Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - 2021 Marketing Trends - Mass Marketing is Dead

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

In this episode of the Radcast Ryan and Josh break down the most pressing marketing trends for brands in 2021. After a crazy 2020, the consumer landscape has changed forever. Consumers are not going back to pre-COVID ways and the brands that lean into this will win in 2020.Key Trends:1. Mass marketing is dead. The media landscape is splintered and consumers want highly relevant content that matches the channel they are in.2.  Social Selling is ready to explode - Capability is meeting demand3. The cookie is crumbling - the impact of a cookie-less digital environment and how brands must plan accordingly.4. Consumers know you are marketing to them - treat them accordingly and you will wine.Enjoyed this episode? Then share it on Instagram and tag us @the.rad.cast | Do you want to hear more from our host? - Give him a follow @ryanalford on Instagram. | The Radcast is a product of @radical_results | #theradcast If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here. What better time than now? You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Ryan Alford here with the latest edition of the Radcast joined by the digital media manager here at Radical. Josh Hill. what's up Josh what's going on hey good to have you good to be here so uh our definitive are we calling it definitive I think it's definitive might as well yeah I think I've been playing it up as our definitive we'll be later on because we talk about trends and a million other things when we're on on the show about tentatively definitively definitive we we reserved the right to change our minds at any time trends and things and news in general changes so quickly

these days, I don't think there can be anything definitive, but here today on December 21st of 2020. This is it. This is it. We're coming down to the end. We'll have our marketing trends for 2021. Before we get into that, Josh, I think, you know, this is going to be primarily looking forward. I like to look forward.

I'm not a rearview mirror guy, but I think that it does do some just to talk a little bit about what's been a pretty damn strange year. Yeah. Yeah. As a whole. I know. I think everyone's counting down the moments to get through it. It's been weird, wacky, and crazy.

But what have been any like, even personally, but definitely from a marketing perspective, anything that's obviously we've battled COVID and still battling it, but anything that's kind of resonating with you as we look back. The general shift to the day. digital life. Like, as a digital, like, marketing manager, like, I live pretty online. Like, I mean, it's your job. Yeah, it's my job.

It's my job. A lot of my job. A lot of my entertainment. I want to buy a T-shirt that says that. Yeah. Digital. It's my job. Like a digital guy.

Yeah. But, yeah, like a higher, I'd say, like a higher portion. of my learning entertainment and everything is kind of moved even further online. Like I had a lot of concert plans at the beginning of the year and some tickets that I had to get returned. But I attended a lot of live stream concerts. A lot of artists were doing bedroom stuff. A lot of people were doing like green screen stuff.

One of my favorite artists did a show at the Red Rocks Amphitheater completely empty. And that was really cool. A lot of people, like, if you're online, you could, like, yell into your mic at the end of one song. And then you could vote on what colors to change the background. That was kind of fun. Ooh. But I like it. Interactivity within the...

Yeah, getting interactive. Yeah. But, like, I think, yeah, that was the biggest resonator for me was shifted digital. More live stream stuff, more FaceTime hangouts with friends, stuff like that. Well, I think, and we've talked about this on other episodes and maybe even add gab, if you are the segments that we do. They say that the transition to e-commerce and digital channels sped up by the rate of what they anticipated to be seven years worth of transition happened in roughly 10 months.

Yeah, I think a lot of, I mean, most of the tools that people are using for e-commerce and new online stuff is not new by any means. like Instacart's been around these drive-in grocery places have been around and curbside pickups been around but it's the way we use it has definitely changed and so more people I think realize like oh wait it is a lot easier to just online shop for groceries and then go pick it up or it is a lot easier to get delivery or all these things I was buying in person like e-commerce is way easier yeah I think what you know it's it increased the you know people start to adapt things when they're ready and try things on their own time.

Yeah. Suddenly it became necessity to try to try these things because if you were going to do or get these experiences and or products, the only way it was digital. Yeah. You know, for at least no matter what state you lived in South Carolina being a little more conservative and thus opening up more quickly like we did here. But universally you had a three-monthish period where. everything was pretty shut down and if you wanted anything you needed to be online.

Yeah. And then in most places, probably with the most population, those things have stayed through. So it's been forced to try. And then once they've tried, you know, I think what you're going to see, which we'll get into with 21, is that that genie's not going back in the bottle. No. Yeah. Whoa, this really is more convenient. Oh, I can, you know, do all of these things.

you know, obviously Amazon's been around forever, but, you know, but still the numbers are crazy because as much as, you know, we live and breathe the digital world, it feels like, you know, Amazon's been around for a while and social channels have been around, but only eight, depending on markets, so eight to 12 percent of all sales were did, were online. Yeah. All sales. They could close my mind when I read that, read that stat before COVID. So as far along.

as we had come there were still the bandwidth the head room as you call it was still so vast and even now they I think they've gone we've gone there was anticipation of of you know a couple points a year but we think we've gone

to like we're in the 20s now yeah you know I think if you pull out the like back to my business degree of the like product life cycle like a lot of people when they talk about trends they're talking about the like trend setters the early adapters and stuff. But then there's that, it takes years for that big hump of most people to like jump on

onto it. So yeah, these could have been trends maybe from five years ago, but I think now it's just now come to fruition of like these new e-commerce things, these new like delivery platforms, like Uber Eats, Grubhub, that stuff got really popular. I think we're just getting to that point of like it's becoming widely accepted by people. I mean, it takes a long time. if you look at the like streaming versus like cable people like people who are on dish and traditional cable TV like I think this last year or the year before that was the first time that streaming like streaming users overtook the traditional cable like saying traditional cable because it's still kind of new but yeah traditional linear yeah linear yep but these things

take time and like it sometimes it takes just I mean it literally took a whole pandemic and forcing people to stay inside to get on this. I know. So if you're a conspiracy theorist, Jeff Bezos caused the pandemic. Yeah. Because has anyone's net worth increased more than Jeff Bezos? I don't think so. And it was, he was already a really wealthy dude.

If you've seen that video clip, he's got robot arms now. Yes. Like Doc Hawk from Spider-Man. So it's game over at this point. Yes, exactly. And I end and before anyone quotes me. me, I'm joking. I have no ill will towards Jeff Bezos saying I don't think he started the pandemic.

But he certainly benefited from it from a financial standpoint. But, you know, once you get into the billions, if you got $30 billion versus $100 billion, I'm sure he thinks there's a difference. I remember my first billion. Yeah, I know. I've kind of lost track of mine, you know, but I spin it too quickly in the casino. know. You know, before we jump into 21, again, you know, managing ads for all of our clients with

your team and, you know, seeing into the channels and the formats and any like things just kind of like, obviously we just talked about digital as a whole and the transformation that's just the gasoline on the fire that's happened. But anything by way of, you know, like observing and looking back at the year. and going, you know, this changed or this really stands out. Yeah. So like one of the biggest hurdles anytime is kind of like when you're like messaging to people, usually like a really effective way to go about it is building that, like,

phomone, the fear of missing out. And one of the easiest ways to do that in the past was show like your restaurant with a ton of people there or your store with lots of people there or people using. your product, your service, testimonials and stuff. Yep. And kind of showing that like within the lifestyle. And then now you're last year, you're kind of going towards people in a digital lifestyle. Like how do you kind of jump in that hurdle like how do you make people like realize other people are involved where they want to join in? And so that was a kind of a big hump to kind of get around.

And so it took a lot more kind of building social engagement, kind of collecting those views, collecting those likes and comments on posts. So people were kind of creating a community online. And like really a big change was I saw this really successful brands did this. And then we did this with a few of our clients just trying to make those like posts and videos, those ads, either like native posts or the. ads kind of be a place of people can comment give feedback like really just engage and create a conversation between the brand and the people yeah we did some fun like we did even like silly stuff

like we uh we said like show us like tell us your favorite like menu item at this restaurant we'll tell you what band or movie you you would like the most we're like stuff like that um and it's just a way to like get people like especially during the height of court like quarantine people were bored at home like just looking to engage with someone else yep so that creating that feedback loop I guess is kind of what I'm summering that down and obviously driving engagement but kind of having more of that real time discussion yeah yeah I think also leaning into it's kind of a content approach but like leaning into your videos and then leading into live streams was a big thing.

Kind of like opening the doors up a little bit and kind of really being honest was really effective. I'd just be like, hey, like, you get online and you just talk to your people. Like, you don't even have to talk about your business. You're not doing a sales pitch. You might just show them how something works. If your restaurant, you might show them how to cook a meal. I saw a lot of places in town were doing take and bake meals of like there's a local

pizza shop of like come get a ball of dough and sauce and cheese and like, make it yourself. It kind of like helps you feel involved. And also it's a great way to like show behind the curtains of like, we make this fresh and this is what goes into it. And so I think that really helps in the future. The irony of everything that's happened is by taking people out of the businesses, like not going live brick and mortar,

not having those in person experiences, consumers are actually able, the ones, the brands have done it well, to get closer to the business. Yeah. You know, it sounds totally like against like reverse. Yeah. But in a way, the brands that really have done well and thrived have opened the curtain more to really what's going on, what's happening, the transparency of doing it yourself or seeing what's happening. And so like the need and opportunity for content combined with the reality of consumers really wanting, brands really wanting consumers to engage with them.

kind of required a little bit more of that transparency. Yeah, absolutely. And so I think that's contrary to what you might expect. Oh, we get closer, you know, not to be cliche with some of the country music songs. I was too. It's like, we've gotten closer by being apart. But in some ways, the brands that have done well probably have gotten closer to their communities by being distanced. And I think that's not going anywhere.

I think that's only going to continue. but I don't while I think that's going to continue I don't think everyone's going to jump on it and I think only the people who do it and do it well and do it right like will be really successful with that. Yep, I agree. Well, let's transition to 2021, shall we? Let's go to the future. Go to the future. If we had an effect, Riley, I would have wanted like, do, do, do, do, do. Anyway, maybe it's not that insightful.

But we'll pretend that it is. Yeah, yeah. No, no. So, Josh, let's transition to 21. You know, not that we're going to start an order, but is there, I do want to just, and I will say this, these are 20, 21 marketing trends. We want to take this at 70,000 feet a little bit. We'll drill down on some things.

We're doing some drilling down with ad gab and those kind of things. I think we're talking holistically here from a broad marketing standpoint, branding standpoint, content standpoint. We'll get specific with certain things. But this is really about some overarching trends that we see going across the marketing landscape. So we'll teet up there. And again, not to put any of these in any sort of order of definitiveness or necessarily importance. But where would you start for you, Josh, is maybe, you know, a key number one.

Key number one. Wow. Jumping right into it. Jumping right in. I think people need to, like, this has kind of been a running theme over multiple podcasts. I hear a lot of episodes you say people are still not like utilizing digital channels as they should be. And I think it's time to do mostly digital ads. And it's time to kind of do more like cohesive content.

behind those. I see a lot where they have their social channel looks one way and then their ads look another way. They kind of need to feed together along with the site, their website and I think messaging should be kind of they're like, I see a lot of kind of

disparate messaging across where it's like there's no central theme to businesses and I think broadly speaking with everyone moving online there's going to be, it's not just oh you're in town so you're a brick and mortar like b to b company like you don't less people are seeing your visual store your um your in person stuff you're moving online to the worldwide web where there's a million other places the exact same size who can do the same thing you do um and you're trying to be this that and the other and you're just kind of like blandly saying hey we're available and we do this that's not going to cut it you're just going to get lost in the noise.

you're going to get lost in the sauce. Yep. I love that because it's so interesting because hearing you say that and thinking about what I hear out of like business people and like things that I read and like e-commerce is no longer a differentiator. No. And I think a lot of businesses are still in that mindset of, yeah, but we have our, we're going to have our stuff online now.

Like nodding. Look, they want acceptance that that's differentiating. that in every industry. It's like, really, you are? Okay, wow, you're going to sell a lot more. I'm thinking like the elf movie, you know, like, thinking back to them like, yeah, sure, all right, gumballs and, and yeah, like. Wow.

Yeah, wow. Okay. Really differentiated. You can sell online. Okay, I could be selling T-shirts at five minutes on Shopify. Yeah. So, again, thinking about what I would almost drill down that to online Omni Channel. So forever we thought of Omni Channel was integration of offline and online.

I think what we're seeing here is in 21, there's going to be an expectation for consumers and a need for brands to be Omnichannel in their online approaches. What I mean by that is that exactly what you just said. synergy across those platforms. Okay, so what do I mean for a real wide example? One of the key trends we're talking about Sue, I will be bringing up is social selling. But again, your social experience with your online experience, with your chat experience,

your products, your services, your communications, across all digital being integrated and having a cohesive experience for the customer. Yes. Because what happens now, In a lot of instances, yes, it's still disconnected offline and online, but in this world where the digital genie isn't going back in the bottle and consumers are shopping you across these channels and experiencing your brand, if you don't have a digital integrated approach, you're going to be left behind. Right. And you're already behind.

Yeah. But I think you're going to see budgets have already started to head this way with digital ads and stuff, which is where you kind of want with this at beginning. But the brands that really kind of get it together for having the right hand talk to the left across all of these channels. And it's both internally and externally. Yeah. Because a lot of what happens is disconnect. And I've seen this because having worked with the brands we work with now and brands I've worked with in the past. The disconnection of all of these parts is so apparent.

Because even like five years ago, working with a brand I won't even name, how just disparate these parts. Well, that's with the online team. You know, like the brand team. That's the online team. We're talking about the digital team. Like, I'm the brand team, digital team. How is this even?

It's the same company. It's the same company. We work for the same place. We're selling the same. here. Well, we're trying to sell more of these. Well, and what are we trying to do? We're trying to get more service contract. Okay. All right. That's the goal. These

all have to talk to each other. Yes. And I think with COVID exponentially increasing the online channels, the expectation for those things to really live and breathe and act together is going to be really important. And I think

you know, I'm going to say it now. Linear TV is D-E-A-D. Dead. Dead is a door now. And I'm just going to say it right now and somebody listening to me and I still have media plan of friends in New York that buy a lot of TV and I get it. But it's dead. It has, it is, if you have more than 10% of your budget in linear TV, it's in the wrong place. Yeah. That is your, uh, your exclamation point trend there. That should be a trend on its own, but I've been saying because here's the deal. And I will say this. We were talking about like, what's changed. Even 18 months ago, I wouldn't have said that. Yeah. But people now, even when they're home, unless you're like 60 plus, there is,

linear TV is not being watched. I was 18 months ago, I was watching news in linear TV. I'm 43 years old, and I'm out of a digital agency, but I don't do it anymore. And I don't know exactly what changed. And I have cable TV still at home. I watch sports only on it. That's it. That's the only time I watched linear TV.

and I don't know what's changed, but something in my own habits have changed. And the need for people to realize that that digital, that everything needs to, and I even hesitate sometimes to putting the word digital in front of it because it's really just where marketing and eyeballs are today. Yeah. I think that brings a kind of extended trend of advertising approach

is with that being dead, you need to stop thinking of ads as commercials. Yes. Like they are like you are going to digital channels with different placements and different looks. Stop making a 30 second TV commercial to try to work on Instagram. It's not going to be the same. That's exactly right.

And I think kind of going back like when you are making these things, you're going to make, you're going to be making a lot different, a lot more formats, a lot different placements. But you're going to have the same key brand messaging of like you want to find that key. pillar, maybe a couple supportive things, but it's all going to work across all your channels. Like, you have to differentiate yourself online. Otherwise, you're going nowhere. And, like, you can try to be all things to all the people and like, oh, we do everything. We do it all. But, like, I think it's way more effective when you're honest. And you say, we do this, but we're not for this. If you're looking for this, we, like, are probably not your best

bet. And I've seen a lot of, like, new companies kind of do that. really well. And like, unless you've got that Coca-Cola ad spend that those massive budgets and you can spend a few hundred thousand dollars a month, you need to focus on what you can actually do. Yep. I love it. All right. I'm just going to tee up number two.

I put you on the spot for number one. And that was a broad one for sure for us. But number two for me and might be what I think, 2021 to me is going to be the year of social selling. I think I've talked about this in previous episodes a little bit. We've reached this plateau of demand with capability across the channels. And the ability to do what we just talked about with number one, which was integrate the experiences.

Because it was so clunky before on Instagram or Facebook, like, you know, 17 clicks later, and I still don't have, you know, I haven't bought anything yet. Right. combined with the interactivity within the content itself. But you finally got the platforms figuring it out. I think you're going to see you've got the Shopify integration with TikTok. I think TikTok's app platform is going to continue to evolve quickly. Right.

So it's a matter of time where you're going to see direct buying within the platform. They're already linked with Shopify. So there's some integration already there. But I think you're going to see this. And I even lump into this, you know, it's a really large category. But even the influencer marketing within social and the ability to buy and purchase within that whole loop, I think all of these things are coming to ahead here in 2021. So I see social selling, you know, if it's anywhere from, you know, 8 to 15 percent of your overall e-com, I see it double-tripling, easily being potentially 30 percent or more of the economy. the overall online buying pie for brands that do this well and leverage the platforms correctly.

Yeah, I agree. And I think I see this a lot with kind of the like the side hustlers. Like I see a lot of like young college age students doing this where they're running businesses exclusively online, like exclusively on like social media. Not even, they won't even have a website. It'll be just Instagram where they can do the tagable shopping. and I've seen it seems like a lot of like people doing side hustles are utilizing it even more quickly than big brands are and they're going it's like going really well for them because there's other they'll like integrate with Etsy and other things they'll never have like an actual website but they'll make a lot of money for it. I had some friends jump on that in college a few years ago and like one dude paid his rent and like put a down payment on a house just from doing like a few hours a week.

win like you'd see massive e-commerce brands not even like testing out anything it's like you you this is like there's money to be made here these new platforms like you kind of have to like get with the program a little bit not be this like slow moving like wait till it picks up like if you want to be cutting edge you have to do it this is why the d toc brands are killing the major brands and just to ultimately get bought by the big brands right it's the nimbleness of of leveraging these things fast enough. You know, that's what it is. It's like a slow bus to China.

Like, it's like it, for those of us in the U.S. And if you're coming from China, China to U.S., probably need a boat, so maybe not a bus. Yeah. But nonetheless, it's just like, oh, let's, it's so funny. Like, we had James Gregson, who's with Lego, one of the creative directors, brilliant guy talking, and he was even admitting, you know, for Lego, like,

getting that bus rolling, you know, like how slow it can be. Like they try to be on the advance of things, but it does like stall innovation. Yeah. Just the red tape that's involved with the larger brands and integrating some of these things, while the DTC companies and the quick young entrepreneurs can like, you know, they're on TikTok doing videos and selling stuff on their econ store within two days. Yeah. And it takes even the largest best brands in the world two months.

And it used to take two years. But now they're doing it two months and they've gotten better. But it's like some of these trends come and go faster than you can. But leveraging social selling, I do think that B2B has got to carve out their niche in this. Yes. I think you're going to see more. You've got to make it easier for businesses to do business with you online through e-commerce and leveraging the aspect of social selling in some way.

I think the businesses that figure this out will really win in 21. Yes, absolutely. Like, you've got to be able to transition from no trade shows. And also, like, the webinar is kind of overplayed at this point. Like, having social channels and doing the social selling creates this, like, perfect hub of content for people to go to on their own time instead of trying to schedule out a webinar that's just going to get a meeting, like, scheduled over.

Totally agree. So social selling big on the 21 trends because opportunity is finally meeting capability along with demand. And so that's going to be a big one. Let's talk, Josh, just for the sake of numbering, we'll call it number three. But I think it's as much a trend or an observation. Cookie-less. Yes. So starting in 2022, Google, some of the other platforms, Apple and other, if I,

already like started to integrate this, but there's going to be no more cookie retargeting. So I'm going to ask you to kind of give anyone listening that might be, you know, not, I won't even say digitally deprived, but they may not be in it every day. Maybe give everyone a broad understanding of what that, what both, what the, how the cookie, how the cookie crumbles, literally. It's crumbling. It is crumbling. But the impact of this and really what it's doing today.

So like how is the cookie used today and what the impact of that going away might be? And then we can both kind of chime in on what we see coming out of that. Yeah. So the cookie in its broadest form, there's been minor updates and stuff, is close to 20 years old and technology-wise. And it has a shelf life. That's why they call it a cookie. It's a small little thing. And it deteriorates.

So like 30, 60, 90 days out, it goes away. It doesn't taste as good. Yeah, it doesn't taste as good. So they're going to get you a fresh cookie. The cookie is really, like, really effective because whenever you go to a site and whenever you go, like, check out a product, check out a service, like watch a video, go anywhere online or like do your ad to cart, start a checkout process. Like these cookies are collecting data and they're saving it to your browser. whether you're on your phone, your computer, sometimes they're interconnected. And nowadays, you can even do it through connected TV platforms and, like, video game platforms,

like Xbox, PS4, Roku, like smart TVs. So this is all collecting data to, for a number of reasons. One, it's going to collect your behavioral stuff, so like what you're interested in. So your ads and social ads are going to be more curated to match what you are interested in just based off your browsing behavior. And keep in mind, like, what you're searching is signaling the computers, so it might not be guessing exactly what you're into. But, um, so this is really important for small brands who are trying to reconnect with people

who are like started the checkout process, but kind of abandoned it at some point. Like this gives the cookie gave people the ability to send them more ads later, the retargeting ads, and do follow-up emails and stuff. and a lot of marketers have kind of started leaning into their targeting and not their messaging to where it's just kind of an okay message of like oh we'll provide this service for you but it's highly targeted so it's reaching the right people now that's going away so now you're going to bound to the social selling using the platforms you have your content creation but you're going to be a lot more limited on targeting like Apple

Facebook put out a notification to all like ads manager users where they said that Apple's already with their newest update is going to severely limit cookie use. And so a lot of iPhone users, which is a lot of people, you're not going to be able to retarget them nearly as well as you could. So that means like machine learning optimization is out. Like AI driven like stuff is out. So you can't you can't optimize for purchases. You now have to. optimize for a higher funnel thing, like optimizing for clicks. I know a lot that kind of like, it's not going to be like useful to a lot of people unless you're in like manager like ads platforms.

But for those of you are, like I think it's time to really kind of reflect where are your ads going. Like is it doesn't make sense contextually. Like you want to think of your consumer. You want to think about what your ad is saying. Is it different from, is it standing out from the feed? I don't think we're still kind of seeing how it's going to affect geographical targeting. I know Facebook's really fighting that because if we take away geographical targeting,

then only the massive national brands with the major budgets will be able to be seen. And your mom and pop stores with a few thousand dollars or a few hundred dollars ad spend are going to be shoved down the feed and they might be showing up three states over. For anyone listening, does this mean that will you be able to retarget? So if I'm a company and today, you know, you place a pixel on your website that again tracks, you know, the behavior and all those things, will people be able to retarget people that come to your site? Some, some will.

It will depend on your website. It'll depend on your browser and your platform. like if you're on Google Chrome versus Safari, it's going to depend on how much Apple's allowing you to do versus how much Google's going to let you do. There is a lot of promise where there is a lot of native, kind of like the walled gardens, kind of have a lot of safety measures put in place for their own self

of like a Facebook embedded site is going to be able to retarget on Facebook and Instagram. But I think a lot of the, potentially a lot of the cross-channel targeting is going to be lost. but I think but like general web visits are going to be pretty targetable but you're probably going to lose a lot of the finite capabilities on certain platforms and that's kind of where it's kind of up in the air where it's like they say it's ending for some people some platforms are rolling out like the end way sooner some are waiting until later and they're really kind of

ambiguous on what's going to be allowed and out loud and there's already some like beta testing of new like alternatives to the cookie but we're it's kind of like up in the air of is there something that's going to be effective developed fast enough or are we going to lose everything altogether for the sake of I guess like internet an an an inaninony an anenomidy I don't know an anenemy an enanimity yeah anonymity I don't know something like that not being able to know who's where on the web on the on the on the on the internet internet Yeah. But here's the thing. One, be careful what you ask for, consumers. So you want all this privacy, and I get that. I mean, nobody wants, you know, everyone's stuff out there.

But the relevancy of ads is going to get interesting in the next couple years. Right. There's not a replace. But I'm also, you know, what I think happens is innovations, when you get it, when these tech companies get their back against small innovation seems to happen. And so I think you're going to see some kind of replacement of this somehow. That would be my expectation. Too much money on the line. And then the other part of this is, you know, the scary part is, like you said, with big brands or small brands.

Big brands have data management, DMPs, data management platforms, other things, better mechanisms for gathering first-party data. So it's back to the, you know, kind of like the joke earlier with Bezos and Amazon, like the risk get richer. But the bigger brands are a better position for this. smaller brands that don't have these kind of ad tech stacks are in a weaker position. But I think my takeaway from all of this is encouragement. We tell every client that we have this collect first party data. Yes. If we get people to your website, if we get people to your store, if we get people interacting

with you, you've got to have a mechanism for collecting first party data. Name, phone number, email. And I don't say that so that we can span them. It's so that we can serve them up, relative content, have a relationship with them. Yes. Do email marketing. Do social marketing. All of those things in a relationship way.

So this isn't about spamming. But if you've got a handraiser, you've got to be collecting first party data so that you can remark it to them. It's going to be more important than ever because our custom audience lists are going to be very heavily reliant on having that first party data. And I think that to me, for 21, anyone paying attention for a trend or takeaway, that's why we need to pay attention to cookies going away. And that's important for large brands or small brands, but even more so for small brands because they don't have some of the technologies in place that the big brands do. Yeah.

And I think it's more, it's more incentive to, like, really get online in, like, have website, like, options that appeal to. the internet as opposed to just your city or like your location if you're a local person um like having your services be available like nationwide would give you like better opportunities to like advertise easier and not have to rely on cookies too um and i think the relationship part is a huge thing um because if you i always like to think of with the internet and like keeping the relationships and your messaging worthwhile and making it memorable, you kind of have to treat it as being like your neighborhood mom and pop hangout spot of like

they're going to know, like, if you go in there regular enough, like they're going to know your name, they're going to be able to call you if they like need something. They'll ask for your input, your feedback. You're going to be a loyal customer to them and you're going to build that relationship over time. Like you kind of want to approach digital in a similar way of like you want to collect their information, stay in touch with them, get the feedback. back because they're your customer, like they're going to teach you a different perspective of, like, what they need for solutions, like how they can improve your product and stuff.

It's kind of like you're super fan. You want to leverage the people closest to you who are like regularly interacting and have the experience. Love it. Finally, we're going to trim this down to four key trims. I think that's enough. We've got a lot in depth here. Let's talk about content changes, you know, trends, you know, content development, you know, how, you know, businesses should speak to their customers, the changes in the formats, all of those things. But maybe kind of our broad blanket kind of, you know, trends and content changes for 21.

Where would you start? I think starting would be looping back to what we kind of touched on earlier is the clarity. and the honesty of and when I say like like honest like you want to be truthful with your honesty and not just be sincere like there is a lot of brands this year with COVID a lot of political movements a lot of like social political stuff they were being very sinuous like sincere and what they were saying what they were putting on their social feeds but they weren't being necessarily honest of like not every brand is a social justice like warrior like there were there was plenty of brands and a lot of them got exposed of like really trying to visually look diverse like

visually stand for diversity like if you look at the bon appetit like example like they were having they had a huge YouTube channel and they tried to promote different cultures of food all these things and turns out for the video placements, only their white, like, cooks were being paid for the video stuff. They all had salaries, but the white chefs were getting paid extra for their video appearances while everyone else was not. So it's stuff like, and they were trying to post about, like, other, like, current events and stuff. It's kind of like you need to, like, people kind of see through the BS of, like, online. and that's like the internet brings a lot of like transparency.

Like I think if you're going to stand for something online, you need to like fully do it throughout your whole company. And that's where I think it is okay to not stand for something. Like that like you can, you don't have to come out and take a huge public stance. Right. On every single thing that goes on. That's not utilizing your like social channels well.

And it's not like it's not going to set you up for success because people are going to like people are going to like people are going to snout. smell that out sooner or later. And it just kind of like messes up. Like it kind of just, you fall into the noise. Like only, I think brands need to become more focused and their messaging and more kind of

self-aware and honest of like, we do this and this is what we're good at and we're for these people. I think if you can stick to that, you're kind of golden. Yeah, right. It prevents a lot of issues and it prevents a lot of like, confusion and like misleads too even like in a practical sense of sales um i think it's just you know brands mass marketing is kind of over i mean you know like if there's one like takeaway

from maybe all of these things it's like mass is dead i think like it's it's it's got to be personal it's got to mean something you've got to be relevant you've got to be real you've got to have it all tied together and you'll win. There's enough consumers and there's enough scale that if you do that, you know, like I think these days of like, I mean, don't give you wrong, Amazon who has all things for all people because they aggregate, they're a curator. Right. It's a little different.

But like as a brand or as an entity, you need to hone in on who your audience is and speaking to them more clearly than how all things for everyone. Yeah, I agree. I think when you look into like, I guess culturally speaking of Gen Z and millennial, like, thinking, we're kind of, we're not even kind of. Like, we are in a, what people are calling the post postmodernism or they refer, like, there's all these concepts of like the new Dada movement. It's like new sincerity. It's just kind of this hyper honest, like, like they're kind of given up on society. is kind of if you kind of do some,

I would recommend doing some Googling on the original, like, um, like Dada movement and like, think about the, I said it before. Just absurd, like absurdism.

Yes. Whereas just kind of like, like nothing matters, but to sum it up is like, society isn't matter. Like all this like separate brand entity kind of thing. It doesn't really. is not real. Like, we're just people who are doing things. I think that's a great approach and

messaging of like when you're on an ad, like people know you're in an ad. Like, you can be honest to say, we're a company trying to sell you something, but we're a team of people who know about this thing and we're here to help you who needs help with this thing. We will do it at a fair exchange of like, we can help you for this much money. I think people who are really jumping into that well, like Ryan Reynolds, if you look at his ads, he's like, he will get in a video and say, hi, this is an ad. I make gin. Buy this gin. I would really like you to try it. And it's just like, there's no, like, even there's like a lot of really funny commercials like that where it's like it's super self-aware. Yeah. You seen even ATT did that with like their latest ad.

It used to do, it used to be called word of mouth advertising. Yeah. Like using the commercial with the girl that's been their ads last few years, you know, he's like, I mean, they're, and it, it's like semi-okay, you know, but I thought that was the best part of it was like that real self-realization of, uh, this is really a TV commercial. I think it, like, it honestly, if you really think about it, it kind of makes things easier. It takes the pressure off of like, if I remember like starting to get into branding and stuff in like, I was around 2008 to 2010 when everyone's like, you don't need a solely the brand. Your graphic has to look perfect your fonts have to be pristine and now it's like man just make the website work like yeah give me

the place to like email or call someone and like just tell me what your product does i don't care what it looks like um there's just so much noise out there i think if if you're just simple and you're like this is what we again i've said this throughout the whole thing is like this is who we are we're a bunch of people who know how to do this thing will help you will help you either get this product or do this. People buy into that. People like to have, people like to buy into other people. People will support others.

And we've seen that a lot this year of supporting small businesses, supporting groups of people who are just trying to do their business. And that's it. I think, you know, back to, and, you know, I'm even going to say it out loud, Riley, this is going to be, you know, like our headline for this, you know, whole thing. And maybe it's less that linear team. TV's dead and it's mass marketing's dead. Yeah.

You know, like I won't pick on just linear TV, but these mass channels where, look, I get it. You want reach and you want frequency, but it's perceived reach. You can drive up the frequency, but it's perceived reach because unless it's, and I know there's like nightly news, like I can understand ads on nightly news and I can add ads on the Super Bowl. Totally makes sense because you get the reach. There's just no other reach that you can get like that. So I get it.

But you're going to have trouble getting the frequency that you need because Super Bowl's once a year. A lot of these sporting events have gotten so splintered too, like with attention and everything. So it's embracing not being overwhelmed by all the channels, but finding your channels and getting reaching frequency there, leveraging, you know, influencers and all these things and like leaning into the realities of now instead of being scared of the realities now. Because right now it could be scared of shit. It's hell.

Like, holy shit, there's, we got 37 channels that we could be marketing. And I even follow in this sometimes. It's like, oh, God, I've got YouTube. We've got Facebook View. We've got TikTok. I mean, like, all these channels. Lean into where your customers are. Yeah.

And be real open and honest with them and build a community. Yes. Like, build a community. Like, if you want long-term business, you have to build a community and provide a place where like-minded people can come together, share knowledge, learn from you, and it will generate revenue the long term. Yes, I think we've said this in meetings before. We're marketing to people.

We're not like I live in the analytics side. Like I'm staring at numbers all day, but these are people viewing things and interacting. Yep. Like in that, your messaging needs to reflect that and your whole approach needs to. B2H. Yeah. Business to human. Yes.

Yes, it's humanity wins every time. But, you know, humanity at the highest level, but then heavily sprinkled with relevancy and specificity around what you are selling, who is buying it, why they're buying it, why it's important to them, why, like you mentioned before, like, hey, why is this, yeah, it's great you have an offer, but why do I care? You know, like how do we make that relevant to them? Yeah. And I think that's got to go throughout your content in 2021.

Yeah, absolutely. Mass marketing is dead. Mass marketing is dead. There is room for you. Like just. That's the thing. That's what people, you know, the, the boardroom gets scared here in terms like that. Yeah.

Because they want, you know, more revenue. But the pie can be big enough and you can create sub-segments of your offering. So we'll say differentiation can be. scary of like you're you're seeing the monkey do or monkey see monkey don't i guess like monkey see monkey do something else yes like but brands are doing it well um and there's there's room for you to be different yeah i love it cool so there are your marketing trends for 2021 we uh hope that is helpful we continue to drive what i think is one of the best marketing uh podcasts in the country um and really appreciate your insights josh

Oh, yeah. I have to give my insights. Are the outsides now? Yeah, the outsides are now. My insights are now outside. Your insights are outsides. Cool. We hope everyone has a great 2021, whether you're listening to this, pre-holidays or post-holidays.

Keep listening along. You can follow us at all times at theradcast.com or on Instagram at the. The.rad. dot cast and anywhere else you get your social content or content in general you can find the radcast and we'll see you next time bye yo guys what's up ryan alford here thanks so much for listening really appreciate it but do us a favor if you've been enjoying the radcast you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else we'd really appreciate it and go leave us a review at apple or spotify do us a solid tell more people leave us some reviews and hey here's the best news

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