations and then they won't, because Black Friday will hit and then they will.

Speaker 2 1:49

They will yeah.

Speaker 1 1:51

No, your ads will work. They're working now. They'll just be pretty. Yeah, they are working now. But if you're wondering why they're not working as good Is that fair.

Speaker 2 2:04

That's fair Since summer. Well, first, first of all, let's just talk about last year. Non-election year, yes, 2023. The average from what we have gathered, all the data we've gathered from 100 plus accounts, it's the average cpm crease last year from january till now yep in 2023. So january to november was only about like 10 to 20 yes, which is natural yeah, especially going into q4, because q4 is generally and november shoots up even more.

Speaker 2 2:37

But like from now, from january until end of october this year, cpms have just been higher than last year in general. So like we've seen about a 50% increase in CPMs. There's a lot of reasons for that. Like we could talk about ASC plus campaigns and there's kind of been a skew for retargeting and whatever, but nonetheless on average it's been higher. But what's crazy is your CPM has gone from January till now. This year the rise has been 100%.

Speaker 1 3:10

Yes.

Speaker 2 3:12

Crazy, and from your summer season it's gone up 30% till now, so we're talking June, July, August. Last year it had only gone up 10% from summer season. So, yes, like the CPM cost, just the cost of placing your ads has gone up substantially. Some may argue that targeting has gotten better. Sure, and so CPMs do not matter. We know that some people like to make that argument.

Speaker 1 3:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2 3:44

But nonetheless, it's just obvious that it is harder totally yeah, you could.

Speaker 1 3:49

Yeah, I mean you could go and jump in, look to see it. Okay, to really understand how targeting has gotten better. You would just go look at like your CPCs to write have those increased? And they have.

Speaker 2 4:00

And your conversion rates and your conversion rate. So, yes, you might be getting something reported on Meta that says, oh, you're doing just as good as last year. It might not feel like it, but if your cost per clicks have gone up, if you're spending the same amount as last year but your cost per clicks have gone up, but your conversion rates haven't gone up, then You're getting less clicks.

Speaker 1 4:19

You're getting less sales theory.

Speaker 2 4:27

Then either your paid channel has gotten a lot better and your organic traffic has gotten a lot worse, which guess? What has happened in a lot of accounts. Yeah, organic to reach. Everyone here knows like your organic reach is just not even what it used to be oh most are feeling that yes, most people are for sure. So we're not saying ads aren't working. It's just that the, the entire environment and ecosystem has has shifted yeah, yeah, 100.

Speaker 1 4:52

So what do you tell? What do you tell brands? What do I tell brands? What do you? What do we tell? What do we tell people?

Speaker 2 5:01

well, it's a little bit more nuanced than this, but we have generally advised people to spend and in fact it's right now is one of the better times to spend more, irregardless of election season. I'm not saying it's harder now because of election and cpms. There's just more cost to be in the system. But, um, you, your your best cohorts. So your august I mean even july sort of, but july, august, september, october, like those, are your best cohorts of the year yep and what he.

Speaker 1 5:40

What he means by that is cohorts, are the people who buy within a certain month as a first-time customer.

Speaker 2 5:45

And then come back and buy again.

Speaker 1 5:47

And then how likely are those people to come back and buy again?

Speaker 2 5:49

And they're your best because they all come back for Black Friday.

Speaker 1 5:54

Yeah, and October, notoriously, is the best of those.

Speaker 2 5:59

Yeah, so they buy at full price in October, generally right, or maybe a slight 10% email discount, whatever Sure, but their chance of returning is really really high, significantly higher than most months. So generally, if you look at your numbers, you'll figure out that it's worth paying quite a bit more to acquire someone in October, because they will come back and buy off of your emails in November.

Speaker 1 6:22

Yeah, the promotions and things that are going to happen, especially if you have a now listen, if you've got a product that sucks and you are then it just sucks to suck. Yeah, and you are just a first time customer acquisition machine. Um then, maybe, no, maybe now is not the best time to spend, true true, yeah, like if you.

Speaker 2 6:46

If you have a problem solution product and you're a one-trick pony, then Unless you have a good angle with gifting that product.

Speaker 1 6:53

Sure, maybe not but for the most part, now is a great time.

Speaker 2 6:59

Yes, and in fact we have some clients. This might be a hot take Roll the drums, I don't know, maybe it doesn't. We do have some clients where we spend far more money in October and September than we do in November.

Speaker 1 7:16

Very true, not a hot take. Because, the cost of acquisition for these certain customers is just not.

Speaker 2 7:24

And that cohort has always traditionally just sucked like they don't come back. They just come for a discount.

Speaker 1 7:30

The new, the first timers in november yeah, they end up losing more profitability in november versus and yeah.

Speaker 2 7:36

So november is a crazy good, profitable month for them. Yes, because we don't really focus a ton on acquisition.

Speaker 1 7:43

It's more of hey, yes, we will acquire customers, but we're not trying to push the boundaries so much that we're losing money on first purchase yep, all the more reason to marry finance to marketing, to understand things like that, right, because most people will just look like oh my gosh, my we did so much revenue my cost per acquisition went down, but you're like well.

Speaker 1 8:08

Also, you had 30 or 40 percent less margins due to your discount and those people will never come back, and so you didn't make any profits on the first time customer and you're not going to make any more profits yeah, that's an interesting equation that sometimes you don't take into consideration is that when you discount right, like when you have a 40 discount, that only affects your profitability.

Speaker 2 8:36

Well, like your margin doesn't get better, like the cost of your good is the cost of your good right, yeah, yeah, you're not getting, yeah, you're not getting like so it's only cutting into your profits and and there are sometimes unless you're doing a ton more volume like those.

Speaker 2 8:51

Deep discounts don't necessarily benefit you. Now we can talk about black friday if we want, but yes, you should generally be doing discounts because people expect it. Now, um, however, I think some people just don't take that into consideration. So why that matters is your cost per acquisition If it goes down. If it's 60 bucks and it goes down to 30 bucks, that's great, but you're actually not like that. 40% discount or 30% discount is all into your profit margin. Yeah, so you might not be making nearly as much money as you think on that customer. Yeah, or any money at all, yeah.

Speaker 2 9:32

The hope is that the volume yes, and those customers tend not to come back very well from November. Yeah.

Speaker 1 9:40

So spend in October. October is a good time to spend. I know it doesn't look like it is, but generally it is. And if you want to know for your sake if this is true for you and you're a Shopify brand, Granted, october will be over when you guys listen to this.

Speaker 2 9:56

So yeah, it's true, it's true.

Speaker 1 9:59

But tough titty, said the kitty, that's right. Tough titty, said the kitty.

Speaker 1 10:03

I hate that, my that saying I never heard that until I married into my family really yeah, yeah, it's kind of gross and I say it all the time now to my kids because I just think it's funny um, but if you want to look at that, just go into. Your shopify has a cohort analysis. It's a new, it's not that new. What? 18 months, maybe a tile in there that has a cohort analysis. You can jump in. You can sort it by all sorts of things. You can sort it by returning customers. You can sort it by total revenue. Go to total sales. Look at the last year. See what happened last October and see how many of those people who bought in October came back and bought in November.

Speaker 1 10:41

The darker of the blue or purple, depending on it's purple violet, if you will I thought blue like a purpley blue my indigo yeah nonetheless, it's a blue or purple, we digress. So what's a couple things that are happening right now.

Speaker 2 11:10

So, yes, sucks to be advertising right now. It's election season, things are costlier.

Speaker 1 11:18

And things. Just we didn't say this things are also if you're in a swing state too.

Speaker 2 11:23

Oh, it's even worse in swing states. Yes, we pulled those numbers also if you're in a swing state too. Oh, it's even worse in swing states. Yes, we pulled so like 35 percent on average has gone up from the summer.

Speaker 1 11:31

It's like 55 it's gone up in swing state.

Speaker 2 11:33

Add like an extra 20 points to your state 120 thank you politics, thank you politics luckily most people.

Speaker 1 11:45

When you think of the swing states they are generally like if you were to go look at uh brands like audience or geographical analysis. Those states generally don't tend to be most tense.

Speaker 2 11:59

Yeah brands, biggest heavier hitters well, depends on what you're running, but yes, true if you're running broad.

Speaker 1 12:08

Generally speaking, broad will favor the highest population states, which are just going to be california, texas, florida and new york yeah, which are not swing states anymore yeah, but even like your, uh, like highest conversion converting rating states, sometimes yeah, oftentimes are not those places, but nonetheless, were you going to say something before I navigated topics Hot topics Hot topics, hot topics.

Speaker 2 12:36

No, just that. Yeah, it's hard. All I was going to say was you might think it's all because CPMs have gone up, but we have actually seen meta is performing really well and totally a lot of this has to do with, like, organic shrinking. So it's not uncommon to see brands organic reach shrinking this year and over the last two brands that used to be able to count on X amount of reach and engagement and likes.

Speaker 1 13:09

Yeah, it's just, the game has changed which doesn't mean you shouldn't fight to get that back.

Speaker 2 13:18

Maybe, in my opinion. Well, I think you must change what you view as success. Sure, I think a lot of brands are still stuck on the idea that, like, you're going to post a picture and you're going to get X amount of engagement or reach from that picture, from your followers, which just doesn't happen.

Speaker 1 13:37

Yeah.

Speaker 2 13:43

Not only do you have to change the definitions is part of it. Like live puts you right in front of the stories, like you're front and center. So you don't have to hope that somebody sees that post. Like if you go live for an hour, you'll be one of the first icons that people see.

Speaker 1 14:02

Yeah, in the story section.

Speaker 2 14:04

Yeah. So I think there's a different play now, where in the past it was post and you'll reach all your followers plus more. Yeah, or do the giveaways and then you know, expand your reach where now it's. If you want reach, you're going reels and tiktok. If you want followers to interact, you're going regular posts and stories and lives yeah, so you got to think about, like current audience cultivation and new audience cultivation yeah, and not to mention.

Speaker 1 14:37

I think I mean obviously it's been reels and tiktok from a reach perspective, but, like a lot of people's, reels and tiktok that used to get good reach are no longer getting good reach. So the other caveat to that from the organic perspective is you just have to do different things. Abt always be testing. Do you know what marketing channel introduced them to you? Do you know what motivated them to buy? Do you know what your MPS score is, if people actually like and love your products? If you don't know the answers to some of those questions or any other questions you might have for your customers, you need to start using post-purchase surveys. Bestie is the only post-purchase survey provider that utilizes AI to not only help you craft your questions, but also takes the insights that your customers give you and creates actionable insights and steps for you to make as a business to help grow and scale your company.

Speaker 1 15:43

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Speaker 2 16:26

Me. Yeah, you just went through this.

Speaker 1 16:36

Oh, are you talking about my content? Yeah, yeah, okay, sure, I can talk, so, okay. So I started creating content in 2019 or 2020 and my content at the time, even though video was becoming popular, I was creating carousels and they were almost like information guides, right, you know?

Speaker 2 16:59

so like very high, like five steps to get better engagement.

Speaker 1 17:02

Yeah, high value like hey, here are five ways you can get your CPM low.

Speaker 2 17:07

I forgot about carousels. Those were so big back then.

Speaker 1 17:10

Yeah, and I just used Canva and it crushed it. Yeah, like absolutely crushed it High value, lots of shares, lots of saves, until it didn't. And then all of a sudden it didn't. And the reason why it didn't is because Reels came about, and so then I started to, essentially, then I took my carousels and just turned them into talking head, you know. So I would still say, hey, here are five ways, but it'd be a camera like this hey, five ways to lower your CPM, number one, number two. So I essentially did the content didn't change, it was just the format that changed to video. And then that absolutely crushed it until it didn't. And then I started doing like story lessons over B-roll, voiceover-y stuff.

Speaker 2 18:06

Yes, okay.

Speaker 1 18:07

And that crushed it. Until it didn't Until it didn't, and then podcast clips until it didn't, and that is just the name I have been through so what is that?

Speaker 2 18:18

hell and carousels, carousels, just kind of repurposed carousel format, but with reels, yep, and then I did kind of voiceover v-roll that was valuable yeah and then I did voiceover b-roll.

Speaker 1 18:33

That was like just lifestyle stories. Yeah, and then I did podcast clips. Kind of podcast clips was kind of between there like throughout that. That worked really well and now, unless you're saying something insane, a podcast clip doesn't really do anything, mainly because this podcast, as big as it is, it's not Right. So, like a Jay Shetty.

Speaker 2 18:53

But to be fair, I see far. I see less and less and less podcast clips. Well, yeah, I think Like even the comedians, like you used to see those comedians pop up in your feed. It seemed like one every three scrolls was going to be a podcast from a comedian, and now I don't tend to see those very often.

Speaker 1 19:13

Yeah, yeah. So what, what did you count? Five or six formats?

Speaker 2 19:16

That's five so far.

Speaker 1 19:17

Five formats of high growth. And then the last 18 months for me has been really rough.

Speaker 2 19:24

Dry. Just very dry 40 years in the desert.

Speaker 1 19:28

And I will admit my dedication and trying has been less I started shifting some more of my dedication from a content creation to like a written LinkedIn style and that did great and has done just fine, which did good until Sometimes doesn't?

Speaker 1 19:46

It's kind of plateaued, yeah, so now it's like, okay cool, what do we do? Yeah, yeah. So now it's like, okay cool, what do we do? And so now what I'm doing is I'm going back to very high value and I'm breaking what businesses and brands are doing down, why it's good or why it's bad.

Speaker 2 20:06

Which, all of a sudden, you've seen a growth Like a 10x increase in reach and engagement yeah, and in many times much bigger than that in a couple times.

Speaker 1 20:18

So we will see. But the point is, you can. Meta works it always. I shouldn't say always, but for the foreseeable future, meta is always going to be the best paid advertising platform. However, what is going to happen is when it's the only thing you're dedicated to, the only thing you're putting attention to, the only thing that's driving traffic. You are just going to be beholden to bad days and bad weeks and potentially bad months due to whatever's happening in the world macroeconomically, or even what's happening just internally at meta. You're just, when you don't have anything else, driving distribution. You're just at that mercy, right like. We have one client right now who that's all they're doing is just meta and it's like some days you crush it and then yesterday else and their sales were literally cut in half. You go into meta and you look and nothing changed Today. Guess what?

Speaker 1 21:20

it's back up it's back up, but for whatever reason, their conversion rate went from 1.8 percent to 0.8 percent. Yeah, dude, so just axed, spent hours looking to see what's going on, but that's just like the name of the game, right.

Speaker 2 21:35

Yeah, it is the name of the game when you're paying to play. But you know, I know we hash on this a lot, but I think the overall theme here is as organic. It gets smaller and you become more dependent on paid, which guess what? If you're growing fast, that's just going to happen anyways.

Speaker 1 21:55

Of course yes.

Speaker 2 21:57

Eventually, most of your acquisition is coming from paid you can spend more money than you can.

Speaker 1 22:02

Test and find new ways to hit organic virality or better distribution you're just hitting like economies of scale at that point.

Speaker 2 22:09

So yeah, exactly cost per acquisition becomes less of a concern yes um, but if you want to help yourself, just know a lot of people give up on that like they see it shrinking and they just keep doing the same thing and hoping things will change.

Speaker 1 22:25

but nothing changes If nothing changes and it's not going to guys like I've done hashtag Theo Vaughn. Yeah, I've done it. I've done it so long now that it just doesn't work. So speed, so change. Let's talk.

Speaker 2 22:35

It's good to hear that. I just want to point that out because you did five.

Speaker 1 22:43

You've gone through like five content strategy changes in four and a half years? Yeah, and or four years and and there was like an 18 month drought of like nothing worked to. You know, I probably should be through seven because I didn't change and adapt, but so, so we're not saying it's easy, so speaking of difference, we're just saying it's easy.

Speaker 2 23:00

So, speaking of difference, we're just saying it's worth it.

Speaker 1 23:03

There's a couple of things that are trending right now that I think are interesting to call out of this exact topic, like nothing will change unless you do things different, right? And when you look like everybody else and when you act like everybody else're gonna blend in like everybody else, right? And so one thing that I thought was really cool, that's been trending really since the beginning of the month or kind of first week of the month, was wendy's announced a collaboration with spongebob squarepants and they created the wendy's crappy patty. And the reason why I think this is really cool is, for those of you who don't know this, wendy's on the burger fast food chain is always number three. It never hasn't been number three or lower than the two you could probably you would. I think anyone can guess McDonald's number one by a long shot. Burger King is number two and then it's Wendy's.

Speaker 2 24:03

Yeah, Wendy's is the redheaded stepchild, literally.

Speaker 1 24:06

Literally. Yeah, exactly, but Wendy's on the fast food chain.

Speaker 2 24:10

I can say that I married a redhead, so I can make the jokes.

Speaker 1 24:13

Number seven I got a couple redheads in my family, sister and boss. So the reason why, if you go back and look at the last eight years of Google Trends, wendy's has never once in Google Trends been searched more than Burger King and McDonald's. Maybe a couple times with Burger King, okay, but never with McDonald's Ever.

Speaker 2 24:35

Like McDonald's, is light years. Wait, when did they do this Krabby Patty? On the 8th, on the 8th of this month.

Speaker 1 24:41

If you look at the 8th and 9th, those are the first two days that they have a higher search volume than mcdonald's. But it's, it just went.

Speaker 2 24:46

It exploded because spongebob and then trump had to go work at mcdonald's which we'll talk about in here in a second too spongebob wendy's.

Speaker 1 24:55

You know, they just always get outshined well, that that's what's really funny is you see, mcdon McDonald's? The moment Trump does that just skyrockets in trend, so funny. So anyways, back to Wendy's here. Okay, and the Krabby Patty. They take something wildly nostalgic and they do something very, very different than Wendy's is used to doing and they do a collaboration, and so it gets every millennial what Like anyone who is probably 35. I watch SpongeBob, but only because my little brother did, and if he had the TV.

Speaker 1 25:29

I'd watch it with him, but that was never the show I picked to be on.

Speaker 2 25:35

You're just wanting Power Rangers, huh.

Speaker 1 25:37

I'm more of a Rugrats guy. You know Tommy Pickles, you didn't know you were. Yeah, you always say you were too poor for cable never had cable yeah, sorry, I guess I was just you know just living high life.

Speaker 2 25:50

I guess I was just better than you did.

Speaker 1 25:52

You have a tv in your room, no, I did when I was in high school, but it's because I bought it with my own money. Oh yeah, okay, so anyways, nostalgia. Nostalgia sells even someone like me who has not eaten at wendy's in 15 years, went and bought one with my own money.

Speaker 1 26:01

Oh yeah, okay. So anyways, nostalgia, nostalgia sells. Even someone like me who has not eaten at Wendy's in 15 years went and bought one. So they're selling to at least. Did you buy one? No, I didn't. He will. He's going to Grayson will Wendy's is just not good though.

Speaker 2 26:17

Well, there's a reason why it's on the on the lower end of the list.

Speaker 1 26:21

So great job to wendy's because they just did something different and it got not only google search term but if you go to tiktok and you just type in wendy's patty, like crabby patty, collaboration, millions and millions of views it's. It's very similar to the whole, uh, secret life of mormon wife's thing that we talked about, just like hulu was really good at just finding something that that was already already you know, like they just knew was gonna trend and boom.

Speaker 1 26:44

It's kind of like when grit was. It was the last year that McDonald's did grimace, the grimace challenge.

Speaker 2 26:48

Yeah, they did very, very similar uptick and lifts on tick-tock tick-tock, you know they does where the the main trend was happening, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like you would take you to eat a Shake and you would die.

Speaker 1 27:00

Essentially, yeah, and people were creating these skits around it and it just blew up and Gourmet Shakes were crazy.

Speaker 2 27:06

Which you would think would make it less popular.

Speaker 1 27:08

but yeah, so doing different things is really huge. Going into Donald Trump right Just because it's election season.

Speaker 2 27:16

Yeah, we got to bring back our analysis of the campaigns.

Speaker 1 27:22

Yeah, so this is like going into the analysis of the campaign. So we talked a lot about like okay, how has the game shifted? Yeah, there's this like okay, kamala has taken the more traditional route.

Speaker 2 27:33

You know kamala kamala, sorry.

Speaker 1 27:35

Kamala has taken the more traditional route, which has been lots of tv advertisements raise more money. She's outspending him 3 to 1 in traditional advertising the only thing she's done differently is she's gone the celebrity route right, which is like not quite new age.

Speaker 2 27:50

I don't think that's new age at all, I just think. Well, I mean celebrities, I think used to be maybe a little less political, yes, but celebrities have always rubbed shoulders with politicians, so I don't know if that's, I totally agree I would say, that's still traditional.

Speaker 1 28:06

I'm gonna give her that as new age.

Speaker 2 28:08

I'm not.

Speaker 1 28:08

I'm gonna give it to her.

Speaker 2 28:10

I think she's running a very traditional campaign.

Speaker 1 28:13

I think she is too, but that's the little caveat I'm gonna give her.

Speaker 2 28:16

That's fine, but celebrity endorsements I'm pretty sure have existed for a long time.

Speaker 1 28:20

They have 100%, but the landscape of how celebrities distribute their content is different Very much, yeah, I mean I guess they have direct audiences and they don't really rely on publications in that sense. Exactly. That's why I'm going to give her New Age.

Speaker 2 28:40

Okay, that's fine.

Speaker 1 28:41

Okay, trump has been.

Speaker 2 28:43

We'll agree to disagree.

Speaker 1 28:44

And Kamala has done. She did a Call Her Daddy podcast.

Speaker 2 28:47

She did do one podcast appearance, she did one New.

Speaker 1 28:49

Age podcast appearance. I think she did.

Speaker 2 28:53

No, radio shows really aren't New.

Speaker 1 28:55

Age no, no, no Negative.

Speaker 2 29:04

Not going gonna give her that one, so nonetheless heavy traditional yes and she's out spending three to one yes, right, trump has been doing very new age stunts trolling, because I think trolling is very new age too.

Speaker 1 29:14

Right, like these, influencers are always trolling each other well, trolling is big because other people talk about it yes, yes, in the new age form yes.

Speaker 2 29:22

So, so the whole reason why he was at McDonald's for those who don't know is because Kamala said she worked at McDonald's.

Speaker 1 29:30

Came out that she never had Well there's.

Speaker 2 29:34

What's come out is McDonald's doesn't have any employment records from the 80s, right, she has a friend that says she worked there, got it, that's so people are saying so she's never. It hasn't come out that she quote didn't. It's just, there's no actual evidence, I guess evidence of it outside of anecdotal yes and so trump has been saying that she hasn't and so part of that troll, and also like trump has always been a big mcdonald's guy remember that funny, hilarious picture of him like with all the mcdonald's bags in the white house.

Speaker 2 30:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he loves it so as a troll, it appears to be a troll he went and worked at mcdonald's on kamala's birthday yes which many people don't know it was was Kamala's birthday.

Speaker 1 30:20

And he, like, wished her a big happy birthday. That's like blowing up.

Speaker 2 30:23

Because the whole news everyone just started melting down about the publicity stunt.

Speaker 1 30:35

But what has been the number one talk on both the left and the right and just social media in general? Right, the left is talking about it as what a terrible political stunt. How tasteless.

Speaker 2 30:40

Obviously, there's the partisan takes, and then you've got the right side. Who's talking about it as what a terrible political stunt. How tastes, you know?

Speaker 1 30:41

obviously there's the part it takes, and then you got the right side who's talking about it, and this is the coolest thing. And then you got the like just the more new age people who are talking about it and like can you believe that trump did this? Yes, kind of thing, but that's where he's winning from a polling perspective well, so now?

Speaker 2 31:01

so now. So yeah, I think this goes back to our whole argument. What's going to win yes? Is it the traditional or is it the new age? Like there's still value. We had Russ on yes and he still showcased in the marketing world.

Speaker 1 31:20

How traditional can pack a very heavy punch, especially from a branding perspective.

Speaker 2 31:23

Yes, but we had argued on this podcast that the new age is really just what marketing is now. It's not that traditional, it doesn't exist, but it doesn't pull what it used to.

Speaker 1 31:37

Yeah.

Speaker 2 31:39

And I think we're starting to see that in the polling. You're starting to see from polymarket odds to swing state polling, like Nate Silver's I know he kind of screwed up in the last couple of elections and people don't like him anymore. But him and the RCP average now have Trump ahead where he was behind for since their first debate.

Speaker 1 32:01

Yeah, by relatively significant margins.

Speaker 2 32:04

Yeah.

Speaker 1 32:04

Not just like.

Speaker 2 32:06

Yeah, he was down. I think it was like 48 to 52 or 46 to 54.

Speaker 1 32:11

And now, what is the poly market on now?

Speaker 2 32:13

Now it's flipped. Well, poly market's up and again that's a betting market. I don't know how much weight goes into it, but he's up by 24 points.

Speaker 1 32:20

Which is insane. Last time I saw it, and then the RCP average.

Speaker 2 32:24

I think he's now up 53 to 47. And you guys can fact check me on that. But nonetheless those trend lines are happening because, with the new age approach of Twitter and social media and doing these trolling events, his team has figured out how to dominate headlines without spending money.

Speaker 1 32:46

Yes.

Speaker 2 32:48

So they're being outspent? Three to one, yes. And now the lesson in here, regardless of your politics, is you are always going to go against competition that can outspend you.

Speaker 1 33:00

Always, there's always somebody bigger than you.

Speaker 2 33:03

Now, I'm not saying you always use the tactics of the Trump campaign, yeah, but there's lessons in there for us to learn as marketers, of how do you capture attention, how do you pick fights in the arena to dominate headlines or to draw attention to you, and you can do that in, obviously, I think, more tactful ways. Yeah, you don't have to be mean about it necessarily, but you do have to pick enemies in marketing. You do have to go out against your competitors. You do have to showcase hey, why are you different? Right? So the reason why Trump's so polarizing is because everyone knows why he's different. Yeah, so he plays on that. His team plays on that. They're always going around talking about it, yeah.

Speaker 2 33:49

Now for marketers yeah, you're going to go up against much bigger spenders than you. Yeah, but a lot of these big spending companies are stuck in what we would call as, like, a traditional thing. And guess what, guys? I don't know what's going to happen in the election. Like, kamala very well may win Sure, and I don't think it's going to be a surprise if she did At this point. It's a coin flip. Yeah, because we're talking about, just like, such small margins of error in voting.

Speaker 2 34:17

Like we're talking, 10,000 votes might swing uh swing state one direction or the other, that one swing state can swing the entire election and yeah, and that one swing state might decide the whole election, but nonetheless it's just to say, hey, look, this guy is getting so much attention all the time.

Speaker 2 34:33

I'm not saying that it's always savory what he's doing, but as a marketer and as a as a company, how can you learn from that and say we might not be able to spend a hundred million dollars this year, or even a hundred thousand or even a hundred thousand dollars, but hey, we can go do like, we can go out in the wild and film, like right now in the election. Guess what's super hot on Tik TOK and on Instagram? It's like election. Guess what's super hot on tiktok and on instagram? It's like. I see these on from both sides political, of the political spectrum. They're doing these like round tables, not the political candidates, but like these influencer type people who are, yeah, like they'll go to college campuses or college campuses or they have like a round table and they do these debates, or like they're going around on campuses asking people who they're voting for.

Speaker 2 35:22

Like you can do that with a product, right, like how come we don't see more people going out and saying, hey, this is my product, this is this product, let's test it out and get some live reactions. Yeah, like you can go out into the wild, get real human interaction. Yeah, that's not fake, that's not. You know, when we say authentic, we mean it's. There's not a lot of polish around it. It's like it seems like it's all real and authentic yeah, you may.

Speaker 1 35:47

You may be staging it and curating it to get, hopefully, the outcome you expect right, but everything else is going to be relatively real. Yes, you know the reactions, whatever I mean, if we want to take an example of somebody doing this, I just thought of one outside of like Trump or politics. Have you heard of what's going on with vital farms, the egg company?

Speaker 2 36:06

they're like the uh no antibiotic chicken, like I'm sure they are.

Speaker 1 36:15

I haven't heard, okay, what's happening. So forgive me because the details are going to be lost a little bit in translation, but the point I'm going to make is going to be there. So apparently there's been some uh, what seems like lobbying against vital farms as they are scaling and growing and and putting a dent in the egg industry. Big egg um, as not as clean as they say they are okay, and so the way vital farms has attacked back is They've said that the owner is coming out and going on every single podcast in the health space and he's exposing what, what um, antibiotic free means and what organic means, and how you can get those, what, what do you call them? Seals of approval, and how they're pretty much garbage.

Speaker 2 37:11

Like he's coming out and saying I don't know if the antibiotic one is, but I do know about like free range and grass fed and like how you can yeah, he's like.

Speaker 1 37:20

He's essentially saying they're completely unregulated. Essentially, all that you have to do is have like one chicken that fits the bill and you can say your whole place is that way that's mind-blowing.

Speaker 2 37:32

Yeah, there's, I do. I do know that a lot of those seals like you can?

Speaker 1 37:34

you can game it so all the people who are calling him out, calling him out. He's calling them out by saying I will film and show you every one of my chickens. You do the same. So he's going out and showing how they are abiding by what the law should be not not letter of the law loophole exactly, and he said that I've called everyone out and not one person is willing to do what I've done Big farm, you know.

Speaker 1 38:06

And so those are ways you can do it right, like you can like. That's a really kind of you know, it's not necessarily trolling, but it's just this. It's this way of getting other people to talk about something. He's turning something that's very could have could potentially crush his business, you know. And he's turning something that's very could potentially crush his business, you know, and he's never gonna have the money to outspend be better into something without tons of people are talking about vital farms.

Speaker 1 38:28

Because at first, because we buy vital farms and at first I was like talking to my wife, I'm like dude, I don't know if we should be doing this anymore. Sounds like it's, but now that I'm watching I'm like, actually hold up. It sounds like this you know, maybe they might be not a hundred hundred percent, but it sounds like this. You know, maybe they might be not 100%, but it sounds like they're much better than everyone else. So there's plenty of ways.

Speaker 2 38:49

It doesn't matter whether you're political or whatever Like.

Speaker 1 38:53

There's ways for you to. You just have to be different. You have to be willing to be gutsy and you have to be willing to just break the norm and say, oh, I'm not going to have this image look like the last 10 that didn't do anything. Maybe I'm going to give a hot take.

Speaker 2 39:09

Yeah, just throw. Throw some things away and try things different, because the new cycle is always shifting. Like that's another lesson to learn as a company from someone like Donald Trump is like you would have thought Donald Trump would not be around in 20, like you know, I mean like how many? How many stories have there been about this guy or how many things has?

Speaker 1 39:28

he done. Yeah, you'd think that this guy is long gone, yet he's still.

Speaker 2 39:32

Just like people a lot of people do not care about, like that 24 hours news cycle because it's just on to the next thing. Yeah, so when you're trying new things and this was our advice to the Kamala campaign too right, if I was advising the Kamala campaign it's like we gotta, you gotta get out there. You gotta get away from these scripted performances. You just gotta go out and be a real person. We gotta get some real interactions, because it doesn't even if you screw up, it doesn't matter. The cycle changes every 24 hours.

Speaker 1 40:02

Yeah, and guess what?

Speaker 2 40:04

they listen to us because she went, they hurt, they were their lifetime listeners of the podcast yeah, they are.

Speaker 1 40:10

They were like oh hey, mark and trevor are really smart. Should we talk to alex cooper and get on the caller daddy podcast?

Speaker 2 40:16

get out there even more like that's all you can do in this age of marketing is the more exposure is always going to be better, unless you're you know there's some things that are going to be good completely crazy and yeah, there's. There's obviously a line there, but I don't know what that line is sometimes yeah I agree, like remember jake paul. Like went to that one forest and filmed oh yeah, dead bodies and stuff.

Speaker 1 40:41

yeah yeah, that was the line.

Speaker 2 40:44

It wasn't the line, apparently, because it didn't really affect him.

Speaker 1 40:47

Well, I thought it did for a few years. I don't think it did. I could be wrong. I have not done enough research.

Speaker 2 40:51

There's a huge up. I'm not saying to do that. I think that's pretty bad, yeah, but nonetheless, what I'm saying is like 24 hour news cycles. If you're a company, try new things.

Speaker 1 41:09

Yes, you're going to make some mistakes, but yeah, and the easiest place to do that is ads. Honestly, yeah, great great testing.

Speaker 2 41:12

You don't have to put it on your front page. Test it in ads, see if you can get some engagement and then maybe start incorporating that into your organic yeah so it.

Speaker 1 41:21

Yeah, I mean good luck, election season is finally almost over. We're all excited for it to be done with if you're listening to this episode and you're still not quite a hundred percent sure what you're going to do with black friday, like go back what four or five episodes and listen to our black friday episode. Still not too late to do some of the things we talked about in that one Almost though. Almost, but still not the next episode. Yes, yes, it will be, but don't worry, no fear, but don't worry everyone.

Speaker 2 41:56

Election season's almost over. I'm telling you it'll be a lot better after election season.

Speaker 1 42:01

Everyone will be happier too, we're all going to be happier, everyone's going to be so much happier, Regardless of the winner there will just be a breath of fresh air that this is over.

Speaker 2 42:10

The finality of it. Yes, like, let's just yes, especially for marketers, because, man, these CPMs suck. Yes, they do, but meta is still working. So don't doubt meta, but it'll be great when we don't have to be competing with political ads.

Speaker 1 42:27

Yes, I agree. Awesome, Okay, everyone. Thank you guys. We will see you guys next Tuesday. Yeah.

Speaker 2 42:35

Yes, we will.

Speaker 1 42:36

Farewell. Thank you so much for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer podcast. Please go rate and subscribe the podcast, whether it's good or bad. We want to hear from you because we always want to make this podcast better. If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback, please go follow me and get in touch with me. I am at the Trevor Crump on both Instagram and TikTok. Thank you, and we will see you next week.