Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - The Radcast 2022 Marketing Trends with Ryan Alford and Reh Harvey

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

In this episode of the Radcast, Host Ryan Alford and Rey Harvey, Director of Digital Media at Radical, break down the marketing trends for 2022 that all businesses should be paying attention to. From B2B to B2C they cover trends across categories.They also had a little recap and evaluated some of the major trends that kicked-off 2021.Key Trends:ADD America - Video Format is EverythingSocial Livestream Shopping 2.0Social Messaging and Text Marketing finally chip away at Email MarketingLinkedIn is about way more than jobs and salesBack to the Past - Why Branding Matters in 2022 more than ever 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.

The notion of social live stream selling. Yeah. It's been huge this year. Started in Asia last year, 2020, blown up in America this year for a lot of brands. I call this the QVC effect. This isn't like a new trim, but back to that first party data. Yep. You know, getting that first party relationship.

And what better way to do that than if you're building the community, they're naturally going to hand that data over to you. Exactly. It feels more organic. The funny thing is, if you. get into like a 15 or 14 year old BMW. They have the voice button on steering. Oh, yeah.

Like 19 or 2004. We're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to a special edition of the Radcast. The 2022 Marketing Trends Edition, I'm joined. by Ray Harvey, our director of digital media. What's up, brother? How are you? Hey, I'm good, man.

You know, just getting ready for the new years. I know. I'm glad to have you on the show finally. Yeah, finally. I know. You know, like me or something. Crushing it. I know. Like, I've been invited. You don't even say that. True. You have. You're going, hey, you got to come on. We got to do it. Damn job gets in the way sometimes. Right. I mean, being busy. It's a crazy thing. I know. So I'm excited. You know, we do this. We've been doing this, it's our third or fourth edition. Obviously, the audience has grown and changed. Thanking all the audience out there. I just saw our numbers today.

We're officially top 90 on Apple business marketing podcasts. And we remain the top 30 on Spotify. Love that. I know. So we appreciate all the loyal listeners. We hope we give you both some entertainment and some education here on our 20, 22 trends. You know, before we jump in, I'm just going to completely put you on the spot, Ray. I'm not, you know, but, no, I mean, what do you think of 2021 overall?

I don't want to talk too much. I want to forward thing most of it. But like, are there anything that's like, you know, has been like real surprising for you this year from just a marketing and digital perspective? Yeah, I think from the digital perspective, at least, it was definitely a year of an eruption with the iOS update and having to learn how to navigate that. And I would say also chaos, but chaos in a good way with the NFTs. this whole metaverse talk and what does that look like and just trying to figure it out. So it definitely feels like a year of figuring things out again and just constantly learning and constantly.

Yeah, it's like all that buzz around cookies going away. And I don't know that we've, you know, because Google extended things, I don't know that we've completely felt that. But we definitely felt it within, you know, buying ads for our clients on the iOS 14 stuff. And, you know, the impact that's had with targeting. because it has definitely shook up, especially Facebook ads, particularly. You've had to, I don't want to say definitely there's been a component with Facebook that you've got to know what you're doing within the ads manager and all that. That's never been not true.

But it was definitely a little easier a couple years ago that I think everybody made their money. Everyone earned their paychecks yourself included kind of navigating through that. Absolutely. I mean, it was just from the whole, and we all knew it was coming, the whole privacy stuff, and we were all getting prepared for it. And then it just kind of hit like a wall, especially on Facebook. Like you said, Google is kind of prolonging things. But even so, I think when that happens, it's going to be a process of relearning again. And it's always constantly learning, but just figuring it out. I know. And then the NFTs, I think that's another one. It's like the Wild Wild West of crypto and blockchain and all that.

And it's like, you know, I'm going to talk a little bit about that when we get into 2020. too. As much as I think of myself, our agency name is radical. I think of myself as progressive, but I'm a practical person when it comes to marketing and like the implications because I like, I'm kind of an action guy. And I, other than buying some personal NFTs for investment or some crypto for investment, there's not action that I can take either for one of my own brands or the clients that we serve. You know, I can't, I can't act. upon NFTs. I mean, you could for bigger brand that have deeper pockets. But for this medium size companies that we help every day, and especially in B2B, which is a lot of our clients,

you know, I would get laughed out of the room trying to, certainly they want to know about it. They don't want to be behind. Right. But there's not an action I can take that will lead to business or brand awareness for them today. Absolutely. You know. And so it's kind of like you don't want to be behind. I think I think you've got a little bit of the FOMO right going on right now or or fear of being left behind. Yeah. But there's not like practical stuff that can be done for brands of all sizes. Right. Right. And I think you hit on it. I think being progressive is one thing, but you still have to have a strategy that makes sense. Yep. And like you said, brush medium sizes. The NFT world doesn't make sense yet. I think it will one day, but yes. I agree. And it'll be interesting where it all plays out. And if for some reason my

kids are right and it all ends up on Roblox. Damn it. I mean, who knows what Metaverse will win. Right, right. But we'll see. Let's kick off 2020 talk here. And really, you know, you do it. We joke before the episodes, you know, about keywords and things like that. And invariably, this will be titled 2022 marketing trends. But it's really, again, back to that practical.

It's like the here and the now and we're in December now. So thus we are into 2020 planning and all that. So it's certainly the foreseeable future for, you know, ware marketing, technology, messaging and just overall opportunities for brands and people that are listening to kind of get ahead. You know, I'll let you kick it off. Like, is there a first and foremost thing that you're seeing, you know, is either expanding or starting in 2022?

Yeah, I think, and this isn't going to be super surprising, but I think we're moving towards a Reels in a TikTok video world. And the big players in the game, Facebook, they've all said it. They've all come out and set it to our face. So it's like how much clear they can they get. That's where we're heading. That's where they're going to start, I mean, promoting. They're going to put some boosting behind it.

They won't say that. But definitely change the algorithm to. It is. And I, you know, I titled this, you and I were on the same page. We both kind of started there with our trends and we were kind of pre-planning. I call it ADD America because with the, it's both the functionality of the apps. Right. The swiping fast nature of the UI combined with our fleeting attention span.

And it's whether you physically or on Adderall or not or whatever, it's still we're all a bit ADD. You know, our interest in trends is fleeting. are interested in the videos is like get to the point jack you know and i think to your point via ticot facebook reels instagram reels uh even linkedin is coming out with short form video which we'll get to you know you're seeing um i i i kind of made this statement that short firm is getting bigger and long form is getting quicker because i don't think that long form is going I think long form will have its day. Yep.

But I think what you're going to see is the proliferation of the video experience and content taking on. It might be a three minute or two minute video, but it's still going to move quicker. Right. I think you're going to see, you know, some of that stuff that, you know, 15 second TikTok video that's boom, boom, boom, like frenetic. I think you're going to see some of that in the longer form video perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I also think on TikTok specifically, I think there. lifespan for trends, it's already super short. If you know about a trend, you're already behind, but I think it's going to get shorter. Yeah. And I think TikTok videos are going to become more entertaining and the fact that they're going to be entertaining with a purpose. Yep. And so I definitely see that. I mean, it's not going to be just an app for Gen Z anymore. Everybody's going to start to get on TikTok. The question's now becoming, have you seen this TikTok, whether then are you on TikTok? That's right. Because that kind of was the question, just at the beginning of this year's, are you on TikTok? Right. Is TikTok growing? Yeah.

Yeah, now it's like, but have you seen this? Right. Exactly. That's a good way to put it. And you use the buzzword there, which for me is, you know, this is my soapbox. I talk about all the time. On social media, you're educating or entertaining. Right.

And if you're doing both, you're really winning. But entertainment, you're entertained or die in today's world. Because in this world where the smartphones, the television, any ad like contact content is an interruption. Absolutely. to my entertainment. Yep. So you've got to play that entertainment or edutainment, right.

Game or you're getting swiped faster than, you know, you can take a breath. And it's funny too because I do think that's where TikTok has their work cut out for them in 2020 is with the ad game. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about it how ads on TikTok just piss people off right now because they just want to swipe. Yes. So figuring out what that looks like in 2022 is going to be TikTok challenge. I'm sure they're already. ahead of the game and just hasn't said anything. But I think, I think you nailed it. I think the,

you know, some of the shopping integration. I think for them is going to be really big, you know, like, because that's going to help maybe. But I do think brand placement. Yeah. You know, within the natural form, it's going to play a more branding medium perhaps. Right. You know, and I think once they get the Shopify linkage and the, in the shopping, no matter what your e-commerce platform is, Once they get products, like loading your product catalog into it and all that, once they figure all that out, certainly it starts to make sense. But I think you're kind of chipping away at the brand a bit for now.

Right. If you can kind of get with the right influencers and stuff like that and kind of get product placement or product mention. Yeah, 100%. I think that's the name of the game right now for sure. Cool. Well, I'm going to go to my kind of, you know, first or along the same thing.

I think we've seen this. We have some clients that are just blowing up. up in this, but the notion of social live stream selling. Yeah. It's been huge this year, started in Asia last year at 2020, blown up in America this year for a lot of brands. I call this the QVC effect. Right. For all the middle-aged women out there to do it.

But it's blown up this year. And I think, you know, for a lot of reasons, it's, you know, the one thing that I think QVC always did well. Obviously, they had the live component, but they built a sense of community. Right. You know, it was like they got to know the host. They got to know the, you know, the brand of QVC and the brand of the products because a lot of times they'd be sharing products and it'd be whoever the founder was on stage with the personalities. And so you're seeing a lot of that with the brands that are doing well this year with live selling. You know, they sell out of stuff. There's that scarce.

effect plus promotion plus community I think really has become the secret sauce and I think I'm calling it kind of live stream shopping 2.0 because I think what you're going to see is you're going to see that community engagement get even more involved where they're doing a live shopping session and they bring a customer into the live right that might have already bought it it might do a live review right there oh I've already got this necklace look how beautiful it is and like wow it's a person personalized or interaction with the with the host or brand personality I think you're going to see that community engagement kind of come to life more and even some level I think customer service live customer service might start to hit off of kind of that same notion I think you're going to see

like just this whole community development kind of take it to another level yeah the one thing I love about just the live social selling is it scalable too I mean your mom and pop store can do it all the way up to the big brands, the million billion dollar brands, they can all do it. And so it really just comes down to the strategy of, hey, is this a live social selling where you have to come into the furniture store to get 10% off today? Or is it a, I don't know, X, Y, or Z for the big brands. But I think that to me is the, and that's with all social media, right? That's why it's taken off. My recommendation, you nailed it, is the scalability of this is both e-commerce and if you have brick and mortar.

Because if I was brick and mortar, I would literally have a 10 by 10 section studio cornered off in my building or in my back room and I'd have live selling going on three times a week. Absolutely. And products, whether it's furniture, whether it's jewelry, whether it's T-shirts, jeans, whatever it is, I would have a live studio section going on within my brick and mortar. And then if you're e-com, wherever your office is or whatever, same thing. Live studio, that's how most of them are doing it. But this is not just an e-commerce game. Not at all. It's brick and mortar, huge opportunity.

It's another distribution channel. Right. I think it's, I mean, it's B2C, obviously, but it's also B2B. I mean, if I think of, I mean, ultra fabrics are client, it's a look at how this fabric feels, how it can look up against this color. Things you can do now with an image, but it takes that one step further in connecting with the human emotion to say, hey, this feels a certain way, or this would look great in this concept. There's a difference

I kind of compare it to talking over email and talking face to face. Yep. Like we can still get the message across, but there's something different about talking face to face. Absolutely. Yep. And I think you know it with the B2B. I think it does cross the gamut of personalization and

even with influence or just some things bringing them in. There's just so many ways to bring it. It doesn't, your live selling or promotion or sharing doesn't have to take place within your physical building. You can bring in influencers or whatever, do multi-person lives, different things.

It's just really that, again, back to that word community, the community opportunity and the realness of that organic interaction. Right. And I think that's the, I mean, you'll hear me say it a thousand times over. That's common, the common thread that will always stay the same. All social media, all tactics, go back to the storytelling, go back to the connectivity of the people using it. It's kind of funny that we as humans use a digital platform to connect.

But that's the world we're in. It is. And I think that's where we're going to keep going to keep going to even with all the talk of the metaverse and all that kind of stuff and what does connectivity look like there. Who knows? But at this point, that's the goal. Yep, 100%. So live social selling, live stream selling, whatever you want to call it, 2.0 is coming in 2022. What else is on your list, my friend?

Yeah. I think one of the things that it'll be interesting to see. And we've already seen a little bit of this, but it goes back to the community building aspect with live social selling and everything else. But the Facebook, the Instagrams of the world, going to have just constant Facebook lives or niche audio groups, which is still trying to find its footing, but I think it's going to stick. And Facebook groups as a whole, I think if we can start looking at Facebook and Instagram as niche platforms and start saying, hey, here's a Facebook group for the furniture lovers or the, the world or the digital marketers of the world stuff that we already do but it's going to become more of a fourth off it's going to become more of a in your face this is a specialized group and it works with live social selling because if you're in this group you can get 20% off when we go live at

at 8 p.m. tonight and it kind of captivates that audience even more rather than just having the giant Facebook audience 100%. This is like niche marketing 101. This is how do you aggregate your super fans? Right. as a brand. Exactly. And how do you create connection so that you have that interpop, you know, kind of polarity of like coming together so that they share ideas, share stuff? So how do you aggregate your super fans and create community for them, which then, you know, ladders up to so many other opportunities. You know, you learn from them.

You sell to them. They learn and share with each other. And so that kind of community aspect is, you know, again, right at the center of it. Right. And I think Twitter too, I mean, I don't want to leave them out there. I know we're talking about Facebook a lot. But I think one of Jack's last great ideas was the super follower and the paying per month on Twitter and being able to captivate that audience even more. Like you're saying, aggregate the audience because that to me, if you can talk directly to a person, again, it goes back to connectivity.

You're not talking to the masses anymore. You're kind of personalizing it to people you know that's going to respond. That's right. And it kind of all plays into this isn't like a new. trim, but back to that first party data. Yep. You know, getting that first party relationship and what better way to do that than if you're building the community, they're naturally going to hand that data over to you.

Exactly. It feels more organic. Leading into the next one, I think we're going to see, this has already kind of been proliferation, but I think email marketing is, this is not some prognostication that marketing is dying. I still am a huge fan of email marketing. Right. But I do think that we're on the cusp of like true.

share going away from email marketing in this social messaging SMS realm. Because, you know, SMS proliferation has grown tremendously. There's becoming more acceptability. It might be annoying. I know people get annoyed. I get annoyed sometimes, especially if I don't opt in. Yeah. I really get annoyed with, you know, SMS marketing.

But you're seeing more and more of that. But whether it's WhatsApp, whether it's Facebook Messenger, IG Messenger, Instagram Messenger, TikTok, LinkedIn. I think you're going to see marketing proliferate even more within those messaging channels and start to chip away at just pure email. Not that email is going to go away, but I just think there's some fatigue that's taking place with email marketing. Yes, there's fatigue with the other ones, but I think there's a little bit of acceptability

because they're new and they're, you know, more organic and maybe, I don't know, back to that community aspect of where you are, what you're doing. Right. Versus kind of interrupting just, well, this is my personal email box. Right. So, yeah. Yeah, and I think, I think, and we've seen it with our clients, email has to start to become more informative and more valuable content rather than just here's a product.

Yep. People never want to be sold to. That's always been the case. That's not a new trend. And they still don't want to be sold to. Exactly. valuable information, which is why the community aspect is starting to grow up a little bit. Absolutely.

And I think you're, but the one thing that you are seeing is, you know, we do this for some of our clients. You can do mass DM campaigns and different things like that at scale. And because of, and I think, you know, Instagram at least does this well. Some of the others are starting to do it better is kind of the separation of your inboxes, the channels that they go in. Gmail does this pretty good, but so that not everything goes into like your primary box, you can kind of, you know, stiff.

I get a lot of DMs anyway, you know, all my channels, but they at least go to the different inboxes so that I can kind of go, okay, I know that's probably promotional or whatever, but I do look at them. Yeah, I mean, I get probably 100 DMs a day and I look at almost everyone eventually, you know, so it gets my, it gets an impression on me one way or the other, and I'll sift through the stuff that's of interest and this not, but I've bought products that I've gotten Instagram DMs on. I've definitely followed some people I was like, you know, went down the rabbit hole and you're okay, it's pretty interesting. So I think you're going to see, and you've got automation tools that

have come out. I'll give a props to one of the companies we've had on the podcast. Larry came on, who's the CEO of Mobile Monkey, which does automated Instagram messaging, pretty slick. And so you're seeing some proliferation of different tools. within these channels, and I think you're going to start to see it, maybe chip away at, you know, just naturally going, okay, we're going to email them. You know, okay, maybe there's another channel. Right. And I think it just becomes a holistic point in view. So why are you emailing them?

What are you emailing them about? And then can you also turn in some SMS marketing with that or some DMs? That way it's not just a, here's an email at 5 p.m. because this program says it's the best time. You actually look at that person as a human and say, if I were them, what would I want to see? What would I want to hear? And just everyday life,

like if I'm driving and I get a text message, I'm probably not going to look at it. But if I get an email from that same company later that night, I'm probably going to see it. Yes. And so it relies more on multiple tactics rather than putting all the weight just on email marketing. That's right.

And they do say, I mean, like especially SMS, like the open rate's like 80%. Right, you know? That's probably going to go down over time as we, marketers start to junk up everybody's inbox. Right, right. But it is like astounding email open rates like, you know, you're great if it's like

five or six percent. Yeah. And now SMS is clouding it. But look, it's all about relevant message. Right person, right message. Absolutely. If you're relevant, they've opted in. They've already done business with you or you know they're a relevant super fan or

consumer, then they're not going to be annoyed, you know, like even if they delete it, it's not the right moment for them. you know, that repetition of message, if they've opted in and they're ready for that message, you know, you want to be able to get to where and when you need to. Absolutely. Yep. Anything else on your list? You know, I think for me, one of the things that we kind of talked about earlier,

but is Facebook ads. I think the chaos of 2020, 2020, 2021 is going to slow down a little bit. I do believe that Facebook ads will become not more effective, but we'll calm down, so to speak. So we won't have to worry about the, iOS updates. We'll have figured out the pixel. We'll figure out the cookie idea. I think across the board, I don't think that's just with Facebook, but sooner or later, an alternative's going to have to come up. So that's one of the things that I'm looking

forward to the most is not having to ride the tsunami of all the changes, kind of going back to the early days of, hey, this is Facebook ads. And obviously that doesn't mean they're not going change. I do think that there'll be different add types that they'll roll out next year. I think one buzzword that everybody's talking about right now is the Metaverse. Yep. I disagree or agree. Don't think that's going to be a big thing in 2022. I think 2022 is going to be a preparation year for Metaverse. So all the big brands, I mean, a lot of them are already jumping on ship for that. But I think the big brands of the world is going to drive the Metaverse, not necessarily the Schmedium clients. Yeah.

No, I think you're 100% right. I think it's one of those that, you know, brands that we work with and brands that we talk to. And if you're listening to this podcast and you're not with Pepsi or Pizza Hut or, you know, insert larger brand here. It's not that you should you should pay attention. Absolutely. And we're going to talk about it. I'm going to talk about it on the podcast. I'm going to have people on, you know, thought leadership on on the podcast.

So you'll hear it here first. But there's not a real like action step today, you know, for, what you need to do because a lot of this is going to play out because you don't know who's going to kind of be the lead metaverse. Yeah, at some point, because it's blockchain, they should all connect. But we don't even have the major players worked out. Yeah, we know Facebook's going to be evolved, but is it through Oculus Rift and VR and AR and all that?

The answer is probably yes, but what's the true universe that we're talking about here? Is it going to be a gaming platform like Roblox? Is it going to be insert crypto here that's tied to some type of metaverse that they're selling land on? You know, again, I would pay attention more from an investment and interest standpoint than necessarily where can I spend marketing dollars today. Right. And, you know, and again, no one wants to get left behind, but I think 2022 is going to start to paint the picture. for where all this goes and I'm not even sure it's going to be I think this is like the next five year thing right you know like figuring out where you know the true landing spot is for a lot

of this stuff it reminds me a lot of on a smaller scale of the whole voice phenomenon and how everybody was saying for years oh get ready for voice get ready for voice get ready for voice and I feel like I don't feel like voice is dead by any means but I definitely don't feel like we have it understood or is used as much as it was expected. Yes. So that's similar what I feel about Minterverse right now. Again, I think once they figure it out, I think once everybody jumps on board, will it be great?

Absolutely. You know, voice. It's so funny. You bring it. Voice search has been on everyone's marketing trends list for the last 10 years. Right. And someone, I'm sure, has it on their trend list for this year. Right.

And it's like, eventually someone will be right. Yeah. I can tell you, at this point with my sports, we have to. too. We have an Alexa and Google, but both of them are only used to listen to Blippy or whatever my daughters want to listen to. That's really all for us, at least. I mean, I'm sure. My does Alexa set timer for 10 minutes for the cookies the kids are eating? Right. Exactly. Exactly. So again, I think they're valuable. I think they will be valuable more so in the future.

But once we figure out all of it connects and works going back to the connectivity. The funny thing is, if you get into like a 15. or 14 year old BMW, they have the voice button on Steeringwell from like 19 or 2004. Yep. The voice button's there. Yeah,

it sucks ass, but like, right, it was there. We were talking about voice. It wasn't internet connected. I get all that. Someone's going to DM me invariably and go,

well, you know, it wasn't interconnected. Right. You know, shit Sherlock. Just send it to me. I'll think,

but like, yeah, but it's like, we were talking voice for 20 years. Right. And then now it is all interconnect connected. And,

yes, I do some things with the voice, but I'm not voice searching internet at all. Right. And I feel like I am on, I may not be on the cut. Compared to my friends, I'm on the cutting edge. You know, like, so it's like, I don't know. I can tell you in the past week I've used it three times, once to listen to songs for my daughters, twice for a timer. Yeah. And the third time is to say, hey, Siri, who is this? Or what is this song? Yeah. And that's it. So, yeah. But you haven't gone, hey, Siri. internet look up how to play Monopoly or whatever.

Or it's going to be some like random Google search. Like how many miles is the sun away from whatever planet I want to look at? And they've been talking about like I don't go, hey Amazon order five rolls of toilet paper. No. They've been saying that's going to happen too.

Right. Now I'm not doing that. Not doing that either. Not yet. Right. I mean, it will I maybe and look back. But again. Who knows?

We might use it for the metaverse and be like, order five rolls of toilet paper for my 600. $150,000 yacht that I just bought on the Metaverse. Yeah. Yeah. My head just was to a dark place. Literally and figuratively of the Metaverse. What all we do there?

Joe and I joked about getting catfish in the dating Metaverse. I mean, how will you know? You'll never know. You'll never know. The future's ahead of us. I'll make believe anyway. Right. Cool.

I do have a couple more. I do think LinkedIn's taking. shape as a platform that's beyond job seekers, job hunters, and people looking for jobs. I mean, that's been happening the last few years with content. But creator mode has come out. You've got live events. You've got short form videos supposedly launching any day. You've got video I am back to video messaging.

I do think it's rounding into a broader platform for content, for influencers, for I don't know, a hub of a lot more than just selling in jobs. Yep. It's becoming a platform of valuable information. Yes. And it's funny, we were actually talking about this before starting recording. And one of our creative director, he said, you know, nobody has subscriptions to ad week or ad age, like the physical copies. And our other creative director said, because I see all of that on LinkedIn.

Like I get all of that information on LinkedIn. And I think that's, at least for my age, that we did use it for, jobs and now it's become more curated. Right. Curated content be that we can look up, whatever we want to look up. And it's professional. It's business minded.

So it's not the Wild Wild West like TikTok, but also it's valuable. That's right. And so I think you're going to see, it's going to be interesting, you know, with virtual events and stuff like that, you know,

with live events on LinkedIn. It's going to be big. And I think, you know, as much as, I was trying not to say the word COVID on this. But like, you know, our news cycle just scares the shit out of us, I guess. So with, again, not seemingly never going away, you know, I think we're going to be in a hybrid world again in 22 with events. Because until I think it's completely out of the news, even if we just learned to live with it on some level, I just don't think we're going to have every single trade show that we had in 2019.

Right. You know. No, I agree with that 100%. And I think that's a smart strategy to take COVID or not. I agree. You have to become a hybrid. You can't rely on your brick and mortar store or your physical trade show because that's just not the world we're living in anymore.

It's not even efficient. Right. I mean, you know, it's just unnecessary. Right. From a cost standpoint, I still believe in that human interaction. Yep. But not for everything. Right.

And you shouldn't just because you did have five physical trade shows in 2019. pre-COVID. I don't know that that genie needs to go back in the bottom. I think you can be more efficient with the hybrid approach. You might have two, especially if COVID finally settles down completely or whatever that looks like, two in person and three virtual, but they're all hybrid.

You have both experiences. So you can draw a broader crowd. And I would be at those two in-person ones, that would be collecting and people already are first-person data left and right. That would be kind of my goal for that. and then use the hybrids as, hey, here's my captivated audience. And the great thing about hybrid is you naturally collect the audience because people have to opt in. You get email addresses no matter what.

Yep. You still have to physically get that once you get to the trade show. 100%. Which is kind of the hardest part sometimes, no matter how many frisbys you give away. My last thing on my list is, you know, when I'm calling back to the past is, you know, I get on the soapbox a lot. I'm a long-term guy in a short-term world. And I believe in playing the long game as it relates to brand and other things like that.

But I think also the world that we live in and the nature of where we talked about with the ad targeting not being like, again, five years ago, you could, I mean, with the data, lack of data privacy and everything else, Facebook, ads was easy. Right. I mean, like, it was like, you know, ROA was like a snap of a fingers. If you had a decent product, I'm not saying if you had trash or something, but like compared to what it is now. Right. And so in a world where data privacy is more secure, it's a little harder to get to the

absolute bottom of the funnel of everyone. And even that universe is smaller than it needs to be. Right. You've got to play the brand game where you've got to raise awareness and, you know, and, you're have a drumbeat of getting people to know and understand your brand. Because if you're not known and you aren't people by familiarity. This is why you have reach and frequency in media. You have to have reach, which is the size of the audience that you get to,

the number of people that you hit, and frequency, the amount of messages that you hit. And you've got to have that drumbeat happening more important now than ever, especially with the just, every other day, 20,000 e-commerce business is popping up. Right. I mean,

you have to have some type of brand presence and familiarity because you can't just go to the bottom of the funnel. If you have no awareness, unless you're selling truly a differentiated one-of-one product. Right. But if you're selling a T-shirt or a necklace or a fabric,

or whatever and there's a lot of other category players, you've got to stand out with your brand and have built some type of drumbeat familiarity and awareness in either your purpose or your perspective or whatever your brand stands for. There's got to be some familiarity there. And I think it's just vitally important and gets lost in the sauce today. Right. Yeah, I think one example of that for me personally is Liquid Ivy. I saw it in.

Costco, went home, researched it, and then saw an ad for it on Facebook and finally bought it. But between those three, I would say it took probably about a month. And so clearly they're geotargeting Costco's or something because I got an ad for it after going, well, either way, weeds. ADD. I do have ADD, by the way. But I think that's, I think you're 100% right. I think it is a brand building. It is a storytelling. people are people that we're skeptical by nature.

So if I see an ad of something that I've never heard of or never researched or never did anything, I'm not clicking on it. I'm sure as hell not buying it. Let me figure out on my own what you are, who you are, and then show me your product. Yeah, it's an average of seven to ten impressions

before you consider buying. Right. Not necessarily before you buy. Right. And so one ad, at one moment doesn't make a sale. Right. And, you know, we work with clients and that's hard to get across them.

And, you know, we know we're in it for, they're in it to sell stuff. We get it. But you don't just turn that motor on. You've got to build. And I still believe, you know, I think you might title parts of the funnel differently. It's still just true. You know, there's still some level of awareness that you have to build. Right.

That builds towards intent, ultimately to consideration and then purchase. Right. And you don't just go to purchase unless you got them at the zero moment of truth. Right. I needed that pack of gum. And I'm at the, I'm at the checkout line. And I'm like, damn, I've been going to these meetings. I've been wondering about my breath stinking.

Right. And I've got that pack of gum. Right. And it's that exact zero moment of truth. Right. Or, you know, I've been really wanting a new Clemson T-shirt to support my fandom. And damn it, they got me right there on the Clemson Forum's website. Okay.

Right. You know, that happens. You probably don't want that t-shirt this year. Yeah, I know. Hey, have a fan thick and thin, brother. Go dogs. Oh. Sorry, your year.

You can have your year. Well, hey, beep bam on Saturday. Oh, God. And by the time anyone's listening to this, you'll already have known. And we'll see if Georgia gets over the hump. If you can't get over the hump this year, we're not going to. Yeah. You guys are so due.

Whatever. But, yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, even go back to like the old traditional ways, like the QVCs of the world, that's why they brought the. owner on the founders of the company to, it might have tried to shorten that length a little bit, but to tell the story. Yep. I mean, they're not just having a product on here, not telling you what it does or why you need it, or you have to, and going back to the beginning, you have to entertain, you have to educate all day long.

But QVC had their whole funnel built into the 30-minute show. Right. You got on the show, you meet the first 30 minutes are, we've got 200 of these to sell. So they set up scarcity immediately. Yeah. And then, you know, whoever's watching is watching. And here, meet the founder who's going to talk about it. You know, Jim, you know, I would put a lot of heart and soul into this soap.

You know, we've got a goat farm. And, you know, they do all that. And you see the story. And they're like, we only got 200 bars to sell today, Jim. And, but, oh, look now. So they built the entire funnel right there. You got to know the brand. You got to understand it.

But not every company is that way. And not every ad could carry that. Right. Because you don't, unless you're doing live selling, right. We talked about. But, you know, it's like. that was it's a it's its own like funnel that covers a lot of bases you get 30 minutes of impression then not three seconds right and I think at the end of the day we can talk about

the new 2020 22 2020 yeah trends but at the end of the day it's the old is new again it's the same old human emotion connection storytelling brand building it might be different tactics it might be newer tactics but the principle stays the same I mean that's that's that's the end of it for me is like we can be talking in 2032 52. Those principles are always going to be the same. Yep, 100%. Not every product is going to be a viral TikTok product, which everybody wants it to be, but then would it be viral?

And so. And, you know, large brands can sustain underinvestment because of the awareness they've built over time. If you're a small and median brand, you have to overinvest in branding and awareness to play the long game. Yeah, you can throw sales up and you can do short-term behaviors and those things, but it doesn't last. Right. Short-term doesn't last.

Right. And so you've got to be ready to play the long game and do the fundamental things that have mattered because I think we had this little, I don't know how long it was, this universe from 2010 to 2018, 19. You had this moment in time where you could kind of play the digital marketing game and start. short circuit some of that. Yep. But both before that and now we're back to the past of you got to play the long game to kind of have sustainability. Yeah, absolutely.

I agree with that 100%. And again, that's how it's always going to be. You'll never hear me say that you should never not build your brand. And you're going to have these organic moments. Right. You're going to have these moments if you could be a first mover on TikTok. You know, and you could just get a sky rock, you know. But like some of those first moves on Skyrocket, they skyrocketed for eight months.

Right. And then they fizzle. Yep. You know, they runs out. and maybe they made $2 million and they can, you know, they did well enough if they're just a small individual person. But, you know, a brand can ride a rocket ship for six months, but that's not going to sustain you forever.

Nope. And trying to rekindle that moment in time is a fleeting exercise. Right. Yeah. At one way or another, you're going to have to play the game of long-term braining. Always, always. It's the name of the game for sure. Cool, man.

Any final thoughts? No, I'm interested to see what. what 2022 brings. Yeah. I think like I said, I think the chaos is going to, I probably am wrong on that, but I think it's going to calm down a little bit. Yeah.

I hope so. I hope so. I appreciate you. Absolutely. I appreciate you. Cool, guys. We really appreciate you listening today. You know where to find us.

We're at the radcast.com. Learn about all of this. Search 2022 trends. You'll find all the content today. And hey, if you're looking for an incredible mastermind, I want you to go check out the radical formula. Amy Murphy and I are going to do brain and brand engineering, a mastermind, weekly mastermind kicking off here the next few weeks.

Go check that out. Get signed up for our email newsletter to learn more. We appreciate everyone. I'm Ryan offered on all the platforms. We'll see you next time on the Ratcast.